This Easter, Ordinary Caribbean People Will Rise from the Dead: Rev. Leslie Lett’s Sermon at the Memorial Service for Maurice Bishop (1983)
Kite flying continues to be an important Easter Tradition in the Caribbean.
In the Caribbean, those of Christian faith mark the resurrection with the flying of homemade kites and the racing of goats. Those who celebrate Easter should not fear its defamation by imported games that children play with bunnies and eggs. Indeed, the greatest threat to the rich tradition of Caribbean Christianity lies not in the commercialization of Easter with German-American symbols, but with the adult preachers and parishioners who enable the reactionary evangelical perversion of this tradition.
But on this Palm Sunday, we are quite serious about gathering with a faith community who looks forward to the rising of the dead. Far more than we realize, the season of resurrection marks not simply the rise of Jesus, God in the flesh, but the rising of those who toil and suffer. We invite everyday people of all faiths to get ready. When we catch power, when we are filled with the spirit, we must decide what action we will take against those who tried to seal them in the social and economic crypt that is their Caribbean.
In Puerto Rico, Cuba, Antigua & Barbuda, Saint Lucia, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, and elsewhere processions will occur, some dressed as Roman imperialists, and some dramatizing Jesus bearing the cross. A clear majority of the Caribbean, 65–85% of each territory identifies as Christian of various denominations. More than 3/4 of the 44 million people that make up the Caribbean will celebrate Easter one week from today. These millions regardless of party affiliation, whether working class or unemployed, have faith. So, too, do Caribbean followers of Islam, Sanatana dharma, Rastafari, Ifá, and Judaism, among other faiths. It is a faith that makes a particular annual claim which we at Clash! identify.
Rev. Leslie Alexander Lett, an Anglican priest in the second half of the twentieth century, who was educated in Barbados, and served the faithful in Barbados, Antigua, St. Kitts, and Montserrat, met Maurice Bishop, the leader of the Grenada Revolution (1979–1983) at a Christian Peace conference in Bishop’s country in 1981. He delivered a sermon at Bishop’s memorial service in 1983 at Trinity Cathedral in Port of Spain, Trinidad.
What Lett said on that day many wished not to forget. It has been passed down informally in the spirit and collective memory of the faithful yet to fulfill itself.
Bishop told Lett the Grenada Revolution at its best was about ‘people’s participation’ in Village Councils, a search for what ordinary people wanted, a commitment to popular education, a commitment to federating the whole Caribbean regardless of Dutch, British, Spanish, or French colonial burdens. That Bishop recognized there was a struggle within the struggle.
Rev. Lett reflected that this was both a grand vision and it had deficiencies in it. In 1983, after the killing of Maurice Bishop by Grenada’s military, the US invasion, and the overthrow of the Grenada government, it seemed self-evident what the deficiencies were at that time. But Lett may not have had the knowledge to clarify what should have been self-evident. Whether we think Bishop was a martyr, or Bernard Coard and others are villains, the major deficiency in the Grenada Revolution is it tried to reconcile participatory democracy with a one-party state. And if they had ten parties it would still have been a bad idea. They simply did not grasp that the workplace councils and village assemblies must serve as the direct forms of government. They cannot be mere decorations that invite ordinary people to gather and deliberate only to subordinate them to the will of a central committee of a select, distant few. That without this vision ‘popular education’ still sustained certain colonial and eugenics tendencies. Even revolutionaries did not really believe ordinary people could directly govern Caribbean society. But that spirit, the struggle within the struggle, may appear, disappear, and reappear. It will rise from the dead.
Rev. Lett explained whatever were the flaws in the Grenada Revolution, Christians needed to be clear in their minds and vision about the struggles of “ordinary people” of the “little people for justice and dignity.” To be clear Rev. Lett was saying the everyday people who have no power above society.
Rev. Lett said, mind you in 1983, it is not enough for Caribbean people to pledge to never to be colonized again. To be colonized or be subject to empire, to be militarily dominated, economically exploited, culturally subordinated by a foreign power is one thing. But Caribbean people taking responsibility for re-arranging society and directly governing ourselves is something else. And this is the basis for analyzing the flaws of the Grenada Revolution, not the external pressures of past British or present American domination.
Rev. Lett then explained Christians need to be very clear that to pursue such a vision, such social criticism, analysis, and plans, is in their faith tradition. That Christians cannot follow a path of opportunistic conservatism. The vision of ordinary people struggling to govern themselves, as they walk with God, is the faith heritage itself.
In Exodus, a movement of ordinary people is found against their conquerors. In Isaiah there is fiery agitation on behalf of the poor against the ambitious and powerful. Isaiah promised when there is equity for the meek there will be peace. This of course meant if there was no economic justice for the poor there would be risings and confrontations. This was the prophecy. Isaiah said that God would breath life, knowledge, and courage into the downtrodden to slay those who exploited them. This was the holy spirit’s presence in our lives. Jeremiah taught that knowing God was the moral imperative to do justice.
When Rev. Lett acknowledges that Jesus came on the historical scene among the ordinary people in Palestine, “this man whom we call God and believe to be God was born among the oppressed, lived among the oppressed, shared the oppression of the oppressed.”
Jesus shared their joys, their hardships and frustrations, he shared their agony, and at age 30 he began to preach the faith vision afresh, he called it the Kingdom of God. He taught that the Kingdom of God was within the faithful, but also by how they behaved they could re-arrange the social and political relations among them. He conveyed this full of poetry, it was like the mustard seed, a woman making bread, a man’s search for treasure. Jesus was preaching “good news” to the poor and oppressed. This faithful vision of “the kingdom” was not based on a new king or ruler, it sustained the faith of those who were poor, and confirmed their hopes and struggles. God was on the side of the oppressed. Jesus was saying your aspirations is the “Kingdom of God.”
Rev. Lett told the faithful, Jesus had to confront the political world of King Herod, a human who thought he was divine and all-powerful. But Jesus destroyed the myth of the divine leader — the leader who thought he would overlord humans by some divine command. This is what Rev. Lett said. Jesus, in contrast, gave ordinary people self-confidence, he was in solidarity with the masses, not some elite. Jesus helped deposit in, and draw out of, the masses the language of protest. He made them understand that the enemy was not all powerful, that they could be defeated. Rev. Lett said the world will not be changed by laws made in parliament or congresses, among presidents and prime ministers. It will be changed by the multitudes who take history in their own hands.
Rev. Lett suggests that to the extent Jesus cultivated the popular will of the faithful, the enemies of ordinary people could not capture him, where he was rooted among the mass of the population. Rev. Lett explains that the meaning of Judas, was his impatience and his 101 motivations to pursue power or self-advancement in the here and now, that this impulse (not the singular personality) is what betrayed the movement following Jesus to the imperial forces.
Whether Rev. Lett wished to suggest that Bishop was like Jesus, Coard was like Judas, the key factor to us is this. Not simply impatience but the premature desire for power and advancement in this world, not taking seriously arranging the popular self-directed institutions to bring the new world closer, is what happened in Grenada. Both Bishop and Coard, and their one-party state, despite debates within, agreed that a government of workplace councils and popular assemblies was premature, and subordinate to a sense of administrative rationality that was not faithful in the best sense.
Rev. Lett would not concur with those who believe the defeat of Grenada in 1983 was decisive or marked an end to the consciousness and desire of Caribbean working people to govern themselves. He reminded that so long as there are creative conflicts, dynamic tensions, and contradictions among humanity, a faithful and direct self-governing vision must rise again. Rev. Lett explained the apparently poor and the powerless are not embalmed and trapped in the tomb for long. The crypt has a way of opening up. The faithful spirit among ordinary people, degraded for so long, has a way of flowing, their hopes forming a tide that cannot be stopped.
If the Gospel explains that we experience God’s presence more in the struggle than in the victory, that apart from that struggle for self-directed emancipation there is no hope, there is no divine transcendence, then Rev. Lett’s reminder about the Grenada and future Caribbean revolution, is that the revolutionary spirit cannot be defeated among those who keep the faith. Long before the Church was officially founded and the Bible was codified and human rulers left out the gospels that were inconvenient, and interpreted prophetic words in mediocre ways, there were ekklesia — popular assemblies of the faithful.
Therefore Rev. Lett reminded as he addressed many bewildered, unsure of what the future may hold, that the vision of freedom and self-government cannot be destroyed. We can be “afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, struck down but not destroyed.” Those who carry the life of Jesus within them, can also manifest from their own bodies his courage and teaching.
Not gatherings of a hierarchy of social classes called churches but those who had walked with Jesus, learned of his message by word of mouth and awaited his return. The crucial thing is whether believing he was God in the flesh or believing in his social teachings or both (there was some variation antiquity history tells us), they were waiting for the time when society would be rearranged so that they could bring forth the Kingdom of God within themselves. That the popular will would reconcile with the Almighty or Most High whose prescribed path they believed was the good life.
It is human for us to stray from God’s will from time to time and ask for forgiveness. But the prophetic promise is everyday people will rise from the dead. Whether or not we rise before the final battle, part of being self-directed with the will God gave us, is that we remain ever vigilant in defense of bringing the new society closer.
Sermon Delivered by the Rev. Leslie Lett at a Memorial Service for the Late Maurice Bishop, Trinity Cathedral, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.
On Saturday 10th December 1983
Transcribed by Ryan Cecil Jobson from Oilfields Workers Trade Union. General Council’s Report: 45th Annual Conference of Delegates (San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago: OWTU, 1984).
IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, SON AND HOLY SPIRIT — AMEN!
In late May 1981, there was a meeting of the Christian Peace Conference in St. George’s, Grenada. It was during this meeting that I met for the first time, Maurice Bishop. He was present at a few sessions, and he invited me to his home on the following Sunday. I will always remember that Sunday. We sat for about two hours, just talking. Maurice was a good conversationalist. And we spoke about the sovereignty of small states, about the U.S. military manoeuvers in the Caribbean, and we spoke about Grenada, Maurice’s primary passion.
I remember how he told me about the people’s participation in Village Councils, about a recent survey to discover the priorities of ordinary people; about the popular education programme, and I thought at the time, here was a man with a tremendous vision, a vision full of humanity and a vision that emerged out of a struggle and was being continually shaped by a struggle, a struggle for a new form of social existence that would effectively put power into the hands of ordinary people; a struggle for Caribbean unity to include the French, Spanish, the Dutch, the whole Caribbean; a struggle to make the Caribbean a place free from external domination.
This was the struggle, and this was the vision that Maurice had. Of course, there were defects, of course there were weaknesses, of course there were flaws for it was not a perfect vision. It was in fact a human project, and of these flaws, these defects, the Caribbean Conference of Churches, pointed to three in particular, but it also affirmed the positive dimensions of the Grenada revolution.
Today, I wonder to what extent some of these flaws contributed to the events of October. History alone will tell, for make no mistake about it, all those who in the Caribbean hope for radical changes within Caribbean Society, and even those who merely hope not to be colonised again, must carefully examine and analyse the Grenada revolution, and the events that led to October 25th.
But I also believe that churchmen and churchwomen throughout the Caribbean must also reflect on the events in Grenada. You see, Christians need to be clear, very clear in their minds that the vision and the struggle of ordinary people, of the little people, for justice and for dignity find their roots in the biblical tradition. Let me repeat that — Christians need to be very clear that the vision and the struggle of ordinary people, of little people for justice and dignity find their roots in the biblical tradition.
My fear is that many Christians will be afraid at this time of witch hunting, at this time when people are banning people and restricting the movements of others. My fear is that Christians will adopt a path of opportunistic conservatism and they need to remind themselves that the vision and the struggle of ordinary people for justice fund their roots in the bible. So God’s call in the book of EXODUS — “to let me people go” remains the paradigm for all liberation struggles in which Christians enter, and this evening’s first lesson from ISAIAH describes for us the vision that confirms the hopes and the aspirations of the poor and confronts and contradicts the ambition of the powerful.
For, my friends, it is a simple historical fact that just about all visions emerge out of the contradictions within social life, within human community, and that those visions that emerge out of these contradictions in turn sharpen the contradictions, and so ISAIAH in this first reading announces very boldly, “The time will come when justice will be there for the poor, when there will be equity for the meek, and then there will be peace,” and on that day he asserts, “with the breath of his mouth, God will slay the wicked.” God will slay all those who subvert and sabotage and oppose the vision and the struggle of the poor for justice. And then ISAIAH proclaims, “Then the Earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” The Knowledge of the Lord…Jeremiah makes us to understand that to know God is to do justice and to defend the poor and the defenceless. This is what it means to know God. Knowing God is not an abstract thing, it has to do with justice and with defending the poor. God is indeed the moral imperative to do justice.
ISAIAH’s vision which we listened to this evening lived on for centuries in the hearts and in the struggles of ordinary people in Palestine. And then my friends, one day the man Jesus appeared on the scene. This man Jesus whom we call God, and we believe to be God, was born among the oppressed, he lived among the oppressed, he shared the oppressions of the oppressed, he shared their joys, he shared their hardships and their frustrations, he shared their agony; and at age thirty he began to proclaim the vision afresh and he called it “The Kingdom of God.” And this vision of the Kingdom was one full of humanity, full of poetry — it is like the mustard seed, it is like a man searching, searching for treasure; it’s like a woman kneading bread. He used images that ordinary people could understand, and for a very good reason, because Jesus knew that this vision and the kingdom was good news to the poor and the oppressed, in language they could understand and that was the problem. He dared to share his vision with the poor and having done so gave it political content, and gave it a strategy for achievement. Jesus went and told the poor “the kingdom of God is yours, it’s yours.” This kingdom, and this vision, is yours, don’t you recognise it? It affirms and confirms your hopes, your aspirations, and your struggles; watch it and understand it and begin to see that God is on your side.
This vision, this Kingdom, emerges out of the aspirations of the poor and the oppressed, and Jesus asked them to recognise it, “yours is the Kingdom of God.” And then Jesus started to help the poor and the oppressed to understand, to become aware of what the Kingdom should mean and he had many opportunities. One day some people came to Jesus and said to him, “King Herod, the strong King Herod, the man who declared himself to be divine, he is looking for you.” And our Lord’s response was one of name calling! He said, “Go and tell that fox…Jesus called the King a ‘fox.’” “Tell that fox” — in one word Jesus destroyed the myth of the divine leader, of the leader who thinks he leads and is to control the world out of some strange divine command that is entirely bogus. He destroyed the myth of the divine leader, and he put into the hands of poor people the language of protest and the language of self-confidence, and he made them to understand that the enemy is not all-powerful, he is a fox, he can be defeated. That was the sort of thing that Jesus did. And having spoken to the poor, he spoke to the crowds and gave them the language of protest. He was forever speaking to the crowds, to the masses of people and sometimes he fed them, but he spoke to the crowds because Jesus was in solidarity with the masses, not with some elite.
The world, my friends, will not be changed by an edict in Parliament, however democratically elected. It will be changed by the masses of the people who take history into their hands, and so Jesus spoke to the crowds. It is interesting to note that in the Gospels, the Greek word for crowds, the crowds upon whom Jesus has compassion is Ochlos, and that word means the common people as they stand in contrast and in opposition to the powerful leaders. Maybe the church in times of persecution, in times of oppression, should start to think of itself not so much as the Laos of God but as the Ochlos of God.
Jesus spoke to the crowd, and for three years the authorities attempted to capture and to kill him, but they could not, because the crowds were always around Jesus, they were with Jesus. Until, my friends, one day the impatient Judas with a hundred and one motives swirling around in his mind, decided to betray Jesus. That was the only way the powerful could get inside to destroy Jesus, by the betrayal of a close friend of Jesus himself. And Judas’s betrayal opened the door for the powerful Ecclesiastics and for Imperial Rome to enter and to do their damage.
But the vision does not end there. It never does, does it? The vision rises again and again in the struggle of the oppressed, and for as long as there are contradictions within human society, there will always be visions and there will always be the struggle, and the struggle will rise again and again. Whenever Christians join that struggle and support that struggle, they respond to the risen Lord himself; and the tomb, the tomb in which the hopes and aspirations of poor people are so often embalmed and entombed never stays shut for long, and soon the tomb will burst open again and the aspirations and hopes of people will pour out into the world in a tide that cannot be stopped.
The Gospel makes us to understand that you and I experience liberty and freedom and the presence of Jesus himself more in the struggle than in the victory, and that apart from the struggle for justice and for peace and for transcendence, human or divine, apart form that struggle, there is no hope and no God. Those of us here today who knew the Grenada Revolution, who understand what it was about in spite of its defects and the many others who are not here, who today are bewildered and are wondering what the future holds, my message is that the vision and the struggles for liberty and freedom is something that no one and nothing can destroy. It is deep in the hearts of men and women, and it is there in the biblical tradition for Christians to uphold and affirm and so I leave you with some words that St. Paul gave to the Corinthians who were themselves in struggle and wondering how to cope with defeats.
“We are afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always carrying in the body of the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifest in our bodies.” Let this courageous and resilient hope remain with you always.
IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON AND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT — AMEN!
