Churches Weekly Newsletter: No.154, 2 April 2023
Jesus was no innocent victim, lest we forget. His crucifixion was the outcome of his dedicated mission to promote the values of the kingdom of God over and above the values of the Jewish religious establishment and the Roman Empire, which dominated his society. He constantly challenged the priests for the way their regulations crushed the ordinary people; and his heresy that there was a greater God than the Emperor called into question the hegemonic power of Rome.
Whilst his crucifixion aligns him with every other victim of political killing through history, his resurrection has always offered hope to people whose lives are blighted by such powers. Hope, and the impetus to work for change-for-the-better in the world. If we forget this history we reduce Jesus' mission to something abstract, spiritualised, and uprooted from his - and our - lived experience.
Historical remembering and forgetting is a current issue in our public life. Whether the subject is war crimes, or slavery, or empire-building genocides, or corporate injustices, the 'debate' is too often reduced to a push-and-pull between those who say 'we should leave the past in the past', and those who want to kick over the statues.
The Christian gospel insists that we can't remain neutral on this. For the Jesus tradition (informed by the prophetic works of the Hebrew Scriptures) is clear where it stands on the ground between the poor and those who oppress them. The Jesus tradition is rooted in history, and it demands that we open our eyes to what we know.
“You already know enough. So do I,” writes Sven Lindqvist on the first page of Exterminate All the Brutes, his exploration of the consequences of European imperialism. “It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and draw conclusions.” This is no easy task, complications and discomfort abound as we peel back the many layers of our thorny histories, as we trace back the capital in our homes, churches and businesses to its potentially immoral sources, and process how to respond to what we find.
The gospel warns us that if we travel such paths there may be crucifixions along the way. But the gospel does not stop at crucifixions. It insists on resurrections. The hope is that the process of historical remembering can bring to life new ways for us to flourish on this earth together. The process of historical remembering: that is what Holy Week is about.
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