“Good” Friday was real good this year. We remembered Jesus, and we remembered Jesus disguised in the “least of these” — those who continue to be tortured, spit on, slapped, insulted, misunderstood … those who ache, bleed, cry, love, forgive, and ask God “have you forsaken me?”
The morning started with a slow meditative reading of the passion narrative from the gospel. We sat still, praying that we would have the courage to follow the way of the cross in a world of the sword.
Then, as many Christians do throughout the world, we spent Good Friday remembering the “stations of the cross,” the various stages of Christ’s execution.
But we didn’t keep things inside the walls of cathedrals — we took to the streets. At one gathering, hundreds of us gathered outside Colosimo’s Gun Shop, one of the most notorious gun stores in the country for selling weapons later traced to violent crimes. On the makeshift stage outside the gun shop, alongside a Pentecostal dance team and a host of collared clergy from all sorts of denominations, there was a giant gun about the size of a small car, and a cross, and a coffin.
After some songs, testimonies, and spitfire preaching, we read aloud the same scripture we had read in the morning, only this time what stood out was how the heartbroken women went to the tomb with all the perfumes and spices, and found no body there. We heard from women who had lost their children from gunshots on the streets of Philadelphia, who wept and prayed that tomorrow “the casket and tomb would be empty.” One of them lost her 18-year-old Harvard-bound son to a stray bullet outside a movie theater. We could almost taste the salt in the tears of those childless mothers as they wept, like Mary.
A few miles away, another group of folks gathered on that same Good Friday outside the headquarters of Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest arms contractor. We walked the stations of the cross, one by one, remembering our lover Jesus. And we heard stories of suffering – stories of God’s little ones groaning in the midst of killing, displacement, torture. We heard statistics about weapons manufacturers like the one on whose property we were standing. And again we read the passion narrative. This time as we listened to the words, it seemed that we could almost hear the wailing of women in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine, women like Mary.
As we approached the final station of the cross, about 20 of us crossed onto the property at Lockheed Martin. I bowed on my knees and began to pray the Lord’s prayer … interrupted by a police officers who placed me under arrest. As I stepped into the police van, smiling faces lit it up … there was a solemn sense of peace. It was the right place to be. It was a magnificent thing to hear folks honk and wave as they went by. We even had a police officer who had arrested us thank us for our witness and decry the evils of violence and war.
As I sat in silence that night after a long day, I recalled the words of one of the preachers that had spoken earlier with that historic black-church fire: “Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it right.”
It was legal to kick black folks out of stores and buses because of the color of their skin. But that didn’t make it right. It may have been legal to take slaves from Africa and treat them like property. But that didn’t make it right. Maybe it was legal to take the land from natives, but that didn’t make it right. And it may be legal to sell handguns in bulk to “straw” buyers who sell them on our streets, but that doesn’t make it right. It may be legal to make weapons that can kill 100,000 in one blast, but that doesn’t make it right.
It may have been legal to kill our lover Jesus on that cross … but that didn’t make it right.
Oh yes, just because something is legal doesn’t mean it is right. The great irony is that Lockheed Martin was allowed to stay open that Good Friday and those of us that gathered on their property to pray went to jail. I recall an old proverb: “In an age of injustice, the true place for just men and women is in prison.” And as we look at history, we see that we are in pretty good company behind those bars.
But we know the end of the story. It may be Friday, but Sunday is coming.
A few action steps you can take:
- Contact Mr. Colosimo here in Philly (215-765-4400, 933 Spring Garden St., Philadelphia, PA 19123) and encourage him to sign the “Code of Conduct”.
- Join the Two Futures Campaign to try to bring an end to nuclear weapons.
- Call Lockheed Martin (610-531-7400) or your local arms dealer and invite them to stop making weapons.
Shane Claiborne is a Red Letter Christian and a founding partner of The Simple Way community, a radical faith community that lives among and serves the homeless in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. He is the co-author, with Chris Haw, of Jesus for President.
