INTERPRETING THE SIGNS

 

INTERPRETING THE SIGNS

Meteorology as a science is growing better all the time. Our ancestors were accurate enough at a local level, as Jesus recognised (Mt 16:3), but now we can predict cyclones anywhere in the world. Interpreting is our way of advancing. As we approach Christmas we read of the unusual birth of Samson as a herald of John who was himself a herald of Jesus. Samson slaughtered the enemies of Israel and this was interpreted as ‘salvation’ (Jud 13:5). By the time we reach John, salvation meant condemnation and judgement (Lk 3:7). Then Jesus comes along and announces compassion and forgiveness.

There is a shift in interpretation. One more example. Isaiah wrote in Hebrew in 736 BC that ‘a young woman will conceive’ (7:14). By the time the Greeks came to translate the text some five hundred years later they chose a word which could imply the woman was a virgin. Then Matthew got hold of the text in the time of the early Christian community and he expressed the accepted interpretation of the Church as it had evolved after the Resurrection, ‘the virgin is with child’ (1:23). The interpretation of what God was doing shifted and developed over time.

Moving into the history which brings us to our own time, we see how the interpretation of how humans see themselves has also shifted. We used to be welded to ‘the group’. Both in sacred and secular history our ancestors did not think for themselves; they constantly referred to the chief or king – whether it was David of Israel or Lobengula of the Ndebele. When Prestage tried to introduce the plough in Empandeni Mission, south of Bulawayo in 1887, the people waited for Lobengula to turn the first sod. He never did. The people were locked into the will of the ruler. They had no will of their own.

This ‘group responsibility’ persisted, and persists, up to today. Yet, more and more, ours is a time of individual choice and responsibility. To the confusion of many parents, young people often make wild choices which the parents know will land them in trouble but they are powerless to prevent. Individual responsibility is our interpretation of what we are meant to be and clearly this is a great advance in human history. People feel free to explore and make amazing choices which benefit humanity. There are examples too many to mention: the railways began with the choice of one person, so did flying, so did the internet.

What is the good news of Christmas? Every year it comes round and there is a tendency perhaps to concentrate on family and fun. That is good and a blessing. But perhaps we can also rejoice in the growing realisation of who we are. Despite all the pitfalls, it is truly wonderful and ‘good news for all the people’ (Lk 2:10).

18 December 2022          Advent 4A  Is 7:10-14   Rm 1:1-7     Mt 1:18-24      

THE DESERT BRINGS FORTH JONQUILS

 

THE DESERT BRINGS FORTH JONQUILS

With heightened emotion, people across the world are watching the triumphs and disappointments of the World Cup. The camera gives us the thrill and skill of the players, the tight concentration of the managers and officials and the ‘agony and ecstasy’ of the supporters. The game, as it is often said, brings the world together. Differences of wealth and culture, belief and custom, fade as people engage on equal terms on ‘a level playing field’. The mighty tumble and the weak lift their heads. At the time of writing it is even said Morocco could win the cup!

The ’beautiful game’ gives us news that can lift or deflate us in an instant. The scriptures, in contrast, gives us news that may take months, years or even millennia to come true. ‘Happy Christmas!’ is a greeting that means different things depending on who says it and who receives it. You can give the greeting to a person poor, sick or in prison and mean it. It is not an insult. Your greeting carries hope – not in the immediate future but in a time which will definitely come – if giver and receiver want it.

The third Sunday of Advent is known to some of us as Gaudete Sunday, from the Latin word for joy. The readings are full of impossible wishes, ‘Let the wilderness exult and the wasteland rejoice. Let them bring forth flowers like the jonquil.’ This yellow flower grows in fragrant clusters, the last thing you would expect in a desert.

The message is clear. There are no instant solutions to our broken world. Just look at the present politics of Zimbabwe! But there is hope, not a wishy-washy hope that is just words but a real deep-down hope, buried in the wasteland of our dreams. The jonquil, or whatever beautiful flower we come across in unlikely places, is a sign. Jesus gave us signs: a deaf man hears, a blind one sees, a woman bent double for years straightens up. The gospel is littered with jonquils. But we have to want to be healed and do something about it.

Peter Prestage was a Jesuit priest who walked to Zimbabwe in 1882 and died, still walking, twenty-five years later near Masvingo. He spent years trying to persuade King Lobengula to give permission for him to teach and preach. He met disappointment after disappointment. But he just kept going. ‘What was great about him was his working and hoping for so long ‘without hope’ and finding in the end that his hope had not been in vain.’ (Francis Rea, The Shield, 1966).   

11 December 2022      Advent Sunday 3A       Is 35:1…10      Jam 5:7-10       Mt 11:2-11

A NEW WAY OF THINKING

 

A NEW WAY OF THINKING

There is one line that is central to the three rich readings we have today, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.’ Don’t let this familiar sentence slip away. Try to tease it out. What is it saying? All three readings huddle round it and support it.

First, the kingdom of heaven is something new. Before John the Baptist, the Jews thought of ‘kingdom’ in terms of the restored kingdom of David and Solomon. ‘Make Israel Great Again’ might have been their slogan. But Isaiah doesn’t buy that. For him the kingdom is about truth, integrity and justice, about ‘not judging by appearances or hearsay’.  And it is just around the corner if we grasp the moment. And he gives this poetic fable about the lion and the ox, tsuro and gudo, Jew and gentile; they no longer compete but feed and lie down together.

This is the vision too of Paul. He says we should never give up, never lose hope, that this vision of truth and integrity will come true; the patriarchs and the pagans will share the same inheritance.

Then we come to the gospel. All the drama – ‘you brood of vipers … the axe is laid to the roots of the tree’ – is an explosive warning about something new. It is good news but people need to be shaken up before they can receive good news. Someone once said, ‘people can handle bad news, they are used to it. Good news is much more difficult to receive.’ Well, the good news is about the kingdom and it does not make the headlines. People yawn and move on.

But, actually, the joy of our vocation as Christians is that we are building a new world through all the actions of creativity and kindness that we do each day. God is doing it and we are doing it. We are doing it together. He takes our water and transforms it to wine.

Finally, the word ‘repent’. What does that mean? Repent of our sins? Well, maybe, but that is not the main meaning. It comes from a Greek word needing five English words to translate it: ‘Change your way of thinking’. Change how you see people and things! If before you are self-centred, open up to others. If you look down on the poor, the handicapped, the migrant, any person who is ‘different’, change how you see them.

When we all do that the kingdom of heaven will have arrived.  

4 December 2022   Advent 2A     Is 11:1-10   Rom 15:4-9     Matt 3:1-12

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.