Seeking a New Society: Resurrection and Solidarity

 

La Resurrección de Cristo, El Greco (1597-1604)

Extract, by Benjamin Cortes

The Gospel is the message of life for the excluded of the earth. Jesus of Nazareth proclaims the word of God to the poor, the exploited, the oppressed and the marginalized by the Roman Empire.

Jesus Christ interprets the word of hope for humanity spoken by the prophet (Isa. 61:1-2) sent by the Lord to the Jews in exile in Babylon to announce the time of return to fullness of life -- the kairos of God which makes it possible for us to be "born anew to a living hope" (1 Pet. 1:3), the time of grace and freedom, the time to rebuild the future and lay the foundations for a life with equal rights for all.

Good news to the poor means that the system of oppression can be transformed into a system of justice. His resurrection is a revolution for the human race, making those who are raised from the dead into the architects and builders of the future. In this resurrection God requires co-workers; it is the utopia at the heart of the Messiah's message and action taking concrete shape in history.

Jesus recognizes the plurality of human life in its spiritual, cultural, political and social dimensions. The actions of Jesus are acts of resurrection.

The logic of the resurrection

New life begins with the resurrection. The logic of the resurrection breaks with death and initiates a process that aims to break with the system of oppression and the motives underlying it. Those who have been raised up were once dead, but they have returned to life and now are the architects of a scheme of society which seeks to be just in its objectives and relationships.

The logic of the resurrection is the antithesis of the logic of the market, which dislocates communities and leads to death. The logic of the market does not solve the problems of countries and regions, nor does it meet the basic needs of the impoverished peoples of the world.

Christians in the South and North alike cannot ignore the logic of the market but must resist it and stand against it spiritually and politically as we apply the logic of the resurrection in planning the future of our communities. The logic of the resurrection opens up ways of life for us, starting from where the people are and what they are, using their way of reasoning to devise alternatives which make the future possible.

The logic of the resurrection allows all the potentials and dimensions of life to develop anew, with their spiritual, philosophical, ethical, social, political, ecological, cultural and historical content. A community or a world which lives by this logic embarks on a learning process involving constant intercultural exchange, in which popular wisdom and the sciences interact and enrich one another and tolerance, standards, values, attitudes, capabilities and solidarity combine to serve the quality of human development and its material base.