The Sunday Mail
Unbelievable!!!
Easter, or Holy Week, has never been anything remotely as sombre and sober as it has been for the past three days.
During this time of the year, which represents the sacrediest of days on the Christian calendar, churches and places of worship usually overflow with believers.
However, this year men of the cloth have been kept company by the occasional church mice and creepy crawlies, which now enjoy unfettered liberties in church halls as spooked families are tightly secured behind closed doors.
The vicious monster that is coronavirus (Covid-19) is now on the prowl and is currently stalking our communities with a spring in its step.
How life has changed.
You see, Bishop Lazi always lived for sacred days like these.
In fact, nothing quite pumped him up like the energy from congregants, which made his sermons and homilies fierier with each “Hallelujah” or “Amen” from tranced and stirred up followers egging him on.
But now he has had to do services or say Mass before a couple of geeks brandishing smartphones for online streaming.
What a cultural shock!
It probably has never happened in the history of the Church for all places of worship around the globe to be shut because of fear, particularly at a time when believers are commemorating the triumph of life over death, courage over fear and light over darkness.
Well, today is the day Jesus Christ — the son of God — rose from the dead after being killed in the most humiliating and cruellest way imaginable.
But non-believers say this is another contrived fable that is meant to promote social cohesion by tying people to a seemingly omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent deity.
Stone-cold Facts
The Bishop recently told you the real-life story of Lee Strobel, a former investigative journalist with the Chicago Tribune in the United States, who thought the story of Jesus Christ was either pure baloney or hocus-pocus.
As his wife, Leslie, increasingly warmed up to Christianity, the determined journalist set out to gather information — both historical and scientific — to prove that this whole story was a hoax.
As an atheist, he did not want his wife to spend time meaninglessly chasing shadows.
The more information he uncovered, the more he became disillusioned.
He discovered from scholars and manuscripts from Roman historians such as Cornelius Tacitus, Pliny the Younger and Suetonius, including Jewish historian Flavius Josephus that Jesus actually existed as a historical figure.
He then struggled to reconcile himself with the fact that Jesus could have risen from the dead since there are several historical texts of many witnesses who had seen him after his crucifixion.
But, after establishing the historicity of Jesus as an incontrovertible fact, Strobel was left with one possible logical explanation: Jesus could not have died on the cross.
He then turned to science to prove his hypothesis.
Unfortunately, it did not quite turn out as he imagined.
Dr Alexander Metherell — an expert who holds a medical degree from the University of Miami, Florida, United States — managed to describe to him in gory detail that it wasn’t conceivably possible for anyone to survive a Roman flogging and crucifixion.
It was generally established that in the 12 hours between 9pm on Thursday and 9am Friday before he was crucified, Jesus suffered great emotional stress and flogging.
Flogging was generally considered as a legal preliminary to every Roman execution.
You see, the Romans, who had established a sprawling empire by sheer force, did not mess around and were consummate killers.
They flogged their victims using a short whip (flagellum), which had several single or braided leather thongs fitted with small iron balls or sharp pieces of sheep bones that were tied at intervals.
Experts say it was designed to weaken a victim to a state just short of collapse or death.
Then came the crucifixion.
This practice began among Persians and was later introduced to Egypt and Carthage by one of history’s most iconic figure, Alexander the Great (the Macedonian prince from Greece).
It was considered one of the most disgraceful and humiliating forms of execution; therefore, it was reserved for “slaves, foreigners and revolutionaries and the vilest of criminals” only.
Victims were nailed using tapered iron spikes approximately 13cm to 18cm long.
In Jesus’ case, they were driven through the wrists.
Each wound was apparently intended to induce intense agony and excruciating pain.
Etymologically, the word excruciating is from the Latin word “excruciatus”, which means “out of the cross”.
It gets worse.
The weight of the body pulling down on outstretched arms, especially slumping on the cross, makes it difficult to breath.
You see, there was a science to this kind of execution.
According to US-based pathologist Dr William Edwards, “the actual cause of death by crucifixion was multifactorial and varied somewhat with each case, but the two most prominent causes probably were hypovolemic shock and exhaustion”.
Well, the investigation accomplished the incredible feat of converting the incredulous journalist into a pastor.
In 1998, he released a book, “The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus”, to document his near-exhaustive investigation.
This is exactly why Bishop Lazi will be celebrating today.
God could not have suffered all this to lead us to perdition.
However, stripped of the commercialisation and distracting bluster that had become the bane of Easter holidays over the years, this year’s coronavirus-induced isolation will definitely force humanity to reflect on where it is taking the world.
In silence and serenity we find the Lord.
We learn this lesson when Elijah met God while escaping from Jezebel.
1 Kings 19: 11-12 said: “Then He said, “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.”
“And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.”
And just as the Israelites did in the desert, we must look up to Moses’ hoisted bronze snake to survive (Numbers 21:9).
Silver lining
The incredible strength of human beings lies in learning from crises.
Bishop Lazarus never knew we had so many municipal police officers who are crawling from almost every corner of the central business district (CBD).
We never knew that our colleges could manufacture medical sundries such as masks, hand sanitisers and protective clothing, which we used to import using the little foreign currency we had.
We never knew we could work from home and minister using the phone.
In fact, we will never know what else we are capable of.
We have a lot of potential that is hidden in our society.
Our challenge is to ensure that we do not relapse into the pre-coronavirus import-dependent state but instead chart a new innovative post-Covid-19 path.
We have clear choices to make: we either have to emerge stronger from this crisis — the worst in modern times — or we sink into an unimaginably intractable crisis.
Bishop out!
