The Easter festival day, when Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, is as old as the resurrection faith itself — the very foundation of the Christian faith.
Christians believe that Jesus was sentenced to death and executed by crucifixion for the salvation of humanity and all creation, on the day we commemorate as Good Friday.
Good Friday is the moment when Christ, in his pain, identifies with the pains of the people and atones for our sins.
Believers surrender their sinfulness and place their miseries, pains and woundedness onto his outstretched arms. Christians also believe that he rose from the dead on the “first day of the week”, Sunday.
From about the middle of the first century, Christians were recognising Sunday as a holy day, the Lord’s Day, to celebrate Christ’s resurrection — the anchor of their faith. This is what made Sunday the day of Christian worship.
From about the second century, while the Christian faith was still underground and not legally recognised, Christians went beyond the weekly observance of the resurrection and began an annual observance.
The final fixing of the Easter festival protocol and its dating was done after the legalisation of Christianity at the Council of Nicaea in 325. This included the recitation, through scripture, of the known salvation history up to the Christ event and how it heals and restores the relationship between humanity and God through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
My love affair with Easter was nurtured by my love for church choral music and some of the best hymns, for me, have always been Easter hymns.
But as I learned more from the Black Theology project of Black Consciousness about the theological claims of the human person created in the image of God, regardless of race and gender, I realised the blasphemy of apartheid, which undermined the fullness of the humanity of black people.
As I began to interrogate the relationship between the black experience under apartheid and the Christian faith, Easter became a point of focus.
I saw it as a celebration of a seminal event for the faith: the resurrection of Jesus. From this, I began to examine and more purposefully interpret my church experience. I learned more about the idea of God as a God of love and justice and the death and resurrection of Jesus as the practical manifestation of that.
A core question for me, which ultimately led me to enter seminary and theological studies, was: “What does it mean to be created in the image of God if I am black in apartheid South Africa?”
Therefore, does the Easter celebration and the annual messages of hope associated with the resurrection mean anything for black people in South Africa?
I explored these questions as a theological student at the Federal Theological Seminary. This was a decidedly anti-apartheid institution, providing space for Black and Liberation Theology, as well as serious critical analysis of the Christian message contained in the gospel. I found the answer to my question and it brought me back to an interpretation of Easter as a liberating festival.
My studies revealed that the scriptures do not present God in physical terms that allow us to see God as black or white, male or female. Scripture states that God is love; therefore, love is a human fundamental, since humans are created in the image of God.
I began to gain a greater appreciation for the African love ethic of ubuntu, as it represents a living expression of the image of God in humanity.
Because God is described as Creator, humans must be creative as a function of their being in the image of God, the Creator. From this, I began to see how Bantu Education, designed to kill the creative spirit in African children, was a blasphemous policy that sought to deliberately stifle the creativity that is the image of God in our children.
This revelation in response to my question about the image of God led to other realisations and a deeper appreciation of the attributes of God that all humans share and which the faith celebrated at Easter is meant to honour.
God is just and righteous and so we should be. Therefore, to stand up for justice is to stand up for the image of God in society. God is free, for nothing compels God. Thus, freedom is another human fundamental that we should claim, struggle for and defend.
Ultimately, we speak of Almighty God, for God is powerful. This means that power is another attribute of God’s image that humans possess. Power exercised without love is tyranny and power with love is justice.
All of this gave new meaning to me as one member of an oppressed people celebrating Easter. It brought renewed significance and energy to the meaning of Easter hope following the pain of the Good Friday crucifixion.
Thus, Easter and its resurrection faith mean that the pain of apartheid, akin to the painful and shameful death of Jesus on the cross, cannot be the last word. The resurrection faith celebrated at Easter is a call to new hope.
For me, the Easter resurrection hope became a fountainhead of struggle theology that informed pastoral ministry in a praxis of justice. As a priest in impoverished townships in the 1980s, this was important.
As I applied that understanding to each Sunday — the resurrection day — I began to communicate continuously the message of resurrection hope, moving people away from the despair of apartheid’s viciousness.
Because the image of God is alive in all of us, regardless of race and gender, I was able to appreciate the similarities between apartheid racism and patriarchal sexism in black society, which oppress women and girls and prevent them from applying the resurrection faith to transform their circumstances.
As a priest in Cape Town in the 1980s, I worked with young people in the Young Christian Students (YCS), where I served as chaplain, to conduct social analysis and identify instances where that resurrection hope was negated in our experience.
One of the gross violations of this hope was the necklace killings that became more prevalent on Friday afternoons (payday) in the border area between the townships of Nyanga and Gugulethu. We established a sentry system and saved no fewer than 30 people from certain gruesome death.
During the 1980s state of emergency, we were burying young people killed by apartheid soldiers every week.
We could not preach the hope grounded in the resurrection faith while leading funerals for those killed by apartheid forces and saying: “The Lord gave, the Lord has taken, the Lord’s name be praised!”
We agreed, as township pastors, that this verse would be used only when people died of natural causes — not those shot by the apartheid army.
Because the resurrection hope underpinned my ministry wherever I went, I maintained the same approach when, in 1988, I was transferred to Uitenhage, where there were fierce hostilities between supporters of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Africanists (AmaAfrika), led by Reverend Mzwandile Maqina.
From the same principle of Easter hope, we used a mediation model that helped the warring groups envision a “resurrected” life for the communities of KwaNobuhle. We secured peace and ended the internecine killings, resulting in a public celebration.
This Easter outlook has continued to inspire my public ministry, for the “Good Friday” experience cannot have the last word.
Easter, through its resurrection hope, represents a call beyond the pain of the moment.
Because we are created in the image of God — the Creator, the Powerful, the Loving, the Just and the Free — there are no limits to what can be achieved through the Easter faith. And so, we pursue even what seems impossible.
Malusi Mpumlwana is the Bishop of the Diocese of Maropeng of the Ethiopian Episcopal Church.
Discussion about this post