Some Thoughts on Easter

They’re telling you it’s Easter Sunday, the stone rolled away and the tomb found empty, but you know that ain’t the truth. It’s Friday, and that old boy’s still hanging up there on the cross, limp now, bloodied and still as the last light dies in the sky. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday, and a chill still sits upon this land, the trees still bare, a bitter wind sends us crawling back inside even on a sunny afternoon. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday, and soldiers kill and die and torture in distant lands, all in the name of the freedom being stolen from us in our sleep by corrupt and deceitful rulers who care only for the interests of the wealthy few. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday and kids are kicking trash around the crumbling playlots in their forgotten neighborhood with their asthma and their lead poisoning and their missing fathers and their crowded failing schools, while their pale, hidden safe from the truth behind the fortress walls of their gated communities stuff their faces with candy as they learn to thank their God for all the good fortune that power and privilege have stolen for them. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday, and around the world millions die of AIDS, of hunger, and from preventable diseases all but forgotten in the lands of the rich and powerful, as the ruling classes in their SUVs talk of feeding tubes and basketball and desperate housewives and the indignities of paying $2.49 for a gallon of gasoline ripped from the dying lands of subject peoples. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday and the curse of Babel keeps the world in chains as the people gather in ignorant camps, Serb and Croat, Palestinian and Israeli, Hindu and Muslim, Hutu and Tutsi, Black and White, Mestizo and Indian, back to back in their pathetic circled wagons, preferring death to the shame of compromise. But Sunday’s coming.
Sunday’s coming and with it will rise a new heaven and a new earth. But there can be no waiting this time for the old boy to roll away the stone. This stone only you can move. Rise, you magnificent, miserable bastards. Rise and walk!