George

We met George on the very first Sunday we arrived in Portugal over four years ago. Or Jorge, if you prefer the Portuguese spelling. An affable Afro American guy settled into life here, married with two kids and involved in the life of a Christian community out to the west of the city which we had started going to. An odd job man, painter and decorator, always helpful and practical, ready to do what he could for you, and when we’d sit in a small discussion group on some Biblical theme or other, he’d often come up with a word of deep wisdom

So it’s strange to see his story featured in this weekend’s magazine, “Publico” in a four page spread, all about a forty year flight from justice and the case for his extradition to the US. It’s a story, that would have made a great  fiction novel, if it were not for the fact that for the most part, it is true. Here’s the gist of it. An armed robbery in a shop in New Jersey, in which the proprietor dies, incarceration in a US prison, and then escape from prison, involvement with the Black Panther movement, and then the hi-jacking. George together, with a small group of activists hi-jacked a domestic US airliner, released the passengers in Miami and took the plane and with it $1 million in ransom money to Algeria. The plane and the money were eventually returned, but the offenders were released  by the Algerian authorities and went to ground, only to be one by one hunted down over  the following years and recaptured by the FBI, all except for George. 41 years later they catch up with him in the unlikely setting of Colares, Sintra, and all of a sudden he’s all over the media

Interesting to watch how the media deals with someone you kind of know, and it makes me think about issues of justice and forgiveness, punishment and restitution. The US press paint him out as a villain who needs to come back and face the music. For the Portuguese he’s the smart anti-hero who managed to give the great super-power the slip. Nowhere in the media is there the idea that the man may have changed, that his life could now be marked by grace of God. That, ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, he now walks with the God who loves him, values him and, yes, who does not overlook the wrongs that were done, but decides, on the basis of His son’s death on the cross, to freely forgive.

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus .. through Christ, the Spirit of life has set me free from the law if sin and death..” “For you died, and your life is hid with Christ in God”  (Romans 8:1, Colossians 3:3)