Eastertide
April 21, 2023
Scripture Reading: 1 Peter 1:17-23
If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile. You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.
Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.
I am a member of the Poor People’s Campaign, A National Call for Moral Revival, working to build the Third Reconstruction.
Drawing on the transformational history of the First Reconstruction following the Civil War and the Second Reconstruction of the civil rights struggles of the 20th century, the Third Reconstruction is a revival of our constitutional commitment to establish justice, provide for the general welfare, end decades of austerity, and recognize that policies that center the 140 million poor and low-income people in the country are also good economic policies that can heal and transform the nation*.
The scripture above describes a similar call when it says we have been born anew, given a second chance to correct the moral failures of our lives. We humans tend to reshape that word moral , which simply means what is right or good to definitions that support our worldview, what is right for people like me not all of God’s people.
The Papal Bull “Inter Caetera,” issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493, is an excellent example of that. The Bull stated that any land not inhabited by Christians was available to be “discovered,” claimed, and exploited by Christian rulers and declared that “the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself**. On March 30, 2023, the Vatican responded to Indigenous demands and formally repudiated the “Doctrine of Discovery,” the theories backed by 15th-century “papal bulls” that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Native lands and form the basis of some property laws today.
The scars from our human tendency to define morality to our benefit continue in many ways today. I fear evil temptations often define what we consider to be moral. It is only through our deepest desire guided by the Holy Spirit to follow what God describes as right will we ever be able to unchain ourselves from worldviews of greed that eventually always destroy us.
Prayer: Lord, guide us in living your righteousness and your goodness adapting them to be our own in all we do. Amen.
*See at https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/join-us-as-we-build-the-third-reconstruction/
** See at https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/04093_FPS.pdf
All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.