A BRUSH MERCHANT

 

A BRUSH MERCHANT

As I walked home, I was overtaken by a vertical collection of brooms. As it passed, I realised it was a man on a bicycle with a neatly bound selection of different sorts and colours of brushes. He skilfully wove his way among the potholes like a dancer on a stage. His demeanour suggested a happy man, confident he knew what he was doing.

We know little of the deeper stirrings in people’s hearts. This week we have a saying in the scriptures; He is ‘the one who is going to baptise with the Holy Spirit’. We can quickly pass by, saying, ‘Oh, I’ve heard that before many times. I know what it means.’ Well, maybe. But what does it really mean for us? Karl Rahner, the German Jesuit theologian who flourished in the late twentieth century, wrote, ‘we may think we find around us too much of the spirit of the world and too little of the Spirit of the Father. While these impressions may frequently be valid, there is usually something false in them. Something false, I say, because the human eye cannot detect the Spirit in us and in the church.’  

We are baptised. But we do not always attune ourselves to the promptings of the Spirit who lives in us. I am always struck by the example of Elizabeth Musodzi and Charles Mzingeli who, in the 1920s and 30s, worked patiently and successfully for the improvement in the living and working conditions of the people of Harare. They were brushed aside because they were not producing quick results. Now, there are sharply different views about that period of our history but the question can, at least, be asked; were we attentive at the time to the deeper workings of the Spirit in our hearts? Ghandi once said (I do not have his exact words), ‘I would be prepared to wait – if necessary, for a long time – for freedom to come if, in doing so, we could avoid violence.’ He was a man who reflected deeply and believed that violence only breeds violence. Patience lays a better foundation.  

We are baptised, yes. But has the Spirit found a place in our bloodstream? Are our reactions and thoughts prompted by a habit of attentiveness to the deeper movements of our heart or are we inclined to follow the crowd? It is a question to ponder as we stand, in our imagination, by the river Jordan this week and listen to the words of the Baptist.

Sometimes we can be helped by a person who passes by, like the man selling brushes.

15 January 2023    Sunday 2 A           Is 49:3-6     1 Cor 1:1-3    John 1:29-34

A SHOWING

 

A SHOWING

A legend is a story invented to describe something true though we do not know what really happened. There is a legend embedded in the opening of the Christian scriptures about three wise men coming from the east to Bethlehem, drawn by a star. They are led to a manger in a stable and shown the ‘light of the world’ long foretold by the prophets. Gentiles came to know Jesus early on.

It is a good story, full of drama and T.S.Eliot wrote a poem about it which begins:

‘A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp.

The very dead of winter.’

 

The wise men made their journey and we make ours and often it is during ‘the worst time of the year’. We take wrong turns and have to retrace our steps and start afresh.

 

We are also told the wise people brought gifts of gold, incense and myrrh. These were precious commodities in the ancient world and we can draw out our own meaning. When Isaiah sketched the origins of this story, he mentioned gold and incense but left out myrrh. If gold is a symbol of wealth, beauty, goodness and love, incense represents homage, prayer and mystery. But myrrh? The dictionary describes it as ‘gum resin used in perfume’ and it was used, I suppose, to offset the smell of decay which corpses soon acquire. Rather inappropriate for a new born child.

 

The Church quickly associated it with the death of Jesus and the spices the women brought to anoint his body (Mark 16:1). Death is a sad thing but the women who came with the myrrh found an empty tomb. ‘Death was swallowed up in victory’ (1 Cor 15:54). At first, they were ‘scared out of their wits’ but they came to be astounded and rejoiced.

In the story of the Epiphany we are invited to we see through our legends, our make-up, our appearances and outward show to the reality that underlies all? God draws us to himself and we set out on the journey offering our gifts, gifts that represent the best we can bring but they also include our suffering and death.  Eliot ends his poem: ‘We returned to our places ... but no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, with an alien people clutching their gods…’                                                                                                    Epiphany, 7 Jan 2023     Is 60:1-6     Eph 3:2-6    Matt 2:1-12

 

A HOPEFUL NEW YEAR

 

A HOPEFUL NEW YEAR

Pope Benedict XVI, who lies between death and burial, once wrote a letter on hope which he called Spe Salvi, we are saved by hope (Rom 8:24). Is this new year going to give us grounds for hope – or more of its opposite, despair? Benedict was writing just before the money collapse of 2008 yet his words spoke of a hope more solid than Wall Street.

He began his letter by remembering a poor Sudanese girl who was wrenched from her family in Darfur while still nine years old and sold into slavery five times. Constantly beaten and abused, ‘she bore 144 scars throughout her life.’ In 1882, when she was thirteen, she was ransomed by an Italian merchant and brought to Italy where she entered a totally new life where she was respected and cared for. It took her time to adjust to this new reality but gradually she gained confidence – she gained hope - and came to know God and, what is far more, that he knew her and loved her. Josephine Bakhita went on to become a nun and eventually a saint and, besides her work with the sisters, she spent her days telling others of her liberation through her encounter with God through the good people who helped her.

‘Faith is the assurance of things hoped for; the conviction of things not seen’ (Hebrews 11:1). Each of us has their interpretation of our situation in Zimbabwe and our hope for this year. For many there is little hope. It will be just more of the same. The results of the elections are already known. And so, many people just shrug their shoulders and get on with life as best they can. They have lost hope that things might change for the better.

But if we have such an attitude, we are ignoring our Christian heritage, all that we received through our different churches and religions. We may feel as hopeless as Josephine in her days of slavery, but to sit on our hands and accept it is to ‘prefer darkness to light’ (John 3:19).

Hope is not about idly waiting and ‘hoping’ something will happen. It is about changing my way of thinking and exploring every moment as an opportunity to bring light into the world. I cannot change the way things are done in this country but the way I think, speak and act can create, what Bobby Kennedy used to call, a ‘ripple of hope’ that can spread out and inspire others to create their own ripples. And that is what Nelson Mandela did when in prison: he began by insisting on wearing long trousers and he went on to become president of a free country.

New Year 2023     Num 6:22-27        Gal 4:4-7       Lk 2:16-21

GOOD NEWS

 

GOOD NEWS

Someone once said there is one thing harder to accept than bad news and that is good news! Perhaps we are not used to good news. We don’t get enough of it. What is the ‘good news of great joy’ the angel announced on Christmas night? Each one of us will have their own version and down the ages we have sought to puts words to it. Poet John Milton, four hundred years ago, wrote;

The stars, with deep amaze,                                                                 Stand fix’d in steadfast gaze,   

                   Bending one way their precious influence…

 

Even the stars are astonished by the event at Bethlehem. The good news is, first of all, about hope. When lost is a forest, we long to see some familiar landmark to give us our bearings. We may have a long and tough way to go but at least we know where we are going.

 

So hope, especially vague hope, is not enough. We must know what we are hoping for - in detail. It is Christmas and we are in Zimbabwe. What exactly are we hoping for? That ‘they’ would sort out the power shortages? Introduce a stable currency? Rescue the health services? Pay the teachers? Mend the potholes? All these – and many more. Above all, allow freedom to breath.

 

But even these ‘hopes’ can remain vague and ‘out there’ – someone else’s responsibility. Something more radical is needed to put flesh on hope. That ‘something’ has to do with our mentality – our way of thinking. Just to take the last, and least important, of the examples given: there are countries where a pothole would have a life expectancy of twenty-four hours at the most. We have potholes, where you could bury a cat, that have lasted months. Why? Because the consensus of people is that nothing can be done.

 

Hope will find no fertile soil until we begin to change our way of thinking, our way of looking at things. We are good at waiting; we are patient and that is a virtue. But to wait too long is to give in to hopelessness, to shrug and say there is no hope, there is nothing I can do. There may, indeed, be nothing I can do for now but I can still look at my mentality. Am I passive and just ‘going with the flow’ or am I trying to influence the flow? Develop a way of thinking that could be contagious and lead to a new consensus among people.

 

There is nothing revolutionary about this; it is simply healing our hope. From being a limp formless feeling, it becomes a searching expectant attitude ready to grasp every moment that offers a new outlook, a new vision, a new way – a hope that has flesh. That really would be good news. 

 

                                            

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