CHRISTMAS

The word ‘Christmas’ is appearing less and less in countries where people think the word imposes a private belief on another person who may not share the belief. So, instead of saying ‘Happy Christmas’ many prefer to say, ‘Happy Festive Season’. This latter greeting avoids mention of why one should be happy. It implies that it is good to have a time to relax, meet family and friends and celebrate with food and drink. That itself is sufficient.

People who are inclined that way have a good reason. Why wish someone a Happy Christmas if you do not know what Christmas is? It is more honest to simply wish them a happy time and leave it at that. Maybe our world is becoming more honest, more sincere? And maybe it is teaching us too to be more honest about our faith? Yesterday, I was given a link to Oxford where a group of people put on a concert as a way of expressing their gratitude to the teams of researchers who had come up with the vaccine against Covid. This will save lives and open up the economy and restore the conviviality people have missed since March.

But what kind of concert was it? It was a deeply religious one in which all the pieces expressed sentiments and desires Christian people associate with Christmas. One piece was specially written for the occasion; a carol for St Joseph composed by John Rutter. If you google him you will hear his advice, ‘Compose what is in your heart’. Don’t try to be ‘in fashion’ or worry ‘what will people think’. I take him to mean, ‘listen to your inmost self’. Thirty seconds with a violinist playing your music, he says, is worth more than three years of seminars.

People today are trying to be authentic, true to themselves. They would say; use the word ‘Christmas’ if you mean it and it comes from your heart. Otherwise use some other word. Jesus came to expose our hearts: is there truth hiding there trying to come out? Or is there hardness which bears fruit in hypocrisy: I present myself as good and caring but, at base, I am driven by desires for money and status.

I am always moved by the weakness of Jesus, the fragility of his circumstances. Like a migrant, he is born far from home and then his parents have to hurriedly flee with him out of the country. And in his adult life he has no great strategy, no five-year plan. He reaches out to people one at a time; a woman at a well, a tax-collector at his desk. He just wants them to look into their heart and see what is there.  Time and time again he unlocked something in the human heart – one person at a time.

That was all a long time ago. Then he could only reach a few people in a few places over a few years. But he began a community and lives in that community which carries on his work – in every age and every continent. We are part of that community today, still trying each day to allow him to unlock out hearts and let ourselves be loved.     

Christmas Day 2020               Is 9:1-6            Titus 2: 11-14              Luke 2: 1-14

DISTURBED BY THESE WORDS

 

DISTURBED BY THESE WORDS

In 1954 Iris Murdoch published her first novel, Under the Net. It is about a man who is searching to understand himself and other people. The story is about four people; two men and two women. A love B but B does not love A; she loves C who in his turn loves D. And D loves A! It is not a triangle of love but a diamond. The title of the novel refers to the network of relationships of which we are all part – some of them link us to one another while others we use to keep people at a distance. Murdoch wants to get under this net. She writes:

What I speak of is the real decision as we experience it; and here the movement away from theory and generality is the movement towards truth. All theorizing is flight. We must be ruled by the situation itself … it is something to which we can never get close enough, however hard we may try as it were to crawl under the net.

In 1954 no one thought of ‘the net’ in the way we do today where we can be in touch literally and immediately with people anywhere on the planet and even beyond in space. But are we any closer to understanding ourselves or one another? Do we get ‘under the net’? Has the ease of communication, the thickening of the net, made this harder? Have our relationships suffered as a result of the constant stream?  

These thoughts come as we approach Christmas. Malcolm Guite has written in a poem that celebrates the ‘O’ antiphons of Advent, ‘O Word beneath the words with which I speak’. All our words, all our efforts at communication, are expressions in some way of our desire to relate. We want to move closer to people or we want to keep them at a distance. There is a place for chatter, banter and even gossip! Harmless gossip! But these should only be the decoration, not the substance, of our relationships. It would not be good if our constant chat ends up being ‘normal’ and our only way of communication. Our chat is the surface of the well. It hides the clear still waters of our depths. These waters are there for us to draw and quench our aching hearts in times like Covid and economic struggle as well as personal difficulties.

The glitter of Christmas is fine but it too is only the surface. We are to go deeper to know the Word beneath our words, to get under the net. Mary was ‘deeply disturbed by the words’ of the angel Gabriel. She could not understand the message hidden in the words she was hearing. She had to ‘ponder’ and come to believe and find her own words, ‘let what you have said be done to me.’

20 Dec 2020    Advent Sunday 4 B     2 Sam 7:1…16    Rom 16:25-27         Luke 1:26-38

‘HOPE IS NOT THE SAME AS OPTIMISM’

 

‘HOPE IS NOT THE SAME AS OPTIMISM’

This observation, by the Czech playwright and president, Václav Havel, is quoted by Fr Diarmuid O’Murchu as opening a door to understanding where we are called to go in a future after Covid. It has been said many times, and most emphatically by Pope Francis, that we cannot go back to pre-Covid days as if nothing has happened. Some politicians are leading their people to think that if we can just get a reliable vaccine – and it seems we now have one – we can get ‘back to normal’ and, most importantly, get the economy going again.

But no, says the seemingly still minority opinion, it is not medicine only we need but conversion. We simply cannot go back to where we were where we squeeze nature to serve our interests regardless of the consequences. We can repeat the adage: God always forgives; men and women sometimes forgive; nature never forgives. But nature will bounce back if given a chance. The destruction of the ozone layer has been halted and is slowly reforming and fish have returned to the no longer polluted rivers of Europe. But we, and especially the young among us, now know that the planet will continue to warm up unless we take action. And a consensus is slowly accumulating to support that action, even to demand it.

And so we continue with the question: can we return to what we considered our normal way of life in a post-Covid world? What the mounting number of voices is telling us is ‘no’. We have to ‘lose our life if we are to find it’. We have to put a limit on our lust for power and wealth if we and our children are to have a good life on this earth. The human body has a built-in immunity as a gift of nature. But in the world of the spirit immunity is not built-in. It has to be chosen freely. The gift of the human spirit is that we construct our own ever evolving immunity by our choices. The vaccine, like any medicine, does not affect our choices. It just does its job, like air in a tyre or fuel in an engine.

We need another kind of immunity as a result of the scare both Covid and global warming are giving us. And this is where Václav Havel comes in. We find no solution in optimism which is often defined as ‘hoping for the best’ but which, in practice, means looking forward to things returning to normal. That is not hope. Hope is being open to a new future which will reveal itself when we preserve the best of what we have achieved while avoiding those things we now know to be harmful to us and our planet.   

In Advent, O’Murchu tells us, we focus on God coming to us but we would do well to invert the focus to one of us coming to God.  Covid is like John the Baptist: it comes to warn us to ‘make straight the ways’ and that means to pay attention to what we have to do to make sure this planet will still be around so that our children and our children’s children have ‘life to the full’.    

13 Dec 2020    Advent Sunday 3 B     Is 61:1-2, 10-11           1 Th 5: 16-24      Jn 1:6-8, 19-28  

 

 

 

 

 

 

ADVENT TAKES US BEYOND OURSELVES

 

ADVENT TAKES US BEYOND

Advent takes us beyond ourselves. There are times when we glimpse this, especially when we are young. I am old now but I remember moments which are indescribable when I was filled with wonder and anticipation. We would visit my grandmother and there was something about the pantry – and the lemonade - which went way beyond the grandest restaurants and the finest wines. We lived far from the sea but when we did go there the excitement went far beyond geography; the smell of the sea, its constant motion and its infinity – all spoke to me of mystery beyond my puny ability to understand.

In Advent we are called to stop and dwell on the mystery which we are. We can be tyrannised by the demands of each day and collapse exhausted on our couch at night. Yet if we can find moments to pause and soak in the poetry of Isaiah we will open a door that takes us beyond reason, beyond technology. We are not meant to make our home here for ever.  ‘Console my people, console them’, he cries this Sunday and it is not going to be the consolation of money or status or some other good thing of life though such things are good and have their place. It is the consolation of trust solidly placed in one who is beyond us and always faithful.

Last week I wrote of Fr Augustus Law dying in a lonely place without medical care and without those he was with understanding why he came. His mission was a total failure in terms of result based planning but his last written words in his diary before he died were, ‘I don't think that I could ever despair, even if I tried'. This week I listened to an interview with Jewish South African artist William Kentridge and at one point he said, ‘Follow through what happens at the edges’. An enigmatic piece of advice perhaps but when you think of Jesus noticing the widow putting her few pence in the temple collection plate you begin to see what he means. She gave all she had for something greater than herself. Jesus noticed her. Probably he was the only one who did. Our moments of attention to what is beyond us are pregnant with blessings.

‘Some times it was as if a chink had opened

Upon a scene unforeseen and enterable –

Seamus Heaney, The Real Names

The kingdom, the gospels insist, is ‘close at hand’. It is round the corner. But we have to notice it, to welcome it. We are to be alert to every person we meet or see. Advent is a kind of institutional ‘Rinse your eyes, stay awake’ time!

6 Dec 2020 Advent Sunday 2 B     Is 40:1…11   2 Pet 3: 8-14                  Mk 1:1-8

 

A LONELY DEATH

 

A LONELY DEATH

 

We had an unusual anniversary this week: a dying man attended by a dying man. Fr Augustus Law, a Jesuit, died of fever at Mzila’s capital, near Chipinge, on 25 November 1880, just 140 years ago. The man in attendance was Br Joseph Hedley, also a Jesuit, who recovered and lived for another 53 years. They were part of a team of four who set out from Bulawayo by ox-wagon in response to a promised welcome from the Shangaan king. One of the others got lost on the way and the other, Br Francis de Sadeleer, had gone back to bring up the wagon which they had abandoned when the going got tough after they crossed the Save River.

The round number anniversary this year seemed like a call to do something to commemorate the effort these men made all those years ago. After all, the Church in Zimbabwe grew out of seeds that died. Fr Shepherd Muhamba and I set off this week to try and find the place where Law died and celebrate the Eucharist on or near it. We got puzzled looks at first until eyes suddenly brightened and everyone we talked to – from the priest at Chipinge, Fr Abraham Nyamupachitu, to the soldiers on the border – became interested and enthusiastic. In fact they marveled at the story.

But we had set out without knowing precisely where we were going. We knew we must take the road to Mount Selinda and as we did so we received a gift: we passed a sign marked MZILA PRIMARY SCHOOL. The head was fascinated by our quest and phoned everyone he knew who could help. One of these was the local Chief, Madungwawa, who is also a senator. He wanted to help but he was in Harare. Robert Burrett, one of Zimbabwe’s most renowned archaeologists, had given us the approximate site of where Law had been buried – though his remains had later been moved to Chishawasha, near Harare, in 1904. The site was a few meters across the border and the soldiers would have allowed us to cross if we had the exact coordinates. I had never thought of that detail!

So we had to settle for the border itself and offered our prayer of thanks for these ancestors in the faith. I thought of Law lying on the floor without food that he could digest and without medicine, though the Jesuits were said to have alerted the world to the power of quinine. Rats were everywhere though there was a snake in the hut that kept them at bay. De Sadeleer later wrote it performed the function cats did in his Belgian home.

Law and Hedley were helpless, dying in what was for them a remote place surrounded by people who did not understand why they came. They were not hunters, traders or miners and seemed to have nothing to offer. They comforted one another reading from the Lord’s Passion. Hedley managed to hold Law in a sitting position to say his last Mass some days before he died, by supporting him with a rope tied to the rafters.    

It was a lonely death in a remote place. It seemed like a failure and Hedley and de Sadeleer, when they eventually met up again, returned to Bulawayo where they arrived 18 months after having set out and after accomplishing nothing. Or so it seemed. In reality it was an integral, even necessary, part of the story of the founding of the Church in Zimbabwe and beyond. Our journey this week and the interest it aroused shows that it touched a chord. The excitement of those we met seemed more that ephemeral. They glimpsed the reality. Perhaps we too planted a seed.

29 Nov 2020   Advent Sunday 1 B    Is 63:16- 64:7  1 Cor 1:3-9      Mk 13:33-37

BY BEING WHAT WE ARE

 

BY BEING WHAT WE ARE

The Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Jonathan Sacks, died on the 7^th November. This news did not make the headlines in Zimbabwe or probably anywhere else but Rabbi Sacks was a remarkable prophet for our time. He longed to contribute the full weight of Jewish culture and religion to ‘the healing of the nations’ (Ezk 47:12).

Sacks saw society through the ages as oscillating between concern for the group and the affirmation of the individual. Traditionally, in Africa and elsewhere, the need to survive drove people to submit their own interests to that of the group, the tribe or the nation. When society reached stability and people were free to reflect on what they wanted at a deeper level than simple survival, individuals began to emerge from the group and question ‘tradition’ and affirm that things do not have to be as they are now.

This happened in the Reformation in the sixteenth century and in one way or another has continued right up to the present with the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. The dominance of the ruling class, the people with power, is challenged by individuals who in their turn gather a new ‘tribe’ around them and a new reality emerges. Rabbi Sacks helps us understand how this tension between the individual and the group is being played out in this 21^st century.

So, he saw society moving from ‘we’ (responsibility to society as a whole) to ‘I’ (concern with the individual self) and he says this led to a counter move back to the group in the form of nationalism and racism where individuals felt once more under threat and submitted to new authorities who promised protection. This again led to a further assertion of the individual in the 1960s and finally to ‘identity politics’ in our own day, where people are again fearful and populist leaders play on these fears to carve out new autocracies. Trump is not the only one of these leaders but he is the most powerful and dangerous.

Sacks’ point is that this leads, in the words of his obituarist in The Tablet, Norman Solomon, ‘to the abandonment of traditional codes of morality by which society was governed and through which it maintained stability. Power and economics, he argues, cannot guarantee stability without a third element, civil society, the locus of morality, in which we all share’.

Then comes the punch line from Sacks himself: ‘By being what we uniquely are, we contribute to society what only we can give. That is a way of being Christian or Hindu or Muslim or Jewish while being proud to be English (or Zimbabwean) … If there is no such thing as a national moral community, if civil society atrophies and dies while all that is left are the competitive areas of the market and the state, then liberal democracy is in danger’.  Solomon concludes, ‘above all Rabbi Sacks was deeply concerned with the moral values of the society in which he lived, and he was fully committed to playing his part to bring about the civil society through which those values could be implemented.

This Sunday we celebrate Christ the King, whose statue often appears on TV dominating the city of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. The gospel tells us we will be judged on basic things; ‘I was hungry and you gave me food, a stranger and you made me welcome’. These are moral values and we are not living them.

22 November 2020      Christ the King        Ezk 34:11…17     1 Cor 15: 20…28      Matt 25: 31-46

‘OUR CHILDREN MAY SEE THIS’

 

‘OUR CHILDREN MAY SEE THIS’

Far away from Africa in a corner of SE Europe a war raged that ended with a truce a few days ago. It could have been South Sudan, Mali or Mozambique: people failing to sink their differences and live together in peace. In this case it is a dispute between two Caucasian republics; Azerbaijan and Armenia. The former is Muslin, the latter Christian. Many Armenians lived in an area within Azerbaijan called Nagorno-Karabakh and, at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, they wanted to join Armenia, now an independent state. Azerbaijan did not accept this and so war and death reigned in the 1990s.

Now war has just flared up again but the Russians have leant heavily on their former ‘colonies’ and managed to persuade them into a truce which recognises the Azeri gains, which were considerable, in the recent short war. Why I mention all this is because the scenes on TV, which are so deeply painful, are reminiscent of similar scenes in Africa and indeed in other parts of the world. You see people in Baku, the Azeri capital, dancing and rejoicing in the streets. Then you move to Yerevan, the Armenian capital, to see widows and mothers weeping and lamenting over their husbands and sons killed in the fighting.

A reporter asked an Azeri, ‘Can you now begin to live together with Armenians side by side?’ and the reply came; ‘Our children may see this.’ It is an honest answer. It will take time. It took time for the Germans and French to live side by side after three major wars. It took time for the Irish and the English to live side by side after 700 years of colonisation. Elizabeth was Queen for 60 years before the time was right for her to set foot in Ireland. And it is taking time for the many divisions in Africa to heal. It all comes down to attitude. Do I see the other person as a threat or as a fellow pilgrim doing the best she or he can? The more we put a good interpretation on the efforts of others to live their lives as best they can the sooner we will ‘see this’ and live together in peace.

This Sunday’s parable, about a corrupt businessman praising his associates for making 100% profits, is a daring lesson in seizing the moment for making peace or any other activity that will hasten the reign of God. As we near the end of the Church’s year we are given lesson after lesson in acting – and not letting opportunity slip like the man who hid his master’s money in a field because he was afraid to do anything.      

15 Nov 2020   Sunday 33 A    Prov 31: 10…31          1 Thes 5:1-6                Matt 25: 14-30  

TEN BRIDESMAIDS, TEN INTERPRETATIONS

 

TEN BRIDESMAIDS, TEN INTERPRETATIONS

 

There are different ways you can interpret the parable of the ten bridesmaids which we read this Sunday. You can turn it on its head and say the five ‘wise’ ones were selfish and unjust in not sharing what they had with their fellows and so excluded them from the banquet of life. They showed ‘concealed violence’ to those who were ill-prepared and so perpetuated divisions in society. Gerhard Lohfink, who wrote a great book, Jesus of Nazareth, What He Wanted, Who He was, tells us that the Christian community from the beginning has focused on one interpretation as being in accord with the mind of Jesus: Jesus was saying, ‘the reign of God is here, his kingdom is among you, seize the moment’.

This is the message of Jesus from beginning to end. Mark’s gospel, the first to be written starts with the proclamation, ‘the reign of God is close at hand, change your way of thinking and believe the good news!’ Every word and action of Jesus from then on supports, clarifies and demonstrates that proclamation. Another parable tells of a man who hears the message as if it were a treasure buried in a field. He ‘sells everything’ and buys the field. The key in the words and actions of Jesus is the sense of urgency. There is no time to waste. We are to act.

Interpretations that ‘kick the can down the road’, that divert our attention from the central point into, for example, a detached critique of social conditions as mentioned above, is simply an excuse for avoiding the urgent call to act. We may come up with a brilliant analysis of our situation but if we do not do something – however apparently insignificant – we are blunting the force of Jesus’ words and emptying them of their transformative power. We are like the people addressed in the story of the Good Samaritan who pass by saying, ‘this is the state’s responsibility, this is the Church’s task’ and we do nothing.

Thank God for young people! (We are all young once and know this!) They have terrific energy and a burning desire for change and they want to ‘seize the moment’. The sad thing is that today’s young people are often tomorrow’s comfortable middle class, settled in their professions with all their anger blunted by ‘success.’ But Jesus doesn’t allow us to get too settled. He allows ‘unsettling’ things to happen in our life. Over and over he gives us opportunities to seize the moment and by so doing we advance along the way for our own benefit and the benefit of those who are part of our world.

8 Nov 2020     Sunday 32 A   Wis 6:12-16     1 Thess 4:13-18           Matt 25:1-13

 

`AN ILL-FATED PEOPLE`

 ‘AN ILL-FATED PEOPLE’

The late Lawrence Vambe – he died last year aged 102 – opened his celebrated book, An Ill-Fated People, with a story of a rapid white wedding in Chishawasha before the Jesuits at the Mission discovered that Josephine was pregnant. A ‘verbal scuffle’ had ensued among the elders about what to do when the news of her pregnancy first surfaced. Her husband, Martin, though also a Christian, had scoffed at the idea of a rushed wedding. They had both fulfilled all the customs tradition laid down for marriage and in the eyes of the community were man and wife. But if they did not have a wedding there was a fear that the priest in charge of the mission might expel the whole family from the mission land. They had the wedding.

Vambe uses this incident like a grenade to blow up any complacency we might have that the reception of Christianity by the people of Zimbabwe was a smooth matter. He gives us a passionate account of how the whites used their military power to subdue the people from 1890 and trample on their freedom, dignity and sense of self-worth. The settlers were only momentarily checked by the risings in the mid-1890s before resuming, with greater determination, their plan to take from the people their land and their mines and make the locals labourers on their own property. Vambe gives a psychological as well as a political history of what this meant as he viewed events growing up in Chishawasha and listened to the accounts told again and again by the elders.

The missionaries were caught between their appreciation of the order and infrastructure the settler presence gave them, enabling them to pursue their task of preaching the gospel in word and action, and their indignation at the cruelty and racialism of the settlers which always implied the local people were inferior. Vambe felt the tension in his own person for, while he was deeply embedded in his own roots in Chishawasha and appreciated the culture and traditions of the VaShawasha society into which he was born, he felt drawn to the Christian message by the example of the sisters and fathers at the mission who educated him. He even explored his vocation to become a priest spending three years at the new seminary founded by Bishop Aston Chichester, half a morning’s walk from his home in Mashonganika village.

This tension is still there today and may explain why the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe is far less developed than in some neighbouring countries. Numbers are not everything but they are something: In the DR Congo Catholics make up 50% of the population and in Zambia 25%. In Zimbabwe the proportion is 9%. (These figures come for Google). It could be that the white alien influence, being much stronger south of the Zambezi, hindered the work of white missionaries. If it is true that the high sounding words of the Congress of Berlin (1884), about defending the rights of the local people when the colonisers carved up the continent for themselves, ‘have as much meaning as a rosary beads wound round the knife of a murderer’ (Vambe p 84), there was little chance that the Christian gospel would be welcomed warmly. The defeat of the Shona and the Ndebele in the 1890s destroyed the self-respect of blacks and degraded the whites. The implications of both these judgements of Vambe were played out in the twentieth century and have not been resolved to this day.

This Sunday is All Saints’ Day and we celebrate the many people who lived their lives faithfully often in harsh conditions. They are saints. Yet we have to hold that we did not succeed – and are not succeeding – in reaching those who are responsible for the running of our country with leaven of the gospel.

1 November 2020 All Saints Day Rev 7:2…14 1 John 3:1-3 Matt 5:1-12

STANDING UP

 

STANDING UP

My eye caught a report in the news lately of a courageous Indonesian who is engaged in the struggle against injustice in her country. Yuliana Langowuyo is a law graduate of Cenderawasih University in Jayapura, Indonesia, and she has accepted the job of leading the Papua branch of the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission in Indonesia. The threat of terror and intimidation are part of the risk people take in fighting injustice in Papua, says the 36-year-old lawyer who is gaining a reputation as an ‘iron lady’. She was hesitant as a lay woman but she set her doubts aside. ‘It was intimidating at first to work among priests who were smart and possessed excellent leadership skills. But they welcomed me and gave me the space to develop dialogue and communication’, she said. ‘We all have the same goal: peace in Papua’.

 

This Sunday we read the words of Jesus which he took from the ancient law of Israel and manifested in his own life: ‘You must love others as yourself’. We have come to realise that justice does not come easily anywhere and every country has had to struggle for it. Those in power do not cede their privileges unless there is both a constitution which sets limits to power and the civic muscle to ensure compliance with the constitution. Much as he would love to continue in power if he loses the election Trump knows there is no possibility whatever of his manipulating the results in his favour.

 

So it is a simple call: ‘love others’! I saw a picture of it scrawled on a London street last week showing that Covid 19 has drummed the message into our dull skulls. But it is a call many continue to ignore in the headlong selfish lust for power. It is painful to have to continually remind ourselves that no change comes without selfless sacrifice, the sort Langowuyo lives. We look at the situation in our countries and lament that so much suffering still awaits those who struggle to bring justice and peace.

 

25 October 2020         Sunday 30 A         Ex 22:20-26          1Th 1:5-10       Matt 22:34-40

NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ME

 

NO ONE UNDERSTANDS

 

The Minister of Public Service, Professor Paul Mavima, came to L’Arche Zimbabwe on 15 October to mark World Mental Health Day. One of the residents living with an intellectual disability, Tatenda, recited a poem she had composed, one line of which began, ‘No one understands what I am going through …’ She was referring to the experience of people living with intellectual disabilities but her words struck me for another reason.

Some time ago the BBC put on a series of programmes on the British royal family which explored the influences and pressures the royals are under and the resulting stress to shape up to what is expected of them. They have interpreted the demands made on them under the general heading of duty and, if we are to believe the TV series, this has led to a painful distortion of who they are as people. To put it bluntly, they cannot be who they are and more than one of them vocalises this in similar terms to Tatenda, ‘No one knows what I am going through’. It is excruciating to watch what can almost be described as the mental torture Prince Charles, for example, goes through in order to fulfil his ‘duty’.

But it struck me most of all in the way the Queen’s late sister, Princess Margaret, is portrayed. When, in the early days, she was asked to do something official she tried to be who she was and spoke to people from the heart - informally and warmly. But she was soon reined in and, in struggling to conform to what was expected, never found a role. She died before her time (in 2002, aged 71; the Queen is 94) and, on the evidence of the TV series, was frustrated all her life.

Margaret and Tatenda lived, or live, an experience that many people do. They feel misunderstood and have no one who could help them work through this experience and discover how to develop their own inner strength.  We should be able to live our lives without worrying what others think. My self-worth does not depend on the opinion of others. If there are some people who try to understand, it helps! (One of the aims of  l’Arche communities is to provide just such an environment where a person, however handicapped they are, can become self-confident, accepting themselves just as they are).

But it is not enough to let people struggle on their own.  There are so many who long ‘to be who they are’ and become who they could become and there is a great need to reach out to help them just as we too also need help. Covid 19 is breaking down barriers and reminding us that our survival depends on others. The readings for this Sunday speak of help coming from unlikely sources. Israel came to understand herself through the intervention of Cyrus, the Persian, and Caesar, the Roman. Margaret and Tatenda would have got on great together. They could have shared and explored the loneliness they each felt and draw strength from the encounter.

18 Oct 2020    Sunday 29 A               Is 45:1…6       1 Thess 1:1-5               Mt 22:15-21   

FRATELLI TUTTI – THE SPACE BETWEEN

 

FRATELLI TUTTI – THE SPACE BETWEEN

Creating enduring unity among people is an on-going task. Zimbabweans were united in their desire to create a new country after the collapse of the Rhodesian project but no sooner had they done so than fissures began at appear.  The new government’s reaction was to use force to preserve a unity more on paper than real.

This is nothing new. Shaka welded his people into a strong Zulu nation in the early nineteenth century but it soon exploded and groups broke off to move west and north to found new nations, most notably for us in Matabeleland. And in the twentieth century the European Union, so painstakingly negotiated by 27 nations, is now weakened by the defection of the British. ‘The centre does not hold…’

Brexit is only one instance of a movement where people, dissatisfied with the broken promises of liberal capitalism, are listening to politicians who say nations should look after their own people and forget about the rest. This is what brought Trump to power and it still a strong feeling as Americans approach a new election.

Covid 19 has taught us this does not work. Selfishness on any scale, be it local or national, does not work. This week Pope Francis has issued his letter, Fratelli Tutti, at Assisi in Italy, the home of St Francis, reminding us we are all brothers and sisters and should think of ourselves as one family living in one common home. There is nothing wrong in local pride and culture but we are called go beyond these to have a universal heart. St Francis was the son of a merchant content with a world divided between rich and poor – he being one of the rich. But Francis, the pope reminds us, stripped himself of all his possessions, even the clothes he wore, in a sign of his openness to all, especially the poor.

Many are discouraged and confused today about the way our world is going. The editor of this paper has just become a grandfather again and the question arises what kind of world will this new person inherit? Since the Second World War huge aspirations have found expression in establishing the United Nations, the World Health Organisation, the World Food Organisation and so forth. But it is to the space between ideals and action that the pope addresses his words. What happens, Francis asks, when we see a man by the side of the road robbed and beaten and left half dead? We know what the good Samaritan did. What is preventing us from doing likewise? Why do we turn aside like the priest and Levite?

Climate change affects everybody. Covid 19 affects everybody. And so do many other things. Can we learn from these to create a society marked by compassion rather than competition, by opening our heart to our brothers and sisters, fratelli tutti? Obama would say, ‘Yes, we can’. But can we?     

11 Oct 2020                   Sunday 28 A        Is 25:6-10   Phil 4:6-9    Mt 22:1-14

A TIME TO CHOOSE

 

A TIME TO CHOOSE

Among the simple dramatic stories Jesus told, which we call the parables, The Vineyard stands out. Vineyards are more common in the Cape than here, north of the Limpopo, but you can call it a farm. Much preparation goes into it: ploughing, sowing, weeding, maybe irrigating and then waiting. There is nothing further the farmer can do but wait.  That is essentially what God does: he calls Abraham but then he waits to see what Abraham will do.  He invites Mary to accept her task but then he waits for her response. What will she do?

This is the essential tension in human life. We are faced with choices. What will we do? We talk of social and cultural ‘conditioning’ and they do influence us but, at root, a person can always choose. I met a man in prison condemned to 25 years for murder. He could choose to ‘do’ his time in bitterness and anger, counting the days and the years, or he could choose to live; to take part in activities in the prison, to laugh and to reach out to others. He chose this latter part.  

Responses to Covid 19 vary across the planet. Some take it seriously for a while but are not convinced and soon become careless, mixing with others as they did before and not wearing a mask. Others plead work and their ‘rights’ and also ignore precautions. And still others simply get tired of the whole thing day after day. The result is a second surge of infections with the death toll reaching one million and even the US president becomes infected.

We pray, yes, but there is nothing God can do but wait. Will we choose with wisdom or will we rebel and go our own way? It is up to us.

This is not to say God will abandon us. The tenants of the vineyard chose badly and eventually murdered the heir. God knew they would do this, on Calvary, but he endured the cost of their evil choice and turned it into a gift of life that would outshine the earlier life in a way beyond our ability to grasp. The words of Jesus run through the gospel and must be taken as a whole; they are the ‘good news’ that crown our choices in a way we cannot imagine. The key is to choose well now, while we can, and not to ‘worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself.  Set your hearts on the kingdom and all these other things will be given you as well’ (Matt 6:33-4).

4 Oct 2020  Sunday 27 A        Is 5:1-7       Phil 4:6-9    Mt 21:33-43

ITS HOUR COME ROUND AT LAST

 

ITS HOUR COME ROUND AT LAST

 

As you pass the President’s House you are met by traffic lights that flash green and red at the same time. Is this some message we are to decipher? How often we hear of people outlining their plans and ending, ‘I am just waiting for the green light’. Well, we may see the green but it is dominated by its powerful red companion which glares at us at the same time.

I do not think we should lose heart. We are in a testing time. We have never had prosperity and have no model, from our own experience, to fall back on. The red light discourages our every move but, like Yeats’ hippo, there is progress in the air, however sluggish it may appear. In the same poem with the oft’ quoted line, ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’, Yeats writes:

            The darkness drops again; but now I know

            That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

and what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 

Can we allow ourselves to be ‘vexed’ by the rocking cradle of Bethlehem? Can we be stirred by the new born child? Has our hour come round at last? Two events have drawn our attention this week. One is the 75th birthday of the United Nations. Often scorned as an ineffectual talking shop, it could well be likened to a slouching hippo. It puts flesh on our highest inspirations and the Secretary General had every right to list the many achievements of the last seven and a half decades. The UN building in New York sports the many coloured flags of the nations but the unwritten message on all of them is that human rights be universally respected. Despite huge lapses, the decades have shown great progress in this regard from the time of the independence of India in 1947 to the liberation of South Africa in 1994.

 

Political freedom seemed like the great prize but nations soon learnt that it was a hollow victory if it did not lead to social and economic freedom. This is the area where we are still ‘slouching towards Bethlehem to be born’.

 

I mentioned two events this week. The second is the European Union’s agreement on a migration policy which one European leader commented would satisfy no one. That is certainly true but it is still an agreement which represents the best they could do when 27 nations sit down with their hugely different perspectives on a complex problem. The beauty of the agreement is that it is not imposed by some strong power but freely agreed. Even if it is ‘weak’ it is a beginning and the EU will continue to ‘slouch’ its way forward.

 

There is hope wherever we look despite all the dire forecasts. If people everywhere persevere in their good work we will eventually get to the time when we ‘realise our common unity’. (Ephesians 4:12) 

 

27 Sept 2020   Sunday 26A                Ez 18:25-28                 Phil 2:1-11       Matt 21:28-32

 

 

 

 

 

 

HARDNESS OF HEART AND COMPASSION

 

‘The magnitude of her sorrow was also the magnitude

of her compassion for others in trouble’.[1]

Tsuneo Yoshikuni on Elizabeth Musodzi

 

This week in the Church’s calendar we had the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. It is a moment when the camera zooms in on the figure standing at the cross of Jesus as, ‘aloud and in silent tears’, he writhes in agony. Mary can do nothing to help her dying son. All she can do is be there and absorb his pain by suffering with him. That is the meaning of the word com-passion. It is not easy and relatives visiting their sick family member in hospital find it hard to just be there. Often they try to fill the emptiness they feel with words of comfort that express easy promises. It is just too hard to face the pain of the moment.

 

Elizabeth Musodzi shows us there is a way. Her closest relatives were killed, some by execution (Mbuya Nehanda was her aunt), during the Shona rising of 1896/7. Virtually an orphan, she was sent to the new school run by the Dominican sisters in Chishawasha. There she breathed in an atmosphere of faith which gradually transformed the bitterness in her heart to a lively compassion for others. Attuned to suffering she saw and felt the pain of women in the new ‘location’ in Salisbury (Harare) whose husbands failed to share their earnings and support their families. One who remembered those days asserted, ‘Most marriages survived because of this woman’.

 

Musodzi used to tell the women about gardens and having an income of their own and not being totally dependent on their husbands. And she showed this by example when she rented a plot and produced maize, groundnuts, rice, pumpkins and rapoko. She did not stop there but went on to advocate for classes in sewing and knitting, for a maternity clinic, registering marriages and other improvements in the township. She started the African Women’s Clubs with her friends and this included First Aid training.

 

This was compassion in action and when her grandson, Leonard Chabuka, was asked by Tsuneo Yoshikuni, a Japanese historian of early Harare, where she drew her inspiration, the reply led Yoshikuni to write as above: ‘The magnitude of her sorrow was also the magnitude of her compassion for others’.

 

It is women Like Elizabeth Musodzi who unpack for us the message of Mary’s sorrow as she stood by the cross.

 

20 Sept 2020   Sunday 25 A               Is 55:6-9          Phil 1:20…27              Mt 20:1-16

 

 

 

 

 

  

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[1] Yoshikuni T,  Elizabeth Musodzi and the Birth of African Feminism in Early Colonial Zimbabwe, Weaver and Silveira House, 2008, p 13

 

 

THE WORKERS IN THE VINEYARD

From Gerhard Lohfink, Jesus of Nazarath, pp 110-114

There is a pervading sense of joylessness in the parable. Work is drudgery without a sense of a joyful harvest. At that time in Israel people had lost their land to large landowners and the Romans demanded high taxes. Farms had to be large, using cheap labour, slaves or day workers. The day labourer earned enough to feed his family for one day; if he was not hired they would go hungry. A denarius was not a bad day’s wage but if the one who only worked for a single hour received as much as those who toiled many hours in the blazing heat, that seemed unjust and inhuman: the latter felt degraded.  

The force of the story lies in the collision of two worlds. In the society they were used to everyone was for himself; each struggles for their own existence. The hearers would expect the last workers who came at the eleventh hour to get a few coppers. Yet they receive exactly the same as the first. This was shocking. Their world was turned upside down by Jesus. But if they could hear the parable they would realise a new world, the reign of God, had arrived.

In the reign of God different rules apply. Work has dignity and solidarity. There would be no need to go home worried and in distress. The early comers would rejoice that the late ones received the same. No one is alone. People are not in competition but in co-operation. People would suffer with those who suffer and rejoice with those who rejoice. Here was something new. This new reign of God is visible in Jesus and his disciples when they learn to abandon their rivalries and live in communion. The parable is not simply about God’s generosity. God’s generosity costs nothing and changes nothing. If Jesus had talked only about the generosity of God he would never have been crucified.

The grumbling of the workers reflects the grumbling of the contemporaries of Jesus who were outraged by this new thing he was beginning with his disciples: a common life growing out of forgiveness where late comers find their place. Jesus speaks of the generosity of God as a reality here and now in the reign of God. This new reality is breaking into the weariness and hopelessness of the people. It is an outrageous process. It makes the lowest into the highest, it causes scandals. And it is happening now before the eyes of his listeners, even though its impact is still hidden. Can the hearers – can we - enter into the story and do our part to make this reign, this new world, come in all its fullness?

Jesus’ words are effective: they create a new reality. In this parable which so exactly describes the gloomy social conditions of his time, Jesus was thinking that the time of this new harvest in Israel should become a time of happiness with shouts of joy.

Fr. Charles Searson SJ (adapted)

20 Sept 2020   Sunday 25 A               Is 55:6-9          Phil 1:20…27              Mt 20:1-16

 

 

PRINCE ANTONIO

 

PRINCE ANTONIO

 

Prince Antonio is 20 today. He has lived his score of years with severe mental and physical disabilities. Now he is seriously ill. In Zimbabwe today it is hard to get treatment and medicine when you are poor. He lies on a foam rubber mat in the yard unable to brush away the flies that constantly bother him. I am called to bring him the Church’s anointing of holy oil. He brightened up and smiled but I felt my own poverty as there was little I could do to help him. He used to board at a school called Tose, all of us (together), but they had to close because of Covid 19. So now he is at home reliant on what help his poor family can find.

This Sunday we read one of Jesus’ stories about a man who was heavily in debt. Pay-back time came and the man was at his wits end to know what to do. He went to his boss and, with extravagant gestures, begged for more time. The boss was touched and decided to cancel the debt. The man was effusive in his thanks but his heart was not touched. Shortly after he met someone who owed him a paltry sum and he could not find it within himself to cancel the debt. Instead he threatened him with legal proceedings if he did not pay immediately. When the boss heard of it he was furious and condemned the man to the worst imaginable fate.

We are all bound up with one another. What I do to others will either bring a blessing or a disaster. Insofar as I fail it has a knock on effect that, most likely, I am not aware of. Insofar as I succeed and show compassion that too has a knock on effect I may never know. But who, among our decision makers, spares a thought for Prince whose life is threatened by a lack of medical care? We are responsible for each other and the parable of Jesus we will read points to how he cancelled the debt that we all incur. His desire to pay the price of our infidelity to God removed us from the worst imaginable fate. Israel’s refusal to accept the reign of God, which Jesus announced, threatened to squander its - and our – salvation, that is, the unimaginable happiness God has in store for us.  

‘Jesus interprets his death as a final and definitive saving decree of God. … he does not withdraw election for his people but instead truly allows that people to live even though it has forfeited its life’ (Gerhard Lohfink). God holds fast to the covenant with Israel in Jesus in spite of everything. Jesus invites us to find and take our place in this struggle in which he is engaged in the world today.

The man in the story was forgiven but he forgot his debt has consequences which are embedded in society. The fact that he is forgiven does not excuse him from the struggle. In fact it binds him more to it. Our divisive Zimbabwe history has consequences that we have to struggle to overcome. Otherwise Prince Antonia will not be the last to suffer neglect. The consequences of thirteen decades of a divided society have to be ‘worked off’ and human beings cannot do this alone. Let me give the last word to a former Secretary General of the United Nations, quoted by Lohfink:

‘Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who ‘forgives’ you – out of love – takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice. The price you must pay for your own liberation through another’s sacrifice is that you in turn must be willing to liberate in the same way, irrespective of the consequences to yourself’. Dag Hammarskjöld

13 Sept 2020   Sunday 24 A    Sir 27:30-28:7              Rom 14:7-9     Matt 18:21-35

 

 

A KINGDOM OF JUSTICE

My nephew is 50 and I sent him birthday greetings today. He has ridden the crest of the wave of prosperity in his country though not without hard work, risks and setbacks. He is not poor

but he is not rich either. He has what he needs and this brings him happiness. The

environment is right for him. The country provided stability, credit and structure. The nation

is at peace and the government is on its toes to respond to the voters. Elections are keenly

fought, transparent and unchallenged. His two boys and a girl go to excellent schools which

reward hard work and hard play. A variety of opportunities are open to them if they are ready

to search.

 

It was not always like that. The country was a colony for centuries and its people oppressed -

second class citizens. They struggled to be free and eventually succeeded a hundred years

ago. With independence their home grown government floundered for a while, unused to the

feel of power and untrained in the management of the economy. But the society was open and

talent was able to rise and be heard. After drifting for decades the leaders found their feet.

Imaginative people pushed on an open door; the economy boomed and the country

flourished.

 

My nephew’s country is not the only one enjoying such fruits. There are others on the planet

like his. Would that ‘others’ becomes ‘all’! It is obviously possible. If some can do it, all can

do it. But there are blockages. There are leaders who do not open the door for their people

because it will threaten their own position. There are international businesses, more powerful

than nations, which exploit the vulnerability of governments – even developed ones.

To move toward universal prosperity – the kingdom Jesus announced as ‘among you’ – takes

courage. It is the courage of the prophets like Ezekiel who we read this Sunday. He is to

‘warn the leaders in my name’. A tough call! Jesus widens the call beyond a few special

prophets to all his disciples: ‘if your brother does something wrong, go and have it out with

him’. We are responsible. We are to announce the kingdom by how we live. God wants all

his people to ‘enjoy the fruits’. But do we?

 

My nephew lives a dignified life. He has neither too much nor too little. His is the harvest

others planted and cultivated. Now he is helping others.

 

6 Sept 2020     Sunday 23A    Ezek 33:7-9     Rom 13: 8-10              Matt 18:15-20

 

SHOOT FIRST, THINK LATER

In the short clip of the shooting, yet again, of a black man in America this week what gripped me was the despairing frustration of the young woman. She jumped up and down in utter anguish and when she was interviewed the words tumbled out in anger and shock. Once again America is racked by unbelief that police are so itchy with their guns that they shoot without thinking – and shoot continuously – a man who was so obviously helpless and unresisting.

We are caught off balance by the tragedy played out again of how human beings treat one another out of some irrational and emotion based compulsion. Why is it so hard to face up to the truth which presents itself to us in every situation and is waiting to be recognised? Why do we prefer to be driven by primitive motives of fear rather than rational motives of compassion? America has a particular problem as they will not allow their government to control the use of guns. And so people are afraid that others will use their gun first. Their instinct is to shoot first and think later.

It is a relentless agonising situation. But we would be running away from ourselves it we think it is their problem only. All of us, one way or another, find it hard to face up to the reality that presents itself to us daily. The reaction by the Zimbabwe government to the Catholic bishops’ recent letter, calling on the government to listen to the grievances of the people, is another example. They could not bring themselves to listen and preferred to ‘shoot’ verbally instead.

Why is it so difficult to listen? To hear what people have to say? To enter for a moment into the suffering that people are enduring? Why is that so difficult? Is it that we do not have the inner confidence in ourselves to hear other people’s words and feel their experiences? Why do we feel so threatened?

There is a passage in Jeremiah 20, which we read this Sunday, in which he confesses he wants to run away. Facing the truth is just too demanding. ‘I will not think about him. I will not speak his name any more’.  Then, he says, he felt ‘a fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones. The effort to restrain it wearied me. I could not bear it’.  He was trying to resist the truth but there was something deep within him that he held on to and even though it felt for him like ‘violence and ruin’ he persisted and accepted his mission to speak out.

Peter had a similar experience in Sunday’s gospel. He wanted Jesus to run away. Don’t get involved!  Keep yourself safe! Jesus turned on him and called him ‘an obstacle in my path’, a scandal preventing me fulfil my work.

It would not be easy for the police on America’s streets to listen but it would be a way to freedom for them as well as the people they so easily shoot. It would not be easy for our ministers to listen but it would be a way to freedom for them and the people they so easily hammer.

But each of us has to think, ‘where am I in this scene?’ It is so easy to say what other should do. But if each of us can begin to listen, and to feel for those who suffer, it could, in the end, become a contagious epidemic – a Covid 20.

30 August 2020           Sunday 22A                 Jer 20:7-9        Rom 12:1-2     Matt 16:21-27

      

SILENCE AND TRUMPETS

Two people drew my eye this week. One has quietly devoted his life to a meticulous study of infectious diseases and ways of combatting and overcoming them. The other has come up in a moment with an imaginative method of gun control. Both are passionate about serving others and improving the quality of our lives.

 

How we love to see a skilful goal or hear music that lifts our hearts. But do we feel the same thrill when we hear of one person silently searching for a solution to life’s threats? Dr Anthony Fauci is such a man. At 79 he is still at the height of his powers. He has advised six American presidents on epidemics. The present one is, of course, Covid 19. Some four or five years ago he sensed something like this would happen and he spoke of it.

 

His words were not heard and even today some do not listen. He has met the same hostility as the Hebrew prophets. The people do not want to know. ‘Go away seer; prophesy somewhere else’ (Amos 7:12).  Fauci has had to employ security for himself and his family. But he is a reliable guide and when people really want answers they listen to him. He gives no empty assurances. He warns us of the long haul. There ‘may’ be a vaccine by the end of the year but there will be no ‘normality’ for 12 months.  

 

Listening to him you sense he knows his compatriots.  He has a light touch and a ready humour. He is not surprised at obduracy. Many drown their fears in bars. But people like Fauci are a gift to us.  They deserve a hearing. They can save us from destroying ourselves.

 

The other person is a jazz musician in New Orleans, Shamarr Allen, who is appalled by the fatal shooting of a 9 year old in front of his home earlier this month. ‘I have a nine-year-old son, so for me it just hit me different,’ Allen says. He posted a message, ‘To all the youth in New Orleans. Bring me a gun and I'll give you a trumpet. No questions asked’.  He got the police to agree on the ‘no questions asked’. ‘They aren't bad kids, they're just dealt into bad circumstances,’ Allen says, ‘People don't understand that these kids are trying and wanting to do other things, but there's just nothing for them to do’. 

 

For his very first exchange, Allen collected a fully loaded gun from a young girl. It opened his mind. ‘I would never suspect she would have a gun.  And she was so excited about getting a trumpet’.  Local musicians have now volunteered to give the youngsters free music lessons. And the community have rallied to support him; $26,000 has been raised to buy trumpets.

 

These two people, in different ways, have shown imagination and passion. They make the world a better place.

 

2 August 2020                        Sunday 18 A               Isaiah 55: 1-3  Rom 8: 35-39  Matt 14: 13-21