THE MARTYRS OF UGANDA

THE MARTYRS OF UGANDA

We do not see and touch the presence of God in the world as we do the acts of our politicians.  Their decisions, or lack of them, lead to money shortages, fuel shortages, power shortages and so forth.  We live in a fractured world but we are called to hope and work for better days.

God acts differently.

Stories are filtering through of the annual celebration at Nymugonga, Uganda, of the more than a hundred Anglican and Catholic martyrs who died there in between November 1885 and January 1887.  The people of Uganda celebrate those painful events each June as victories of the human spirit over evil. One 97 year old man spends 14 days every year walking the 340 km from his home for the event. He is just one of thousands who come from many different African countries and beyond.  Many travel on foot and people along the way leave out food by the roadside for the pilgrims.  They eat what they need and move on and the food is then replenished.  The whole country seems to come alive in one great act of celebration.

And yet at the time it was a cruel tragedy.

Those who suffered and died did so as their forefathers in the faith did in the early church: some were cut to pieces, others devoured by dogs, others decapitated and thirteen were burned alive in reed baskets. The Catholic Church has canonised 24 of them. They ranged in age from Matthias Kalemba, who was fifty, to Kizito who was only thirteen. Most were between sixteen and twenty four. The main accusation was that they were ‘men of prayer’.  Also the king was enraged that they refused to give in to his sexual desires. They showed extraordinary courage and joy as they face their executioners, so much so that people were astonished. For the most part they had been recently baptised and four were still preparing for baptism. As what awaited what became clear was about to happen, Charles Lwanga, one of the leaders of the group, decided to cut the preparation and baptised them. The most notorious event was the deaths on the pyre at Nymugonga on June 3, 1886. The growth of the people of God in Uganda, and Africa, is a testimony to the permanent efficacy of the offering of their lives. The blood of the martyrs is indeed a seed.

It was a disaster but this seed bore much fruit.  We cannot let it pass as a pious religious devotion ‘for those who like that sort of thing’.  Being prepared to sacrifice for truth is something that we long to see in our own day, in our own lives and in the practices and policies of those who rule us.

16 June 2019               Trinity Sunday

Proverbs 8:22-31         Romans 5:1-5              John 16:12-15

  

RENTING OUR OWN HOUSE

RENTING OUR OWN HOUSE

Why do people have to sacrifice so much to become free?  And why do those in power resist so much people’s desire for freedom?  These are modern questions.  For centuries, people felt they had no choice but accept whoever it was who ruled. If they were lucky he or she was benevolent. Often this was not so and people suffered in silence under the weight of tyranny. Today things are different.  People believe things do not have to be as they are. Change is possible.

That is why the people of the Sudan are engaged in a life and death (literally) struggle to attain civilian rule, knowing full well that even if and when it is attained it is only ‘half a loaf’.  Civilian rule can also be manipulated to benefit a few at the expense of the many. There is often a further struggle – to make civilian rule accountable to the people. The United States struggled to attain her freedom two and a half centuries ago. But less than a hundred years later she was involved in another bitter struggle to extend that freedom. Thousands died. Half way through that war President Lincoln told the people:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Sudan is not the only country engaged in this struggle today. There are others; some further along the way to accountability than others. I live in one country north of the Zambezi and have strong ties with another south of it. The common element in both countries, and in many others, is the lack of a civic sense.  People do not own their country, they tolerate it.  The government owns it and so – like someone who rents a house – they, the people, have little desire to repair it or improve it. They do not invest, in every sense, in their country because they do not feel it is theirs.

In the euphoria of freedom the leaders of the new Zimbabwe set out high ideals:   

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 the decision making processes, management and control of those resources. (Election Manifesto 1980)

The same people who wrote these words then are running the country now. Do they reflect on how far they have gone along the road of achieving these goals?

And the people, how long will they wait patiently renting their own house?

Sunday is the feast of Pentecost when ‘what sounded like a powerful wind shook the whole house’. The gift of the Spirit is not for our personal lives only but for the whole human family and if it is to have an effect it must reach into every corner of our lives – even our civic sense.

9 June 2019                 Pentecost Sunday

Acts 2:1-11                  Romans 8                    John 14:15-16, 23-26

The young man’s courage

The King was astounded at the young man’s courage, 2 Maccabees7:1-14

The Uganda Martyrs, 3 June

The 24 canonised martyrs of Uganda remind us of the stories of the martyrs of old. The same tortures ere repeated: some were cut to pieces, others devoured by dogs, others decapitated and thirteen were burned alive in reed baskets.

They were of different ages: Matthias Kalemba was fifty, Kizito was thirteen; most were between sixteen and twenty four. The main accusation was that they were “men of prayer”.  Also the king was enraged that they refused to give in to his sexual advances. Kizito drew the admiration of his brothers by his courage and joy. For the most part they had been recently baptised and four were still catechumens when Charles Lwanga baptised them before their ordeal began.

More than 100 Catholic and Anglican martyrs died between November 1885 and January 1887 and the most notorious event was the deaths on the pyre at Nymugonga on June 3, 1886. The growth of the church in Uganda is a testimony to the permanent efficacy of their offering of their lives for Christ our Lord. Today, as always, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians.

A CLOUD TOOK HIM

A CLOUD TOOK HIM

‘We have lift off’. We hear these words as a rocket carrying astronauts takes off for a space shuttle, but it is an unhelpful image for the Ascension of Jesus to heaven! Far better are the actual words of the Acts where we are told ‘a cloud took him from their sight’. 

Clouds have long been used by writers to express the hidden presence of God. When the Israelites journeyed through the desert, ‘Yahweh preceded them in a pillar of cloud’ showing them the way.  And Luke tells us Moses and Elijah spoke with Jesus on the mountain about his journey – his ‘passing’ from this world to the Father ‘which he was to accomplish in Jerusalem’, that is, through his passion and death. Luke continues, ‘a cloud came and covered Peter, James and John with shadow; and when they went into the cloud they were afraid. And a voice came from the cloud saying, this is my Son’.

The fourteenth century author of the ‘Cloud of Unknowing’ urges us to hammer away at the cloud until we penetrate it.

Clouds both hide and reveal. They hide the sun and then they clear and its brightness shines through. So the Ascension is a statement about the earthly life of Jesus: the time when the disciples saw, heard and touched him, is over. He is now hidden.  But that does not mean he is no longer present. He is hidden in the Eucharist but he is present. The Ascension basically says to us: he is no longer limited in his presence to Palestine in the first century.  Jesus is now present everywhere to all people at all times. Jean Vanier, whom we buried last month, used to speak of Jesus as if he was in the room.  I remember when I first met him how often he would say, ‘we’ll have to see what Jesus wants’ as though he was going to phone him to find out.

So, paradoxically, Jesus going away is really Jesus coming close. He is present to everyone who wants to welcome him into their life.  The ‘cloud’ is a bit different now. It hides and reveals in another way.  You walk into a prison and see people tattered and shattered and it is as if there is a great cloud hanging over the place.  But Jesus is there in each one of those people, ready to be recognised if we have eyes to see. And if you go into an institution for people living with mental disabilities – or a psychiatric hospital – you may feel the desire to leave as soon as possible.  A sense of revulsion may come over you.  Yet Jesus is there.

And in our ordinary life with all its joys and irritants he is the one who walks with us as he did with the two going to Emmaus.  But maybe it is sometimes hard for us to recognise him. 

2 June 2019     The Ascension of Jesus

Acts 1:1-11      Ephesians 1:17-23                   Luke 24:46-53  

YOUR JOY WILL BE COMPLETE

YOUR JOY WILL BE COMPLETE John 16:23-28

June 1, 2019. St Justin Martyr (+165)

We have been journeying through Easter since 21 April and reading the Acts and John’s Gospel. Maybe we are getting a little tired of John, day after day! Maybe we are looking forward to getting back to Matthew, Mark and Luke where things happen and it is not endless words. But it would be a pity if we lose the accumulative effect of the discourses in John where he gradually builds up a relationship between the disciple and the Lord. We are being drawn, step by step, into the intimacy of life in the Trinity. ‘Where do you live?’ they had asked in chapter 1. Well here, in these last chapters, Jesus reveals that he lives in the Father and if anyone loves him that person will be drawn into this life in the Father and the Son through the Spirit.

BLESSED IS SHE WHO BELIEVED

31 May 2019, Mary visits Elizabeth

BLESSED IS SHE WHO BELIEVED (Luke 1:39-56)

This is the first ‘missionary journey’.  Mary hastens to share the good news with Elizabeth. And Elizabeth is awed and responds, ‘Blessed is she who believed that the promise made to her by the Lord would be fulfilled’.  Elizabeth immediately recognises that Mary has embodied in her own response the whole promise of God in the former times of Abraham and all who followed him.  What is that promise? It is that human kind will now rise above its bleak concerns for security and survival to blossom in a new way of life that releases all the pent up hopes of generations.  Mary is the porta coeli, the one who opens the door to a new humanity where all will be fulfilled.

THE POLITICS OF TENDERNESS

THE POLITICS OF TENDERNESS

These two nouns do not sit well together: politics and tenderness.  Politics is a competitive business where the one in leadership constantly has an eye on any threat to their position. Voters appear to like someone who is tough and resolute and not easily deflected from their goal. We saw a leader crumble yesterday because she dared to use the word ‘compromise’. Yet, courageously, she insisted on it and in her farewell speech she gave honour to the man who first inspired her with it.

We seem to like toughness. As kids – at least of my generation – we liked cowboys who burst through swing doors with both ‘six-guns’ blazing. Churchill saved, not just Britain, but arguably the world, from tyranny but his toughness.  Yes, there is a place for it.  But it is like a stone we find wedded to the ground: when you stop and turn it over you see softness and, even in the desert, life.

I am often astonished by parents of young children. A child, securely loved and with all they need available to them, will go into a tantrum and scatter their food, plate and all, to the four corners of the room. I expect, maybe from long forgotten experience, a harsh response.  But no, the parent says nothing and, after a time, quietly clears up the mess. She or he knows that this is some chaotic bursting forth of energy, some misstructured assertion of identity. The child is simply saying, ‘I exist! Take note!’ But I am touched by the tenderness of the parents’ response.

Jean Vanier, who died earlier this month, discovered tenderness was a royal road to healing. He lived for 56 years with people who had intellectual disabilities, people who could not express themselves in ways that most people could understand. Jean set out to help them live in conditions that resembled a home but he soon discovered that they, like the child referred to, used their new found security, to let out their pent up frustrations. Jean was confused, at first, and even felt anger rise within him. But he reflected and, like the good parent, he realised that this was their way of saying, ‘thank you, we have arrived, we are accepted and now we can be ourselves’.

Jean went on to develop the lessons he learnt in those early days and he wrote and spoke about them often. Eventually a model came to him and he would use it constantly to announce the good news he had learnt. The model was Jesus washing the feet of his friends. And Jean himself, giant of a man that he was, would get down on his knees and wash the feet of the handicapped people he lived with. People called him ‘an apostle of tenderness’ and so he was and he would extend his message to relations with other Christian communities (denominations, if you like) and other religions.  And his message could build peace even among nations.

Booting up the search engine in my head I look for examples in the world of politics and three examples appear. One was Angela Merkel inviting a million migrants, four years ago, to settle in Germany at the very moment such a welcome was urgently needed. A second example was the rock solid peace negotiated between France and Germany around 1949 after three bitter and devastating wars.  And the third was President Kennedy of the United States, the morning after the failed invasion of Cuba around 1961, saying on TV, ‘I made a mistake.’

Tenderness and compromise are the legacy of our religious traditions but they are often unwelcome attitudes in the tough world we now inhabit.        

26 May 2019               Easter Sunday 6 C

Acts 15:1-2, 22-29       Revelations 21:10-14, 22-23   John 14:23-29