AND WE CALL IT "GOOD FRIDAY"

What are we doing?

Photo by the author.

Good Friday. When some devout inflate their egos with religiosity, and skip a meal, and toy with compunction, while the state and religious powers continue to oppress the people that Jesus stood for: the weak, the indigent, the sick.

How thick our skulls can be in preventing comprehension of the oppression…. How thick our skins that we do not feel the pain of the immigrant, the refugee, the homeless, the persecuted…. How hard our hearts that we elect politicians who hawk false security placing barbed wire on the path of refugees fleeing persecution…

We stand before a cross of the immolated Jesus, the immolated Christ that is us, as we eternally assail ourselves with oppression and war and devastation in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Africa, in Haiti, in South America, on and on right up to our borders.

And we do not stop there, for in Texas, SB 4 allows police to arrest people “suspected” of illegally crossing the Texas-Mexico border, and to harass and arrest those called to assist the refugee. We are all called by our faiths to protect the defenseless. Are we up to the task?

For centuries houses of worship and charities had evolved into houses of refuge for those fleeing injustice and persecution. Now, we have SB 4, enacted by a Texas Legislature controlled by the fearful and reactionary GOP and supported by those who call themselves Christians.

What is a border but that which separates us from our sisters and brothers? Is that not an insult to Jesus, the man that we crucified 20 centuries ago? Will he “remember us when He comes into His Kingdom”* as the Gospels declare?

Are we letting ourselves be distracted by Easter festivities? Should we not focus more on those that we are oppressing through the systems that we support?

*Lk 23:42

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