Sermon for a Confirmation Service for Anglican Schools in Cape Town

 Archbishop Thabo Makgoba

Combined Confirmation Service for Anglican Schools in Cape Town

St Cyprian’s School Chapel, Cape Town

3^rd August 2025

Readings: Hosea 11: 1-11; Psalm 107:1-9, 43; Colossians 3: 1-11; Luke 12: 13-21

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

Sisters and brothers in Christ, dear people of God, heads of participating schools – our host today, Mrs Shirley Frayne of St Cyprian’s School, Mrs Heather Goedeke of Herschel Girls, Mr Antony Reeler of Diocesan College, Mr Julian Cameron of St George’s Grammar School – also friends and families, educators here present, I am pleased to join you once again this year as we share in this important day in the lives of the confirmation candidates who will be presented during this service.

Let me warmly welcome you all and thank you for the invitation. Most importantly, thanks to the school chaplains – the Revd Andrew Weiss of St Cyprian’s, the Revd Monwabisi Peter of Bishops, and the Revd Lorna Lavello-Smith of Herschel. I also thank you all for the hard work you do in preparing candidates for confirmation. A very warm and special welcome to the parents and godparents of the confirmation candidates, together with those attending this service for the first time.

A big thank you, Revd Andrew, for hosting us in this beautiful chapel which I appreciate so much. Thanks also to you and your team for preparing the service and a brilliant service booklet. It is always a joyous occasion when the schools in our diocese meet and worship together as a family.

As we gather in the presence of God today, we also attest to the special gift with which God, out of His goodness, will bestow you, the confirmation candidates: the outpouring anew of the Holy Spirit into your lives. This is the rite of passage that will help you to practise your faith more effectively and efficiently in every aspect of your existence, deepening your relationship with God and strengthening your spiritual lives.

Our Catechism teaches that the Holy Spirit empowers us for worship, witness, and service. In worship we praise and give reverence to God. In the traditional formulation, we say in the church that this begins with fear of the Lord. We shouldn’t misunderstand what the word “fear” means in this context – it doesn't mean we should shiver in terror before the Lord, rather that we should stand in awe of the Lord. Fearing, or standing in awe of God, is one of the gifts of the Spirit. So, through worship we show respect for and love of God, admiring God with those who have faith and believe in him.

In our first reading today, from the book of the prophet Hosea (11:1-11), we read of God’s response to his people when they turned away from him. In passing judgement on them, God was not punishing a sinful nation but was agonising over a people on whom he had settled his inheritance, meaning that God poured out special blessings on Israel – Israel in this context meaning the people of God as described in the Old Testament, not the modern secular state. It was tragic if you think of it; when they were a young people, God heard their cries of suffering, and delivered them from the bondage of the Pharoah in Egypt. The Lord led them with love and understanding rather than driving them with whips. Hosea says that ‘they shall not return’ signifying that in spite of their sins, God would not give them the punishment they deserved; he would not reverse His great redemptive act. We see a glimpse of the heart of God in verses 8 and 9, when we see God’s emotions in turmoil, his compassion for his people driving him to cry in anguish, ‘How can I give you up...’

Because, sisters and brothers, just as God met the needs of the people of Israel in bringing them out of harsh bondage, in our own day God knows our condition and cares for us by responding to our cries and our needs. God does not give up on us. God’s unchanging and unchangeable character means God will devise a way of dealing with God’s people. Jesus, the Holy One, came in our midst to seek out the lost sheep of the house of Israel and to give His life as a ransom for many. ‘I will return them to their homes, says the Lord’ (v.11b).

In the Parable of the Rich Fool, the Gospel account we heard today (Luke 12:13ff), Jesus refused to respond to a request from a man in a crowd to decide on a legal issue, which was how someone’s estate should be divided. Instead He went to the root of the matter, giving a stern warning against covetousness, which is the desire to have something belonging to someone else. Jesus’s warning may well have been motivated by personal knowledge of the man in question. Covetousness not only leads to strife but also expresses a fundamentally wrong philosophy of life, one which says possessions are all that really matters.

It’s not news to any of us that money cannot buy everything. It only takes the death of someone on the verge of retirement, with plans to live in comfort and ease for another 10 or 20 years, to make us realise how how useless possessions can be. The rich man in our parable today failed to seek the true riches of a right relationship with God, and so he was a fool, a senseless person.

Thirty years after South Africa’s political liberation, many of us still need to learn that striving merely for material possessions, and especially for material possessions only for ourselves and our families, will not bring stability and peace for our families, our communities and our nation. We can no longer sit back and allow the elites of our society, whether old elites or new elites, simply to reproduce themselves. I have said repeatedly what I think we all know to be true, which is that the daughters and the sons of the well-off tend to get the best opportunities in life, and become well-off themselves, while the daughters and sons of the poor struggle to escape the vicious cycle of deprivation that keeps them poor. Our President has asked me to serve on the group advising the National Dialogue that is about to begin, and although I know many are sceptical, even cynical about what it can and will achieve, the single most important reason I accepted his invitation is my belief that if we don’t fundamentally reform our economy to give better opportunities to the poor, we may as well pack up and stay at home. I am not an economist, but I cannot in good conscience sit on my hands in Bishopscourt, sniping at the process from the outside, without arguing my case as strongly as I can.

And while I am on the subject of public advocacy, please allow me to refer to a matter which, as Jeremiah once said, is like a fire burning in my breast, one which compels me to speak out, even if I struggle to find the words to speak as eloquently as God would want me to. The subject is Gaza, Palestine and Israel, which along with the brutal civil war in Sudan, constitutes, I believe, one of the great moral issues of our time. In a city which includes Christians, Muslims and Jews, it is our responsibility to preach sanity to all whose hearts and passions are consumed by the crisis in the land all three faiths call holy. Please, form prayer cells, fast and pray, and advocate wherever you can for an end to starvation as a weapon of war, for an end to hostage taking and the deliberate killing of civilians, for an end to ethnic cleansing and genocide, and for a just peace which guarantees stability and respect for the rights of all.

Now each of you here today might be hesitant to think of yourselves as being up to the challenges I have posed. But our faith tells us that God remains the same, always, and Paul reminds us to set our minds on ‘things that are above and not things that are on earth’ (Colossians 3:2). This does not mean we should ignore the suffering around us; no, it means that we should look to the values which derive from focussing on the higher purposes of our lives and seek to embody them in the practice of our everyday lives. God conceives that Christian life is a constant quest with Christ as a goal, the Christ who died for us and our salvation; the salvation which is represented by the true peace and reconciliation which is achieved through the attainment of justice; and the salvation which will be ours when the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. (Rev. 11:15)

So today, as each of you receives the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, I challenge you, and I challenge all learners and parents at our Anglican schools, to open your minds and your hearts to the invitation extended by God. To those of you who will be confirmed today, and to all learners at St Cyprian's, Bishops, Herschel and St George's: 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 the educators, learners and families who continue to ensure that learning and teaching take place in all our schools. To those who teach, thank you for your dedicated work, you are among the most under-appreciated professionals in our society. Thank you for what you do to help our young people live in harmony with one another, to guide them away from simply fulfilling selfish earthly ambitions.

May you all, learners and educators, 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 of worship, service, and sacrifice.

Congratulations class of 2025 on your confirmation, and may God bless you, your families, South Africa and the world.

God loves you and so do I. Amen