The Tribune

By the Rev Canon S Sebastian Campbell, CM

HOW many times in your life have you said something like this? “That could never happen. It’s impossible.” “Not in my wildest dreams can I imagine that ever coming true.” “I’ll never get through this. It’s over. This is all there is or ever will be.” “No way. Not now, not ever.”

I suspect we’ve all said those kinds of things in one form or another. We’ve all bumped up against the impossible in our lives. And we all live with our own version of what is and what isn’t possible. Most of the time we live our life based on what we consider to be possible. We consider the range of possibilities and then we decide, choose a direction for our life, take our next step, all within the boundaries of what is possible.

But what if life is bigger than that? What if the impossible can be made real? What if the impossible really does happen? What if the impossible is possible? I know that doesn’t make sense. And I can’t explain it. I don’t know how it happens. I only know that it does. I’ve seen it happen in my life and I’ll bet it’s happened in your life too. What did you consider an impossibility that was one day realised, an impossibility that happened? Or maybe it was just too painful, and you vowed to never risk being hurt like that again. Either way you had closed the door on love and intimacy until he or she opened it in ways you never imagined possible.

The message of Easter is clearly that of the risen Christ conquering and overcoming that which was insurmountable. On Easter day he appears to His disciples even though they were locked behind closed doors. Then He offers this traumatised bunch a message of hope, “peace be unto you.” Then he challenges them to do the impossible, he sends them out into a hostile environment, Jerusalem. “As the Father sent me, even so send I you.” This is insane, to send his friends on a suicidal mission. Remember what Jesus himself said about this environment, “Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, that kills the prophets, and all those sent to you.” The world had to be conquered; this nigh Impossible mission required the brave at heart, empowered by God almighty. That explains Jesus breathing on them, consequently they received the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit empowers.

Within this context we place ourselves; we are called to make impossibilities real. Emancipation in 1834 after three hundred years of slavery was an impossibility made real. Men and women, made in the image and likeness of God were enroute, albeit long and tedious, to being recognised and accepted as human beings and all that means.

Who thought it possible that sons and daughters of slaves would upset the applecart on the 10th January 1967, becoming rulers in their own land of birth. Majority rule was a dream for hundreds of years and then independence was indeed an impossible dream. Even so that the great father of the Nation, Lynden Oscar Pindling, in 1967, could himself only see internal self-government. With time the campaign was for independence. The Abaco movement was hell bent on making this dream still-born, indeed with many others even in the official opposition, FNM, who led a campaign of, “not-now”. Like Martin Luther King, Jr, I have a dream, many more impossibilities will become real, for there is no arsenal greater than an idea whose time has come.

The republic of the Bahamas will one day become real. We need it, it’s the only way to make sense out of Independence. Independence as it stands is a farce. However, it must only be seen as a step in the direction of our total mental liberation. Fr Cartwright Davis rightly says, “emancipation still comin”. All these vestiges of our enslavement, to which we cling on tenaciously must be relegated to relics of the dark past. We would one day not bow down to White Colonial Masters coming to our shores as superior beings. We must evolve our own national dress and stop playing with our minds of seeking to look like other people to be accredited. The days of colonial wigs and gowns and addressing people as ‘mer-lord’ must come to an end. This new generation or ever evolving generations must see achievements of the past as steppingstones on which they are beckoned to build.

Now what about our own individual impossibilities, name them one by one. Don’t allow them to take us to suicidal thoughts.

Have you ever had one of those times in life you thought you would never get through? You limped through life going through the motions. It felt as if you had lost everything. Your grief and loss had locked out the possibility of a new life but one day something happened. Something changed. The world looked different. You felt different. A door opened and what you once thought was impossible was your new reality. We all have stories like that. We could each talk about a time in our lives when the impossible was made real. So, what about you? What are the doors of impossibility for you today? What possibilities have you locked out of your life? We all have our locked doors of impossibility. I wonder what is being unlocked and opened for you and me today. We’ll never know unless we consider the impossible possible. So, what if, instead of starting with what we consider possible, reasonable, realisable, we began with the impossible. Let’s not get trapped by what we think is possible. Let’s go to the place of impossibility in our life.

That is where Jesus is showing up. That’s where He is breathing peace.