REDEEMED! RACE AND THE RESURRECTION OF THE LORD
- Apr 3
- 4 min read
The Resurrection of the Lord
"He has been raised from the dead..." (Mt. 28:1-10)
“I am redeemed, bought with a price,
Jesus has changed my whole life.
If anybody asks you, just who I am,
tell them I am redeemed.”
- From “Redeemed,” by Jessy Dixon (1993)
Happy Resurrection Sunday! “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!” Amen? Amen!
Indeed, every day is a glorious gift from God Almighty. We are right, as St. Paul says, to “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks to God” (1 Thes 15:16-18). We are right to say “God is good ALL the time; and ALL the time, God is good!” What then makes this day different than any other day? Saint Augustine said it best: “We are Easter People and Alleluia is our song!”
It is truly right and just to give God praise -- and to be JOYFUL! Our Black and Catholic ancestors of happy memory passed along to us an authentic faith and spirituality that centralizes joy. Not a fleeting joy, but a joy eternal. A joy that can sustain us in the midst of suffering. A joy that can uplift us in the midst of sorrow and confusion. Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman, F.S.P.A., called it the joy of knowing “who we are and whose we are.”
We see this Black spirituality in Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” starring Michael B. Jordan. Set in the Mississippi Delta in the 1930’s, its characters struggle to remember who and whose they are. To “make it” in a corrupt world, sinners abandon ancestral ways and the God of their weary years. This makes them vulnerable to vampires: agents of a corrupt system that exploits Black cultural gifts (eg. the U.S. music industry); even vulnerable to becoming vampires themselves. With no desire to respect or preserve the humanity and heritage of the people, they suck out life and move on. The only protection from vampiring is a mysterious mojo bag (gris-gris); a spiritual lifeline to the ancestors. In short: a way to remember who and whose one is.
Slavery and its aftermath pressed our ancestors to forget who and whose they were: Forget names, they were told. Forget geography, languages, and religion. Yet, to forget the elders and ancestors – those communal intercessors close to God -- was worse than death itself. It meant to forget who YOU are; to never find your way home. Our ancestral genius still managed to pass along enough breadcrumbs for Alex Haley to write his classic 1970’s book “Roots.” This lost child of Africa remembered who he was, found his way home, and inspired a whole generation to do likewise.
We too have a home – a heavenly home – and an enemy who pressures us daily to forget who and whose we are and to become like vampires to our own. Abortions and addictions, these are not our way. Poor education and neighborhoods, these are not our way. Pornography and misogyny, these are not our way. Violence and incarceration, these are not our way.
The Way is simply this: “For God so loved the world that he gave His Only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him would not perish, but they shall have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Only Jesus, who came down from heaven, knows The Way home. The Way home to a God who is love, IS love. St. Paul said, "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). God cannot forget who and whose we are. He came to redeem our memories; our families; our humanity; and our world, so that his “joy might be in you and your joy might be complete” (John 15:11).
As Gospel singer Jessy Dixon put it:
“I am redeemed, bought with a price,
Jesus has changed my whole life.
If anybody asks you, just who I am,
tell them I am redeemed.”
I can be a child of God precisely because I am redeemed! I can pray “Our Father” precisely because my Redeemer lives!
And when was I redeemed? Way back on Calvary – in the blood that Jesus shed for me. The same blood that made Eddie Hawkins sing “Oh Happy Day!” The same blood that runs red for all races in Kirk Franklin’s “The Blood Song.” The same blood that inspired Andrea Crouch to sing “The Blood Will Never Lose its Power.” This blood “reaches to the highest mountains and it flows to the lowest valleys…it gives me strength from day to day, it will never lose its power.”
This same blood -- shed for our redemption -- is made available to us every day through the holy sacrifice of the Mass: a remembrance of our redemption on Calvary made present to us in the Eucharist.
"This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice in it and be glad" (Ps. 118:24). May his broken body and shed blood -- the ghastly price of our redemption -- always remind us who and whose we are. ….and if anybody asks you who you are, tell them “I am redeemed…a joyful child of God!”
Author: Deacon Melvin Tardy, Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend at St. Augustine Parish in South Bend, Indiana.
Deacon Mel Tardy serves as an Academic Advisor in the College of Arts & Letters at the University of Notre Dame. Ordained a permanent deacon in May 2011, Tardy serves the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend as Administrator of St. Augustine Parish, as chair of the Black Catholic Advisory Board, and as the Spiritual Director for the St. Vincent de Paul Society of St. Joseph County. Tardy also serves on the USCCB Subcommittee on African American Affairs; as past-president of the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus; and on the board of the National Association of Black Catholic Deacons. He and his wife Annie are most proud of their three children and four grandchildren.