Of shocking jobs statistics & peace talks for Sudan & Gaza - Sermon for St Saviour's 170th anniversary

 Archbishop Thabo Makgoba
 170th Anniversary Service
St Saviour's Anglican Church: Claremont
18th August 2024 @ 08h30

Isaiah 9: 2–7; Psalm 8; Acts 4: 8–21; Luke 2: 15-21

May I speak in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
    Sisters and brothers in Christ, St Saviour's family and friends, dear people of God, it is a privilege and an honour for me to have been asked to celebrate this day and share with you the Word of God. Wow! 170 years of service, witness and ministry through God’s love and grace! What a milestone. Thank you, Fr Chesnay, your leadership team and to the whole community of St Saviour's for inviting me. Thank you everyone for your welcome this morning on our arrival. Thank you too to those who worked tirelessly in preparation for these celebrations. And a special welcome to the guests who have been invited for this auspicious event. 

    Today we give thanks to God for the firm foundation that was laid here, first with the building of the chancel in 1853 and the formal establishment of the parish in 1854. History tells us that, when the British settlers first came to the Cape, they bought land which was used for farming in the southern suburbs for residential purposes. In 1822, Claremont was established on land that used to be part of greater Groote Schuur, and significant growth followed around 1850, which led to to the growth of Claremont Village.
    Your remarkable journey was started on the foundations laid by the first Bishop of Cape Town, Robert Gray and his wife Sophy, who was instrumental in designing this and many other churches in our Province. Credit also goes to Mr Rice Jones who ensured the availability of this land from the then Feldhausen Estate. Their initiatives, the work begun by the Revd Hopkins Badnall, the first rector, and the dedicated efforts of those who followed, have transformed the parish from its modest beginnings into what you represent today, a wonderful testament to the consequences of God’s intervention in our lives. May I take this opportunity to ask the former rectors and clergy of the parish who are here today to stand so that we can acknowledge and thank you.
    As a community of faith, you have worshipped, witnessed and served God well in this part of our Diocese, and in turn God has been faithful to you. Just as Jesus said he came not to be served but to serve, so you have served this community with dedication and persistence.
    Today's readings have been chosen to reflect the patronage of this parish of our Lord and Saviour. The Gospel account in Luke (2:15-21) of the visit of the shepherds to Jesus after his birth, describes a time when the present-day Palestine was ruled by the Emperor Augustus. The Romans, who were reorganizing their administration in several parts of their empire, had decreed a fresh census of the population for the purposes of taxation. The execution of such an imperial decree brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem as the Messiah’s place of birth – an event which had long been prophesied, in fact from the time of Isaiah, 700 years earlier.
    Our reading from Isaiah (Is. 9: 2-7) embodies that prophecy, reflecting the mounting relief and joy as the trappings of war are abolished in preparation to meet the deliverer, the child whose advent is foretold as our Immanuel – “God with us”. And as we hear every Christmas and Epiphany, the Christ-child's birth was heralded to an unexpected and even despised group of people – shepherds. They had a vision of an angel who announced the significance of the birth: a Saviour had come. His message was confirmed by a chorus of angels who sang, “Glory to God in highest heaven, and on earth his peace for men on whom his favour rests”.
    Sisters and brothers, God’s peace is not given to us because we deserve it. It is given to the undeserving and deserving alike, to all of us whom God has freely and graciously chosen to favour. Although the Roman world was experiencing peace, marked by external tranquility at the time, here the angels were proclaiming a deeper, more lasting peace than that – a peace of mind and soul made possible by our Saviour, a peace of mind we can experience even in the midst of the conflict that is inevitable when we stand up to oppose Satan and his works. Peace with God comes to us through faith in Christ, and it is on believers that his favour rests. Recall that passage in John's Gospel, in which the Davidic Messiah, that is Jesus who was descended from the House of David, promised peace to his disciples in the words: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” (Jn 14:27).
    Members of St Saviour's Parish, be reassured that each one of you, transformed by your faith, is loved by God as if you are the only being in existence. And of course, this does not apply only to each one of you. It applied to those who came before you, to those who laid a solid foundation for this parish, to those whose legacy as faithful servants of our Lord and Saviour we honour in this celebratory Eucharist. Today we remember all of them, all the clergy, the church wardens, lay ministers and lay leaders down the years who paved the way for our worship today. They are our inspiration in leading the witness of Jesus through some of the most difficult times of our history.
    And just as those who came before us were nurtured and upheld through times of trouble and tribulation, so we too are upheld through the troubles of our lives and times. Just as God sustained members of this parish through the First World War, through the global pandemic which followed, through another World War, then through the suffering of apartheid and the Group Areas Act removals, so God sustained us through the recent Covid-19 pandemic and will surely sustain us through the difficult economic times we are going through.
    Friends, my vocation as your Archbishop, the vocation of my brother and sister bishops, and the vocation of all those who are ordained in our Anglican Church is to seek to discern the will of God for us and our church through the multiple lenses of Scripture, Reason, Experience and Tradition. Returning to today's scripture readings, the lesson from Acts today is about pain and joy, about being challenged, being confronted, and yet being encouraged, even treasured, in the face of confrontation.
    Peter, as bold as ever he was, insisted to the Sanhedrin – the Jewish ruling council which comprised chief priests, elders of the community and legal scribes – that the name by which a disabled beggar was made healthy was the only name through which they could receive spiritual health from God. In those memorable words, “This Jesus is 'the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.' There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4: 11-12) Peter's boldness was all the more surprising to his listeners, because he was untrained in the rabbinical schools of the time. But Jesus's disciples had been taught by no ordinary teacher who had himself triggered the surprised comment “How is it that this man has learning when he has never studied?”.
    People of St Saviour's, as we celebrate 170 years of your witness to and service in this community, what can we draw from these lessons today? In the light of the suffering and distress experienced in our communities, in our country, and in the world, how best can we serve God and model God's love and compassion for the world?
    I was pleased to see that during this Month of Compassion, you have given support to those suffering from the intense cold of this winter, from Swellendam to Paternoster, and locally from old-age homes to homeless support centres. These are times of great distress. I was shocked to learn this week from Statistics SA that nearly eight-and-a-half million South Africans are now unemployed, up from just over five million 10 years ago. One in every three South Africans doesn't have a job, and three-quarters of those have been without a job for more than a year. If you look at the expanded unemployment rate – which includes discouraged work-seekers who have given up on searching for a job – the figure rises to a shocking 42 percent. Apart from that, drugs, violence, extortion, demands for protection money and the kidnapping of people for ransom are rife in some of our communities and in other parts of our country. And uppermost in the minds of many of us are the appalling incidents of gender-based violence, including the killing of women and girl children by those who should be protecting them.
    The suffering is not, of course, limited to our country. We continue to pray for the end of the civil war in Sudan, where fighting between the army and a powerful paramilitary force has killed thousands, driven 10 million people from their homes and generated what the United Nations has called the “world's worst hunger crisis”. We pray especially for peace talks which convened this last week in Geneva, but deplore the fact that neither of the warring parties turned up to attend them. In Gaza, we heard this week that Israel's brutal war, ostensibly on Hamas but in fact on the whole population, has now resulted in more than 40 thousand deaths. Again, there are negotiations for a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, but Hamas is not attending them and the New York Times says Israel entered the latest round of talks making new demands. Let us never stop invoking the name and the power of our Saviour, the Prince of Peace, to end war and bring about a peaceful settlement and security for both Palestinians and Israelis.
    As you, the people of St Saviour's move forward into the next 170 years and beyond, I leave you with a challenge and an assurance. The challenge is: What is your vision for St Saviour's for the years to come? What can you do to enable the parish to move confidently into the next 170 years and to witness to Christ and his peace in the world? Your founders planted this parish through turbulent times of colonialism, oppression, apartheid and war. I charge you today to pick at least one thing that will make eternal life felt in the here and now; something that will better the lives of many in and around Claremont, Cape Town and beyond.
    Our assurance as people of faith is that God has, again and again, met people and sent them out to proclaim his truth in and to the world, with clarity and courage, through difficult and challenging times in the past. And he will do so again today and in the future. In closing, I congratulate you all very warmly on your 170th anniversary. God loves you and so do I. Amen.

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