Sermon for the Easter Vigil, St George's Cathedral - 2025

The Most Revd Dr Thabo Makgoba

Archbishop of Cape Town

Easter Vigil

St George’s Cathedral, Cape Town

April 20^th, 2025

Romans 6:3-11; Psalm 114; Luke 24: 1-12

May I speak in the name of God who is our Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer:

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Sisters and Brothers in Christ, may each one of you experience the fullness of life that the Resurrection of our Lord offers us this Easter.

A warm greeting to you all on this holy night, and an especially warm welcome to the parents and godparents present for tonight’s baptism. An equally warm welcome to our new Dean, Moruti Terry, and to Nicky, on this, their first Easter in his new role in this, the mother church of our Province. Thank you, Mr Dean and your team for the work you have put into this year’s Easter services: the Cathedral staff, the Wardens, the Lay Ministers and Sacristans, the Verger and Assistant Verger, our magnificent Choir, the Choir Master and Organists, the flower arrangers and all other members of the congregation who have played a part. Our congratulations to newly-elected Cathedral Councillors, and our heartfelt thanks to the outgoing members.

Tonight rings with those words from the opening verse of our Gospel reading tonight, “On the first day of the week, at early dawn...” Luke sounds those words, historically, in the midst of so many levels of night, of so many layers of darkness, which the disciples had experienced over the days of what we now call Passiontide. It seemed the dreams of where the Jesus story would lead the disciples had crashed; a time during which the power of the various establishments – the political, the religious and the military establishments – had borne down upon them, scaring them into fear and vulnerability; a time during which the darkness of the Roman occupation of Palestine threatened to crush them, rendering them a community deprived of the air of freedom.

Luke’s words are thus, from the word go, a testimony that, as the English poet and priest John Donne, wrote in one of his Divine Meditations,

“Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so...”

The reading from Luke, reinforced by Donne’s poem, reminds us as Christians that Easter is a vindication of new, resurgent life. If ever there was an hour when we needed Luke’s words; when we needed the assurance which the Easter message of resurrection and new life offer us, it is now, when our politics around the world and in our own nation are so dysfunctional, when conflict wreaks death, dehumanisation and destruction in at least 40 places across the globe, when domestic abuse and gender-based violence strip their survivors of their dignity, and when we destroy our environment, putting profit above people and making excuses for genocide.

For we live in a time when a European power, Russia, continues its merciless bombing of civilian targets in a neighbouring country, Ukraine. We live in a time when the civil war in Sudan continues without pause; when South Sudan teeters on the brink of a new civil war; and when we look on in despair as Israel expands its occupation of Gaza, where not even those identifying themselves as medical personnel are safe from attack, and where the Israeli government gives every indication of pursuing ethnic cleansing with the collusion of the United States.

In South Africa, it is a time during which the credibility and commitment to good governance of our political parties is seriously open to question. Last week leaders of the South African Council of Churches met President Ramaphosa and members of his Cabinet, where we registered our protest at the way in which members of the Government of National Unity are engaging in grandstanding and political one-upmanship at the expense of resolving the urgent challenges our nation faces. For my part, I am concerned that unless our politicians stop playing these dangerous games and develop a proper respect for the legitimacy of their partners in the administration, the very concept of democratic governance in South Africa is headed for a crisis of confidence.

A section of the leadership of the African National Congress clearly finds it difficult to accept that they no longer enjoy the support of the majority of the electorate, and still behave as if they alone enjoy legitimacy. The Democratic Party sometimes behaves as if its electoral support entitles it just to override the views of those who represented a far bigger proportion of the electorate in the last election. And at municipal level especially, we see small minority parties exercising far more power than their legitimacy entitles them to. Thirty years into democracy, the legitimacy of every party elected to Parliament needs to be respected, and no party should assume a legitimacy greater than their strength at the ballot box gives them.

Respect for the legitimacy of others also needs to be extended to other institutions in society. This has important implications for the National Dialogue being planned by the Presidency, since a successful outcome depends on the process becoming everyone’s business, not just the government’s. The churches support the dialogue, having called in 2017 for a national conversation aimed at confronting societal fragmentation, moral deterioration and the loss of trust in public institutions. But as we have told President Ramaphosa, it is critical for the credibility of the dialogue for it to be free from manipulation by political and economic elites. To avoid that happening, the President’s proposed “Advisory Panel of Eminent Persons” and the dialogue’s steering committee need to be able to act independently, without being dictated to by politicians. The relevance of the dialogue will depend on how representative its deliberations are of the full spectrum of South African society.

As well as offering us new life, the celebration of Easter offers us new hope. Hope, as I have said previously, is not a nebulous, pie-in-the-sky concept. It is rather the driving force which motivates our determination to name our problems, to identify solutions to them and to mobilise people to overcome them. But it is not just about good deeds or good works—it is about promoting justice. As that great African saint, Augustine of Hippo said, “Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.” The contemporary American philosopher and political activist, Cornel West, makes a similar point when he says justice is “what love looks like in public.”

We will establish true justice in South Africa only if we fulfill the promises of our Constitution by working together for the common good. If we fail to show that democracy can improve the lives of our people, we run the risk of going the way of those countries in the so-called developed world which are threatening to slide downwards into populist autocracies.

New life and resurrection means turning history round, opening spaces for healing, restoring trust in our public utterances and building a just world. Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said: “Easter says to us that despite everything to the contrary, God’s will for us will prevail. Love will prevail over hate, justice over injustice and oppression, peace over exploitation and bitterness.” His words offer us the reassurance this Easter that we can and will build a better South Africa and a better world.

God refuses to let the places of failure and darkness be the final word. Resurrection begins when we call out the darkness for what it is: death. Reacting to the multiple tombs that trap people, dehumanise people, exploit and kill people, Easter says loudly: “Not in my name.” Easter overcomes the darkness and confronts it with the invincible power of life.

A final point, one that is often overlooked, but it is significant. It relates to the role of women and the perceptions of men that first Easter. The women are told by the angel to tell the disciples to go to Galilee and meet Jesus there. But later, we read that they were still in Jerusalem a week afterwards. Luke records that the disciples did not believe the women, and that was because they reflected the prejudices of the time, they reflected the view that some categories of people—in this instance women—were marginalised and that their voices therefore did not count. They were excluded and their contributions ignored, robbing the community of gifts that went unexplored. When we exclude others, 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.

But when we open our hearts and our minds and include others, we become more fully human. Easter restores our humanity through others. Easter grows a spirit of community. Easter witnesses for the common good and strengthens Ubuntu. But note this: all our Easter moments, all these Resurrection metaphors demand high levels of risk. When the angels challenge the figures in the Jesus movement to take up the challenge, his disciples had to be willing to take risks. They did not have it all figured out, but they nevertheless had to believe in themselves and take risks in order to move forward. So now, in our fractured and conflict-ridden world, we have to be ready to take the same risk that God took. We have to be willing to put our trust in God even though we might not know the answers or be certain about our futures. If we do this, we can fill the world with light and love, so that all of us will find ways of becoming midwives of a restored humanity.

In that spirit, confident in the words of Jesus, as quoted by Julian of Norwich¹, that ultimately “All manner of things shall be well”, I wish each one of you a risky Easter.

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1Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter 32.