Endless Good Fridays & No Resurrection

 Endless Good Fridays & No Resurrection

By Prof Matthew Michael

15 April 2022

During this period of Easter, the plight of many Nigerians comes readily to my mind. I have seen several pictures and video clips of Jesus passion--which remind us of the horrific pains and torture of Jesus on the cross in his salvific sacrifice to atone for our sins. The Easter season always brings afresh to us the unimaginable agonies and pains of our Lord on the cross. The vivid image and graphic representations of his pains and abandonment often leave us in complete shock and speechlessness because of the horrors of the human race against its kind.


 While I competely identify with these depictions of the pains and sufferings of Jesus, and I felicitate with all Christians globally on the joy and anticipation of a resurrection, I found it  awkward that this season of pains and suffering does not help us to make the connection-- even though for a moment--with the pains and suffering of the masses who are eternally on the crosses of bad government and insensitive regimes in Africa---and who may never see the resurrection of their hopes and dreams. African people appeared to be in perpetual periods of Good Fridays of pains and suffering but they are denied a resurrection by the tyrants, aristocrats and oligarchs who have made  it their eternal purpose to keep Africa in a perpetual state of death and pains with huge stones over their lives and refusing them-- the opportunity to experience the beauty and sweetness of the resurrection. I do believe that the same injustices that places Jesus on the cross has also today nailed many people in Africa to the small and bigger crosses of poverty, financial bankruptcy, physical and mental sicknesses, and even death. In perpetual agonies of our lives, we cry together with Jesus---saying in loud voices and on our self-made crosses, "Father!!! Father!!! why have you forsaken and abandoned us?" 


In the pains and sufferings of Easter, we see dimly our own human pains and sufferings.  We see the brutal injustices of a society where the innocents are nailed to the cross and the criminal Barabbas are set free. The  drudgery of governments in Africa who have make it---their lifelong ambition to stop African people from experiencing a resurrection. In Africa, we have many Good Fridays but we are no way near a resurrection. At least Jesus endured the pains and sufferings of  the cross because he knew the certainty of the resurrection. But we in Africa are only certain of our endless Good Fridays but nobody is anyway sure of our collective resurrection as a people. So while we celebrate and identify with the suffering of Jesus for three days in the land of pains, sufferings and death, we also should recognize the individual and collective pains and sufferings of the African people where pains and sufferings have become the normal way of life, and the status quos have generally stopped Africans from participation in resurrection and experiencing the joy and beauty of a new life. 


The Roman Catholic priest and Cameroonian theologian,  Jean Marc-Ela in his work, "My Faith as an African," describes the problem of celebrating Easter in Africa as a mere mental or doctrinal exercise. According to Marc-Ela, the fascination with the death of Christ in Africa during Easter is not often connected to the sufferings and death of many Africans who in their various sufferings experience Easter on a daily basis. At the heart of Christian theology is the belief in the substitutionary importance of Jesus' sufferings and death on the cross. This substitutionary significance of Jesus' sufferings and death is believed to be for me and for my sins.  However, this understanding in traditional Christian theology has no connection to my present pains and sufferings. Yet, both of us (Jesus and ourselves) are in traumatized moments of pains and sufferings; and while my spiritual salvation is guaranteed by his suffering and death, my own pains and sufferings appeared to lack any redemptive value. Christian eschatology guaranteed my physical redemption at the end of human history when our redemption will be completed.


 But before this promised redemption at the end of human history, we must seek to create a society where the pains and sufferings of the masses are eliminated in anticipation of the complete and cosmic redemption from all sufferings and pains at the end of human history. While we wait;  we could have a foretaste of this future now. We could break free from this endless cycle of Good Fridays with no resurrections like other developed societies. Like all developed societies around the world, we could create a just society  where the innocents are not crucified and the  criminals are not walking free. We must returned our Barabases back to jail, and release and set our Jesuses free. 


Even though Africans are perpetually in seasons of Good Fridays with no Easter, we must strive to create a society where everybody could enjoy the hope and dreams of a better life. The resurrection morning has taken too long in Africa  to come, and the Good Fridays have been unbearably prolonged. We must end the tyranny of these endless Good Fridays. Haba, the pains and tortures of the Good Fridays are enough; we need the joy and beauty of a resurrected Africa.

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