The World Was Not Worthy

El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was gunned down at the altar on March 24th, 1980 for leading the Church's stand against injustice:

"It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation
in realizing that. This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well. It may be incomplete,
but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference
between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Amen."

(Big Ups: Chris at I-Life in New Orleans 2006, a worship-ellicting blog about their spring break Katrina relief efforts this week. Pray for them.)

Oscar Romero seemed to have led a beautiful life filled with adoration of Jesus. He courageously opposed the terror spread under the Junta government, but also resisted the lure of Marxist liberation theology that plagues Central America to this day. This line from a sermon probably earned his martydom:

"Brothers, you are from the same people; you kill your fellow peasant . . . No soldier is obliged to obey an order that is contrary to the will of God . . . "

I'll let the man's own words haunt you:

In a letter to then-President Jimmy Carter (who still fundraises for Hamas today):

"You say that you are Christian. If you are really Christian, please stop sending military aid to the military here, because they use it only to kill my people."

Others:

"God needs the people themselves," he said, "to save the world . . . The world of the poor teaches us that liberation will arrive only when the poor are not simply on the receiving end of hand-outs from governments or from the churches, but when they themselves are the masters and protagonists of their own struggle for liberation."

"You can tell the people that if they succeed in killing me, that I forgive and bless those who do it. Hopefully, they will realize they are wasting their time. A bishop will die, but the church of God, which is the people, will never perish."