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Easter: Blood at Calvary and passion of Kitutu
Author: Asuman Bisiika. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
Elsewhere, I had advised Ms Kitutu to ‘just’ resign so as to free the appointing authority from the embarrassment...
At Muhokya Primary School (a Catholic Church-founded school), I admired the Abazaveri (St Xervia Youth Group). But my first real appreciation of Christianity was at Kisinga Primary School. This was during the wave of evangelism that followed the fall of Idi Amin in April 1979. Young and fresh Bakonzo graduates from Bishop Tucker Theological College in Mukono hit our schools to feed us with the word of God.
I must confess I have always been fascinated by Christian scholarship. I always seek to understand the deification of Jesus Christ, the Augustinian Academy of The Trinity, the elevation of Mary, Jesus’ mother etc. To the best of my knowledge, Christian faith is founded on the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus’ resurrection is an acknowledgement of immortality and canonical passage to deification (in the same vein the Greek gods?).
What is resurrection to the modern man? Is it spiritual, psychological or physical? Nowhere in the Bible is the ‘faith by resurrection’ captured well by Paul in his letter to the Corinthians using the analogy of ‘a grain wheat’: for it dies first before it sprouts into life.
Jesus always dodged the question of Roman military occupation. And please note even King Herod, who was lording it over ‘the chosen ones’, was not a Jew. Jesus concentrated on his people; chiding the Pharisees, the Aaronaic priests, the corrupt tax collectors etc. If we discounted the deification of Jesus, his teachings are relevant to everyone today as they were with his contemporaries. He railed against bygotry, intrigue, false ideology and power etc. But because Christian scholarship has almost stripped Jesus of his humanity, it has been difficult to appreciate the fact that Jesus spoke truth to power and challenged the leadership of his community in a fashion that an opposition political leader would do in Uganda today.
In 1981, a national leader’s assessment was that there was a need for some kind of blood sacrifice for the nation to be born again. Indeed, after five years of some bloodletting, the nation was reborn. But over 30 years later, the voice is crying now from the wilderness: free my people from the corrupt tax collectors, the Roman occupation and the hypocritical Pharisees.
Thine be the glory
Risen conquering Son
For endless is the victory
Resurrection is the faith
And triumph over death
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Ms Mary Gorreti Kitutu, the honourable Minister for Karamoja has found herself in a spot of bother. In such circumstances, we tend to seek the indulgence of God to intervene. And for some, seeking a place onto which to dump the blame for their circumstances becomes the issue. Stuff like: it is the mafia on my case. So and so is bewitching me.
I have been to prison before; more than three times in more than three countries. Since I never appeared in court, I would like to invite you dear reader to assume that I was innocent. Yet prison is such a heart breaking thing. Even when one believes he or she is innocent and blaming everything on the mafia, it can break one’s heart.
Elsewhere, I had advised Ms Kitutu to ‘just’ resign so as to free the appointing authority from the embarrassment associated with the circumstances in which the minister has found herself. But I was told the word ‘resign’ is not in the dictionary of political leaders in Uganda. With her psychological suffering, we called this the passion of Kitutu. A friend with whom I shared this piece before I sent it for publication, called and said: the passion of Mary Gorreti Kitutu and her impersonal impassion for the Karamojong.Happy Easter!
Mr Bisiika is the executive editor of the East African Flagpost. [email protected]
