The Easter hope: A personal testimony:
The Easter festival day, when Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, is as old as the resurrection faith itself — the very foundation of the Christian faith.
Christians believe that Jesus was sentenced to death and executed by crucifixion for the salvation of humanity and all creation, on the day we commemorate as Good Friday.
Good Friday is the moment when Christ, in his pain, identifies with the pains of the people and atones for our sins.
Believers surrender their sinfulness and place their miseries, pains and woundedness onto his outstretched arms. Christians also believe that he rose from the dead on the “first day of the week”, Sunday.
From about the middle of the first century, Christians were recognising Sunday as a holy day, the Lord’s Day, to celebrate Christ’s resurrection — the anchor of their faith. This is what made Sunday the day of Christian worship.
From about the second century, while the Christian faith was still underground and not legally recognised, Christians went beyond the weekly observance of the resurrection and began an annual observance.
The final fixing of the Easter festival protocol and its dating was done after the legalisation of Christianity at the Council of Nicaea in 325. This included the recitation, through scripture, of the known salvation history up to the Christ event and how it heals and restores the relationship between humanity and God through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
My love affair with Easter was nurtured by my love for church choral music and some of the best hymns, for me, have always been Easter hymns.
But as I learned more from the Black Theology project of Black Consciousness about the theological claims of the human person created in the image of God, regardless of race and gender, I realised the blasphemy of apartheid, which undermined the fullness of the humanity of black people.
As I began to interrogate the relationship between the black experience under apartheid and the Christian faith, Easter became a point of focus.
I saw it as a celebration of a seminal event for the faith: the resurrection of Jesus. From this, I began to examine and more purposefully interpret my church experience. I learned more about the idea of God as a God of love and justice and the death and resurrection of Jesus as the practical manifestation of that.
A core question for me, which ultimately led me to enter seminary and theological studies, was: “What does it mean to be created in the image of God if I am black in apartheid South Africa?”
Therefore, does the Easter celebration and the annual messages of hope associated with the resurrection mean anything for black people in South Africa?
I explored these questions as a theological student at the Federal Theological Seminary. This was a decidedly anti-apartheid institution, providing space for Black and Liberation Theology, as well as serious critical analysis of the Christian message contained in the gospel. I found the answer to my question and it brought me back to an interpretation of Easter as a liberating festival.
My studies revealed that the scriptures do not present God in physical terms that allow us to see God as black or white, male or female. Scripture states that God is love; therefore, love is a human fundamental, since humans are created in the image of God.
I began to gain a greater appreciation for the African love ethic of ubuntu, as it represents a living expression of the image of God in humanity.
Because God is described as Creator, humans must be creative as a function of their being in the image of God, the Creator. From this, I began to see how Bantu Education, designed to kill the creative spirit in African children, was a blasphemous policy that sought to deliberately stifle the creativity that is the image of God in our children.
This revelation in response to my question about the image of God led to other realisations and a deeper appreciation of the attributes of God that all humans share and which the faith celebrated at Easter is meant to honour.
God is just and righteous and so we should be. Therefore, to stand up for justice is to stand up for the image of God in society. God is free, for nothing compels God. Thus, freedom is another human fundamental that we should claim, struggle for and defend.
Ultimately, we speak of Almighty God, for God is powerful. This means that power is another attribute of God’s image that humans possess. Power exercised without love is tyranny and power with love is justice.
All of this gave new meaning to me as one member of an oppressed people celebrating Easter. It brought renewed significance and energy to the meaning of Easter hope following the pain of the Good Friday crucifixion.
Thus, Easter and its resurrection faith mean that the pain of apartheid, akin to the painful and shameful death of Jesus on the cross, cannot be the last word. The resurrection faith celebrated at Easter is a call to new hope.
For me, the Easter resurrection hope became a fountainhead of struggle theology that informed pastoral ministry in a praxis of justice. As a priest in impoverished townships in the 1980s, this was important.
As I applied that understanding to each Sunday — the resurrection day — I began to communicate continuously the message of resurrection hope, moving people away from the despair of apartheid’s viciousness.
Because the image of God is alive in all of us, regardless of race and gender, I was able to appreciate the similarities between apartheid racism and patriarchal sexism in black society, which oppress women and girls and prevent them from applying the resurrection faith to transform their circumstances.
As a priest in Cape Town in the 1980s, I worked with young people in the Young Christian Students (YCS), where I served as chaplain, to conduct social analysis and identify instances where that resurrection hope was negated in our experience.
One of the gross violations of this hope was the necklace killings that became more prevalent on Friday afternoons (payday) in the border area between the townships of Nyanga and Gugulethu. We established a sentry system and saved no fewer than 30 people from certain gruesome death.
During the 1980s state of emergency, we were burying young people killed by apartheid soldiers every week.
We could not preach the hope grounded in the resurrection faith while leading funerals for those killed by apartheid forces and saying: “The Lord gave, the Lord has taken, the Lord’s name be praised!”
We agreed, as township pastors, that this verse would be used only when people died of natural causes — not those shot by the apartheid army.
Because the resurrection hope underpinned my ministry wherever I went, I maintained the same approach when, in 1988, I was transferred to Uitenhage, where there were fierce hostilities between supporters of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Africanists (AmaAfrika), led by Reverend Mzwandile Maqina.
From the same principle of Easter hope, we used a mediation model that helped the warring groups envision a “resurrected” life for the communities of KwaNobuhle. We secured peace and ended the internecine killings, resulting in a public celebration.
This Easter outlook has continued to inspire my public ministry, for the “Good Friday” experience cannot have the last word.
Easter, through its resurrection hope, represents a call beyond the pain of the moment.
Because we are created in the image of God — the Creator, the Powerful, the Loving, the Just and the Free — there are no limits to what can be achieved through the Easter faith. And so, we pursue even what seems impossible.
Malusi Mpumlwana is the Bishop of the Diocese of Maropeng of the Ethiopian Episcopal Church.
The Abrahamic Family House and the fragility of coexistence:
Last year I visited Abu Dhabi and apart from the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the place I most wanted to
see was the Abrahamic Family House.
The concept of a compound containing places of worship from all three Abrahamic religions standing side by side fascinated me.
I was raised attending the Catholic Church, so Sunday Mass and Saturday catechism classes, working toward my first Holy Communion and later my confirmation, were fixtures of my childhood. But I
had never set foot inside a mosque or a synagogue.
It was a typically hot day in April when I visited. The heavy humid heat of the Abu Dhabi spring can climb to more than 30°C, so it was a relief to be greeted by the cool air of the visitor pavilion.
The coolness extended into the houses of worship, thanks to the inspired design of British-Ghanaian architect David Adjaye.
The three buildings are of equal stature, size and materiality, deliberately eliminating any sense of hierarchy. They border an elevated landscaped garden, a shared space for gathering and connection.
Each structure is oriented according to its tradition: the mosque towards Mecca, the church towards the East and the synagogue towards Jerusalem.
The structures are different but the human impulse behind them feels the same.
The desire to search for meaning beyond our finite existence and to commune with others who share that search.
I found it especially compelling that the spaces are not just symbolic or aesthetic; they’re active, regularly used places of worship.
According to its website, the Abrahamic Family House “is dedicated to the pursuit of peaceful coexistence for generations to come”, a place that seeks to bridge our common humanity through dialogue and the practice of faith.
But as I explored the compound, I couldn’t help thinking about the sheer amount of conflict the same faiths have been used to justify in the region. And I found myself questioning: Is it really the religions themselves? Or is that too convenient an answer?
History offers easy examples. The Crusades, centuries-old campaigns waged in the name of Christianity to reclaim Jerusalem, left cities burnt and populations massacred. Later, empires rose and fell across this same geography, from Ottoman expansions into Europe to colonial powers carving up the Middle East, with little regard for the people who lived there. Religion was always present but rarely alone.
Then there’s the present, which feels less like history and more like a wound that refuses to close.
The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is often framed as ancient and inevitable but so much of it is rooted in the 20th century: the collapse of empires, the creation of Israel in 1948 and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
Since then, cycles of war, occupation and resistance have hardened into something that feels permanent.
In Gaza, even in moments that are supposed to resemble ceasefire, airstrikes and shortages persist and civilians continue to bear the brunt of a conflict they did not choose. More than 680 Palestinians have been killed in recent months alone despite a declared truce, as humanitarian conditions continue to deteriorate.
Again I wonder: Is this religion? Or is it land, borders and the machinery of the modern state?
Because layered over the conflict is something even larger.
In February 2026, the US and Israel launched a massive coordinated assault on Iran, striking military infrastructure and leadership in what quickly escalated into a regional war. In just the opening phase, nearly 900 strikes were carried out, killing more than a thousand people and triggering waves of retaliation across the Middle East.
Iran responded with missiles and drones. The conflict has since drawn in other actors, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to Houthi forces in Yemen, threatening global trade routes and widening the scope of destruction.
It’s tempting to see this, too, through a religious lens. Israel versus an Islamic republic, alliances framed in civilisational terms. But the closer you look, the more familiar the underlying motives appear: Western hubris, regional dominance and political gamesmanship.
Maybe religion is less the cause and more the language through which older, more human instincts are expressed. Power. Fear. Territory. The need to belong and the equally strong need to define who does not.
Which is it? A force for division or a framework for coexistence?
Standing in that carefully balanced space in Abu Dhabi, it was possible, if only for a moment, to believe in the framework for coexistence. But outside its walls, the evidence feels overwhelming in the other direction. Cities reduced to rubble. Families displaced.
A death toll that continues to climb across multiple fronts, numbers that risk becoming abstract precisely because they’re so large.
And that’s where the uncertainty settles in. Not in the past, where we can trace causes and assign meaning but in the present where bombs are falling, where alliances harden and where the line between faith
and power becomes almost impossible to distinguish.
Maybe that is the uncomfortable truth the Abrahamic Family House cannot resolve, only quietly resist: that the same human capacity that builds spaces of coexistence is also capable of sustaining conflict.
And for now, both realities exist side by side.
Feast of the Resurrection for our times:
At a time like this, there are wars and rumours of wars. The international body of law has no sway in the conduct of national affairs.
This is a time of the loudmouthed, the powerful; and nations speak, act and form alliances with those who can advance their own national will.
The promises of our world since 1945 — the institutions set up then to assure nations would never go to war again but instead pursue peace and the comity of nations — have faltered.
Small nations no longer matter. We are back to rule by the jackboot of the powerful. South Africa has been a victim of just such a season of bullying of smaller nations. Dark clouds are gathering. Some even talk openly about the inevitability of the Third World War.
We can at least rejoice, as South Africans, that our Constitution guarantees not only freedom of religion but also freedom of thought, belief and opinion. Above all, the Bill of Rights guarantees that those who belong to religious or cultural groups may not be denied the right, with other members of that community, to enjoy their culture, practise their religion and form and join associations with like-minded religious communities.
On Palm Sunday, a disturbing historic event occurred. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the Custos of the Holy See of the Holy Land were prevented by Israeli police from attending the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem to celebrate Mass.
They were stopped en route to the church and compelled to turn away from their spiritual obligations under force of arms.
In Iran, 160 schoolchildren were killed by Israeli missiles targeted at their school and, without a formal declaration of war, three generations of religious leaders of Iran have been murdered.
The world is on the brink of war. Reactions are muted and no outrage has been expressed by world leaders. At a time like this, there is no sympathy for the underdog.
Easter or the Feast of the Resurrection, is the oldest and greatest festival in the calendar of the Christian church.
Next to it is the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord, or Christmas. But Christmas has become heavily commercialised and its Christian symbolism is bound to be lost.
Easter holds sway largely through its deliberate spiritual connotations and discipline. It is preceded by the season of Lent, which means that for six weeks, beginning on Ash Wednesday, Christians commit themselves to spiritual discipline: fasting, prayer, study of the Bible and undertaking good deeds.
The season culminates with a week of observing and sharing the Passion of Christ along the Via Dolorosa. On Maundy Thursday there is the Last Supper, the trial of Jesus and on Friday the crucifixion.
This is considered the most solemn occasion for believers, who re-enact the brutality and cruelty that so many suffer in an unjust world.
The mystery of Easter is the Resurrection, by which hope is restored and trust in the promises of the living God is sustained — the great reversal of human fortunes.
In other words, Easter is more than just the day of the Resurrection because, without Good Friday, there would be no Resurrection.
The Resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is a process preceded by Lent — a time of spiritual preparation for when God intervenes symbolically in human affairs.
It is important to note that this system of belief was unique in its time. It established a new community of believers who were avowed followers of a man called Jesus of Nazareth
This Jesus was a shaman, an itinerant preacher, a healer. However, he attracted the anger of the establishment in the temple — the leaders and the rabbis, the custodians of the law.
He was not known to be trained or learned in the law and the prophets, yet he was able to attract a following.
Of much more concern, perhaps, is that this community gathered around Jesus was operating in a subversive manner. They met in unusual places, not in the temple or synagogue; they were made up largely of common people who had no standing in society.
It was noticeable that, increasingly, the teachings of Jesus undermined the received teachings of the rabbis and scholars of the law: he did not obey the letter of the law; he healed the sick even when it was forbidden to do so on the Sabbath; and he exuded authority, though it was unclear where he received it and by what authority.
In other words, he possessed no recognised credentials to do what he was doing. He had the audacity to debate and contradict the learned. It is fair to say, then, that to the authorities — in the synagogues, temple and society — he was posing a security risk.
It is worth noting that Jesus’s teachings both incorporated and went beyond the orthodox teachings of his time. He pardoned sinners and did not condemn them.
Judaism did not have a theory of resurrection or forgiveness in this sense. At best, Judaism knew the God of retribution and wrath. It was not normal for the dead to be brought to life, as in the story of Lazarus.
God’s presence was known by God’s retributive power and forgiveness was not the ordinary way by which God made Godself known. The worst and most unforgivable idea was that Jesus of Nazareth could define himself as the Son of God.
The belief in Judaism was that God would restore all creation as an eschatological imperative, when God would then restore the godly order with those who are the righteous elect. The hope of the elect was in the restoration of the divine ordinance at the end of time.
It is important to make the point that the idea of the Resurrection was, for the reasons stated above, a strange one to Judaism, though from some eclectic sources there was evidence of suppressed social and philosophical teachings.
It is not surprising, therefore, that modern readings of the Biblical faith must be undertaken with an eye of faith. The Resurrection is not an event in time that is observable.
Testimonies of the Resurrection in the four Gospels fall far short of asserting an objective, physical or observable bodily rising from the dead, as was the case in the prophet Ezekiel 37 or in the case of Lazarus.
Instead, we are presented with unusual interpretations, such as the empty tomb. The appearances themselves are not always physical — as when the risen Christ appeared on the road to Emmaus, or entered a closed room before the disciples, and ultimately to Thomas, whom he invited to touch him.
However, there were also miraculous happenings. The Great Commission in Matthew 28 is thought to be the greatest demonstration of the Resurrection: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations … And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
The lesson and preaching of the Resurrection is an important endeavour. It is to venture beyond the known, touching on the deeper reaches of being human.
It is the idea that truth does not lie in power and might; it resides in the capacity of humanity to reclaim its own humanity, whatever the odds.
It also states that knowledge and being do not depend only on physical attributes, influence or even abstract thought and intelligence but equally on how humanity exercises its critical faculties to make judgments about the world that surrounds us.
Secondly, recognising that the event of the Resurrection is spiritual by nature and mystical, there must also be recognition not just of mystery but of the mysterious ways in which God dwells within the hearts of men and women. That indwelling under God lends itself to ethical judgment on all that we see around us.
It is, in itself, an exercise in judgment — a faculty we are always called upon to exercise because it is essential to decision-making. I cite the words of Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, who writes in his book Resurrection (1982:11): “Preaching the Resurrection … is an invitation to recognise one’s victim as one’s hope.”
When we recognise victims, we are endowed with empathy, a crucial element of ubuntu, without which we are not human.
Thirdly, the late New Testament scholar C.F. Evans argued that Resurrection faith is a call to assurance and hope. It marks the possibility of a new beginning — that nothing is simply at an end. In other words, writes Evans, “within the temporal order of being, a new beginning of life from God and living under God, is possible” (1983:503).
It is possible to anticipate that which, under God, is assured and by which God acts through the agency of others. Humanity is a creature of God and is bound to conduct itself in a godly and divine way.
What Christianity is confident about is that God’s grace is universal and cannot ultimately be withheld by human action. “This,” says Evans, “is cosmic in scope and reaches to the depths of human life and well-being.”
That assurance has propelled me to devote my life to resisting oppression and fighting injustice. It also means that one must pronounce judgment on evil in the world and condemn those who pervert the purposes of God.
I am adamant that the prophetic calling requires that we pronounce judgment on the world.
One dares not remain silent in the face of the intolerable dehumanisation and genocide of the people of Palestine, which has led us to the brink of a world war.
Nor should men and women of faith remain silent as truth is distorted to advance the purposes of the powerful. The Resurrection is a call back to God.
Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
N Barney Pityana is the provincial canon of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa and retired principal and vice-chancellor of the University of South Africa.
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