Jack of Harts

There appears to be some confusion in our political process when it comes to the Jim Crow laws. So will the real Jim Crow please stand up? See, there were laws passed in some areas that encoded the idea that society had to be separated through the use of racial segregation. No mixed race schools or public buildings, black and white public water fountains, and of course black men could not sit down at a lunch counter in a white neighborhood and order a burger. And poll taxes and literacy tests were used to stop black people from voting. They were most common in the old Democrat South, until fifty or so years ago, when the Civil Rights Movement marched in peaceful protest against them on national TV. By the time I grew up, some twenty years later, they had been all but forgotten, remembered only as an evil that should never be repeated. That is the real Jim Crow. Never Forget it.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus went to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. He traveled to the Temple where a market reigned in the middle of the temple, selling offerings to Jews who came from far and wide. Jesus called them thieves, grabbed a whip, and drove them from the temple. He called the priests that supported this corrupt and faithless. This they could not forgive. This dirty carpenter from nowhere had dared to come into their city and called them corrupt. Liars. Morally bankrupt. They could not allow that to stand. They wanted to crucify him. Literally. And then they had the Romans place guards at the tomb to keep his disciples from pulling any mischief with the body. They did not want an empty tomb for stories to be made of. They wanted the name of Jesus stricken from history and his followers forever shunned and ruined. They did not get what they wanted.

Two thousand years ago, a Jewish preacher named Jesus celebrated the Passover with the disciples he had taught for three years. They were his friends. His closest confidants. Brothers and sisters who had followed him all over Israel. He washed their feet, as a servant would for a master. He said that one of them would betray him. That even the fiercest of them would deny him in the following days. He told them to break bread and drink wine in remembrance of him and his covenant with them. Two thousand years later, that Communion is still observed all over the world. Every month, every week, someone is breaking bread (or some bread-like substance) and drinking wine (or juice or something akin to it) in remembrance of Jesus and the New Covenant he established with us.