SHEEP, BUT NO SHEPHERD

 

SHEEP, BUT NO SHEPHERD

On 5 August 1962, Nelson Mandela was arrested on a bend of the Durban/Pietermaritzberg road near Howick in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. He was held in prison for 27 years. The actual spot of his arrest is now a national monument and an imaginative interpretative centre has been constructed there, tracing the story of his life and his ‘Long Road to Freedom’ which was synonymous with that of South Africa itself. A highly original sculpture has been erected next the road consisting of fifty iron poles, each designed so that together they portray Mandela’s head. But you have to view them directly in front so as to see his face. Moving one side or the other distorts the image. 

I was part of a group last week that visited the centre and several things struck me. Perhaps most of all was the description of his first years on Robben Island in the 1960s. The texts on view highlighted the loneliness of those years. They were the first in what was a life sentence. Cape Town can be cold and the food was spare. He and his companions had to work in a stone quarry. They were cut off from the world. He had to struggle not only with the physical conditions but the awful psychological trauma of emptiness. How did he get to this point? Was it all worthwhile? Would he just be forgotten by the world and die and be buried on the island.

These reflections led me to marvel at the cost of leadership. Mandela and his companions supported one another at a time when one might think it was all hopeless and their cause was crushed. There must have been low moments when only a rock-like belief in the justice of their goal kept them from despair. What is deeply impressive is their faithfulness to something they knew was not just their own but was shared by the whole nation. But it was in the distance.

I find such ‘facts on the ground’, such political realities, indicative of something underlying them mirrored in the scriptures. Jesus, echoing Ezekiel, found the people ‘lost, like sheep without a shepherd’. They needed a leader; someone who could put their desires into words, someone who was prepared to suffer so that their hopes would be realised. We know good leaders and not so good ones. And we know the difference. A good leader is someone who has a vision and is prepared to suffer – for 27 years if need be – so that that vision blossoms.

21 July 2024         Sunday 16B          Jer 23:1-6    Eph 2;13-18      Mk 6:30-34

SYCAMORE TREES

 

SYCAMORE TREES

Amos was a cultivator of sycamore trees which produced a fruit like figs, but not the figs we know, and being leafy, provided much shade. He was happy in his work as a gardener and a shepherd.

Then, one day, he was called away by God to be a prophet. ‘I was a shepherd and looked after sycamores. It was the Lord who took me from herding the flock and said “go, prophesy to my people Israel.”’ Being a prophet was a tough calling. Jeremiah groaned under the burden. Prophets often get a poor reception and are sometimes harassed and persecuted.

But something in Amos made him obey. He knew he had to do this thing. He would never find peace if he refused. I know someone in Zimbabwe who struggled with such a call. They resisted and resisted. But in the end gave way and now their work has really blossomed for the benefit of many.

This person and Amos were called to do great things. But we know our days are full of little opportunities to ‘do the right thing’. A multitude of little victories can one day grow into something big. Yet we often take the easy way and avoid the call. And we know this avoidance makes us a lesser person. In some way it diminishes us. We are less alive.

The Lord ‘cultivates us’ as Amos did his fig trees. He wants us to grow. He gives us this wonderful gift we call ‘life’. As the poet says,

          Bliss was it that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very heaven.  (Wordsworth)

 

Life is beautiful, we often say, but yet we do not grasp it with both hands. We spend our time saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’. What made the saints into saints was their saying, ‘yes’, all the time - even when the going got tough. And what makes the going tough is things like Jesus saying in today’s gospel, ‘take no spare tunic.’ Don’t surround yourself with comforts that make you self-reliant. We are encouraged to be self-reliant in one sense. But, in another, we can make our self sufficiency so secure we forget that life is all about ‘launching out into the deep’ and being ready for surprises.

 

14 July 2024         Sunday 15 B         Am 7:12-15   Ep 1:3-14  Mk 6:7-13

 

EFFECTIVE MIRRORS

 

EFFECTIVE MIRRORS

St Clare of Assisi, who lived in the 1200s, used to say, ‘the Lord has called us to this greatness (radical poverty) that those who are to be effective mirrors and examples for others should see themselves mirrored in us.’ Yesterday we buried two great mirrors.

Bernadette Nachowe (spelling?) was a Sister of Jesus of Nazareth (SJN) who spent her 80+ years searching for God in very ordinary things; the garden, the workshop, the training of younger sisters and her prayer in a contemplative community (mainly at Mariachiedza) near Chegutu. Lorenz von Walter was a Jesuit priest from Germany whose father had to leave Russia, where he was a teacher, after World War One when hostilities developed between the two countries. Lorenz came to Zimbabwe and was a wonderful teacher who drew students by his quiet and gentle approach at three schools but mainly at St Albert’s in Mount Darwin, where he was during the Liberation War. Both these ‘mirrors’ gave quiet and solid support to the two responsible for their respective works. Bernadette to Mother Lydia of the SJN sisters and Lorenz, later in life, to Bishop Dieter Scholz of Chinhoyi.

At a funeral, we look at the life of the one who has died and we mourn them. We also celebrate their lives – especially if they have been mirrors. Last week, the one preaching at our church, spoke of Peter rising to the moment and acknowledging Jesus as ‘the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ It was a pinnacle of human response to the divine presence ‘in the region of Ceasarea Philippi’, that is, in a certain definite place on this earth at a certain time. But it is Jesus’ response that strikes us: ‘You are a rock and, on this rock, I will build my community.’

How did that strike Peter? He had reached out to Jesus and the Lord reflected back to him his true greatness. This did not prevent him messing up and denying the Lord when the crisis came in the Passion. But his true worth was revealed to him by his steadily gazing into the mirror that was Jesus. It was this that gave him huge confidence in the awesome mission he undertook.

In the Psalms, we read, ‘Look towards him and be radiant’ (33:5). Look in that mirror and you will come away changed. And let me end with St Paul:

And all of us, with our unveiled faces like mirrors reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the image that we reflect in brighter and brighter glory; this is the working of the Lord who is the Spirit.         (2 Cor 3:18) 

7 July 2024     Sunday 14 B               Ez 2:2-5          2 Cor 12:7-10              Mk 6:1-6