The city also goes all out for Easter. Actually, for Good Friday. Karen, Joseph’s mother, says that the big build up in Bacolod is toward Good Friday. Easter Sunday is almost an afterthought. There are big events and commemorations leading up to and on Good Friday throughout Bacolod. The city, after all, has a rich Catholic heritage.
“But Saturday,” Karen shared, “is Black Saturday.” She explained: “God is dead. It’s the day after Good Friday. Jesus is in the ground. So everyone stays at home. They are afraid something bad’s going to happen.”
Black Saturday. God is dead. Something bad’s going to happen.
I thought of this when we toured a local public cemetery. According to old customs, the dead are not to be buried in the ground. They are, instead, placed in small crypts which are stacked on top of each other like a series of grim Lego blocks. As more dead arrive, more blocks are built. We walked through aisles of crypts about two-stories tall. While we were there, a family arrived in a van and delivered their dead. The casket was so small one man could carry it by himself. A stillborn child were were told. He or she would be placed in one of the countless crypts in the enormous cemetery.
This child was fortunate, however. He had a family and a name. Others were buried/stacked who had no name and no family. The poor. It would be easy to walk through the stacks of the dead, many of them long-forgotten, if they were ever remembered, and wonder if God is dead.
In fact there is a large tree growing at the west edge of the cemetery. It appears that a seed or sapling fell on top of a stack of the dead and began growing. It’s roots wound around the stacks and most likely thrust themselves into the stacks. Nathan, Jospeh’s father, said, “No one in Bacolod will trim that tree.” It looked almost like an upside down octopus, long limbs in every direction. “They believe it’s cursed. Because it’s nurtured by the dead, they believe it’s cursed.” The tree seemed to be a gravestone for God himself. God is dead. How else could explain all these forgotten dead?
Late that evening we sat around the dinner table of Jacob, with this family. We shared stories of what God had been doing in Bacolod and elsewhere through the Shiloh Christian school run by the family and through the local church that meets in Shiloh’s auditorium. Lives changed. Ministries started. Families healed. Children blessed. And as the stories went on and on, one thing was clear: God is not dead. In Bacolod City, Philippines God is not dead. He’s never been more alive.
