The Word Of Peace
Homiletic Reflections On Peacemaking

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti

Good Friday

Good Friday 1999

"Were you there when they crucified my Lord."

These poignant and penetrating words form a question that directs us to the suffering of our Lord, and the suffering of every human person and the creation. It is a question borne of suffering the crucifying reality of slavery. This question was typical of the Negro spiritual--music that directs us to the voice of those who suffer at the hands of others and ask--"Can you hear us ?" "Can you understand us ?"

One black religious writer, James Cone, comments on how the crucified Jesus was no strangers to black slaves in America when he states:

"In Jesus' death on the cross black slaves saw themselves, and they unleashed their imaginations in describing what they felt and saw...His death was a symbol of their suffering, trails and tribulations in an unfriendly world. They knew the agony of rejection and the pain of hanging from a tree...Because black slaves knew the significance of the pain and shame of Jesus' death on the cross, they found themselves by his side."

from The Crucified God, J. Moltmann, p. 48

Those who suffer, especially those who suffer in terrible ways quickly cast their glaze and invest their hopes on the crucified Jesus. In one on the moving and illuminating scenes of modern film this recognition and identification with the crucified is given expression by Steven Spielberg in, "Amistad." His movie is based on the famous trial in the US in the 1830's of a shipload of African men and women stolen into slavery. These people rebelled and took over the ship, which was eventually captured by US coast patrols off New Haven, Ct. The trial was concerned with whether or not these Africans were property or free people. One of the Africans, while heading into the courtroom, took a Bible from the hands of a Christian abolitionist. Throughout the ordeal he would flip through the pages of the Bible trying to understand the pictures he saw. In one part of the film, the leader of the Africans, Cinque, remarks to the man wit the Bible:

"You don't have to pretend to understand that."

"I'm not pretending; I'm beginning to understand."

"See--come and look."

"Their people suffered more than ours. Their lives were full of suffering."

"Then HE was born and everything changed."

(he turns the page)

Cinque: "Who is he?"

"I don't know, but everywhere he goes, he is followed by the sun."

"Here he is healing people with his hands."

"Protecting them..."

"Being given children..."

Cinque: What's this?

"He could also walk across the sea..."

"But then something happened. He was captured. Accused of some crime."

"Here is he is with this hands tied."

Cinque: "He must have done something !"

"Why?" "What did we do?"

"What ever it was, it was serious enough to kill him for it."

"Do you want to see how they killed him?"

pause

"But look, that's not the end of it."

"His people took his body down form this...this... T "wojima".

"They took him and put him into a cave. They wrapped him in a cloth, like we do."

"They thought we was dead, but he appeared before his people again, and spoke to them."

"Then finally he rose into the sky."

Despite suffering and death--he rose into the sky ! Yes, were are there at the cross of our Lord, and some of us know, in a very special way, the level of his suffering. Yet, he also know of the hope born of the vindication, the resurrection of our Lord. We know that Golgotha is not the last word. We know that Easter's light shines all around the crosses, torture chambers, killing fields, cancer wards and dumb sufferings of history. We know that in Jesus the Father's love for us on the cross tells us, "I am with you, and I will bring you through this." This God is the Father of Jesus to whom he cried out and was heard. It is the God that we too can cry out to and be heard!

But there is more to all this. The cross is a revelation of the love of God for us, but it is also a revelation of the depth of human sin. It reveals the inhumanity on our world, the injustice and suffering inflicted by our fellows and even ourselves. It is a call to conversion, to a life of service that heals and mediates God's compassion, rather than a life characterized by a will to domination and oppression. The cross of the Lord is also a call to resistance. It is a call to resist those things that put people on crosses in all their multiple shapes and sizes. The cross of Jesus, in the light of the resurrection, is a denunciation of the behaviors and structures that destroy human dignity, human life, the world around us.

The cross is also the place where forgiveness and peace are found. Because of the cross the tortured and the torturers can now reconcile because the pain of the cross is not the end, it is not our future! The reconciling forgiveness of God finds expression in the forgiveness uttered from the cross. It is the place for a new beginning. Is this not what is happening in South Africa today? The victims and the perpetrators are telling their stories in order to begin the process of healing and reconciliation--not revenge!

It is a healing and reconciliation made possible because of the hope that comes from the cross that is overcome by the power of the God of life that brings resurrection.

The cross--where you there? If we move toward the pain of the world with the compassion of God that we see in Jesus Christ this day, then and only then, can we say, YES! Yes we were. Yes we will be there. And this is so because the cross is not the end. We live in an indestructible hope borne of the light of the victory of Easter. It is the hope that announces

the cross is not the end! There is life, there is joy, there is fulfillment beyond our imagination! Those who erect crosses for humanity have been served notice. There is a resurrection coming!

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.
Uploaded May 1999