The Politics of Easter

On Good Friday for the last five years I have attended an ecumenical service/witness against gun violence sponsored by the interfaith gun violence prevention organization Heeding God’s Call. Five years ago, along with 11 others, I participated in a civil disobedience action against a gun shop known to be a major source of illegal guns used in crime. Starting that year Heeding God’s Call began holding Good Friday services that not only included Christians but also Muslims and Jews remembering the violent death of Jesus and linking it to the senselessness of gun violence in our city and country. This year the service was held in a park in West Philadelphia and 221 t-shirts draped on crosses were displayed representing the 221 victims of gun violence in Philadelphia during 2013. It was both a sad and moving spectacle.

Linking Good Friday with gun violence reminds me of the inherently political nature of the Good Friday-Easter celebration. While most churches emphasize the salvific nature of Jesus’ death on the cross, I have come to increasingly appreciate the way in which his death represents and binds him to the oppressed and suffering of the world. I am reminded that religio-political power structure of Jesus’ day (for there was no such thing as the separation of government from religion) sought to silence and marginalize him.  When that didn’t work they took to discrediting him, then threatening him and finally setting in motion the process that led to his death.  This year as I read the Gospel of Matthew’s account of the last days of Jesus life, I could not help but be struck by the way Jesus was regarded and treated by the power structures of his day….and how similar it was to what happens in our day. 

As we look around the world at despotic governments being challenged by movements for change in Syria, Ukraine, Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere, we see similar patterns meant to immobilize would-be challenges to economic and political power. As we look at the machinations of the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun organizations, we see their manipulation of the facts, and the use of their vast resources to intimidate political leaders into silence. They dismiss gun violence prevention advocates as naïve, unpatriotic and unrealistic, in ways remarkably similar to the way the Pharisees sought to marginalize and discredit Jesus.

Yet, there is even a more personal, political dimension to this special day. The Brazilian educator and liberation thinker Paulo Freire said that people of privilege who seek to be aligned with the oppressed had to go thru what he called an “Easter experience” in order to be in true solidarity with the poor. Of this experience he wrote:

“Such an [Easter experience] implies a renunciation of myths that are dear to them: the myth of superiority, of their purity of soul, of their virtues, their wisdom, the myth that save the poor, the myth of the neutrality of the church, of theology of education, science, technology, the myth of their own impartiality. … This Easter, which results in the changing of consciousness, must be existentially experienced. The real Easter is not commemorative rhetoric. It is praxis; it is historical involvement.” (Politics of Education, p. 123).

The real Easter is praxis, historical involvement. The real Easter does not allow one to be removed from the struggles of history. The real Easter calls us to a choice to join with those who struggle.

As I listened to mothers and fathers at the Good Friday service share their grief at the loss of their children to gun violence, I was struck by the profound meaning of the cross that was challenging me to the side of the suffering and the oppressed. At the same time they shared their commitment to rid the streets of guns and to save other parents from the suffering they themselves must endure. The oppressed know Jesus because he shares their sorrow and struggle and if I am to know Jesus in any real way I must choose to join them. I must let go of my “myths“ of invincibility, of transcendence, of exceptionalism. Their pain must become my pain, their sorrow my sorrow, their struggle my struggle. I have to make a choice.

So I have come through this Good Friday-Easter commemoration with a renewed commitment to transformation and renunciation of privilege, and a desire to join those who know Jesus’ suffering because they suffer with him. However at the same time they know the resurrection of Jesus, because despite great tragedy and struggle they have a fire in their bones for change; like the women at the tomb they long to see a resurrection of hope in their community. I too want that fire; I too want a resurrection of hope; but to do so, I must make a choice. I must undergo an Easter experience again… and again… and again.

Good Friday, Guns and the Cross of Christ

Today, (April 2) is Good Friday. For me Good Friday has always been the most significant point in the Lenten-Holy Week-Easter drama. I remember as a college freshman sitting alone in the Duke University chapel on Good Friday, and feeling like the world was going on as normal even though for me time seemed to stand still. While I was frozen in time remembering Jesus dying on the cross, the people around me went on like it was just another day. Ever since I have approached Good Friday as a uniquely significant day, even though for many folks it is simply "business as usual."

As important as the day is for me, I must admit I have struggled with its meaning; why did Jesus die on that cross? For years I simply accepted the commonly professed theory usually referred to as “substitutionary atonement”: that Jesus died on the cross as a sacrifice for my sins so that I might have salvation. This theory assumes that all human beings are hopeless sinners, that God is completely holy and righteous, and that God can only have his righteousness satisfied by a perfect, unblemished sacrifice: Jesus. This view sees God thru the lens of the Old Testament sacrificial system, and professes Jesus to be the last and final sacrifice.

In recent years I have come to view this explanation as portraying God as arbitrary and petty – that God requires a human sacrifice before he can offers us grace, love and forgiveness. Such a view seems totally out of sync with the image and message about God which Jesus embodied and proclaimed. Moreover, as Anabaptist theologian J. Denny Weaver points out, the substitutionary atonement theory depends on the idea that God requires violence in order to satisfy God’s justice, and that justice depends on punishment in order to be secured. Like Weaver, I find this violent view of God to be inconsistent and small.

Several years ago I came across a little book by Alan Walker called the Many-Sided Cross of Jesus. Walker points out that the substitution theory is only one of many explanations of the cross that have been put forth over the centuries. One of the alternative theories, known as “Christus Victor,” focuses on the fact that Jesus was a victim of violence and injustice. It also assumes that the cross was not part of God’s plan for Jesus, but when the crucifixion occurred “God took hold of it…and made it the occasion of salvation.” (p. 75). Through the resurrection Jesus gains victory not only over death, but also the powers of injustice that put him to death.

Walker then explains another theory (which it appears Walker himself affirms) which he calls “the cross of identification” in which the death and suffering of Jesus is an example and a “point of identification” whereby we who follow Jesus are “invited to share in his suffering” (p. 92). This view transforms what true power is and calls all people to live in service on behalf of those who suffer from injustice, war, violence and poverty around the world.

These days I take a position that integrates Walker’s models Christus Victor and the Cross of Identification. This afternoon I will join a large group of folks in a prayerful witness outside a gun shop in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. This shop is known to be the source of many guns used in street crimes. Just yesterday ago a 76 elderly woman in this area was shot in the cross fire of a gun battle while sitting in her car. At this vigil will be a large group of kids who every day live in fear walking to the store or school. I will be there to stand with them, to in some small way identify with them and proclaim that Jesus too, himself a victim of legalized violence and injustice, also stands with them.

On this day Jesus died on a cross. The power and the mystery of that event may never be fully comprehended. However, to the degree that I do grasp its meaning, that cross stands as a call to stand with and work with those who suffer oppression, injustice, and marginalization in our society and our world.

Resurrection Hope on Spring Garden Street

On Good Friday, April 10, about 100 people gathered near Colismo's Gun shop to commemorate the death of Jesus, and its connection to the countless meaningless deaths due to gun violence. Folks from all walks of life gathered to say that illegal guns and the straw purchasing that lets these guns onto the street needed to end. Several local preachers spoke, as well as two mothers who had lost their sons to gun violence. We were led in songs that spoke of hope. We prayed for the those who had died due to gun violence in the previous year by name. We were called to commitment and action to end this scourge. James Colisimo, the gun shop owner who had refused to sign the code of conduct that wold allow him to more readily identify straw buyers in his shop was called out by name to act. The shroud that hung on the cross was laid on a enlarged gun and coffin, saying death to the means of destruction not to more victims. We ended the service by marching in front of the gun shop, singing "Lord, Listen to your children praying", an enlarged version of the code of conduct being held in front of us. Four police officers stood in front of the shop, "protecting" Mr. Colismo from this spiritual onslaught.

Altogether it was an inspiring gathering, a sign of hope that the violence can end. This gathering had a feel and a color that was more diverse, and included not just concerned white folks like me (personally distant from the violence) and folks who were and have been on the front lines of this struggle for a long time. However, the presence of the mothers reminded me of (1) the struggle is a long one (these mothers had been speaking out since the early 1990's); and (2) the pain and suffering of those who have lost loved ones or been maimed by guns is also long. However, my prayer is that they found comfort and felt the hope I felt in that gathering.

On Good Friday, we stand in the face of Death, to anticipate Death's defeat. As the speaker that day, Bishop NewKirk of Harold O.Davis Memorial Baptist Church, said, just because guns are legal, when young people die needlessly, they are not moral. Like slavery, like the Native American Genocide, like the Japanese-American internment during WW II, selling guns to straw buyers is "legal" but not "moral." The instruments of death, by some twisted NRA, Second Amendment logic, are legal, but in this age when gun men kill 13 people in a Binghamton Immigration center, and 3 police officers in Pittsburgh, and 318 people in one year in Philadelphia; those guns may be legal, but they are not moral.

I believe the laws in PA will be changed to limit the sale of handguns to straw buyers - its only a matter of alot of effort and time. I believe the NRA can be revealed for the fraudulent front for the gun manufacturers that it is. I believe that gun dealers like Colismo's, that will not be accountable for their business will be exposed and disgraced. Hope is on the rise. Death will be defeated. This was the feeling and message with which I left the service that day. Indeed, there was hope of resurrection on Spring Garden St on Good Friday!

(Many thanks to Kemah Washington for his pictures of that day!)