POWER, WISDOM AND LOVE

 

POWER, WISDOM AND LOVE

In a memorandum to Anglican priest David Russel in 1974 expressing his ideas about God, Steve Biko wrote,

I am sufficiently religious to believe that man’s internal insecurity can only be alleviated by an almost enigmatic and supernatural force to which we ascribe all power, all wisdom and love. This is ultimately what makes us tick.

I was astonished to find these were exactly the same words used by Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, in a lecture on ‘The Trinity in Julian of Norwich’ in the fourteenth century mystic’s writings. Biko would not have claimed to be a theologian but he hit the bull’s eye here, especially when he added, ‘This is what makes us tick.’ 

As children we were supposed to be satisfied by being told the Trinity is ‘a mystery’. And since mystery is, by definition, beyond understanding that was the end of it and the teacher went on to more manageable subjects. But to move on hurriedly is to deny ourselves a glimpse of something essentially nourishing, something that ‘makes us tick.’ What is revealed to us in the scriptures becomes increasingly challenging the longer we stay with it. The story of Christmas is attractive and bathed in excitement. The life in Nazareth is some thing we can easily understand and relate to. The ‘public’ life of Jesus was fraught with misunderstanding and opposition, but also with acceptance and joy. The passion was terrible but again we can grasp the story as we see it daily. So we progress from what is easily intelligible to what is more difficult. Then the going gets really tough. Resurrection? What does it mean? We have no experience. Can we relate to it? The Ascension too. It is beyond us. Then there is Pentecost and gift of the Spirit. More drama. Wind and fiery tongues. But does it touch us? Finally the Church throws everything at us: she has us celebrate the Trinity. Now we are really lost.

From Bethlehem to the Trinity sounds like a course with ever more demanding modules to master. And yet it is all an invitation to go ever deeper into the loving friendship God offers. God is power (the Father) Julian, Williams and Biko are saying. He is almighty. He is also wisdom shown in the Passion accepted by the Son. And it is all because of love (the Spirit) leading us to our ‘homecoming’ (Julian). These attributes are all one, interdependent on each other. This whole movement makes sense of our life. It is what makes us tick. For Julian, we are anchored in God (power) in our vulnerability (wisdom) as we follow our destiny which is love.

May 26, 2024.                      Trinity Sunday.                    Dt 4:32…40         Rm 8;14-17.         Mt 28:16-20   

 

THE WIND BLOWS WHERE IT WILL

 

 

THE WIND BLOWS WHERE IT WILL

I like the wind. I don’t know why. Perhaps as a child I enjoyed going to sleep to the sound of it rustling in the trees outside my window. It denotes movement, action. It’s a comforting companion. It is not the noise of cars or trains, games or work – all human made. The wind just comes, from we don’t know where.

I have just read the story of the bride choosing her wedding dress. ‘I want one that rustles’, she said. She tried everywhere. None were available. Finally she met a seamstress who told her she could make one but it would be heavy, uncomfortable and unsightly. ‘Never mind,’ the bride-to-be said. ‘That is what I want.’ ‘OK’, said the seamstress, ‘but may I ask you why you want such a gown?’ ‘My husband-to-be is blind’, said the girl, ‘and I want him at least to hear the rustle. That way, he will know I am beside him – and will always be.’

A pretty story? Maybe! But one that bears a touching truth. ‘Know that I am with you always.’ I am not alone. I may be blind. I may feel lonely, anxious, afraid. But I am not alone. Many people, I think, feel they are alone. They sense there is no one who understands them. If they feel lost or confused, they may reach out for ‘substitutes’ – distractions that ease the pain for a while. Maybe drink, maybe drugs.

There is no need to feel alone. Traditionally, in Africa for instance, there was always the community. A person was part of something bigger than themselves. There were people they could turn to – elders or peers. But Africa is now contaminated by the individualism of the ‘developed’ world whose message is; ‘you can do it yourself.’ Be independent, be free.

Yet freedom and friendship go together. It is no diminishment of the former to enjoy the latter. In fact, it is the constant rustle of people that can hone friendship and make us strong. We build each other’s freedom in so far as we engage with them in depth.

We are told the house rustled mightily at the time of Pentecost. A mighty wind shook it. This was the climax of the drama that began in a manger. The Word pitched his tent among us and progressively taught us the way to a complete life. He chose people and called them friends. He said he would be with them always. Not as he was for those years of tramping the roads of Galilee, but as a permanent walking with each one who would answer his invitation to companionship. He would give them his Spirit to be with them always.    

[Pentecost            19 May 2024              Acts 2:1-11                  Rom 8:8-17              John 20:19-23] 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

THE CARPENTER’S SON

 

THE CARPENTER’S SON

‘Is not this the carpenter’s son?’ (Mt 13:55). Jesus started life in a carpenter’s workshop – and he has never left it. He is continually ‘making things’ and, as with Jeremiah’s potter, they often ‘come out wrong … and he has to rework it’ (Jer 18:4). We quickly forget the terrible headlines telling us of things ‘coming out wrong’, but he never does. The Ukraine war may fade from our consciousness but not from his. Two years on, there are soldiers stuck in dug out defences trying to hold up the Russian advance. They are tired but they keep at it. Russia’s freedom and Ukraine independence in 1990 ‘came out wrong.’ Now they have to be reworked.

Zimbabwe became independent ten years earlier but now we know that something has ‘come out wrong and has to be reworked’. We are not pieces of wood nor are we potter’s clay, but we are being moulded, fashioned, hammered into shape. It is good to know that we are not alone. We don’t have to think of everything ourselves. There is One who is fashioning us, day by day.  We are called to trust that.

I was in South Africa recently and I was amazed to discover Ascension Day was, until recently, a national holiday. In the Christian view – and South African history was influenced by Calvinist Christian beliefs – the Ascension is a celebration of the final triumph of Christ. Christianity has often been used to buttress unjust structures and South Africa was an example of this. If the Ascension was seen as celebrating the authority and power of the Lord, it could be borrowed for state reasons. So perhaps it is a good thing it has been dropped from the list of national holidays. The remembrance of the Ascension needs to be ‘reworked’.    

The Ascension has to be linked, iron clad, to the final words of Jesus on the cross, ‘It is completed’ (John 19:30). What he set out to do at the Jordan; all his labours, disappointments, sufferings and death, are now done. They were the work that turned out right in the end. But what a cost! Our Easter joy is based on the cross and we should never let that slip. Our joy is founded on endurance and suffering and it comes out right in the end – for Jesus, for us and for all who follow his way. The Ascension is only a triumph if it is founded on ‘the way’. Any manipulation of that way empties it of the completion we all seek. The architects of apartheid are no more but many others have also tried to take short cuts to what they want. Nothing works unless based on ‘the way’, the way of the cross.

Ascension Day   12 May 2024     Acts 1:1-11   Ep 1:17-23     Mk 16:15-20   

 

    

STEVE BIKO AND THE ENVISIONED SELF

 

STEVE BIKO AND THE ENVISIONED SELF

Recently, on a visit to South Africa, I met a priest who was deeply concerned about where the country was going. Elections are due this month and he felt there was widespread anxiety about the ability of whoever wins to deliver what is needed. Unusually, he was critical of Mandela. While he recognised the sacrifice he made and the achievement of freedom he facilitated, he felt Mandiba did not follow through after 1994 in inspiring people to have confidence in themselves and hold their new rulers accountable. He looked back to Steve Biko, killed by the regime in 1977, as one who had devoted all his powers to developing a sense of who they are in black people.

Passing through Durban’s King Shaka airport, BIKO’s name stared at me from a book stand and I purchased a 40^th anniversary edition of his I Write What I Want. I remember the excitement at the time when Biko’s affirmation of ‘black consciousness’ first came to our attention. It took time to understand what he was saying and even today, 47 years later, we still don’t tease out the hidden strength contained in his teaching.

Basically, Biko held that far worse than the physical restraints and humiliations of apartheid was the psychological imprisonment of which blacks were often unaware. He analysed the ways in which blacks unconsciously measured themselves against white standards and acted as though white was right. He applied his lens to society, culture and religion and found each of them encroaching on black self-understanding and warping it. South African society is still divided today though differently than fifty years ago. Here are his words:

Once the various groups within a given community have asserted themselves to the point that mutual respect has to be shown then you have the ingredients of a true and meaningful integration. At the heart of true integration is the provision for each man, each group to rise and attain the envisioned self. Each group must be able to attain its style of existence without encroaching on or being thwarted by another. Out of the mutual respect for each other and complete freedom of self-determination there will obviously arise a genuine fusion of life-style of the various groups. This is true integration. (p. 22)

Biko was deeply affected by the society he found himself in at university and, in effect, abandoned his medical studies to devote his energy to working out what it was that caused his unease. He had the courage to follow through on his reflections, share them with others and refine them – and eventually die for them. At first the regime thought he was on its side by his emphasis affirming blacks and so seemingly separating black and white, but they soon came to realise he was doing this to strengthen blacks so that they could, in time, confront the white takeover of their country.

He wrote,

In all we do we always place Man first and hence all our action is usually joint community oriented action rather than the individualism that is the hallmark of the capitalist approach. We always refrain from using people as stepping stones. Instead we are prepared to have a much slower progress in an effort to make sure that all of us are marching to the same tune. (p. 46)

Do politicians, in their quest for power, respond to the hidden, hardly conscious, desire of people to ‘attain to their envisioned self’?

5 May 2024                  Easter Sunday 6B         Acts 10:25…48             1 Jn 4:7-10       Jn 15:9-17