DANCING HIGHWAYS

 

DANCING HIGHWAYS

A tangle of dancing highways greets the visitor to Gqeberha. There is no orderly clover leaf intersection but roads rising and falling in seemingly random fashion. Urban architecture can have a beauty hidden unknowingly in the designer’s plan which only emerges afterwards.  Art is always beyond even the artist who created it.

I have spent a lifetime in Zimbabwe but only four weeks in South Africa. What astonishes the visitor is the beauty of the mix. Besides the obvious difference of colour ranging from black to white with every variety in between, there is the difference of speech. Again, beside the difference of languages there is the difference between those comfortable in one of the common languages, English, and those who labour in it as something strange and foreign. And yet again there is the way people draw on rich cultural heritages on how they relate to you that defy description.

Then the visitor steps back into history; the early people of this mostly dry sub-continent, the disturbing arrival of settlers from Europe with their differences and rivalries, the wars and politics that disrupted the lives of the people and shifted them from place to lace and finally the climax towards the end of the last century when the long struggle for freedom was finally resolved and the people agreed to work together for a common future.

But the way to that future keeps dancing before our eyes like conflicting roads swirling around one another. One struggle has been resolved but another is now underway. And this one is not unique to South Africa but common across the earth. How do we make all these roads converge and build something just and good for all people?

Driving in the Eastern Cape this week, we met a man, a dog and a flock of sheep. We were astonished to see the man instruct the dog to nudge the sheep to open a way for us. The harmony between all three built on a shared knowledge and confidence, however different, touched us for a moment. There is always a Sunday after Easter when we celebrate the image in John, chapter ten, of Jesus as the shepherd. From earliest times the Church has loved this image. It is so simple - and grounded in our experience. The shepherd knows his sheep, each one; he cares for them and opens a way for them. He will do anything for them – even to losing his life. The sheep know his voice and follow him.

It is a simple image. God know us, each one of us, and offers life ‘to the full’. He calls us to take up the task because it is not just given. It calls for our response. Our journey goes up and down and may seem to go nowhere. But in the tangle, there is a purpose.

21 April 2024        Easter Sunday 4B    Ac 4:8-12    1 Jn 3:1-2    Jn 10:11-18