Homily by Brother David Andrews, CSC

[Br. David began his homily with a remembrance for Ray Bordell, a member of the National Farmers Union from North Dakota who very recently died.]

Please look at the cover of the worship booklet. It depicts the earth wrapped in water. And the water that envelops the earth is a part of a vaster deeper pool of water that seems endless. The water is symbol of God's love. It surrounds the earth and is the depth that is the actual backdrop of the universe. There is in the world a field of meaning and love that we enter through our own loving, sharing and conviction. Ray Bordell has entered that depth. We believe and we grieve and trust that God's love as the fullness of life, its integrity and intimacy, is now enfolding Ray. What we know in part, he now knows in full.

The reading from Exodus speaks of the people as grumbling, having a great thirst for water. The deeper level of meaning is that they had a thirst for God. The physical desire is matched by a higher level of value and meaning, the desire for God. And while they were grumbling, seemingly out of touch with the deeper streams of their own longing, Moses is instructed to strike a rock from which water thus flows. The question that the people of Israel raised was: "Is the Lord in our midst or not?" Where is God in our tribulations and troubles? God reveals that God is indeed in their midst…but that is an awareness that they could lose, fail to realize and fail to act upon. God is with us always! But we can forget that, begin to act on some other value, and fail to go into the deep water that already surrounds us as God's love and grace.

And when is it possible that we awaken to God's presence? Is it something that we manufacture and invent? The first reading says that even in our grumbling we can find hints of the deeper desire. The reading from Romans states it clearly, even while in the condition called sin, even when we have lost the presence of God in our own awareness, it is possible to recover and the recovery is first of all not our seeking of God, but God's seeking of us. As Saint Paul puts it: God proves his love for us in that while we were sinners Christ died for us. The Holy Spirit has been given to us and we can acknowledge that only because we have hearts of stone, these can be turned into hearts of flesh by the action of the Holy Spirit. The water then is a symbol of grace, God's love, and the active presence in our lives of the Holy Spirit.

The Gospel of John has the same theme of water, now to be found in a well. Jesus says that everyone who drinks of this water will never thirst. "The water I shall give will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

So water is a symbol of the dimension of depth that surrounds us: it enters our lives as a source of deep conviction about the meanings and values of our living. The Holy Spirit is that water. It is the undercurrent of our actions. We can discover the deeper source over and over, even when it has been forgotten. And the conviction is a dimension that can be shared, becoming a part of Our meanings and values. We can all drink from that well.

But we can also forget the dimension, lose contact, not make the relevance conscious and part of our choices – our policies, our practices, our institutional structures. That’s what happened in the account given in Israel when the people grumbled. They lost a sense of the presence of God in their lives and in the way they structured their community. Conversion, as it is lived, directs our gaze, shapes our understanding and can inform our policy preferences. In the scriptures, the prophet Samuel gives a good example of this. Samuel warned the Israelites about becoming merely practical, and about the negative consequences of worrying only about their security, and forgetting about the deeper source of their livelihoods.

1 Samuel 8:1-8

When the Philistines heard that the Israelites had gathered at Mispah, their lords went against Israel. Hearing this, the Israelites became afraid of the Philistines and said to Samuel, "Implore the Lord our God unceasingly for us, to save us from the clutches of the Philistines." Samuel implored the Lord for Israel, and the Lord heard him.

Samuel judged Israel as long as he lived. In his old age, Samuel appointed his sons judges over Israel. "They did not follow his example, but sought illicit gain and accepted bribes, perverting justice."

Therefore all the elders of Israel came in a body to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, "Now that you are old, and your sons do not follow your example, appoint a king over us, as other nations have, to judge us."

Samuel was displeased when they asked for a king to judge them. He prayed to the Lord, however, who said in answer: "Grant the people’s every request. It is not you they reject, they are rejecting me as their king." He told them: "The rights of the king who will rule will be as follows: He will take your sons and assign them to his chariots and horses, and they will run before his chariot. He will also appoint from among them his commanders of groups of a thousand and a hundred soldiers. He will set them to do his plowing and his harvesting, and to make his implements of war and use the equipment of his chariots. He will use your daughters as ointment-makers, as cooks, and as bakers. He will take the best of your vineyards, and give the revenue to his eunuchs and his slaves. He will take your male and female servants, as well as your best oxen and your asses, and use them to do his work. He will tithe your flocks and you yourselves will become his slaves. When this takes place, you will complain against the king whom you have chosen, but on that day the Lord will not answer you."

Thus Samuel rebukes the Israelites in their search for security they gave up the immediate sense of trust in God and God's love. Thus, Samuel's warning is ours, not to desert the water of life for false and misleading promises of security and protection. Remember that God's love and presence surrounds us, is in us, and helps us to structure a world consistent with God's presence. That this love, like the water, is a deeper source and the deeper goal of our longing. And that this value, this conviction, can be the source of shaping our lives and our world.

As farmers and ranchers we know injustice when we see it. We know unfairness when we experience it. We know the higher road to which we are called. We know over a long experience that our world should be constituted from that deeper source. We don't want a theocracy! We don't want a church-led government! But we do believe that religious values and morality have a role to play in shaping public policy, just as Samuel warned his people bout forgetting the Lord in their constitution of their society, so too we know that failure to draw upon the deeper wells of meaning and value will end up in distorted social circumstances, will end up in misshapen, unjust, ill-focused policies.

And so we need to reclaim the moral dimension from government and reclaim the rights we have and the convictions we have to speak for religious and moral perspectives consistent with as best we can discern, fairness, justice, equity and integrity. Sometimes it is by a loss that we learn again to draw water from the deeper well. Ray Bordell's loss can help us to remember the deeper well that is part of our everyday longing and lives. And we need to be reminded of that deeper well.

We are being struck by the budget, by trade agreements, by the WTO, by the next farm bill, by fast track…unless we claim the moral high ground. Earlier this month the government proposed eliminating 18 federal community development programs in five departments. Rural communities will suffer if this is done. In addition the hard fought wins of the last farm bill are being rolled back as well. I believe these are moral issues as well as issues of structure, related to moral and religious convictions.

I believe that if we wake to the presence of God in our midst, in our lives, in our religious convictions, even when the presence has become dim in the face of other preoccupations, we should claim the right to speak as moral agents, and to claim that these assaults on rural America in the name of fiscal security are wrong. There are deep values to be sustained. At NCRLC we have a campaign called "Eating is a Moral Act" to convince our friends who are the eaters of the world that we all should support fundamental values of integrity, care for the earth, care for the poor, care for family farmers and ranchers. And that we can act morally every time we pick up our knives and our forks. Eating is a moral act. There are issues of food security, food sovereignty, the right to food; examined with integrity and morality, these issues and their response would lead us in a policy direction different from those who would abuse the land, abuse rural communities, abuse family farmers and ranchers.

So, please, join with me in a moral campaign to oppose the policies being proposed for us. Join in a moral campaign that would oppose the assault on rural America. Join together farmers, ranchers, eaters, and the faith community to speak as a moral voice that taps into the deeper steams of water to shape public policy. Join with me in claiming the moral high ground of faith, integrity, religious convictions that move us away from fear into policies that are just, fair, honest, and beneficial, not jus to a few, but for many.

I want us to stand together to shape a constituency of morality and conviction, to be a new moral voice for the public debates ahead on the budget, the trade agreements, the fast track debate, WTO and the next farm bill. Last week I was joined on Capitol Hill by Rosa Chavez, a bishop of El Salvador, when making visits to Harkin, Grassley, and other Senate offices. He described the effort to secure CAFTA as an effort to divide countries one against another. We could be pitted too, one against another. We need to stand together for the well being of rural America, to drink deep of the water from the depth, to draw upon the reservoir of grace, and to claim the moral and religious conviction that will help us through the days ahead.

I would like to think in all of this that Ray Bordell is leading us in song. I have a godchild in New York who loves farms, and whose parents buy tomatoes from the corner deli…bringing them home in plastic wrappers…but do they know where the food comes from? Who grew it? Or have we lost the connection? I think we need to reconnect eaters with farmers! Just as we all grew up singing: This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home, this little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy had none, and this little piggy went wee, wee, wee, all the way home.

So I can imagine Ray changing the words around, moving us beyond grumbling to optimism and hope because We are a people who know about the marketplace, we are a people of faith, concerned about the home; we are a people of vision, who care about those who have roast beef; we are a people of compassion, who care about those who have none. We are a Community, concerned about not just ourselves, we don't say I, I, I or Me, Me, Me…but a Community of moral integrity and so we say We, We, We all the way home.

Thank you and God Bless You!