Troubled Times: Can We Be Surprised by Hope Again?

Troubled Times: Can We Be Surprised by Hope Again?

The Most Revd. Dr Thabo Makgoba

Book Launch — Voices of Hope

English Reformed Church, Begijnhof 48, Amsterdam

3rd June 2026

Thank you for your generous welcome to this church, to the university community, and to this city. What a privilege it is to be with you in this beautiful, history-laden space — and to those joining us online from different parts of the world, you are not a distant audience. You are part of this gathering. This evening belongs to all of us.

I am grateful to Professor Jan Jorrit of the School of Theology and Religion, his team and colleagues responsible for today and for my and my family’s sabbaticalp; to the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Professor Gregor, the faculty that is hosting us; and to the Rector, Professor Jeroen Geurts, and University Council for their welcome and for the gift of a three-month sabbatical at this university.  To the Rector of this parish, Revd. Marius and to Prof Dion Foster, dankie ook, Broers! 

And I am grateful to the editors and contributors of this book — thirty voices, from different continents, disciplines, generations and religious traditions — for trusting that hope is still worth speaking about.

I want to say one more thing before I begin. I have spent these last six weeks in Amsterdam, meeting what I call different publics — communities, institutions, individuals who rarely appear in the same sentence, but who together make up the living texture of this city and its questions, thanks Jan Jorrit (JJ). This sabbatical has been a gift of time and encounter, and much of what I want to say tonight has been sharpened by what I have seen and heard here. Amsterdam has been teaching me. I am still learning.

Can we be surprised by hope again?

I want to sit with that question before I try to answer it. Because the word surprised matters. We are not asking tonight whether hope is theoretically possible. We are asking whether it can still arrive uninvited — whether, after everything the world has shown us, we still have the capacity to be ambushed by it. In Sepedi, “go Makala”- startled, frightened, astonished, seized or overtaken and IsiXhosa- “ukumangalizwa”- struck with awe or wonder, or ambushed”.

I want to earn that answer honestly. The people watching this evening from different parts of the world — some of them in places where hope is not a lecture topic but a daily survival decision — deserve more than comfortable reassurance from a church building in Amsterdam. So let me begin not with hope, but with the world as it actually is or as I see it.

We face what I have called a kairos moment for humanity. Kairos in Greek does not mean ordinary time. It means the appointed time — the moment of crisis and opportunity that cannot be postponed. And the crisis I am describing is this: economic inequality is metastasising across the world like a cancer. Over a hundred million people are currently displaced from their homes — the largest forced migration since the Second World War. The Uppsala Conflict Data Program in Sweden recorded 61 active conflicts involving at least one state in 2024, the highest number since statistics were first collected in 1946.1 The climate crisis is bearing down most heavily on the communities that contributed least to causing it. And the political response across much of the world has not been to face this honestly but to find someone to blame.

Across both the economically developed and under-developed world we are watching the rise of what I call the left-behinds: people standing on the margins, watching elites prosper while their own standard of living is eroded. These victims of the current system of global financial governance are responding to their situation by turning towards populist politics, embracing economic chauvinism, xenophobic nationalism, resurgent racism and the stirrings of a new kind of fascism. And in an age-old pattern, the elites — through their dominance of media and public debate — are exploiting the disillusionment of the left-behinds by cultivating division; by diverting people's anger away from those responsible for the inequality by blaming the vulnerable, the poor and the weak – those even less fortunate than themselves – for their plight. Like a cancer, inequality eats away at our social compacts, threatening to devour everything that makes us human.

I say this not as an observer from a distance. I have consoled weeping mothers and sisters in Ukraine and prayed at mass graves while sirens wailed overhead. I have sat with despairing peace mediators freshly returned from South Sudan and attended a memorial service for fellow South Africans killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo during a peacekeeping mission. I have walked the corridors of the United Nations and the rooms of Davos and found, in both places, the same exhaustion: people who know the scale of what is broken and have run out of the language to say so. I have walked with communities that have no sanitation, no voice, no expectation that the powerful will look their way. And I have stood on the floor of the London Stock Exchange and in the corridors of financial power — and found there a kind of moral vacuum, a disconnection between the decisions being made and the lives being shaped by them.

Earlier this week I was in the south-east of Amsterdam, in Bijlmer, where I learned that although Amsterdam is one of the wealthiest cities in one of the wealthiest nations in history, you can still see the same logic at work in its streets and in its policies: that some lives count more than others.

As I have said, we face a kairos moment. It is real. It is now. And into it, tonight, we launch a book called Voices of Hope.

Before we go further, we need to be precise about what kind of hope we are speaking of. Because there is a hope that is merely the absence of despair — thin, nervous, easily shattered — and there is a hope that is something altogether more durable. I want to speak about the second kind.

Last year in Rome, at a symposium on hope jointly hosted by the Vrije Universiteit, the University of the Free State and the ACSA, I drew on the work of the theologian Jürgen Moltmann, whose Theology of Hope, written in 1964, remains one of the most searching theological texts of the twentieth century. The South African scholar Professor Jacobus Vorster argues that Moltmann's framework offers not sentimental hope, but what he calls tangible hope — grounded not in single liberation events but in the ongoing movement of the Spirit of the living God in history.

Moltmann's thesis, as Vorster reads it, is that hope does not lie primarily in historic moments. Not in 1994 in South Africa. Not in any single triumph. The people of Israel had many liberations — the Exodus, the return from Babylon — and hope rooted in those events soon faded. Consistent hope, on this account, is found in the movement of God's reign flowing from the resurrection of Christ — manifesting in signs where good is victorious over evil, peace over enmity, love over hatred. These signs are God continuously grinding out of the hard rocks of evil the visible and touchable signs of goodness.

I find that image extraordinary and I want to dwell on it. The hard rocks of evil. The grinding. The slow, costly, material production of something good out of something terrible. This is not hope as a feeling that arrives when conditions improve. It is hope as a practice — a refusal to be daunted, an intensification of effort precisely in the face of the challenge, a willingness to act as instruments of the moving God even when the large picture is dark.

We are warned, on this reading, against placing all our hope in single episodes or single persons. And this brings me to the South African story — which is often told as a reason for hope in the world — and to what it does and does not prove.

For most of the second half of the twentieth century, it looked as though South Africa was headed for a racial war. We avoided it — through a largely peaceful struggle, through international sanctions, through the exemplary leadership of Nelson Mandela and the last white president, FW de Klerk. Mandela was what I would call a symbol of holiness: a leader set apart, able to hold himself and others accountable to a greater Being, and to draw people together based on a vision for the common good. Our Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by my predecessor but one, Archbishop Tutu, was praised across the world as something genuinely new in the life of nations — amnesty in exchange for truth, healing in the place of retribution.

I prayed with Mandela. I wrote a book on it — Faith and Courage: Praying with Nelson Mandela. I also prayed with FW de Klerk. I spoke at his funeral and was present at his cremation. Whatever history's contested account of his legacy, his final recorded words were these: “I, without qualification, apologise for the pain and the hurt and the indignity and the damage that apartheid has done to black, brown and Indians in South Africa.” He said it was as if he had a conversion — that he realised in his heart of hearts that apartheid was wrong. Even in the most unlikely of people, the grinding of goodness out of hard rock continues.

But I want to be honest about what the South African story does not prove. The Commission is, as Jesus said of himself in Nazareth, a prophet without honour in its own country. Our government has never acted on some of the key recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Victims of gross violations of human rights violations have been sold short. And it was never mandated to deliver economic justice — that is a task in the hands of the government and the private sector, which have both failed to implement redistributive measures, making us the most unequal society in the world. So, while our forebears fought a struggle against colonialism and apartheid, bringing us out of a wilderness and into a non-racial democracy, we have not built the land which that democracy promised us. 

This is why I have been calling for over a decade for what I name the New Struggle — a struggle to eradicate corruption, to regain our moral compass, to bring about economic justice and realise the promises of our Constitution. 

This New Struggle cannot be for a new multiracial middle class to simply inherit the privileges of the old elite. The struggle must be for a new society: more equal, more honest, one in which the wealth that comes from growth is shared equitably among all, and in which equality of opportunity is real rather than rhetorical. And those of us with financial means must be prepared to make sacrifices to redistribute what God has given us for the benefit of the poorest of the poor.

In response to this crisis, which as I have said affects the Global North as well as the South, I am urging the adoption of a theology and ecclesiology of generosity — focusing on the Incarnation as the hermeneutical key to both theology and economy. If God chose the margins of society in which to demonstrate God's presence in our world — if the Divine entered the world as a refugee child in poverty, in a borrowed room — then the church that follows that God must orient itself toward the margins too. Not as a matter of charity, but as one of justice. Not out of occasional generosity but as a demonstration of structural commitment.

And I want to add what I have been saying recently in Geneva and New York: we must address not only material poverty but spiritual poverty. It is the spiritually poor in the developed world — and many among wealthy elites in the Global South — who generate the blindness that ignores the desperate suffering of the people of Gaza, of Sudan, of Ukraine and the sixty-one other places of conflict in the world today. The ecological crisis belongs to this same frame: the communities of the Sahel, of coastal Bangladesh, of the Pacific islands did not cause two centuries of carbon accumulation. They are bearing its first and heaviest costs. This too is a justice question. This too belongs to the New Struggle.

Let me now name three practices — not programmes, not policies, but spiritual and civic disciplines — that I believe are equal to this kairos.

The first is Indaba. This is a isiZulu and isiXhosa concept — a gathered community discerning together, every voice carrying weight, the purpose being not majority decision but shared wisdom. It entered global Anglican life at the 2008 Lambeth Conference as a way through profound disagreement. Its theological root is ancient — it mirrors the silence of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, sitting with what had been heard before it reached its conclusion. In a world designed to hear only the powerful, Indaba insists that the woman excluded from the peace table in South Sudan knows something about peace that the men around it do not. That the un-documented person in Amsterdam knows something about belonging that the policy document does not. Practising Indaba is, in itself, an act of hope.

The second is Courageous Conversations. I have called the church throughout my ministry to conversations it would rather not have — about the gap between what we preach and what we practise, about the young people we are failing, about the inequality we have normalised. These conversations are not performances of moral superiority. They are acts of love toward a community you refuse to give up on. Amos named the exploitation of the merchants of Samaria with a precision that made comfortable religion impossible. Tutu called out apartheid as an evil policy, evil in and of its very nature, but he simultaneously insisted that its perpetrators were redeemable. That combination of unflinching honesty and unmistakable love is the hardest thing in public life. It is also the most transformative.

The third practice I want to highlight is a Theology of Generosity — the ecclesiology I have been developing from the Incarnation outward. If the God we follow entered the world at the margins, then our institutions, our budgets, our policies and our prayers must orient themselves there too. This means challenging the structural causes of inequality, not merely ameliorating their symptoms. It means being prepared — as Pope Francis insists — to reject the absolute autonomy of markets when those markets produce suffering, and to attack the structural causes of inequality. It means the church acting not as a commentator on injustice but as a participant in its dismantling.

Tonight we present thirty voices. Thirty people from different continents, disciplines, generations and religious traditions, asked to speak about hope in troubled times.

The polyphony of this book is itself part of its argument. A single authoritative voice on hope would be a kind of contradiction — because hope that belongs only to the powerful, only to the credentialed, only to those who have not been broken by what the world has done to them, is not hope in any sense that the suffering can use. These thirty voices are, in Vorster's language, signs of the moving God — each one grinding something good out of hard rock, each one a small step taken in hope.

Already the range of these voices tells us something: hope migrates, cross-pollinates, appears where it is not expected — in a government ministry and dialogue global citizenship on peace with justice at VU, in a mosque in Bijlmer and a churchyard in Ukraine, in a stadium in Soweto or soccer stadium watching match in joy and anxiety and a round table of young city-makers who refuse to accept the world as it is.

So, let me return to our question: can we be surprised by hope again?

I want to answer that question now — not with optimism, but with the testimony of what I have seen. I have been in rooms far darker than this one where hope arrived anyway. Not announced. Not argued into existence. Just present — the way Moltmann describes it: the living, moving God grinding goodness out of hard rock. A woman in Ukraine who had lost everything and was somehow not destroyed. A peace mediator who came back the next day. An apartheid president who spoke words of apology into a camera, knowing they would be his final words to the world.  A woman from South Sudan at VU talking about daring to hope and the courage to knock and open doors shut by male comrades. Young people in Bijlmer this week who looked at a broken city and refused to accept that it could not be made whole.

These are not proofs. They are signs. And signs, as Moltmann reminds us, are exactly what hope is made of — not certainty, but the visible and touchable evidence that the moving God has not finished with this world.

As I have said in South Africa, as well as in Faith and Courage- Praying with Mandela, and as I want to say here tonight in Amsterdam: hope is not a nebulous, pie-in-the-sky concept. It is the driving force that motivates our determination to name our problems, to identify solutions and to mobilise people to overcome them. Hope must be what drives us to fulfil the promise of societies based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights.

Small steps taken in hope can become islands of hope. And as those islands come together, we can create landscapes of hope.

That is what this book is. Thirty islands. One landscape, beginning.

Faith sees further. Justice reaches further still.

Welcome to Voices of Hope. May they surprise you.

Thank you.

*  *  *  *  *

 

Archbishop Thabo welcomes Pope Leo's opposition to Middle East war

As Archbishop Thabo Makgoba began a three-month sabbatical in the Netherlands, he issued the following statement of support for the church's witness against the current conflict in the Middle East:

"I want to align myself with the Catholic Church as Pope Leo XIV, supported by American cardinals, courageously challenges the kingdoms of this world with a vision for the Kingdom of our God.

Our South African experience under apartheid, and the armed struggle which was fought against it, challenged the churches of our country to work carefully through the theological thinking which helps Christians decide when it is permissable for the church of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, to support war.

Judged by these standards, the attack which the United States and Israel launched against Iran can in no way be regarded as a just war. And the glorification of war in the name of our faith that is being advanced by the Pentagon directly contradicts the Gospel. We support to growing calls from Christians across the world for an end to this aggression.

SABC News report on the Archbishop's Easter Vigil sermon

 

"We are seeing clear signs of hope in South Africa today" - Archbishop's Easter sermon

 The Most Revd Dr Thabo Makgoba

Archbishop of Cape Town

Easter Vigil 

St George’s Cathedral, Cape Town

April 4th 2026

Ezekiel 36: 22–28, Romans 6: 3–11, Matthew 28: 1–10

Alleluia, Our Lord has Risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Sisters and Brothers in Christ, thank you for being here on this most holy night, when we recall and celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus. Thank you Mr Dean – we really appreciate your leadership here – and the Sub-Dean, the Cathedral staff, all those responsible for the music, as well as to you, members of the congregation who ensure through your sacrificial giving that we have such a beautiful place in which to worship God. A special welcome to those who are visiting – we are privileged to have you join us.

Before I go any further, I ask for your prayers for the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, Archbishop Hosam Naoum, and his people, and for all faithful Christians who defy danger and restrictions to worship in Jerusalem tonight. I was deeply distressed to read last week that Israeli police stopped the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem from celebrating Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Although that restriction has now been lifted, let us remember that the current conflict has prevented Muslims, Jews and Christians from observing Ramadan, Passover and Easter in their usual ways. Many in the faith community are interpreting the Israeli restrictions – and especially those on access to Al Aqsa Mosque on Eid – as punishment for the Muslim and Christian communities whose homes are in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

On a more hopeful note, I was excited last week to celebrate the installation of Archbishop Sarah Mullally of Canterbury in her Cathedral. On your behalf, I have welcomed her warmly, and expressed the hope that even as she ministers to all, her ministry will reflect a deep concern for the environment as well as those on the margins of society. In the days which followed her installation, the Primates of the Anglican Communion held a meeting where we discussed issues such as global conflict, the integrity of the environment and the effects of migration, looking at the underlying causes of these challenges. Leading the closing session of the meeting, my challenge to my fellow leaders of Anglican churches across the world was “What gives you joy?” since we cannot afford to get bogged down in despair at the state of our world.

Turning to our readings, the prophet Ezekiel was speaking into a moment of national despair for the society in which he lived. The people had lost their land, their temple and their political independence. They lived in exile and humiliation. Their institutions had collapsed and their confidence was shattered. Into their gloomy situation, God makes a remarkable promise when he declares, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you”. This anticipates the ministry of Jesus who, in his conversation with Nicodemus in John’s Gospel, makes it clear that no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born through water and the Spirit (John 3:5). 

In a similar way, in a single chapter of Matthew, from which we drew our Gospel reading tonight, we see a narrative shifting from one of despair in the previous chapter to one of hope. Matthew helps us to see that this hope, this new Resurrection life, this overturning of the old order and the ushering in of a new season, is often the work of taking small steps, of new life emerging from unexpected places and the most unlikely of people. 

If our hearts are not attuned to these sometimes quiet notes of grace, we will sadly miss the moments of Resurrection. No matter how hard the times and how bleak the outlook, God never abandons us to the worst of times. With this, no doubt, in his spirit, Matthew begins to find a new vocabulary; silence turns into words of proclamation and the fear that dominated the beginning of his story is transformed into deeds of courage. Here we find transformation, new hope, Resurrection.

And Matthew underlines that change is not immediate. It is accomplished on a journey, and it takes hard, disciplined, dedicated work to achieve. There is no Easter without the courage of those who made the journey to the tomb while it was dark, to go to a place where dangers lurked. As so often in the gospels, it was women who took the lead at the first Easter. In a world where theological articulation was a male domain, where women were not heard, it was women – the women who had stood at the foot of the Cross when the men ran away – who stepped out of their comfort zones and defied social and cultural norms to go to the tomb. It was women who found the courage to go in search of new life, so becoming the first of Jesus’s disciples to proclaim the first Easter.

Today it is when things are dark that we are called upon to summon up the courage and to take to the road to make change happen by being a part of that change long before the new era dawns. There are people in our country and our world who, once victory dawns, take credit for it without ever putting in any work when the night was dark, the road was long, and working for change was costly. But Matthew’s Gospel praises those who work in the dark in dangerous times, who are prepared to abandon their comfort zones and go to the tombs, and there to challenge the culture of death. History and new life emerges from hearts which, like those of the women at the tomb, are filled with courage, overcome life’s restrictions and proclaim confidently that “The Lord has risen.”

Easter should be a time of celebration, of renewal and of hope. But that is a hard sell, given the current state of the world. The Middle East is consumed by war, and those celebrating Easter in Jerusalem and other cities and towns across the region do so under the threat of drones and missiles. Not only that, the conflict threatens to spread, and its effects – especially the restrictions on oil and gas exports – are being experienced across the globe. Escalating petrol and especially diesel prices raise the spectre of rationing, speed restrictions and higher food prices. The war in Ukraine continues, with South Africans unwittingly and tragically dragged into it under false pretences. In Sudan we are seeing a repeat of the genocide of 20 years ago, apparently perpetrated by largely the same actors.

We are navigating a world filled with destruction and fear, not only abroad but at home. In many of our communities, an almost unstoppable culture of violence seems to have taken hold, fuelled by the vulnerability that comes from increasing poverty, unemployment and the plethora of social pathologies that democratic governance has failed to address after three decades. Waking up in the morning, it is almost a surprise not to read about a new corruption scandal involving those who pervert politics for self-serving ends. Whistle-blowers, witnesses and professionals such as lawyers are assassinated in brazen attempts to escape the consequences of taking bribes from tenderpreneurs. In Cape Town, teenagers are killed, victims of gang violence, with frightening regularity and domestic violence continues to stalk households. 

Perhaps worst of all, the confusing spectacle of claim and counter-claim we are seeing before Justice Madlanga and his fellow commissioners leaves the average South African unable to judge which police general is honest and who is controlled by a crime syndicate. Although we must wait for the Commission to sort the truth from the lies, it is already clear that the public cannot rely on the police service’s leadership, considered as a whole, to end the violence and criminality which has percolated to the top of society. At the same time we need to celebrate those officers in police stations across the country who do serve the public with dedication and empathy.

An evil which is not getting enough attention is how online gambling, easily accessible to anyone with a smartphone, is ruining people’s lives. In a recent discussion paper on online and interactive gambling, the National Treasury reported that annual betting revenue in South Africa has sky-rocketed by 390 percent in the past five years – from around R10.6 billion to R52 billion, with online betting estimated to generate more than R44 billion a year.

At a recent meeting, Anglican bishops from across Southern Africa gave accounts ranging from pensioners in South Africa gambling away their SASSA grants to students squandering financial aid for their studies. We heard of graduates who can’t find work borrowing money to gamble with in the hope of making a living, and of young people committing suicide in despair as a result of losing everything. As Dr Imraan Buccus has said, gambling has become “a form of economic self-medication, a desperate search for luck in a society that offers no opportunity.” 

The crisis that harmful gambling represents for society must be addressed urgently across government and civil society. We need to treat gambling the way we dealt with smoking and alcohol, and consider banning – or at least imposing strict restrictions on – gambling advertising. 

But the story of Easter tells us that we need not despair. On Good Friday, we heard a story of events 2,000 years ago that were not so different from what we see today. The first Easter took place when Palestine was oppressed by the brutal machinery of the Roman Empire. It was preceded by the harsh reality of pain, destruction, the demise of dignity, a political trial that perverted justice, the nailing of a man to a cross and the lives of his followers torn apart by cruelty. 

Just as the story of resurrection brought hope to the followers of Jesus, so we are seeing clear signs of hope in South Africa today. Matric pass rates are improving. The media continues to play a crucial role in exposing bad governance. Our Finance Minister tells us that levels of government debt are stabilising. Load shedding is largely something of the past, and reforms in power generation and transport networks are giving hope for better economic growth and therefore job creation. Business leaders with strong liberation movement credentials tell me they are cautiously optimistic about the prospects for investment in new economic activity. There is growing recognition that blindly enforcing the prescriptions of ideologues, whether on the left or the right, will not help our country to grow. Instead we are seeing the tens of thousands of highly-qualified graduates emerging from our universities looking for more pragmatic solutions to our problems. 

Thirty years ago, Desmond Tutu used to say that our country’s festering wounds needed to be opened, cleaned and cauterised before we would see healing. Today I believe the Madlanga Commission can perform that role – as long as its report is followed by strong and courageous action to root out the rot in our justice system. The challenges posed by its report will present President Cyril Ramaphosa with the most consequential decisions of his presidency. Fortunately he has on his side the unprecedented ferment in political parties, underpinned by our tradition of vigorous debate and civic engagement, which has the potential to sideline ageing leaders with entrenched positions and to create innovative new alliances.

Make no mistake, friends, the challenges we face are enormous, but turning around the ship of state in South Africa is more like altering the course of a supertanker than that of a speedboat – it will take time.

So this Easter, let us celebrate the signs of progress and our potential to do better as a nation. Prophetic faith insists that celebration itself can be an ethical act – a refusal to let cynicism have the final word. To rejoice responsibly is to affirm that goodness, beauty, and human dignity are not illusions but signs of God’s intention for the world.

As we engage our future, our season of new life, we keep in our hearts the reminder that resonates through Matthew’s Gospel – Jesus’ repeated assurance, “Be not afraid!” As we are told in Ezekiel, if we follow God’s statutes and observe God’s ordinances, “then you  shall be my people, and I will be your God.” (Ezekiel 36: 27-28) 

With a confused and often chaotic world around us, with brokenness in our hearts, and amidst communities that are deeply fractured, Easter consoles us, challenges us: “Be not afraid!” and so gives us hope for all that lies ahead. 

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen indeed! 

* * * * *

“Men of violence have nailed diplomacy into a coffin” – Archbishop Thabo on the Middle East war

Archbishop Thabo Makgoba addressed the war in the Middle East at the beginning of a service for the Lay Ministers of the Diocese of Cape Town on March 1:

Sisters and brothers in Christ, you will know by now that the United States and Israel have launched a war against Iran, attacking many sites across the country and killing hundreds of people, including Iran's Supreme Leader. And a prosecutor in Minab in southern Iraq has told media that a girls' primary school in the town of Minab was hit, killing more than 100 people.
    At this time, we can do no better than to read the response to the war by the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, Archbishop Hosam Naoum, who is a close friend of our church, having studied at the College of the Transfiguration in Makhanda.
     Archbishop Naoum sent the following pastoral letter to the Anglican Communion yesterday:

“Dear Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

“As you are all now painfully aware, in the early hours of this morning, February 28th, a coordinated and massive military assault was launched by the United States and Israel against numerous cities and installations within Iran.

“This operation, described by the leaders of the two nations as a 'pre-emptive' attack, has brought fire and destruction to the heart of Tehran, Isfahan, and beyond, striking at the very centers of governance and civilian life. Moreover, just prior to these events, Israel had also “pre-emptively” attacked various targets in southern Lebanon, where the number of casualties has yet to be determined. 

“Tragically, the cycle of violence has expanded with terrifying speed. In the hours following, Iran launched a widespread reprisal, with missiles and drones targeting Israel and U.S. military assets across the Gulf—striking installations in Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kurdistan-Iraq, Jordan, and Qatar. Sirens also blared across the Holy Land, warning of incoming missiles from Iran. Suddenly, our people from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf find themselves once again huddled in shelters, fearing for their lives as the shadow of a total regional war looms over us.

“These developments strike at the very soul of our [Anglican] Province of Jerusalem & the Middle East. Every single nation now engaged in this combat, and those bearing the brunt of the retaliatory strikes, resides within our ecclesiastical boundaries. 

"Our brothers and sisters in the Diocese of Iran are currently enduring the terror of aerial bombardment; our members in the Diocese of Cyprus & the Gulf are witnessing the arrival of war at their doorsteps; and our faithful in the Diocese of Jerusalem—extending across Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria—face an unprecedented threat of military escalation.

“In the face of such overwhelming force, we recall the words of our Lord Jesus Christ: 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God' (Matt 5:9). Today, that calling feels heavier than ever before. When the 'spirit of fear' threatens to consume our hearts, we must anchor ourselves in the 'spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind' (2 Tim 1:7).

“First, I call upon the global Church to join us in urgent, unceasing prayer. We implore God to protect the innocent—the mothers, the children, and the elderly—who are caught in the crossfire of this 'Operation Epic Fury' and the subsequent 'crushing responses.' We pray specifically for a 'sound mind' for the leaders of the United States, Israel, and Iran, that they might recognize the futility of this bloodshed and turn back from the precipice of a global catastrophe.

“Second, we must offer each other the sanctuary of Christian love. I therefore urge our clergy and laity to be beacons of comfort. In a time of 'regime change' rhetoric and military ultimatums, let our message be the unchanging promise of Christ’s peace: to build each other up (1 Cor 8:1), for our hope is not in the strength of armadas or missile shields, but in the Prince of Peace.

“Finally, we must remain 'Bridge Builders.' Even as diplomatic windows seem to slam shut, the Church must keep the doors of reconciliation open. We refuse to see our neighbors as enemies, whether they be in Tehran, Tel Aviv, or the military bases of the Gulf. I extend an urgent invitation to the wider Anglican Communion and all people of goodwill: Intercede for us now. The hour is late, and the danger is great. We remain “battered and bruised, but not defeated.” May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

“In Christ,
The Most Reverend Dr Hosam E. Naoum
Primate and President Bishop
The Province of Jerusalem & the Middle East”

For our part in South Africa, it is abundantly clear that the men of violence have nailed diplomacy into a coffin and  decided that anyone can  kill and invade anyone. In the light of this, we have to call for a de-escalation of the conflict, but just as importantly, we must ask, what does it mean in practical terms to pursue Jesus's exhortation, “Blessed are the peace makers”. What does a sustainable peace mean, because anything short of this should be repudiated?

Now let us pray:

Loving God, Prince of Peace, we pray today for our sisters and brothers across the Middle East;
Look with mercy upon those who fear the terror of bombs from the sky,
Protect the innocent caught in the crossfire,
Be with those fleeing from their homes in a desperate search for places of safety;
Comfort those who mourn,
Defeat the schemes of men of violence; and
Strengthen the hands of those who even now work for peace.

Lord God,
    Bless the people of the Middle East;
    Protect their vulnerable children;
    Transform their divided leaders;
    Heal their wounded communities,
    Restore their human dignity,
    and give them lasting peace.
    Amen.

A Homily for Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday Eucharist 

St George’s Cathedral, Cape Town

18th February 2026

Readings: Isaiah 58:1-12, Psalm 51:1-17, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

May I speak in the name of God, who is Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. Amen.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, welcome to this Ash Wednesday service. and to the beginning of our journey through Lent and Passiontide to the Glorious celebration of Easter. Lent is a time of preparation for that great feast, a time of penitence, of seeking humility, of finding and expressing our gratitude for God’s love for us and of facing our own mortality. It is, to sum up, a season in which we are called to embark on an earnest search for God, stripping away all in our lives which distracts us from God, and during which by the grace of God we can find hope and joy in our lives and those of our communities.

Our readings today – from David’s penitential psalm, to Isaiah’s classic ode to compassion and liberation, to Matthew’s prescription to the kind of prayer that comes from the heart and not merely from the lips – can help us to discover the true meaning and the potential impact of Lent on our lives in a time of moral uncertainty and confusion.

It is hard to overstate the depth of the sin that David was atoning for when he wrote Psalm 51, desperately appealing “Have mercy on me, O God,” “wash me thoroughly from my guilt,” and “do not take your holy spirit from me.” David was actually seeking forgiveness for what we describe today as gender-based violence – violence which he perpetrated on Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and which he then tried to cover up by orchestrating the death of Uriah.

In the context of the gender-based violence we experience in South Africa today, it needs to be emphasised that confession and contrition must include acceptance of the verdict of the judicial system. But accepting that, having confessed and shown repentance for our sins. what message does the passage from Isaiah have for us during Lent? Simply this: that the fast that is pleasing to God is one in which what others see reflects what is actually in our hearts. Our fast must be one in which we truly humble ourselves, in which metaphorically speaking, we wear sackcloth and ashes, to use the image which reflects how people showed repentance in Old Testament times. 

Such a fast promises us healing and restoration. But it also demands of us that we take the action so beautifully described in verses 6 and 7, and which played such an important role in the church struggle against apartheid: that we loose the chains of injustice, liberate the oppressed and provide food and housing for the poor. And underlining the importance of the outward observance of fasting reflecting a genuine inward faith, our reading from Matthew continues the emphasis on keeping a fast which reflects humility and integrity.

In a few moments we will have the sign of the Cross traced on our foreheads with ash. Ash has been  a symbol through the ages of our sad human reality, of our burnt-out lives, of our social realities, of the fires which rage and the shacks which burn in our informal settlements. In recent years, ash has represented, whether in Spain or Australia or the East Coast of the USA, the devastating fires that have caused such destruction as climate change and environmental squandering have made many parts of the world huge tinderboxes, not to speak of the ashes and rubble in Gaza, which represent the wholesale displacement of people.

Ash is indeed a symbol of fragility, vulnerability, poor choices and sin. That is true. But if it was the only truth, it would condemn us to a dark future. However, there is more to the ash you will receive today, because it is signed, not randomly, not as a smudge, but as a Cross, and that changes everything. The Cross reminds us that the ashes of our lives will be redeemed. As in nature, so too with us; scorched earth often yields new life, eco-systems re-activated and we rejoice in something better, more beautiful and bolder. 

Matthew understands that this hope, this renewal, our new humanity, is to be anchored in relationships. Thus he records Jesus reminding us of three traditional practices that we need to emulate in Lent if we are going to be open to transformation. Jesus reminds us firstly of the call to fast, which is all about our relationship with ourselves. Jesus then asks us to pray, which is about our relationship with God. Finally, Jesus challenges us to a generous giving of alms, which speaks to our relationship with others.

Christian fasting goes much deeper than the current fashionable practice of fasting linked to egotism and good health. It  reminds us that we are not sustained by bread alone, and speaks to the re-ordering of our desires. It exposes the subtle ways we attempt to assert an independence from God, and it creates space; space to listen, space to notice the hungry and those on the margins of society, space to rediscover and celebrate our dependence on God.

In his emphasis on prayer, Matthew calls on us to use it to help heal the wounds which cannot be seen. Wounds of abandonment, exclusion, racism, and patriarchy, all fester below the surface, in many people. In a nation that carries the residual trauma of apartheid, a nation that still experiences the very real trauma of violence – and especially the scourge of the abuse of women and children – prayer can never just be a private devotion. At its heart, prayer is fundamentally about transformation.

Finally, Jesus talks of alms-giving. In Biblical times, the giving of alms was more than making voluntary donations; it was a call to share justly. St. Augustine says that “Charity is no substitute for justice withheld”. Similarly, Madiba used to say that “Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity, it is an act of justice.” We dare not forget that we live in a country marked by deep inequalities, by relentless hunger and thus a large part of our response must be responding to the challenge of those who have fasting forced on them and for whom Lent is a year-round hell. Some part of our fasting must speak into that reality, into advocacy for food security and a society where no one goes to bed hungry. In a country where informal settlements stand next to wealthy suburbs, where youth unemployment is at its highest, the giving of alms is a moral response to a shared humanity and Lent an opportunity to align our actions with our values.

Finally, listen to this insightful saying by one of the Desert Fathers: “We are dust, yes, but dust breathed upon by God.” Therefore we journey into this Lententide, not with the shadow of our ashes haunting us, but with indefinable hope. Go into Lent boldly filled with hope!

Amen.

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