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

 

Zamaswazi

 

ZAMASWAZI

 

ZAMASWAZI

‘It is as easy to deceive ourselves without noticing it as it is hard to deceive others without their noticing it.’ A Jesuit who worked in KwaZulu Natal at the time of heightened tension when Mandela was being released and the Inkatha party felt threatened by the seemingly unstoppable progress of the ANC, quoted these words of De La Fouchefoucauld in his reflections about what happened. People who lived peacefully together and who prayed in the same church, suddenly found themselves the prey of those who demanded they support their side.

Horrific events unfolded. I was particularly touched by the story of Zamaswazi Kunene. She was a little girl aged seven, asleep with her sister Lindiwe and cousin Delisile on a night in February 1988, when a petrol bomb was thrown into the store room next to where they were sleeping. The parents rushed to take them to safety and then tried to dowse the flames which involved going out of the house to fetch water. As they did so they were met by a hail of bullets. Two of the children and their mother died and Zamaswazi was shot in the neck immediately paralysing her. She was taken to Edendale Hospital where the medical staff did what they could and she was even allowed home for a wonderful Christmas that year. But it was a brief respite. When she returned to the hospital, she developed pneumonia and shortly afterwards died. A month later her father hanged himself.

This account of Zamaswazi was accompanied by a photo of the little girl in a hospital bed with the most infectious smile on her face. One is left pondering the mystery. The people who destroyed her family thought they were serving some cause and they deceived themselves into thinking they were doing something good. But no one could look at such killing and destruction without being aware how much the opposite was true. ‘War is always a defeat’, says Pope Francis repeatedly. But people still pursue war with passion and continue to deceive themselves.

On Sunday we shall read the account of the death of Jairos’s daughter, only a little older than Zamaswazi. Jesus raised her from the dead as a sign that all the Zamaswazis of the world are loved by God and destined to enjoy life with him. Time is running out for the perpetrators of evil.                                                   30 June 2024        Sunday 13 B     Wis 1:13…24   2 Cor 8:7…15 Mk 5:21-43

 

 

THE DREAM

 

THE DREAM

‘There is a dream dreaming us’, is a saying of the people of the Kalahari. I take it to mean there is something far greater than we can imagine accompanying us on our journey. ‘I will plant a noble cedar on the high mountain of Israel’, says Ezekiel, ‘and it will sprout branches and bear fruit.’ We are hardly conscious much of the time about what is happening within us and around us. Yet we are part of a drama, a cosmic one!

A priest, who had become the first locally born pastor of a rural mission, was telling us during the week of his experience when he was no longer able to afford the wages his foreign-born predecessor used to regularly pay the workers. They took him to court and gave him a gruelling day trying to answer questions before the magistrate. Having ‘tortured’ him till sunset they nicely came to him and begged for a lift back to the mission! His comment was, ‘nothing they had been saying all day entered into them.’

It was as though they lived their lives in compartments which could be lived separately. They felt no inclination to relate one area of their lives to another. One could push for what one wanted without any consideration of the implications on others. This fragmented morality has implications which always surface later. Our decisions always have an effect on others whether we pay attention or not. I may think it harmless to throw a plastic bag out of a bus window. But somewhere along the line my decision will have an effect.

So much for the negative aspects of our decisions. There are also the positive ones and there are ‘gentle’ parables that speak of the long-term good effects of what we do. ‘A farmer throws seed on the land. Night and day, while they sleep or are awake, the seed sprouts and grows; how, they do not know…’ We have all had experience of being told, ‘something you said, something you did, had a great effect on my life.’ We have no memory of saying or doing anything. But it made an impact, an impact that will last.

We are part of something far greater than the little world we think we inhabit. We may be insignificant but we are part of a dream, a dream of God, God wrestling with us as he did with Jacob, God ‘groaning’ with us (Paul in Romans 8) to build a better world.     

16 June 2024    Sunday 11 B                 Ez 17:22-24                 2 Cor 5:6-10                 Mk 4:26-34

 

OVERWHELMED BY THE TRIBE

 

OVERWHELMED BY THE TRIBE

Between 1885 and 1887, forty-five Christians, 23 Anglican and 22 Catholic, were burnt, beheaded or cut to pieces by Mwanga, the Kabaka of Buganda. Among them, the names of Charles Lwanga, Joseph Mukasa, Andrew Kaggwa, Mathias Mulumba and a boy of 14 called Kizito are among the best known.

There were political and religious reasons. The Germans and the British were competing to gain influence and control. Islam was expanding into the interior and even among the Christians there was competition between the churches. All these could be said about other parts of Africa. What made Uganda special?

The kabaka realised Christianity brought a new outlook to people. It threatened to undermine his absolute power. The cause of Mukasa’ execution was that he objected to the kabaka’s killing of Anglican Bishop Hannington without giving him a hearing. The kabaka was furious at being questioned and had him beheaded.

Charles Lwanga took over from Mukasa as leader of the group preparing for baptism and he tried to protect them from the kabaka’s sexual abuse of them. Knowing the danger they were all in, he requested they be baptised by missionary Fr Lourdel. The king determined to get rid of the Christians altogether and had most of them burnt to death at Namugongo on June 3^rd 1886.

The question arises; where did these young men – one only a boy – find the strength to make a stand? Why were they not ‘overwhelmed by the tribe’ (Nietzsche), that is, the pressure to conform to the traditions of their elders? Where did 14-year-old Kizito find the confidence to shout to his friends as he was led away, ‘Good-bye! We are on our way’?

We know the answer – even if it sounds well-worn. They were not alone. ‘I am with you always’. The early disciples experienced this, as we read in the Acts. And in the persecutions in North Africa in Roman times, Perpetua and Felicity showed the same courage. But that is too easy – to say we know the answer. Where do we find courage today? The news is full of people ‘overwhelmed by the tribe’, that is, keeping their head down and hoping the trouble will pass.

It doesn’t. It has to be faced. If not, it overwhelms us. Deep within us we know our courage lies struggling to assert itself. We are terrified by what it might mean if it does break free of the tight hold we keep on it. But if we allow ourselves to be free, who knows what might happen. We might begin to be fully alive.

Uganda Martyrs    9 June 2024    2 Mac 7:1…14   Rm 8 31-39    Mt 5:1-12