THE COLOUR PURPLE

 

THE COLOUR PURPLE

I do not know why the acclaimed novel, The Colour Purple, was so named. Maybe it is because of the cruelty and violence? Or maybe purple is an ‘in-between’ colour – neither blue nor red. Maybe it is suggesting the country in which it is set, the United States of America, is itself an ‘in-between’ country – neither free nor enslaved – but somewhere in-between? 

Whatever the reason, purple is the colour of Advent, an ‘in-between’ season. It recalls the trouble history of Israel, sometimes free and often times enslaved. Israel looked forward to a Messiah, someone who would free them once and for all, and Advent is a time when we remember their long wait and how they spent it. Not a very edifying story. But a story spotted with words of hope. ‘The nations will stream to Jerusalem’, because it is the great city where their desires will be satisfied.

We recall that looking forward and find our focus in what actually happened: a child was born in Bethlehem. We surround that moment with joy and celebration because we grasp the first inklings of what it means. There was no ‘streaming to Jerusalem’ though a few wise men from the east did make the journey and, for a moment, represented us all. But the leaders didn’t like what they saw and heard and in time they killed the child.   

Yet a remnant got the message and spread the word throughout the Mediterranean and beyond. This was the second part of the ‘in-between’. Advent looks to Christmas but that is only the beginning. It goes much deeper. Advent looks to the final fulfilment of the whole story of the world. The enigmatic words used are: ‘a new heaven and a new earth’.  Something final, complete and totally fulfilling is about to happen.

But for this to arrive, the main actors, us, we have to make choices. And there will be a reckoning. The way Luke puts it is, ‘then, of two men in the field, one is taken, one is left; of two women at the mill, one is taken, one is left.’ Our cyclones today, in giving us a literal physical picture of this, are a searing parable of what Jesus means. The more people make good choices the closer we get to overcoming evil and the final triumph.

The words Jesus uses are, ‘stand ready, stay awake’.  The opposite of ‘awake’ is ‘asleep’ and we live in between these two states – in a purple zone. This applies to us as individuals but we can see it clearly when we look at the great events of our world. It is surely obvious by now we drifted into the Ukraine war because, for the past three decades, all the main participants were asleep.

27 November 2022         Advent Sunday 1   Is 2:1-5       Rom113:11-14          Mt 24:37-44

THE SALVATION OF THE WOLVES

 

THE SALVATION OF THE WOLVES

Gondla is a play by the Russian poet Nikolay Gumilyov, written at the time of the Russian Revolution (1917). Its theme is a clash of worldviews portrayed in an allegory about wolves (pagans Icelanders) and swans (Christian Irish people). (It has nothing to do with the actual people of Iceland or Ireland). Neither wolves nor swans are common in Africa but the former represent savage power drawing blood with their sharp teeth and claws while the latter, large white birds which spend their time gliding gently on lakes and rivers, stand for grace, calm, beauty and peace.

Gondla is an Irish prince who is drawn to a royal Icelandic princess, Lera, but she is in two minds and surrounded by cruel warriors out to destroy him. As the story unfolds, Gondla is increasingly cornered and everyone deserts him including Lera although she has a lingering feeling of love for him. The climax of the story comes when Gondla sacrifices himself as the only way out of the dilemma. The wolves gather round his dead body and realise the transcendent power at work in him and become converted. Lera has the final word;

We are going away

to a swan place, a place not of this earth,

Love’s open sea, the open sea of love!   

 

This Sunday we celebrate Christ the King, a feast instituted by the Church at about the same time as Gondla was written. The aim of the celebration was to remind us of Jesus’ words to Pilate, ‘I am a king. For this I came into this word.’ And to remind us that he spoke these words as he was going to his death. In Luke’s version, which we read today, his death leads to the conversion of a wolf even before he expires; ‘In truth I tell you, this day you will be with me in paradise.’

 

The kingship, the leadership, of Jesus is manifested on the cross where his torn and twisted wolf-lacerated body is exposed to the world. This sight is the fundamental announcement of the gospel message. Our world is a world of pain and it will only be saved by people who ‘carry’ this cross, one way or another, in their lives. As the Church closes its year, this is the one message we take away.    

 

20 November 2022       Christ the King             2 Sam 5:1-3                  Col 1:12-20      Lk 23:35-40

PLASTIC SHEETS AND INNER STRUGGLES

 

PLASTIC SHEETS AND INNER STRUGGLES

It is hard to be patient with the constant requests of the poor. Are they genuine? If I give to one, why not to all? Then a woman comes. She says she has four children and has the youngest with her. Her husband is in prison, the rains have come and the roof of her shack is leaking. Could she have $25 for some plastic to cover the leaks? It so happens we too had a leaking roof. We spent a good deal more than $25 repairing it. In fact we put on a new roof as the old was rotting. Ours is one of those countries of the excessively rich and the grindingly poor.   

For centuries, people in poor countries have migrated to richer ones: the Irish to England, Italians to America, Turks to Germany, Zimbabweans to South Africa. It was quite acceptable when labour was needed in the rich countries. Suddenly, in recent decades, the rich are closing their doors on the poor. Mexicans can’t get into America, Afghans can’t get into Australia, Africans can’t get into Europe.

But they try anyway. They risk their lives in flimsy boats in the hands of unscrupulous go-betweens or they climb fences or walls. They do not give up. Anything is better than the wasted lives they live at home. There was a time they were welcomed for economic reasons; they provided labour. Now they are refused for moral reasons; they are too many and we are afraid. They will take our jobs, our benefits; they are a nuisance. The tightly pressed spring of colonialism is let loose and is bouncing back. The colonisers were happy with what they could get at the time. They never thought there would be a price for their descendants to pay.

Well, those descendants don’t seem – yet – willing to face the issue.  There is a report just out from the UK entitled, A Callous Disregard for the Vulnerable lies at the heart of the UK government, which begins;

On Wednesday, we learned that our government has taken refugees it had held at the camp at Manston on the Kent Coast and left them on the streets of London late at night. They were not told where they were, where they could go for safety or given any money.

This does not seem to have been an anomaly involving a few people – 50 were dumped from a bus near London’s Victoria Station. These people had been forced from their homes and had struggled here in hopes of safety. Abandoned in a strange place by those who were supposed to protect them, it is fair to imagine they were confused, disoriented, and afraid…

This is the tail end of colonialism and it is not pretty. There is not even a hint of understanding that these migrants are the desperate victims of a world order designed to favour the powerful. The word compassion, leave alone justice, seems far from the minds of those who deliberately exploit the weak by dumping them in a strange place without help.

Compassion is not a soft cuddly word. It is hard courageous work to think out the demands of justice at whatever cost to ourselves. We are being urged to combat global warming but ultimately, we can understand that combat will benefit us and our children. This combat, justice for migrants, seems to carry no obvious benefits for us. But, if we can stretch our minds and our hearts, reaching out to others will bring unimaginable benefits to us too as well as to them.                                                                                                  13 November 2022

 

   

THE INTERESTS OF THE PEOPLE

 

THE INTERESTS OF THE PEOPLE

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 both the decision-making processes, management and control (of those resources). (ZANU Election Manifesto. 1980).

In 1980 ZANU presented an obvious - and noble - proposal to the people of Zimbabwe: Vote for us and this will be our policy: the interests of the people will be paramount. The link with the people was fresh in the minds of those who conducted the war of liberation. They depended on the people to protect them and feed them as they moved around the country. After the elections, when ZANU was safely in power, they no longer depended on ‘the people’ and could govern with diminishing reference to them.

This process of ‘de-linking’ between governing and governed also happened in Ethiopia after the victory of Emperor (King of kings, Neguse Negest) Menelik II over the Italians at Adewa in 1896. Up to that time Ethiopia was held together, according Tsehai Berhane-Selassie, by the chewa, a self-trained army with definite links to the ordinary people. She writes:

Modernity ‘failed to bring with it the chewa spirit of two-way communication between state and population and to uphold the impersonal working principles that a ‘modern’ civil service was supposedly meant to apply. The gradual centralisation of power in the hands of ‘modern’ state monarchs eclipsed the status and crucial role of the chewa. For the salaried officials of the ‘modern’ structure land was a peripheral structure for their administrative services. The development of banks, ministries and other ‘modern’ state facilities, and resources with which the state could employ salaried administrators, effectively marginalised the long-standing role of rural people in local political matters. While the ‘modern’ state took over from the chewa it failed to adopt their idealised spirit of participation in local decision making by ordinary local people … and so paved the way for despotism (Ethiopian Warriorhood, Defence, Land and Society, 1800-1941, Tsehai Berhane-Selssie (2018) p 4 ff).

The belief that democracy is inevitably attainable by every people under heaven is looking more and more fragile as we view the increased sophistication in methods of control of those who govern us. In China, thirty years after Tiananmen Square, the government is fixed in a determined mindset that seeks to control every aspect of life and yet it was in China, almost 100 years ago, that Mao pioneered the idea of the army and the people are one.

Listening to the people – rural and urban – and making their interests ‘paramount’ is not a simple matter. But if the determination to at last set out on that demanding journey were begun, we could again begin to hope.