Being like Jesus
by LewisOn the morning of February 23, 2008, those of us who were privileged to be at PACC heard an excellent address by Sterling Stuckey titled “Paul Robeson: Christianity, Commitment and Radicalism.” Sterling, a retired professor of history (Northwestern and University of California, Riverside) is an acknowledged expert on Paul Robeson, one of the most commanding figures in the American 20th century, if not in the world’s 20th century.
In anticipation of that talk, I looked last week more deeply into the life of Paul Robeson through the means of that great library, the Internet. I had known about Robeson on a cursory level, having first been told about him by my father, and much later having seen a PBS program about him in the American Masters series. (Sterling Stuckey, by the way, was one of the experts interviewed for that production.)
As I studied Robeson, I began to see some similarities between him and Jesus. But listening to Sterling made Robeson come even more to life, made him even more human, and both my admiration for that great man, who died in 1976, and how he reminded me of Jesus, who died 2000 years ago, were deepened.
The important question for all of us is this: Do we remind people of Jesus? When people look at our lives, will the greatest Life of all be remembered? A man like Paul Robeson only comes along once or twice in any generation — possibly not even that often. So I’m not saying we should be famous, that we should have a place on the world stage, or even the Broadway stage. Our audience may be smaller, but our influence, our being like Jesus, can and should be just as big.
Under the mercy,
Lewis