The experience of Good Friday must not be a time of “special
occasion” or "High Holy Days" but an opportunity for the transformation of values that reflect the deep justice and love encountered in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Mindful
of Simone Weil, a French philosopher, mystic and political activist who said,
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity, Good Friday, which comes
at the end of the Lenten season, and before Easter must continue to the process
of shifting the Christians attention from those things that deny or are antithetical
to the interests and concerns of the Gospel to those which are of Jesus Christ.
The proliferation of the interlocking injustices of poverty,
systemic racism, militarism, ecological devastation, and a distorted moral
narrative, is an urgent call to those who sincerely and genuinely seek to follow
in the footsteps of the Jewish Rabbi to radically shift their attention to social and
political policies that reflect a care, compassion
and a salvation, not of empire, that alleviates the struggles of millions impacted
by these five interlocking injustices. As I write this reflection on Good Friday,
the sacrifice of Jesus upon the Cross for our sake, the words of American
author, radical feminist, professor, and civil rights activist Audre Lorde come
to mind. Lorde writes, “For the master’s tool will never dismantle the master’s
house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will
never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only
threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only
source of support.”
I suppose I am arguing that the Lenten Season, Good Friday, and the Resurrection call for a radical break from those systems that enrich the
few and those who benefit from their policies, represented by the interlocking
injustices, at the expense of 140 million poor, low wealth and working-class
people. For as much as those who value
empire as a means to power, privilege, and profit, i.e. generational wealth, who
adopt Jesus, some serious idolatry, as an affirmation of their ill-gotten
gains, i.e., selling the bible for $59.99 to raise money for their legal fees,
Jesus Christ was clearly for the people and profoundly against empire as evidenced
by his crucifixion at the hands of empire. I can’t help but reflect on the justice work of the abolitionist movement, including Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. The justice work of Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Dorothy Day, and those of the Civil Rights movement such as the Black
Panthers, SNCC, Fanny Lou Hamer, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Rosa Parks, and
Martin Luther King who fought the good and I would add sacrificial fight for the
interest of the Gospel.
As I close this reflection on the day of Good Friday, 2024, I invite you, the reader to ask, “What Good Friday means to you at this time? How will Good Friday motivate you to do the work of justice and the interests and concerns of the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
Blessings,
Monica
