“A Martyr’s Vision” with Edgardo Colon-Emeric

Show Notes:

We welcome Dr. Edgardo Colón-Emeric to The Weight for a discussion of Maundy Thursday (the day Christians commemorate Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples before his arrest, crucifixion, death, and resurrection) through the lens of the ministry of Fr. Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of El Salvador who was assassinated in 1980. Edgardo was drawn to the way Archbishop Romero read the gospel through the context of where and when he lived, especially how Romero dedicated himself in his short time as Archbishop to the lives of the people he served, who mostly lived in overwhelming poverty.

Edgardo is dean of Duke Divinity School, the Irene and William McCutchen Professor of Reconciliation and Theology, and director of the Center for Reconciliation. He earned his Masters of Divinity from Duke University in 1997 and his Ph.D. from Duke University in 2007. He was also the first Latino to be ordained as an elder in the North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Resources:

Buy Óscar Romero’s Theological Vision: Liberation and the Transfiguration of the Poor

Transcript:

Eddie Rester 00:00 I'm Eddie Rester.

Chris McAlilly 00:01
I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight.

Eddie Rester 00:03

We're glad that you're with us today. This episode comes out on Maundy Thursday. We have a special guest with us to help us think about Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Easter. We have Reverend Dr. Edgardo Colon-Emeric. He's the Dean of Duke Divinity School. He is the Irene William McCutcheon Professor of Reconciliation in Theology there. He's also the director of the Center for Reconciliation at Duke Divinity School.

Chris McAlilly 00:29

He wrote a book about five years ago on the theological vision of Oscar Romero. Oscar Romero was the Archbishop of El Salvador in the 1980s and was ultimately martyred while he was at the end of a worship service in a small chapel close to where he lived at a hospital. And we talked about Romero's theological vision and kind of the way in which the gospel and Christian practices of worship can be put in conversation with particular contexts and particular times and places to both help understand what's happening in those places and also to give a lens to deal with both grief and death and then also hope and resurrection

Eddie Rester 01:25

I think one of the things for me in the conversation is really thinking about the body coming to the table. Maundy Thursday, if you're not familiar in your tradition, or if you don't have a Christian tradition, Maundy Thursday is the day where we remember the Last Supper, where the church, when we worship, we come to the table together to remember the Last Supper, the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. And the way he talked about it, the way he reflected on how Oscar Romero saw the table, was that it wasn't just us coming to receive grace, but it was the body coming as the crucified and resurrected body of Christ alive in the world. And for me, just that picture was just helpful for me, because I think about what millions of Christians will do this evening on Maundy Thursday, and what we do, as we gather over and over again, throughout the year,

Chris McAlilly 02:25

Edgardo, who is in a lot of ways, a very conventional Roman Catholic figure up until kind of the end of his life, the death of a colleague and friend and in a context where there was just deep polarization between those who are very wealthy and those who were very poor. Edgardo saw the face of Christ in the face of those who suffered and those who were poor.

Eddie Rester 02:55
Oscar Romero saw the face of Christ. You said Edgardo.

Chris McAlilly 02:58

I said Edgardo. I meant Oscar. I do think that Edgardo turns our attention to those realities here and now and I do think there's a resonance between kind of the life that I see Edgardo living and his scholarship. He does kind of... I don't know. There have been a couple of figures that I've encountered that kind of become vehicles for another person's theological vision. That happened a couple of times when I was in seminary. I encountered people that could just bring forward a theological vision of a particular church father, a particular individual from the past, that made it come alive. And I think that Edgardo does that for Oscar, and it's powerful.

Eddie Rester 03:44

Absolutely. Well, and what I love about Edgardo, he and I were in seminary together. And a couple of memories that I have of him is that he was brilliant, very smart, but also humble in how he lived, how he carried himself, how he lived out the Gospel. And I think you hear that in our conversation with him today.

Chris McAlilly 04:05

Yeah, so this episode will, you know, in some ways, will deal with some harder realities of life. And I think that's part of the gospel. It's part of the next three or four days of the way in which the Church will celebrate the end of Jesus' life, his death, his resurrection. This episode, I see it as like a companion to the one that we've put out the last couple of years during Holy Week--a conversation we had by Kavin Rowe, with Kavin Rowe about Christianity's surprise. And I think these two I think, in future years, I think I'll go back and listen to these episodes together. So if you're, you know, you're just in the spirit and the mood after you listen to this one, you might want to go check out Kavin Rowe, the episode from last year about this time. We're so grateful every week that you spend with us. I hope that this episode, if you listen to it today on Thursday, that it will be part of the movement for you into a deeper and more profound hope. And we always love being with you on The Weight. [INTRO] Life can be heavy. So heavy, in fact, that the weight we carry can sometimes cause us to lose hope.

Eddie Rester 05:26
But we've all come across those people in life who seem to be experiencing the same world we live in, except they maintain a great depth of joy and hope.

Chris McAlilly 05:34
A former generation called this gravitas. It was their description of a soul that had gained enough weightiness to be attractive, like all things with a gravitational pull.

Eddie Rester 05:46
Those are the people we want to talk to. On this podcast, we talk to pastors, entrepreneurs, artists, mental health experts, and many others

Chris McAlilly 05:55
We'll create space for heavy topics, but we'll be listening for a quality of soul that could be called gravitas.

Eddie Rester 06:02
Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]

Chris McAlilly 06:04
We're here today with Reverend Dr. Edgardo Colon-Emeric. Edgardo, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today on the podcast.

Edgardo Colon-Emeric 06:15
It's my pleasure to be with you. Thank you for inviting me.

Eddie Rester 06:18

We were talking before we started recording that you and I graduated the same year from Duke and probably took a lot of same professors and had a lot of same memories. But we kind of ran... You ran with a much smarter crowd than I did at Duke. But it was a great time to be there. I think.

Edgardo Colon-Emeric 06:39
I think so, too. Though, it sounds to me like since you were playing all these sports and all that, that you ran more than I did.

Eddie Rester 06:47
I'm not that athletic, but yeah.

Edgardo Colon-Emeric 06:50

It was a great time to be at school at the Divinity School. I was just speaking with some people who were planning the next convocation and pastoral school, which meets here in October. And remembering of when I was master of divinity student here, one of the speakers for that convocation was Lesslie Newbigin. How transforming it was for me to listen to him speak, open my eyes to different ways of reading and understanding scripture.

Eddie Rester 07:21
I still read his book "Foolishness to the Greeks" about once a year. I pull it off the shelf and read through it, because he, yeah, he was one of the transformational folks we got to encounter.

Chris McAlilly 07:32

I think that might be, for folks who don't know that name, perhaps we just start there. What, Edgardo, maybe tell folks a little bit about Lesslie Newbigin, because I do think that's kind of an interesting place to start, in terms of his scholarship, his theological vision. What is it about theology, but particularly theology that is kind of grounded in a desire to offer good news to the world, that's so compelling? Both, perhaps, through somebody like Lesslie Newbigin, and maybe other figures that you've encountered through your reading and scholarship.

Edgardo Colon-Emeric 08:16

Sure, Lesslie Newbigin was compared to a church father by one of my professors, Geoffrey Wainwright. A church father, meaning those teachers in the early church were pastors often, often bishops in the church, but in the practice of ministry, reflected on the gospel in ways that still speak to us today. So that they became doctors for the Church throughout history, teachers of the Church throughout history. And Lesslie Newbigin believe was one of those in a missionary context in southern India, which is where he did a lot of his ministry. And reflecting on the way in which the gospel is communicated, and has power to transform and how the gospel challenges all cultures to be transformed, including the missionaries' culture. So it's a really rich time, and that image of people who are modern day church fathers is one that stuck with me, and then I went on to read and write on other theological figures, like say someone like Oscar Romero. The idea of modern day church fathers stuck with me as a helpful way of thinking of certain teachers whose stature from the practice of ministry has an extent, a radius, that places them at a different level from that of someone like myself, who was an academic and a professional teacher. But here's someone who, in a sense, is raised by the Spirit to be a teacher for the church.

Chris McAlilly 10:06

So Oscar Romero, you wrote a book and released it five years ago or so on his theological vision. The subtitle of the book is called "Liberation and Transfiguration of the Poor." And I wonder if you could just speak to kind of what drew you to him as a figure, as a modern day church father, and someone who was perhaps communicating the gospel in a particular context in a way that... Not just communicating but embodying the gospel in a way that was both compelling to you, and that ultimately has led you to spend, I think, a lifetime really kind of engaged with his witness.

Edgardo Colon-Emeric 10:52

Well, I came across his sermons while walking in the library of the Divinity School and talking to a student who was just beginning the program, the master's program. I was just beginning as a professor. And I saw these homilies of Oscar Romero in a bookshop next to us. And the idea occurred to me to start a Spanish language reading group during the lunch hour, and that we would read from Romero's homilies. And so I and maybe six, seven students or something like that would gather every week and read from numerous homilies and discuss them together in Spanish or Spanglish, or whatever came out. And I was immediately struck by the power of those homilies, the way in which he read the gospel in a manner that was deeply related to the context of what was happening in his church in that week, and illuminated it, shining light on it from the gospel in ways that were really, to me, extremely compelling, exciting. He disrupted the ideas of the categories that it had previously been what liberation theology was all about, and what social witness was all about, in ways that were maybe very, very helpful. And so there was that work, Spanish language reading group. And then I started traveling to El Salvador to do teaching, actually to organize a course of study program for training Methodist pastors from Central America. And they started doing that in December 2010. And I've been doing it continuously ever since, several times a year. And teaching in the land of Ramero, a land of martyrs and confessors, then strongly shaped and expanded my imagination, my sense of theological vocation. And the desire to study this figure more, to write on this figure, also shaped my own understanding of how I think of engaging scripture, of preaching, of leadership, of worship. So it's really has been, has indeed changed my life. And it was that combination of the reading, and then being and doing work in the context.

Eddie Rester 13:27

And there may be a lot of people who aren't familiar with Oscar Romero or what he did, what happened to him. His time in El Salvador was relatively brief. So share a little bit. Help people understand who who Father Romero was. He was Archbishop, I believe, is that correct?

Edgardo Colon-Emeric 13:47

That's right. And his time was Archbishop was brief. He was Archbishop from 1977 to 1980. Prior to that, he'd been Bishop and priest for many, many years. And he became Archbishop in a very turbulent time in El Salvador. A time of unrest, political unrest, that stemmed from vast income inequalities. The majority of the land was held by a very small group of people. Sometimes they're called the 13 families that own the vast majority of the land and that looked at the whole country, basically, as a private hacienda, their private property, and that everybody else was a tenant on that property. There had been attempts at land reform that had failed, had been frustrated by resistance from this oligarchy. And it was in that setting where Romero was consecrated as Archbishop and was seen as a kind of compromise candidate, who would not rock the boat, who was not arch conservative, but was not a liberationist that was not going to be promoting an insurrection or revolution or anything like that, and that would continue this the church's traditional role of being comfortable with the status quo. But that all changed very quickly when his friend, Father Rutilio Grande was killed just days after he was installed, after Romero's installation as Archbishop. And Romero dedicated himself to reaching and advocating for and defending the lives of his people, of his congregation who were overwhelmingly poor. And his preaching had such a powerful impact in the country that the government started jamming the radio signals transmitting the sermons, blowing up transmission towers. But people kept listening. And then on March 24, 1980, in a homily, late in the afternoon at a little chapel by a hospital where, right where Romero lived. As he was preaching, he was preaching a sermon on John 12, on "as a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a single grain, but if it dies, it bears much fruit." And as he finished his sermon and prepared to celebrate the Eucharist, he was assassinated. So he died by the side of the altar after preaching. He was the grain of fruit, the grain of wheat that fell to the ground and died, and then bore much fruit. And so it's a powerful story, and it's one that really got continues to captivate me.

Chris McAlilly 16:36

He wrote, in relationship, echoing kind of Matthew 25, "We learn to see the face of Christ, the face of Christ that is also the face of a suffering human being, the face of the crucified, the face of the poor." And ultimately, he... We're releasing this episode, you'll hear this for the first time on the Thursday of Holy Week. So today is Maundy Thursday in the traditions of the church. So today, where we remember the institution of the Eucharist, the institution of the Lord's Supper, and that's the night before Jesus dies when he says, "This is my body, this is my blood that's broken and given for you." And moving towards crucifixion, and ultimately, resurrection on the Easter. I wonder for you, it's very clearly kind of this cruciform ending to his life, like so many of the martyrs of the early church, including church fathers, who makes visible in his own body the Gospel. And I wonder kind of as you just meditate on the ending of his life. I mean, how you've come to to understand its meaning.

Edgardo Colon-Emeric 17:55

The ending of Romero's life is one that I think highlights the significance of the hour of Jesus. In the Gospel of John, we hear of Jeuss coming to his hour, and the hour of crucifixion being the hour of glorification when he is lifted up from the earth and draws all to himself. And that is very much what I see in Romero's witness as well, is a lifting up of the witness of Christ, and the hour of Christ being experimented in the hour of the people of El Salvador. So that for him, the church is, he'll speak of the Church as the Body of Christ in history, in this movement, pilgrimage through history, and of the people of God in El Salvador, as the crucified people of God. And so it's the crucified Christ and the crucified people, the people who are being tormented, tortured, put to death for for reasons that are ultimately absurd and only make sense in a certain kind of economy, in a certain kind of a political system. So that's what it's all for. There's a way in which, looking at the Passion of Christ and the passion of the people of God, Romero looks at these very closely together. It's Matthew 25. But Matthew 25, that image of "as you've done unto the least of these, you've done unto me," looking at it with his whole congregation, his whole people that is experimenting the suffering of El Salvador

Eddie Rester 19:48

As Christians gather this weekend, tonight to celebrate the Eucharist and to move towards tomorrow crucifixion and Sunday's resurrection, as you think about people gathered around the table at a Maundy Thursday service after they've told the story again of the Last Supper, what would you hope, reflecting again, through the life of Oscar Romero, what would you hope people would receive as they come to the table? What would you say maybe people should be looking to receive as they come to the table?

Edgardo Colon-Emeric 20:29

That's a very important question. And it's a question that, at one level, the answer is that we are approaching the table with a posture of receptivity, of openness, to receive Christ in whatever way Christ would hand himself over to us, and to do so always with his people. I think that's the key thing, that it's not receiving Christ alone, but it's receiving Christ's body, which is also Christ's Body, the Church. And that for me, one image of what this can look like is present in a chapel at the University of Central Americans in El Salvador, where, in that chapel, it's called the Chapel of Jesus Christ the Liberator. When you look at the Chapel, the altar area, there are these very bright, beautiful panels that tell the story of the civil war in El Salvador and Romero's martyrdom, but in light of the resurrection. It's very colorful. It's very vibrant. It's very hopeful. And Maundy Thursday, in beginning that journey towards resurrection, already starts orienting us to look towards the light of Easter. However, when you stand in the altar area, in the pulpit, and you look back to the congregation, or if you're heading out from the congregation to the world, you see these stations, these panels with these drawings, showing mutilated bodies, tortured bodies. They're not Stations of the Cross as there would be in some churches, but stations of the crucified peoples. And I think part of the message there is that when we are, as we approach the end to Holy Week, we're entering into this mystery of death and resurrection, of lament and hope, of suffering and joy. And that in drawing close to the Eucharist, we're also drawing close to the wounds and hurts and the suffering of the world, and especially the world of the poor.

Chris McAlilly 22:49

Yeah, so one of the things that I hear in that, Edgardo, is, I think, sometimes one of the... I mean, there are a lot of things that we can do to slightly misunderstand what's going on either in the Bible or in Christian practices, like the celebration of the Eucharist. And one of the things that we can do with the sacrament is, we can overly spiritualize it and make it overly individualistic, really just about me and my relationship with Jesus, and the mercy and grace that I'm receiving. I think one of the things that a witness like Romero's offers is an opportunity to remember the full blooded, embodied and communal reality of the meal and the way in which it connects us not only with one another as the body of Christ, but it's given, in the words of the Orthodox liturgical theologian Alexander Schmemann, it's given for the life of the world. And there's this sense that to celebrate the Eucharist, it's a way to connect us with every, presumably every person, that it's offered--the mercy and the grace of Christ is shed and given for the life of certainly a community but also a nation and and ultimately the world. And I think that it's a corrective almost.

Edgardo Colon-Emeric 24:19

It's a corrective. It's also a kind of broadening of the view. I mean, it's like going to wide angle lens and to seeing the significance of the Eucharist for the world. So when when Romero's friend Rotilio Grande was killed, Romero's response to that act was to hold a single mass in the Archdiocese. So for that Sunday, there were to be no masses celebrated, the Eucharist celebrated in any of the church parishes in the Archdiocese, except that the cathedral. And all the priests and the people were to come to the cathedral to celebrate that single mass. And it was meant to be a statement of what would happen if priests continued to be killed, that you'd have no celebration of the Lord's Supper in your community, and also a statement of solidarity that we're all in this together and seeing the body come together around the body of Christ. And it was such an incredible experience, that it truly was a prophetic act. But it was simply an act of worship. It was not politicized, beyond simply saying, let's come together and worship together. That's it.

Chris McAlilly 25:36

Yeah, I think one of the things that strikes me about Romero as a Central American theologian, practical theologian, in a context where liberation theology has taken hold, particularly within the Catholic Church, and there were these fears that it's a catalyst for Marxist revolution. Romero was very clear about the purpose of the church. The church for him was, it existed principally for the evangelization of the human race, as he said. And then at that funeral, when everyone comes together, they come together, and he says, "We are a pilgrim church exposed to misunderstanding, to persecution, but a church that walks peacefully, because we carry within us the force of love." And it's an act of worship, but it's an act of public unity, the public unity of the church across the nation. And it's a beautiful witness, but it's one that it strikes me, I mean, I immediately feel a sense of lament, because I'm not Roman Catholic, you know. And so there's a lament in the possibility of a public witness within Protestantism, and particularly in a place like America, because of just the vast fragmentation of the body of Christ across denominations, etc. And it seems like, I don't know, I guess that's another angle of vision that Romero's witness within Roman Catholicism and on that particular day offers, is just a view of how fragmented the body of Christ has become within the Protestant world.

Edgardo Colon-Emeric 27:16

Two thoughts I'd offer in response. You're absolutely right. The fragmentation is keenly felt by us in ways that even in Romero's time would have been different in Romero's time. In Romero's time, there was fragmentation in different ways. There was fragmentation within his own church, too. He was not supported by everyone in his church. Some of his fellow bishops, Salvadoran bishops, opposed him. And so even the act of gathering together for that single mass was decried by some of his colleagues and by some of the people in his church. So it was divisive then, too. Second, also, it was ecumenical. Romero reached out to Protestants who were in his country, and also beyond, to come together because there's a common cause, which is defending the life of human beings who are in the image of God. And that was something that all Christians were invested in. And then third thing I'd say, I said two, but the third one is that I think that the way in which Romero approached worship, in a way that's had such density, concreteness to the context he was in, the moment he was in, is something we can learn from. I think, sometimes in our preaching, in our worship, we spiritualize it, yes. We sometimes universalize it, make it abstract, yes. And sometimes we nationalize it without making it actually first local. And we're more attuned sometimes to the national news, the world news, but not what's happening in our community. And part of the gift of Romero was naming what was happening in his community in light of the gospel, and he just made it come to live in huge, powerful ways. And that's how you could preach for almost two hours, and people would stick with him. It's not common for Catholic priests to preach for two hours. I just read from Pope Francis a note asking for people to not preach any more than eight or ten minutes.

Chris McAlilly 29:24 [LAUGHTER]

Eddie Rester 29:26

Yeah, probably my folks would like it if I would follow that, just eight to ten minutes or so. You know, I think about his life, and particularly as we're talking about the body and I think that's one of the things sometimes that Protestants miss. I was raised Catholic, Catholic roots going far back. I think one of the things that sometimes Protestants miss is this strong sense of the fullness of the body of Christ. That it's not, again, like Chris was saying, it's not just me and Jesus. It's not just me and the group on gathering within a building in my place, but there's a stronger connection beyond that. And then coming back to thinking of Easter. In those threads, I'm thinking how important it is to come to the table on Maundy Thursday because it prepares us to approach resurrection as one body. Not as a lot of people showing up for worship to try to get to brunch, but it prepares us to come. We've been fed as the body, and now we come to experience resurrection as, not just individuals, but we come to experience resurrection as the fullness of the body of Christ. Any thoughts on that, Edgardo?

Edgardo Colon-Emeric 30:53

Well, I think it's beautifully said and Romero was ministering in a context that was living in a perpetual Lent, in a sense, a time of deprivation, violence. And yet, he, as they moved into this formal season of Lent, as they moved into the Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Saturday, Easter Sunday, there is a way in which he uses the liturgy to read the history of what's happening in their country, in the city, in their country right now. And I think that's something also we can learn from, is how is it that we use... What does it mean to read what is happening in our nation, say, through Holy Thursday? And to let the celebration of the Eucharist on Holy Thursday and the stripping of churches, and the last words of Good Friday, and Easter sunrise services, to let those liturgical celebrations inform our imagination for how we actually read the events of today. That's what Romero was doing. And I think that skill of reading the signs of the times in light of the liturgy and the Christian year is something that we can learn from. And that the practice of these things school serves for them, but it requires also preachers and teachers to make what is implicit in the practices explicit.

Chris McAlilly 32:39

Yeah, so it's a reading that goes both ways. And I think that was one of the things I was thinking about. I'm glad that you mentioned signs of the times. I mean, that's one of the things I feel like he... It was a skill. It was one of the skills that he brought to the table, but then it got sharpened through the course of the last couple years of his life. I didn't mean to interrupt you, Eddie.

Eddie Rester 32:59

No, no, that's okay. As you think about his life, just picking up on that, in my reading of him is that he wasn't arch conservative when he was appointed Archbishop, but he wasn't where he ended up, as you talk about the murder of his friend. But that his ability to read and allow the Spirit to allow to change him because of what he saw was, from my perspective, a significant part of his story, his ability, then, to go back to Scripture to preach, to offer the liturgy in the sacrament. If he was, if he was around this Holy Week, Edgardo, what would he be hoping for the church right now? What would he be... What do you think you'd be preaching for the church today?

Edgardo Colon-Emeric 33:54

He would be very much preaching the gospel, and seeing how the preaching and celebration of the gospel on Holy Thursday and the Holy Week, how that informs our understanding of what's happening around us today. What's happening, what's happening around us with polarization? What's happening around us with divisions, with gun violence? And he would be looking to make these connections and to see how it is, what the Word of God has something to say to these things today, in ways that are not cliche, that are not simply kind of popular culture, but that has real depth to them. And inviting us to engage that exercise and then enter Holy Week and these celebrations with a belief that God will speak a word for us today, and that that word can transform us. It can transfigure us. I talk a lot about transfiguration, the importance of that in Romero's theological vision, and something that neither Protestants nor even Catholics speak about that much. If you want to look at transfiguration theology, you look to the Eastern Orthodox and Romero, I would say. And there are reasons, historical reasons for that. I don't have time to go into. But the point being, that the possibility of truly being changed by an encounter with Christ and continuing to live into that is what Lent is about, preparing us for, and to encounter this Christ in the celebration of Maundy Thursday, which is the command. But Maundy Thursday, lived out in a way that is very missionional and social. What is Maundy Thursday about? Mandatum Thursday. What is the mandatum? The commandment that we love one another, as he loved us. And who is this other? All others, but especially the most marginalized, the most wounded ones. Starting from there, and from there loving all. And so that's also what I think he would commend us to do.

Chris McAlilly 36:21

Yeah, there's an echo, I think, in the very beginning of Pope Francis' tenure, as Pope, I remember just in the first year, or the first couple years of being in that role on Maundy Thursday, my understanding is that the Maundy Thursday service, at the Basilica, St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, was like a high ticketed event, you know. To have your feet washed by the Pope was this thing that everybody wanted to do. And intentionally Pope Francis said, we're not going to do that. Or maybe he did it, and decided to do a second offering that was in the prisons, as I recall.

Eddie Rester 37:12
Juvenile? Juvenile prison, maybe,

Chris McAlilly 37:15

Yeah, I mean, he intentionally leaves the cathedral and goes to a prison and washes the feet of those who are incarcerated. To me, that's a very, I mean, that's an echo in a lot of ways of some of the... I don't know. It's kind of in the spirit of Romero in a lot of ways of reading the signs of the times and thinking about how the liturgy might be heard or seen in this embodied way, as the Pope leaves the cathedral and goes to wash the feet, in response to the commandment of Christ, to love one another, but to do that in a way that that is offering blessing and a kind of transfigured vision for the human family by going to those that are that are incarcerated or poor. So I guess in light of that, I wonder kind of what do you see in the current Pope's leadership that would, as someone coming from central South America, someone who I'm sure is thinking about his theological vision in light of that particular charism that's coming from that part of the world, I wonder what you see in Pope Francis?

Edgardo Colon-Emeric 38:38

Sure. And I find many, a lot of resonance between Pope Francis and Romero. I might also, as an aside, between Romero and John Wesley, but that's perhaps a different direction. I find Romero and Francis both to be very Wesleyan. But that's perhaps a different thing. But the resonance is clearly there. And Pope Francis was, when Bergoglio became Pope Francis, one of his first acts was advancing the beatification then of Romero, which had been blocked for many, many years for various political reasons. And not only advancing that beatification, but very much embodying the kind of ministry that Romero represented. And back to the Maundy Thursday and the washing of feet of a church that would be a servant church, and evangelization and diaconia service as things that belong together. And that ministering to the wounds of the world, to those who are being ignored, the immigrants whom Pope Francis visited very early on in his papacy, that these are ways of living out the gospel and ways of evangelizing. And that these are gospel gestures. And so I find a lot of resonance in these two and find both of them to be ways, that they both represent ways of living out the gospel in our context that remind us that the gospel, first of all, good news. And good news of joy.

Eddie Rester 40:41

I'm just sitting here thinking about the journey of Holy Week through some of what you just said. And as I think about Palm Sunday, and Palm Sunday in my mind is always the day that Jesus starts disappointing everybody around him. They expect him to show up as king to take over Jerusalem. That doesn't happen on Sunday. He makes all the religious leaders furious early in the week. Then when he gets to Maundy Thursday, he sits down for this meal, and he washes his disciples' feet. And again, breaking the mold of what was, to lead to a command to love. I wonder what thoughts you might have on kind of how does that unexpected Messiah, maybe, read into how we celebrate these final days of Lent.

Edgardo Colon-Emeric 41:40

Think the way in which Jesus acts in those days, surprises. And one of my hopes for us as we enter the whole Holy Week is to not let the rituals of Holy Week and the traditions of Holy Week that we already anticipate to numb us or desensitize us to being surprised--and to be surprised by the depths that there are within those rituals, within those celebrations, and also surprised, simply surprised, by whom God brings along side with us. And that in those final days of Jesus, the element of surprise was polarizing, also. It was one that was perceived as good news by some and by others as evidence that he needed to be crucified. And the same thing happened in Romero's ministry, where his witness was one that was celebrated by some and repudiated by others. And that's always the nature of the gospel. There is a scandal that comes from the gospel, not because God wants to trip anyone up, but simply because we trip ourselves up, because we have things invested in remaining as they are. And if they are being disrupted, then that is upsetting.

Chris McAlilly 43:14

Yeah, it seems to me that the weakness of Romero's theological vision is that--I mean, from a particular angle of vision--is that he failed. I mean, despite valiant nonviolent resistance, the prophetic witness did not persuade the powers and principalities to relent. And it seems also that this is the case with Jesus. I mean, a part of the reason Jesus disappoints folks that he wasn't a triumphant Messiah. He was, you know, from a certain angle of vision, he's a failed Messiah, or even a false messiah. You know, "cursed be the one who hangs upon a tree," it says in Deuteronomy. And so there's this sense that the message of the cross is foolish to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved as the power of God. And so, you know, I think one of the perplexing statements that Romero makes that I wonder if you would comment on, Edgardo, is he says, "I don't believe in death without resurrection." What did he mean by that? I guess, how do you interpret that particular statement?

Edgardo Colon-Emeric 44:27

As a Christian, he has been looking at, he does not look at death by itself, because death has been transformed. Or Paul would say it's been swallowed up in victory. And so, when we look also now at crucifixion, we don't look at it on its own. We always look at crucifixion in conjunction with resurrection and resurrection in conjunction with crucifixion. So the two need to be held together. And so we can approach the cross and speak about the wondrous cross and the beauty of the cross even. It's the torture of how. It's the torture of essentially torture and death. We only do so because we are doing so in the light of Easter approaching or already in light of Easter. And resurrection, we don't approach it in a sense of like, it's all now resolved because the risen one carries wounds. Let me give you when we were seeing this represented so clearly. When I was a pastor here in Durham, North Carolina, and I was pastoring a church plant in the Hispanic community, our first worship service after many Bible studies and conversations and so on, people said let's have a worship service. It was Good Friday. And we met in a house on a, at that time, a dirt, unpaved road in Durham. There were those back then. And the house where we were having worship was decorated with balloons, and streamers. And there were pinatas. And there was big cake and all this food and so on. And I was thinking, we're celebrating Good Friday, Good Friday, Tenebrae. We have no vestments, all that, but not there. There was like a combo package of Good Friday and Easter, and the quinceañera all wrapped into one. And there's something very deep about that, about how we approach Good Friday and Easter, as really different movements in a single event, as known by triduum, the three days, and virtually is one service. But we were experimenting that in that community. And I believe that's also what Romero is trying to hold together. Death and life, crucifixion and resurrection, these things are held together, by the way, by the transfiguration, which happens on the way to the crucifixion, but it's the moment of glory. And so holding these things together and letting ourselves be carried by that movement, that is, I think what Romero was getting at.

Eddie Rester 47:26

Edgardo, thank you for your time. I think that's a great place for us to end as we think about holding together the story of these days of a meal, of a gathering of the body, of the breaking of Jesus' body, and the hope of our resurrection. So thank you for being with us today.

Edgardo Colon-Emeric 47:51
My pleasure and blessings to you as you continue to walk with our Lord on the way to Golgotha and onto the resurrection.

Eddie Rester 48:00
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Chris McAlilly 48:09

If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]