HE WHO VEINS VIOLETS

HE WHO VEINS VIOLETS

Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more) …

I suppose we often ask why it is so difficult to create a ‘normal’ society in Zimbabwe.  People wait patiently for years, longing for the simple things of life; shelter, food, work to enable them to send their children to school, stable money and power to light their homes and help them cook. Why is it so hard to achieve such things? Since the country has all the means of providing them the answer has to be that we don’t want to make them accessible to all but the few.

I say ‘we’ in the broad sense of our society as a whole.  There are many individuals and groups who want these basic things but our country does not want them. If it did we would have them. A country is like an individual; courageous, generous, compassionate at times and at other times selfish, inward looking and careless about others. We like to believe the best about ourselves and rightly so but the best does not come without a struggle.

How we would love to have leaders who were generous, self-sacrificing and focused on the good of the country and the continent.  Then we could all sit back and leave it to them and enjoy our life.  But we do not have that situation and we are not likely to have it until we want it.  By wanting it I mean that real commitment to a way of life throughout society which shows courage, integrity and compassion. If we were committed to these things the country would soon change.

I believe it is changing – slowly.  We will get there.  I came across the poem I quote above in which Gerard Manley Hopkins speaks of a Jesuit brother who was a ‘doorkeeper’ – receptionist – in a college in Spain for over forty years, four hundred years ago.  All he did was answer the door.  But the life he built around that simple daily activity – welcoming people, counselling students, helping the poor and just being available to everybody – meant that slowly he himself became a great man and the time came when he was canonised by the Catholic Church.

Hopkins talks of God’s work of hewing mountains and continents but also of ‘veining violets’! These tiny flowers have the most beautiful colour and the image is of the slow evolution of nature over time that eventually produces the masterpiece: a simple purple flower.   God is working in us and in our society, pouring life into its veins, our veins, and the time will come when we will see the beauty of it.  The difference is the violet didn’t have to do anything to achieve its perfection.  But we do.

30 June 2019               Sunday 13 C

I Kings 19:18-21          Galatians 5:1, 13-18                Luke 9: 51-62   

THE COURAGE OF JOSHUA WONG

THE COURAGE OF JOSHUA WONG

I am shaken when I read of the courage of some young people.  They cross the threshold of fear with seeming ease. Joshua Wong is 22 and has become a voice and a symbol of the resistance in Hong Kong to the encroachment of China on the precious liberties secured by the territory when it was handed back by Britain to China in 1997 after 150 years of colonial occupation. Where can we, many of us hardened by years of complicity in injustice, find the courage to give something that will make a difference?

One day, when there was a large crowd listening, Jesus was speaking of the kingdom of God. The day drew on and the disciples advised him to give them a break and send them away to look for food and shelter as ‘this is a deserted place’.  It was the obvious thing to do and shifted the burden of poor planning away from them and onto the people. But Jesus shook them by saying, ‘You give them something to eat!’ ‘What! Us? We have nothing but a few loaves and a couple of fish.’

We know what happened next but the point is surely that they had to do something.  They had to begin.  Where it would lead they did not know.  And that is true for us.  We like to see our way clear from the start.  We don’t like leaving things open.  But leaving things open is precisely what we have to do if we are to have courage: we have to set out even if, like Abraham, we don’t know where we are going. The Our Father contains the line, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’. Sure, this means give us the basic needs we have for survival and growth.  But it also means give us what we need even if we do not yet know what it is we need.

The ancient feast of Corpus Christi was given to us as a moment, long after we have celebrated Holy Thursday and the Passion, to reflect on what Jesus did that night when he took some bread and some wine into his hands. He did not take water because water is not ‘made by hands’.  He took things we make and raised them up so that they became transformed into himself, and himself crucified. It is important we do not think of this as some sort of symbolic act which one interpretation of the word ‘memorial’ might suggest. We see many statues put up ‘in memory’ of famous people.  These are strictly there to remind us of past heroes.  But Jesus is not a past hero. He is our living God revealed to us and, in an action of supreme self-giving, sharing his divine life with us daily.

Food and drink nourish us in ways that only medical science can monitor. The rest of us just get on with life and discover we grow – and age. But this food and drink, this bread and wine, transforms us in terms of our whole humanity – body and spirit.  If we can bring our ‘something’ to this encounter we will find ourselves changed and we will be able to show the courage of people like Joshua Wong.

23 June 2019                           Corpus Christi

Genesis 14:18-20                    I Corinthians 11:23-26                        Luke 9:11-17

THE MARTYRS OF UGANDA

THE MARTYRS OF UGANDA

We do not see and touch the presence of God in the world as we do the acts of our politicians.  Their decisions, or lack of them, lead to money shortages, fuel shortages, power shortages and so forth.  We live in a fractured world but we are called to hope and work for better days.

God acts differently.

Stories are filtering through of the annual celebration at Nymugonga, Uganda, of the more than a hundred Anglican and Catholic martyrs who died there in between November 1885 and January 1887.  The people of Uganda celebrate those painful events each June as victories of the human spirit over evil. One 97 year old man spends 14 days every year walking the 340 km from his home for the event. He is just one of thousands who come from many different African countries and beyond.  Many travel on foot and people along the way leave out food by the roadside for the pilgrims.  They eat what they need and move on and the food is then replenished.  The whole country seems to come alive in one great act of celebration.

And yet at the time it was a cruel tragedy.

Those who suffered and died did so as their forefathers in the faith did in the early church: some were cut to pieces, others devoured by dogs, others decapitated and thirteen were burned alive in reed baskets. The Catholic Church has canonised 24 of them. They ranged in age from Matthias Kalemba, who was fifty, to Kizito who was only thirteen. Most were between sixteen and twenty four. The main accusation was that they were ‘men of prayer’.  Also the king was enraged that they refused to give in to his sexual desires. They showed extraordinary courage and joy as they face their executioners, so much so that people were astonished. For the most part they had been recently baptised and four were still preparing for baptism. As what awaited what became clear was about to happen, Charles Lwanga, one of the leaders of the group, decided to cut the preparation and baptised them. The most notorious event was the deaths on the pyre at Nymugonga on June 3, 1886. The growth of the people of God in Uganda, and Africa, is a testimony to the permanent efficacy of the offering of their lives. The blood of the martyrs is indeed a seed.

It was a disaster but this seed bore much fruit.  We cannot let it pass as a pious religious devotion ‘for those who like that sort of thing’.  Being prepared to sacrifice for truth is something that we long to see in our own day, in our own lives and in the practices and policies of those who rule us.

16 June 2019               Trinity Sunday

Proverbs 8:22-31         Romans 5:1-5              John 16:12-15

  

RENTING OUR OWN HOUSE

RENTING OUR OWN HOUSE

Why do people have to sacrifice so much to become free?  And why do those in power resist so much people’s desire for freedom?  These are modern questions.  For centuries, people felt they had no choice but accept whoever it was who ruled. If they were lucky he or she was benevolent. Often this was not so and people suffered in silence under the weight of tyranny. Today things are different.  People believe things do not have to be as they are. Change is possible.

That is why the people of the Sudan are engaged in a life and death (literally) struggle to attain civilian rule, knowing full well that even if and when it is attained it is only ‘half a loaf’.  Civilian rule can also be manipulated to benefit a few at the expense of the many. There is often a further struggle – to make civilian rule accountable to the people. The United States struggled to attain her freedom two and a half centuries ago. But less than a hundred years later she was involved in another bitter struggle to extend that freedom. Thousands died. Half way through that war President Lincoln told the people:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Sudan is not the only country engaged in this struggle today. There are others; some further along the way to accountability than others. I live in one country north of the Zambezi and have strong ties with another south of it. The common element in both countries, and in many others, is the lack of a civic sense.  People do not own their country, they tolerate it.  The government owns it and so – like someone who rents a house – they, the people, have little desire to repair it or improve it. They do not invest, in every sense, in their country because they do not feel it is theirs.

In the euphoria of freedom the leaders of the new Zimbabwe set out high ideals:   

ZANU believes that the common interests of the people are paramount in all efforts to exploit the country’s resources; that the productive processes must involve them as full participants in the decision making processes, management and control of those resources. (Election Manifesto 1980)

The same people who wrote these words then are running the country now. Do they reflect on how far they have gone along the road of achieving these goals?

And the people, how long will they wait patiently renting their own house?

Sunday is the feast of Pentecost when ‘what sounded like a powerful wind shook the whole house’. The gift of the Spirit is not for our personal lives only but for the whole human family and if it is to have an effect it must reach into every corner of our lives – even our civic sense.

9 June 2019                 Pentecost Sunday

Acts 2:1-11                  Romans 8                    John 14:15-16, 23-26

The young man’s courage

The King was astounded at the young man’s courage, 2 Maccabees7:1-14

The Uganda Martyrs, 3 June

The 24 canonised martyrs of Uganda remind us of the stories of the martyrs of old. The same tortures ere repeated: some were cut to pieces, others devoured by dogs, others decapitated and thirteen were burned alive in reed baskets.

They were of different ages: Matthias Kalemba was fifty, Kizito was thirteen; most were between sixteen and twenty four. The main accusation was that they were “men of prayer”.  Also the king was enraged that they refused to give in to his sexual advances. Kizito drew the admiration of his brothers by his courage and joy. For the most part they had been recently baptised and four were still catechumens when Charles Lwanga baptised them before their ordeal began.

More than 100 Catholic and Anglican martyrs died between November 1885 and January 1887 and the most notorious event was the deaths on the pyre at Nymugonga on June 3, 1886. The growth of the church in Uganda is a testimony to the permanent efficacy of their offering of their lives for Christ our Lord. Today, as always, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians.

A CLOUD TOOK HIM

A CLOUD TOOK HIM

‘We have lift off’. We hear these words as a rocket carrying astronauts takes off for a space shuttle, but it is an unhelpful image for the Ascension of Jesus to heaven! Far better are the actual words of the Acts where we are told ‘a cloud took him from their sight’. 

Clouds have long been used by writers to express the hidden presence of God. When the Israelites journeyed through the desert, ‘Yahweh preceded them in a pillar of cloud’ showing them the way.  And Luke tells us Moses and Elijah spoke with Jesus on the mountain about his journey – his ‘passing’ from this world to the Father ‘which he was to accomplish in Jerusalem’, that is, through his passion and death. Luke continues, ‘a cloud came and covered Peter, James and John with shadow; and when they went into the cloud they were afraid. And a voice came from the cloud saying, this is my Son’.

The fourteenth century author of the ‘Cloud of Unknowing’ urges us to hammer away at the cloud until we penetrate it.

Clouds both hide and reveal. They hide the sun and then they clear and its brightness shines through. So the Ascension is a statement about the earthly life of Jesus: the time when the disciples saw, heard and touched him, is over. He is now hidden.  But that does not mean he is no longer present. He is hidden in the Eucharist but he is present. The Ascension basically says to us: he is no longer limited in his presence to Palestine in the first century.  Jesus is now present everywhere to all people at all times. Jean Vanier, whom we buried last month, used to speak of Jesus as if he was in the room.  I remember when I first met him how often he would say, ‘we’ll have to see what Jesus wants’ as though he was going to phone him to find out.

So, paradoxically, Jesus going away is really Jesus coming close. He is present to everyone who wants to welcome him into their life.  The ‘cloud’ is a bit different now. It hides and reveals in another way.  You walk into a prison and see people tattered and shattered and it is as if there is a great cloud hanging over the place.  But Jesus is there in each one of those people, ready to be recognised if we have eyes to see. And if you go into an institution for people living with mental disabilities – or a psychiatric hospital – you may feel the desire to leave as soon as possible.  A sense of revulsion may come over you.  Yet Jesus is there.

And in our ordinary life with all its joys and irritants he is the one who walks with us as he did with the two going to Emmaus.  But maybe it is sometimes hard for us to recognise him. 

2 June 2019     The Ascension of Jesus

Acts 1:1-11      Ephesians 1:17-23                   Luke 24:46-53