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July 21
Albert Luthuli, Apollo 11, and the fall of Jerusalem.
David Barnhart
July 21, 2025
A scale model of the Temple Complex, with the Fortress Antonia attached in the upper right. Jerusalem, 2007. Own photo.
Today in the year 70, the Roman Emperor Titus captured the Fortress Antonia from Judean revolutionaries. The fortress was the site where a few decades earlier, Jesus had faced Pontius Pilate and been condemned to crucifixion. The Romans went on to destroy the Temple and violently put down the revolution, crucifying so many thousands of people that, according to Josephus, they ran out of wood.
On this day in 1969, the Apollo 11 crew successfully landed on the moon.
Today is also the feast day, in the Episcopal Church, of Albert Luthuli, a non-violent anti-apartheid activist who died on this day in 1967 under suspicious circumstances. After establishing a good career as a professor, he accepted the position of chief of the Umvoti River Reserve, and lived out his Christian and Zulu values by becoming a community advocate. He was eventually elected president of the African National Congress, and began a campaign of nonviolent resistance to white supremacist South African policies. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961.
Reflection:
Albert Luthuli said:
“…as a Christian and patriot, I could not look on while systematic attempts were made, almost in every department of life, to debase the God-factor in man or to set a limit beyond which the human being in his black form might not strive to serve his Creator to the best of his ability. To remain neutral in a situation where the laws of the land virtually criticized God for having created men of color was the sort of thing I could not, as a Christian, tolerate.”
Because is seems appropriate to the day, I’m also sharing what Jurgen Moltmann writes in God for a Secular Society:
“Jesus didn’t bring a new religion into the world. He brought new life. He didn’t found ‘Christianity,’ nor did he set up an ecclesial rule over the nations. He brought life into this violent and dying world, the life that was ‘from the beginning, which we have looked upon and touched… and the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the life that is eternal’ (1 John 1:1-2). Christ is the divine Yes to life. That Yes leads to the healing of the sick, to the acceptance of the marginalized, to the forgiveness of sins, and to the saving of impaired life from the powers of destruction.”
Prayer: God, you have imbued all of your creation with a God-factor, your own image and personality, which we fail to recognize, protect, and love. Give us the power to say Yes to this life. Amen.