Address to the Anglican Women’s Fellowship 60th Anniversary Celebrations

 Anglican Women’s Fellowship

29th Provincial Council Meeting &

60th Anniversary Celebrations

The Most Revd Dr Thabo Makgoba

Archbishop and Metropolitan

Kay Barron Address

Diocese of George

29th October 2026

I greet you warmly in the name of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ!

And congratulations on celebrating the 60^th anniversary of your institution by Archbishop Robert Selby Taylor in 1966! In the past six decades, you have become a stellar witness in our Province and to society to the love and care of our Lord, and we thank God for your witness and ministry. And we are very grateful to you, Pam Mntonintshi, for your leadership of the AWF over two terms.

Thank you very much for inviting me to join you at such a significant celebration, and a warm welcome to your visitors and guests here today. It is very good to be with you all.

I have told you this before, but it is worth repeating: for me, the AWF represents the strength of my younger siblings, my sisters in the faith. The story of your growth and your hope in God over the past 60 year is the story of God, in Jesus Christ in the power of Holy Spirit, transforming our societies. It is also the story of God empowering you to work to end their exclusion from the roles they ought to be playing in church and society across the whole of southern Africa.

And as I have also said you before, the way you have modelled the role women ought to and can play in church and society inspires us, as does the powerful practical role you have played – whether supporting theological education or feeding the poor; promoting Safe Church or advocating for the care of creation; or any of the other ministries you have performed in your roles as both Martha and Mary.

When I think of the AWF, and contemplate the role of women in the church, I can't help reflecting on the women who went to the tomb at the first Easter. We read in the Gospels firstly that, in an environment of persecution and fear, it was women – not men – who had the courage to go to the tomb. Then, according to Luke (Luke 24:11), when the women returned and told the male disciples that the tomb was empty, the men did not believe them, thinking they were talking nonsense! How many times have you been told by a man that you are talking nonsense?! In New Testament times, the testimony of women was usually not seen as credible, but that still happens today. Women were, and too often still are, marginalised and your voices are dismissed as being of no account, your contributions ignored, robbing us of gifts that go unexplored. For me, the AWF plays an important part in countering that narrative.

In this as in so many other areas of our communal lives, when we exclude others – whether based on gender, sexuality, age, nationality, education or physical disability – we narrow our world, we limit our empathy, we shrink our hearts, impoverish our imaginations and deprive ourselves of creative challenges, rendering each of us less than a fully human person.

The women on that Easter morning were drawn to the tomb by a deep and costly love to do what that love called them to do. They went despite enormous adversity, facing a detachment of soldiers guarding the tomb and a heavy stone. Yet despite these obstacles, they followed the instincts of love. They found that a way opened for them to follow through on what love challenged them to do.

Today, in Southern Africa, when you as members of the AWF step up to give witness in our communities, you are displaying the same courage, the courage to step out into the darkness, to follow love and to give witness to its public implications even as we hold it in our hearts.

Each of us has an important role to play in the moral drama of our context and the world around us. Each of us can play a bigger role in shaping the course of our life, our family’s life, our community’s life and our country’s life. I often think of the statue of Jesus without arms at the Community of Sant'Egidio, a lay order in Rome. When you ask why he has no arms, you are told, because you, the followers of Christ, are his arms in the world today; that God and Christ work through you.

When I read your President's report in the latest issue of Contact Magazine, I am encouraged by what you are already doing: sharing food, visiting prisons, recognising the importance of of creating opportunities for the next generation, celebrating good father figures, fighting to end Gender-Based Violence and promoting gender equality. I also endorse your concern for the challenges presented by high unemployment rates and the scapegoating of migrants, and urge you – as I have urged dioceses – to seek ways of harnessing both the unemployed and migrants in partnerships to create jobs and income.

Allow me also to raise other issues identified by the Province recently. One is the question of the provision we make in the church for people living with disabilities. Last month, Provincial Synod called upon organisations within the church to appoint Disability Champions to advocate for people living with disabilities. In one of the most obvious examples, we need to ensure that anyone in a wheelchair has easy access to our church sanctuaries and to be able to receive the Eucharist easily.

Another concern we raised was that the elderly should not be put under undue pressure to contribute financially to parishes, recognising that it is unfair to ask especially the housebound and the frail – who can no longer fully participate in the life of the Church – to help fund that life if they cannot afford to do so.

A matter which the Synod of Bishops first raised earlier this year is the evil of online gambling and its pernicious effect on the lives of many. Gambling today is easily accessible to anyone with a smartphone. South Africa's National Treasury says 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, and online betting is estimated to generate more than R44 billion a year.

This phenomenon is ruining people’s lives. Bishops from across the Province are telling us how pensioners in South Africa are gambling away their SASSA grants and students are squandering financial aid for their studies. Graduates who can’t find work are borrowing money to gamble with in the hope of making a living. There are even young people committing suicide in despair as a result of losing the little money they have.

As societies, we need to treat gambling the way we deal with smoking and alcohol, and imposing strict restrictions on gambling advertising. But we can do something about it in the church. Provincial Synod is urging us all to promote financial literacy, responsible stewardship, entrepreneurship and sustainable economic opportunities as alternatives to the false promise of quick financial gain through gambling. We are also asking parishes and dioceses to alert people to its dangers in Christian education classes, in youth and family ministry, in sermons, and to provide support for those struggling with addiction, including referring them for counselling.

Let me end with an appeal to you to vote in South Africa's municipal elections next week, and to encourage others to do so. The Church will not tell you whom to vote for. Instead, we urge you to vote with a conscience formed by the Gospel. Because it is these elections, and not national or provincial elections, which will decide whether our communities get proper taps and water from the taps that you can actually drink; it is these elections which will decide whether we get proper toilets, proper sewage and drainage systems; and it is these elections which will decide whether we get decent roads, roads without potholes.

I have been encouraging Anglicans to put three questions to every election candidate. Those are: How will you fix water and sanitation in our poorest wards? How will you keep every resident safe, citizen and foreign national alike? And how, and when, will you report back to us?

Before I finish, let me return to a matter that is critical to the way in which we commend the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour to the world. Thank you for encouraging women to come forward in your parishes and dioceses to be considered for ordination. Please continue to nurture and promote young women of potential for the ordained ministry. And also encourage women to accept nomination to episcopal office; during the 18 years of my archiepiscopacy, I am proud to have consecrated four woman bishops, but we have a long way to go.

God bless you, God bless your diocesan Fellowships, and God bless the AWF on your 60^th anniversary. God loves you, and so do I. Amen.

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Sermon preached at a Family Day of the Diocese of Matlosane

 The Most Revd Dr Thabo Makgoba

Archbishop and Metropolitan

Diocesan Family Day

Diocese of Matlosane

25^th October 2026

 

Readings: Deuteronomy 34:1 -12; Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17; 1 Thess 2: 1-8; Matthew 22: 34-46

May I speak in the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Dear sisters and brothers in Christ, the Dean of the Province, Bishop Stephen, members of Chapter, recipients of the Order of Simon of Cyrene, distinguished guests, Diocesan family – dear people of God, it is a great honour and joy to celebrate this day with you today.

Thank you, Bishop Stephen and your team, for inviting me to the Diocese this weekend, and to this service as we celebrate together who we are as a family. Thank you for your warm welcome to us. Let me in turn extend a very warm and special welcome to the guests who have joined us today, including all who have come from beyond the borders of the Diocese.

A big thank you to the team responsible for preparing the service and a brilliant service booklet. I also want to give thanks for your forebears, the unsung heroes and heroines who through the years have kept the fires burning in this part of God's vineyard, from the days when you were part of the Diocese of Johannesburg to that welcome day when you came into your own as an independent Diocese able to set your own priorities according to your own needs here in North-West.

It is always a joyous occasion when the people of God in our dioceses meet and worship together as a family. And today, this being my last service in this Diocese in my capacity as your Archbishop, it is a particular joy to share in this momentous day in which we give thanks to God for His gracious care.

As we gather in the presence of God today, we also attest to the special gift of the Holy Spirit, which God, out of His goodness, graciously gives to us. In the first reading in Deuteronomy (34: 1 -12), we are presented with Moses’ last act of obedience as he goes up to the rocky heights of Mount Nebo to the top of Pisgah. By this time, he was very old, most of his generation had passed away and his mission – the mission to bring his people to within sight of the Promised Land – was accomplished.

Before his death, his prayer that he would be able to gaze on the Promised Land, although God decreed that he would never enter it, was granted. The view he witnessed describes what you can see on a clear day, from snow-capped Hermon, Galilee, the Mount of Olives, Bethlehem, to the Dead Sea and beyond.

Sisters and brothers, to be the servant of God is to know that we must always step aside and take our place in the background, precisely in order that the glory might be given to God. Moses died at an old age with the highest accolade which could be bestowed upon an individual of outstanding character and practical ability. By any standard, Moses had led an unusually rich, productive and beneficial life. He was in many respects a model servant. And yet it was not his role to enjoy crossing over into the land of Canaan.

Turning to the Gospel account we heard today (Matthew 22: 34-46), we find Jesus confronted by the Pharisees about which the greatest commandment was in God's law. The question at issue was one that was keenly debated among the religious hierarchy at the time, but we can regard the Pharisees' questioning of Jesus here as not so much an attempt to engage him in good faith discussion as an attempt to test him with hostile intent. In the language of today, they were hoping for a “gotcha!” moment in which they could trap him into saying something they could use against him. But Jesus's response showed us what is at the heart of the Old Testament; that love flows from a commitment of the will, something that can be commanded as a duty, and involves loving God first and then also neighbour.

Jesus then turns the tables on the Pharisees and challenges them as to what their views of the Messiah really are: “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” (v.41). According to Matthew, they replied that the Messiah is the Son of David. But Jesus then challenges them to explain how David could call the Messiah “Lord” if the Messiah was, as usually thought of at the time, going to be just a king, only a political leader. Jesus makes clear that the Pharisees' concept of the Messiah was not a sufficient designation of Him. He is in some sense Lord as well. The Pharisees were unable to challenge that, and it became clear to them that they could not defeat Jesus in the field of argument. When they next appear, it will be with force.

What can we learn from the Deuteronomy and Gospel passages we heard today? What do we imagine Jesus to be in our lives? What is the one thing that each of us can take back to our parishes, our communities, our families and into the Diocese?

When South Africa emerged from apartheid and colonialism just over three decades ago, we hoped that we were not only seeing our promised land, the new South Africa, but that we would actually enter it. Although some of us have seen aspects of a promised land, we still have to ask: do we, in public as well as in our private lives, reflect Jesus's commandment to love our neighbours as ourselves?

When the leaders of a major city fail to tell their people that they have run out of chlorine, so the water is contaminated to the extent that more than 400 people, mostly children, are suffering from gastro-intestinal illness, can we say that those leaders love their neighbours as themselves? When the leaders of another major city cannot maintain a consistent water supply to all communities, or when leaders of towns enable greedy owners of water tankers to get rich as a consequence of a failure to deliver water to taps, can we say that those leaders love their neighbours as themselves? When those responsible for supplying our hospitals cannot keep pharmacies properly stocked with medication, can we say that those leaders love their neighbours as themselves? When we see self-serving elites lining their own pockets through corruption and steering contracts to their families' companies, can can we say that they love their neighbours as themselves? When we see violent mobs looting the shops of their migrant neighbours, can we say that they love their neighbours as themselves?

Again and again, when we look at our corporate life as a nation and as communities today, the answer must be “No!” But in 10 days' time, all adult voters will have the chance to do something about this, when we go to the polls for municipal elections.

The great thing about municipal elections is that they enable us to take action in the very place where, as they say, the rubber hits the road; where we get to decide who can be trusted to provide taps, to ensure clean, drinkable water flows from them, to give us toilets and efficient sewage and drainage systems, and to ensure that the rubbish is collected, that local clinics are properly staffed and stocked; or that the roads aren't filled with potholes.

So I urge you with all the energy I can muster, please go and vote. As the church, we won't tell you whom to vote for, just make sure you vote. And to encourage and guide you, let me draw on the scriptures.

Firstly, from Jeremiah: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” (Jeremiah 29:7) These words encourage us not only to pray for the welfare of our town or village, but also to do something about it. Jeremiah's audience was being encouraged to act at a time when the city and its politics were far from perfect. Despite this, they were being told: just because your situation is not perfect does not mean that you can set aside your responsibility to do something to make it better than it is now.

Next, Genesis 41 records how Joseph helped Israel prepare for famine. He studied the problem. He planned. He managed resources. Joseph taught us that competent governance matters. So when we enter that voting booth on November the 4th, let us also take Joseph with us. However much we may have been seduced by posters, however strong our emotional attachment to particular parties may be, the issue we face is not whether we like a candidate or their party. The fundamental question that Joseph places before us is: Are they capable of governing?

I also want us to take Moses into the voting booth with us—Moses, whom Jethro advises in Exodus 18 on the art of leadership. Jethro gives Moses a remarkable and practical criterion for choosing those who will govern: they must be trustworthy and honest people who hate dishonest gain. That is the real test we face at this election, at this time as we ponder the lessons of the Madlanga Commission.

Corruption is not merely poor administration. Corruption is a moral issue because fundamentally, it is theft from the poor. Money stolen or diverted to favoured projects is money taken from schools and clinics, from housing, water, roads, and social services. Anyone who excuses or tries to explain away corruption is not fit to govern. So when we choose people we want to trust with leadership, we must ask: “Can they be trusted with that which belongs to everybody?” 

Then there is Samuel, who when he is looking for a leader, sees Jesse's handsome son Eliab and thinks, “Surely this is the Lord’s anointed.” But God responds: “Do not look on his appearance... because the Lord looks on the heart.” Elections and campaigns are filled with appearances: posters, slogans, speeches, social media, promises, and political theatre. But faith asks us to look a little deeper. Our faith challenges us to ask: What kind of character lies behind this candidate's campaign? Character matters.

Another person we need to take into the voting booth with us is Nathan. You will remember that Nathan was not afraid to confront King David when David has done wrong. No matter King David's power, Nathan does not hesitate to call him out. This is one of the Bible’s great statements about accountability. Rulers are not above accountability. Nor are they above morality. And candidates for municipal councils are not above accountability, nor are they above morality. Nobody is. We should never become so loyal to political formations or individual leaders that they can no longer recognise wrongdoing.

Finally there is perhaps the figure who is most important for us to take into the polling booth: Amos. The fundamental question of Amos, repeated throughout his prophetic ministry, is: What is happening to the poor? Recall that it is Amos who says: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24). The plight of the vulnerable should have a profound influence on our discernment when considering politics. What do the policies being proposed mean for the poor, for the unemployed, for young people, for children, for elderly people, for women vulnerable to violence, for people with disabilities, for migrants and refugees, and for communities without adequate services?

Today, as we celebrate as the people of Matlosane, I challenge you, and I challenge all lay and ordained in this part of our Province, to open your minds and your hearts to the invitation extended by God. It is in times like these in your lives and in the lives of our communities and our country that our destiny is shaped. Destiny is a matter of choice, not of chance, and so I appeal to you, as you embrace Jesus's call to be his disciples, to allow him to shape you and form you in accordance with His will for your lives.

As I conclude, I want to thank all you for your faithfulness to God and the Church. Also for giving us an opportunity to lead with you in Episcopal ministry. In 1 Thessalonians (2:8-9) Paul says: “We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well because you had become so dear to us…”. These words remain true even today.

To those who minister, thank you for your dedicated work. You are among the most under-appreciated vocation in our society. Thank you for what you do to help God’s people live in harmony with one another, to guide them away from simply fulfilling selfish earthly ambitions.

May you all be open to the moulding of God who calls you and holds you in his palms like clay, working to perfect you as you seek to follow Christ's example in the world.

Congratulations on your successful Diocesan Family Weekend, and may God bless you, your family, this Diocese, South Africa and the world.

God loves you and so do I.

Amen

* * * * *

Ad Laos - To the People of God – October 2026

The text of Archbishop Thabo's October Ad Laos, published in the Cape Town diocesan newsletter, Good Hope:

 Dear People of God

Coming from meetings of the Synod of Bishops, Provincial Synod and Christian Aid, and then helping to host the Archbishop of Canterbury at the 150th anniversary of the Mothers' Union in Durban, it was good to join the clergy of the Diocese at the recent Clergy Conference in Saldanha Bay. 

These conferences are annual events for clergy formation, arranged by the Dean of Studies and led by our Canons on Chapter. We met to recoup, reflect and learn together. I was only able to join for day one and part of day two, but I felt a great bond, and a great eagerness on the part of clergy to learn from one another.

Since it was my last Clergy Conference, I shared on the topic of “Faith and Courage”, highlighting various aspects of my ministry where faith, nurtured on my knees, demanded that I show the courage to stand up, speak out or act against injustice. I shared too how it works the other way round, in that resolving to act with courage sometimes nurtured my faith, that, having acted, I was thrust back to prayer and finding God in scripture. You will find my address on my blog, together with addresses I gave at other events I mention in this letter, at: https://archbishop.anglicanchurchsa.org/

In a few days' time, our local government elections take place – elections which will decide who gets proper taps, decent toilets and good roads. The Church encourages everyone in our congregations to vote, but it doesn't tell you whom to vote for. 

As I told Clergy Conference:

“The Church... tells you to vote with a conscience formed by the Gospel. And it asks you to put three questions to every candidate. How will you fix water and sanitation in our poorest wards? How will you keep every resident safe, citizen and foreign national alike? And how, and when, will you report back to us?”
         
The purpose of democracy is for the interests of everyone in society to have a say in how they are governed, in how their tax money is spend, and in what public services they need. Unless an election result reflects the actual views and preferences of voters, there is no purpose in an election. So I urge you all to support the important work of election observers who work to ensure that happens. I chair the Electoral Code of Conduct Observer Commission, a body made up of religious and civil society leaders, which works to achieve a climate of tolerance, free political campaigning and open public debate. 

It is easy to become disillusioned with elections when we see the many setbacks our country has had, the poor service delivery and the corruption. I know the road seems long, but let us protect our hard-earned democracy and go out and vote. You only need to look at a place like Zambia, whose democracy and Christian character is now being tested, to see what can happen when we are not vigilant. There, opposition leaders including Bishop Trevor Mwamba, a retired Anglican bishop, have been locked up, leading us to join those calling for their democratic rights to be respected and for them to be charged or released.

Let me end by again congratulating Ma Leah Tutu, who turned 93 on October 14. John Allen in my office shares the same birthday, so please join me in also saying a happy birthday to John and many thanks for your support over these years.

I commend the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation on their moving peace lecture by Nobel Peace laureate Jody Williams, delivered to mark Archbishop Emeritus Desmond's 95th birthday.  We also applaud Judge Navi Pillay for winning this year's Nobel Peace Prize – we are grateful to God for her and her work of peace-making, for which we should also be ambassadors.  

God bless.

†† Thabo Cape Town 

An Address to young Brazilians

An address to a group from the Brazilian organisation, Legado, which seeks to equip next-generation business leaders globally to navigate 21st-century socio-economic complexities, corporate civic responsibility, and wealth stewardship: 

Engaging the LEGADO Delegation

Remarks by Archbishop Thabo Makgoba

October 15th 2026

You come to us as heirs, and the word that brings you here is legacy. I want to suggest that legacy is not only something we inherit. It is something we build through our own continuing efforts, and it is something we owe to our community and our world. What has been placed in our hands is held in trust for others, and the measure of a legacy is not what we receive but what we hand on.

So let me begin not with economics but with Ubuntu. You speak of a Human Dignity Economy, and that is language which we can identify with immediately. But dignity is not one a tangible thing, one which sits alongside urban development and transition minerals. Whether human dignity is respected in the production of goods and services is the test of every economy. A person is a person through other persons. So too is a company, and so too is a family fortune. No wealth stands alone; it was made through the labour, the land and the lives of others.

Faith and Courage for the New Struggle - Address to Cape Town clergy

An address to a Clergy Conference of the Diocese of Cape Town:    

Faith and Courage for the New Struggle

The Most Revd Dr Thabo Makgoba

Archbishop of Cape Town

 

Friends, thank you for the invitation, and thank you for being here.

Some years ago I wrote a small book called Faith and Courage: Praying with Nelson Mandela. This morning I want to return to its question. What kind of courage does our country need now, and where does that courage come from?

This will be a conversation, not a lecture. I will ask you questions along the way. And I will leave you with things to do, not only things to think.

Let me begin where courage begins: on our knees.

Walking Together on the Road - The Church in Times of Division

Archbishop is Chair of the Board of Trustees of Christian Aid. This address was delivered at a recent meeting in the UK. 

 Walking Together on the Road

The Church in Times of Division

Address to Christian Aid supporting churches

Friends, sisters and brothers in Christ, thank you. It is a great joy to be with you, and I feel privileged to be among you as you gather representing the churches which have supported this work for eighty years.

That's an incredible achievement, and I make bold to speak on behalf of all of those in the Global South who have benefitted from your love and caring for so many decades: Thank you! In my own mother tongue, Re a leboga! Or in two of the other languages of the continent from which I come, Asante sana! Ẹ ṣé!

You have spent the morning with two difficult subjects: the search for a just peace in the Holy Land, and the rise of Christian nationalism. We saw the pernicious effects of Christian nationalism in South Africa, where the assertion that Afrikaner identity and destiny were divinely ordained was fuelled by Afrikaner suffering in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, and was later exploited to unify Afrikaners, suppress opposition and construct the system of apartheid after 1948.

As in South Africa, we see in Israel and Palestine how faith is pressed into the service of division: land, identity and God’s name bound together so tightly that the neighbour disappears. As in South Africa, we are asked: Where is the Church, and whose side is Christ on?

I want to come at that question by way of a road. The road to Emmaus.

The road away from Jerusalem

Two disciples are walking away from Jerusalem, away from the place where their hopes were crucified. One of them says the saddest words in the Gospels: “We had hoped.”

South Africa knows that road. And I must speak honestly about it, because the Church did not only walk with those who suffered. Too often, the Church built the road that caused the suffering. Too often, the church struggle against apartheid and colonialism was in fact a struggle waged not against the state, but an internal struggle waged within the churches.

The architects of apartheid specifically promoted what they called “Christelik-nasionale onderwys”, or Christian National Education, first developed to oppose the attempts of the British colonial administration to suppress the Afrikaans language. And alongside it, the Afrikaans churches developed a theological justification for apartheid. Their pulpits blessed separation as the will of God. So when we speak today of Christian nationalism, South Africans do not hear an abstract threat. We hear an old voice we have heard before.

And it was not only the Dutch Reformed churches which underpinned oppression. My own Anglican tradition, and other English-speaking churches, passed fine resolutions condemning apartheid in synod, and then went home to segregated congregations, paid black clergy lower stipends than white clergy, and lived too easily in segregated comfort. We confessed this at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and we were right to do so.

But there were also those who chose a different road. After the World Council of Churches' Cottesloe Consultation in 1960, Beyers Naudé paid for his conscience with his standing in his own Dutch Reformed church and was persecuted and restricted by the apartheid government. I think also of Denis Hurley, the Catholic archbishop who waged perhaps the longest and most consistent struggle. And of Frank Chikane and the South African Council of Churches, not to speak of Desmond Tutu, my mentor and predecessor. And the signatories to the Kairos Document of 1985, which named three theologies: a “State theology” that blessed the oppressor, a “Church theology” that spoke of reconciliation while avoiding justice, and a prophetic theology that took sides with the oppressed.

That is my first lesson for us: neutrality in the face of injustice is not neutrality. As Desmond Tutu used to say, “If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

Reconciliation without justice is not reconciliation, it is sedation.

My second lesson is harder. After 1994, many of us thought we had arrived. The Church moved from the margins to the corridors of power, and we grew comfortable, even quiet. It took the corruption of the years in which greedy politicians and business captured state contracts, the worst police massacre of the democratic era at Marikana, and the persistent inequality of our society to wake us up again. Liberation did not end the struggle. It began what I call the New Struggle: for equality of opportunity, for dignity in daily life.

So division does not end when the regime changes. The Church must keep walking, or it will quietly go home to Emmaus and close the door.

The stranger who walks alongside

Then a stranger joins the two disciples. Notice what he does first. He does not preach. He asks: “What are you discussing as you walk along?” He lets them tell their story, in their words, with their grief.

That is the beginning of true solidarity between the churches of the North and the South.

We in South Africa did not survive apartheid alone. We were accompanied: by the World Council of Churches, whose Programme to Combat Racism cost it dearly in reputation and donors; by Anglican partners across the Communion; by Trevor Huddleston and the anti-apartheid movement here in Britain; by Christian Aid. Those who walked with us took risks for people they had never met. We remember them and we give thanks for how they supported us.

But that is in the past, and we have to turn to the present, and the future, and I have to name the challenges that confront us now. I have to name them because friends can be honest with one another.

Too often, solidarity has flowed in one direction: money and expertise from North to South, with the North also holding the microphone. Yet the centre of gravity of world Christianity has moved. Most Anglicans today live in Africa. The Church of the global South is not a project to be funded. It is a partner with gifts to give: resilience, joy, a theology forged under pressure.

And our Communion structures are under strain. The Anglican Communion has struggled deeply over questions of human sexuality and authority, and we have learnt that “walking together” is easy to say and costly to do. Ecumenical bodies like the WCC face shrinking resources just as the world needs a united Christian voice more than ever.

Here the Holy Land teaches us. When Palestinian Christians wrote their own Kairos Palestine document in 2009, they drew on our South African Kairos. They asked the world’s churches not to speak for them, but to listen to them, to come and see. A just peace means dignity, security and justice for every Palestinian and every Israeli, and it begins when we let those who suffer tell us their story first.

So my plea: accompany before you advise. Listen before you lead. And let the South also accompany the North. Because Christian nationalism, polarisation and the loneliness of secular societies are northern wounds, and the South may have medicine to share.

Hearts burning, bread broken, the road back

Where do we find the strength to keep walking together? The Emmaus story gives us three resources.

First, Scripture read on the road. “Were not our hearts burning within us while he opened the Scriptures to us?” The Bible read together, across our differences, still sets hearts on fire. The same Scriptures abused to justify apartheid were the ones that set Desmond Tutu and Beyers Naudé free. We must not surrender the Bible to those who would use it to divide.

Second, the table. The disciples said to a stranger: “Stay with us.” Hospitality came before recognition. And Christ was known to them in the breaking of bread. Christ is recognised in brokenness: in broken bread, broken communities, broken peoples. Our unity is not uniformity. It is a shared table where no one is a stranger. In Southern Africa we call this Ubuntu: I am because we are. We practise it through Indaba, sitting together long enough to truly hear one another.

Third, hope that gets up and goes back. The disciples got up that same hour, at night, and returned to Jerusalem, to the very place of danger and death. That is what hope does. My friend Denise Ackermann defines hope as a form of active resistance. Not optimism, but the refusal to let despair have the last word.

This is why I love A Million Acts of Hope. Not because one act changes the world, but because a million small acts of hospitality, courage and truth-telling make a road others can walk on. A letter to an MP. A shared meal with a refugee family. A congregation that refuses to let the flag stand above the cross. A prayer for Gaza and for Israel on the same Sunday.

And let us keep our sense of humour. Desmond Tutu laughed in the face of apartheid, because he knew how the story ended. Joy is a form of resistance too.

Closing

Friends, the road to Emmaus begins in disappointment: “We had hoped.” It ends in mission: “The Lord has risen indeed!”

Between those two moments, Christ walks alongside, often unrecognised, in the stranger, the partner, the one we disagree with.

So may we be churches that do not walk away. Churches that accompany, that listen, that open the Scriptures and break bread together. And churches that get up, even at night, and go back together to the places of pain.

And, to use a saying that speaks to me with power: Faith sees further. Justice reaches further still.

God bless you, and God bless the work of Christian Aid.

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