The crucified peoples of the world

THROUGHOUT Holy Week leading up to this Easter Sunday, we Christians have been reflecting upon the life, teaching, death and the resurrection of Jesus 2,000 years ago. This man (he was most certainly a human, not a supernatural being, my assertion being the essence of a credible 21st-century Christianity) revealed that the way forward for humanity is from brutality to kindness, from injustice to justice, from selfishness to generosity, and from cruel indifference to empathy.

In other words, the resurrection is primarily about a revolutionary and even subversive life-changing transformation from death to life in the here and now, rather than about a literal life after death – that being an issue for another discussion.

Within the life and resurrection of Jesus, we ought to recognise the cosmic force of love which brings hope of liberation to the crucified peoples of today while the powers collude in the violence or wash their hands of it, like Pilate of old.

These crucified peoples are to be found, to name too few, on the West Bank, in Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, Haiti, Afghanistan, Darfur, and Yemen. Although the hardship of UK citizens suffering at the hands of a political regime which has been blatantly promoting the most fearsome inequality for the past14 years is on a different scale, we must rescue them too.

For too many in our world today it is still Good Friday (crucifixion) and there is no sign of Easter Day (resurrection). In our world, where millions of people are faced daily with death by hunger, war, famine, drought and economic exploitation, the resurrection is as remote as the crucifixion is real.