1 Corinthians 15:55 New Testament Holy Bible

55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

Blessings from Mauritius! Happy Resurrection Day! Jesus getting up on the third morning after His crucifixion should inspire all of us to do the same and speak to power against injustice realizing God is here and will protect and keep us as we take our stands.

Yesterday my dear Hindu friend in the Quatre Bornes market who I buy my fruit from each Saturday jokingly asked me for his chocolate . Laughing I took it in stride telling him I would give him his chocolate bunny next year. In this land where multiple religions reign and where there are diverse religious public holidays especially for Christians, Hindus, and Muslims, while there are other respected faiths such as Baha’i and Buddhists too, there is ample opportunity for cross-religious faith learning which I really appreciate. It has made being in Mauritius going on five years now inspirational as well as enjoyable in ways I never experienced in my homeland the United States. In the USA we are much more of a rigid Christian dominated nation in which we tend to ignore and demonize other faiths rather than have multiple faith holidays which would provide needed cultural mechanisms for the curious and respectful to learn about faiths other than their own. I have met so many Buddhists,Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and those who live by a golden rule of love who are devout in their faith as displayed in their universal love and care for all people. And then yes, you got the others who are the legalist and traditional institutionalists comfortable in their contradictory claims of love and their reality practices of hatred, racism, sexism, and caste.

Nevertheless, I cannot help but be appreciative of my many Hindu friends and those who are Muslims and Buddhists who within and outside our vibrant interfaith Faith and Justice WhatsApp Group joined Christian friends who extended Easter greetings this morning. Most Hindus did so with cards with white and colored eggs and all kinds of bunnies including chocolate ones which made sense because such are so closely related to their own belief system. I get that and respect their attempt to relate to my belief system as a Christian. That’s what we need right? More empathy in the world realizing no matter who and what we worship we are all brothers and sisters.

And because of that I am obligated to inform my Hindu and other non-Christian and even unaware secular name only Christian friends what Easter is really all about. This is especially the case here in Mauritius which was colonized by the Dutch, French, and English imperialists like in other African, Asian, and Western Hemisphere societies which had Christian missionaries offering selective racist views of the Bible which reinforced their White Supremacy beliefs and encouraged the sustainability of indigenous prejudices against non-white others. The natives were taught to be good passive subjects who could remain set in their prejudices against others who also were not of European descent. It was OK to be of African and Asian descent and be resentful of European colonialism as long as you did not rebel or if you did protest within Eurocentric rules of dissent. But hatred against others of non-white skin color or ancestry was and remains acceptable here and in everywhere European colonialism spread its grotesque filthy dehumanizing wings.

The major thing I am trying to say here is that it is understandable as to why in this part of the world the rituals of the holy week leading up the crucifixion of Christ and His burial and Resurrection are culturally interpreted in such weak missionary derived terms bringing into mind and view eggs and bunnies with a dissolved cross rather than what the Resurrection of Jesus Christ God with us and the week leading up to it really means which the dearly beloved colonizing missionaries excluded to thrust and maintain their power and authority.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ represents justice and empowerment and the week before the preparation of people to become empowered and to get their justice after being oppressed, marginalized, and excluded. It is a view of Christianity which has been left out of its institutionalization throughout the world especially where Europeans colonized and insisted on, forced the passivity of native peoples while allowing them, indeed encouraging them to sustain their prejudices against their fellow non-white colonized brothers and sisters based on skin color, tribalism, age,gender,caste, etc.

This reminds me of an ageist racist incident which happened to me on Friday, yes Good Friday in the Easter tradition, in a major Indian owned Department Store in Mauritius. As the news has spread nationally and globally like wildfire, my friends, Hindus and Christians alike have expressed their horror and have insisted the incident be dealt with which has already started a needed unanticipated movement for racial justice in this land with such great global potential hindered by the denied presence of insidious mosaic racism . One of the respondents to this incident writing from South Africa, a distinguished academic,says this which confirms the point of how much we ignore though need to deal with the deep racial prejudices which exist too often in the Hindu population in Mauritius and elsewhere against people of African descent which we must confront and root out:

“Hi John. A belated Happy Easter greetings. I read your experience with Indian racism and was appalled to the core. I think the world has been living in denial looking at the activism of Mahatma Gandhi and choosing to ignore what he said to black Africans earlier last century. This racism is rife in South Africa and I have experienced it first hand at my own university. It is surprising and totally mind boggling to see the equity regulations here classifying them (and the Chinese) as blacks, which they abuse to create rank and class in an increasingly unequal society. Strength to you man, in fighting this evil.”

A Kreole Mauritius business man respondent after saying he was not surprised, invited me to join a Kreole Facebook group which I replied:
“ Dear Brother , Happy Resurrection Day to you and your family as well. Thanks for informing me about the new Kreol network which certainly I am delighted to join as long as it is coalition oriented in keeping with ASARPI principles of multicultural restorative justice engagement processes premised on the concern that prejudices are reciprocal and multidimensional not just involving one oppressed population in isolation unilaterally. Concretely, I have observed ( as a mosaic)not only prejudice against Kreols but Kreols against Hindus and both against Chinese and Muslims and vice versa and then across populations skin color, class, caste, gender, and age become compounding factors.”

Resurrected people irrespective of their ancestries , skin color and religion are those concerned for justice for all in societies in which prejudices, in this case racial prejudices are indigenous and imposed ways of dehumanizing an entire society as unacceptable evil as well as sin. When we deny or point fingers to others we all lose since the most talented leave for more just lands leaving behind the least productive. This is what is happening in Mauritius now.10,000 have recently left many of them highly talented but stigmatized, denied, and excluded because of the color of their skin, their ancestry, or their caste. This more than likely is not being lamented about in Christian churches or in other Mauritius faith communities during this holy season which incidentally criss-crosses with the Muslim holy season Ramadan since the true meaning of the death, burial, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ is too anti-status quo stressing the sacrifice most adherents of the major faiths are reluctant to give their time and most importantly their lives.

Let us pray for strength abs discernment today to rise from our private complaints of injustices in this land and others and be public proactive speakers to power which use racial and other prejudices such as sexism, caste, and ageism as dehumanizing excuses to degrade, ignore, exclude, and exterminate. Reminding me of a prayer God led me to write in 2013 for another occasion before I even knew Mauritius even existed but applicable for right here and now as we move forward to bring deserved intercultural opening justice here for all .

IN THE MORNING ALL DAY AND EVENING LONG

July 19, 2013
Dear Lord in your holy throne in your holy hill which sits so high though you are right here with us we approach your holy throne of mercy and grace so reverently so early this morning; the morning time O Lord which we are so blessed to see a morning once again which you have created through the handiwork of your all powerful divinity to remind us of morning time as the eternal spring of our lives once again, like the spring time we are brand new in a brand new day to try again to forgive and to be forgiven, to once again try again to reconcile and to be reconciled, to try once again to love and to be loved, to try once again laugh, to try once again to smile, to try once again to sing and to dance as we begin once again this morning to again to open our God seeing eyes and to open our God hearing and seeing hearts, and thus strive to live devoutly in you today much more than yesterday, to wake up this morning in the rays of the brand new rising sun just reminding us of another craft from your divine tool box creating and sustaining the physical universe which reminds us each day of your splendid glory. As we center ourselves in Calvary in the cross where we first received our holy sight, where thus our sovereigns died where we put on your garments of your holy righteousness while shedding our own mortal garments of sins and burdens, we pray that we become living epistles read by everyone in our witness of the presence of joy, peace, openness to others no matter who or what they are since you are indeed love. Open the eyes and the ears of our hearts to see and to hear what thus saith thee the Lord, to have compassion upon those made marginal and excluded by society and institutions and communities therein. Jesus the Christ we praise you this morning for planting in us such joyful hearts liberating each of us from the burdens of privilege and lack thereof, liberating us from the fears in and of life which so deeply inhibit us, which make our faith so uncertain and so cosmetic and superficial , and liberating us from fears generating distrust, envy, and low self-esteem and taking us in thy bosom of love of peace the same love you gave up the ghost just for us so we could live lives liberated through living in and through thee.
As we go here and there today as witnesses of thee all day and evening today, give us the discernment to reach out to all for there may be some who need a smile or the sincere shake of a hand, there may be some who have yet to feel the sensation of a hug let alone a genuine hello and a few sincere kind words in conversation, there may be some with challenges at home occupying their minds and distracting their hearts while here today. Let us all circle each other in the love you showed us by dying out in the flesh for us and rising again so we too could rise and walk as thy resurrected people in the eternity of the morning time. Bless us then O Lord as we continue to become this morning a crystallizing community demonstrated in our genuine care, our genuine love, our genuine embrace, through your everlasting to everlasting power O Lord since only you O Lord with our yielding obedience to your word of love can open most widely the ears and the eyes of our hearts for one another and for our co-travelers on our community journey such as the folks back home and elsewhere in this land and abroad,families, friends, neighbors, and even adversaries. Thanks be to God, God be the glory for the eternal light of this brand new day which shines ever brightly within us, your people O Lord whose names you know because from the foundations of the world before we were awesome glitters in the hopes and prayers of our ancestors where ever they were from, you knew O Lord that we would be gathered this morning in this sacred place which you have crafted for us to be together to be prayers together, to be blessings together, to be witnesses of presence together letting each other know through the sharing of our lives as a community that all of us O Lord serve a risen savior who rose early one morning who continues to rise each morning in those of us who so anxiously grasp the hem of your garment, those of us who climb Mt. transfiguration with you so readily , who walk firmly hand in hand with you in all places in all times in all situations for thou art our Shepherd thus all day and evening long we shall not want through thy unfailing mercy and grace

You will make us all day and evening long to lie down in green pastures: You will all day and evening long lead us beside the still waters.

You restore our souls all day and evening long: you lead us in the paths of righteousness for your name’s sake all day and evening long

Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil all day and evening long: for you art with us; your rod and your staff they comfort us all day and evening long

You prepare a table before us in the presence of our enemies all day and evening long you anoint our heads with oil; our cups run over all day and evening long
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives all day and evening long we all will dwell in the house of the Lord forever, forever, for ever more, all day and evening long, Good Morning, Amen

Happy Resurrection!

Love, Justice, Peace,and Joy,
John
Senior Pastoral Facilitator
Faith and Justice Sunday Conversations: Notes and Reflections
March 24, 2024 copyright
Director, ASARPI: Advanced Study of African Renaissance Policies Ideas headquartered in Mauritius with branches in Namibia and South Africa
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” Prof John” H Stanfield

Faith and Justice Sunday Conversations is a global Internet/social media-based multiethnic ecumenical and interfaith spiritual direction ministry without walls headquartered in Africa and in the United States for everyone though is, especially for devout people of God without a faith community home ,faith community attending devout worshippers interested in discussing and effectively addressing difficult and challenging justice and ethical concerns in their lives,families, and communities; and for those who do not believe in the Abrahamic God but strive to live good justice oriented moral lives. We are now over 3,000 in number and growing daily through the grace and mercy of God.