Los Desaparecidos

We, who call ourselves Christian, should not forget that the One we call Lord and Liberator was a victim of state-sanctioned murder. He was abducted in the dead of night, unjustly tried, beaten, tortured, and executed between two rebels.

Many Jesus Scholars tell us that nobody knew what happened next. There are those who say that his body was left on the cross, to be feasted upon by wild dogs. Others say he was probably thrown into a mass grave. Still others say his body was placed hastily into a borrowed grave.

Paul writing in the 50s never talks about the empty tomb. The story of the empty tomb in Mark arrives at least two decades after.

And the Markan story is clear. There is no body. The women came to mourn, they came for closure, they came with spices. Jesus had disappeared!

Whether we talk about the Philippines, Argentina, Palestine, and many more places in the world, countless cannot mourn or find closure because their children, their parents, their comrades, their teachers, their students, like, Jesus, have disappeared.

Like Jesus they walked and worked with those whose only hope is God. Like Jesus their lives were dedicated to struggling for peace based on justice. Like Jesus, they were threats to the rich and the powerful. And like Jesus, they all disappeared!

Like the women at the tomb, many of us are silent and afraid. Like the women in the tomb, we want to find The Disappeared. We want to find them alive. Or if they are dead, we want to find their bodies. We want to anoint them with fragrant oils. Maybe build a monument or set up a memorial for them. We want to mourn. We want closure.

But the message of the young man in the empty tomb is as real today as it was thousands of years ago… Jesus is not in the tomb. He is risen. He is in Galilee… Waiting for us!

We also believe that The Disappeared has risen again in the tens, in the hundreds, and in the thousands who continue what they begun: fighting and struggling for justice, for peace, for liberation. Like Jesus, they are in Galilee where we do not want to go; where the good news is preached to the poor; where the hungry are given food; and where liberation is proclaimed to the captives…

The Disappeared are waiting for us to pick up where they left off.

[photo from ManilaToday]