Sermon for Desmond Tutu Memorial Mass, St John's College, Diocese of Johannesburg

ARCHBISHOP THABO MAKGOBA
PRIMATE and METROPOLITAN OF THE ACSA
Desmond Tutu Memorial Mass, Diocese of Johannesburg
St John's College
2 October 2025

Readings: Micah 6: 1-8; Matthew 5: 3-12

 

May I speak in the name of God, who is Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. Amen.
    Brothers and sisters, thank you so much for inviting me to this Memorial Service this morning as we remember Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu.  Thank you for your warm welcome on our arrival. Amongst his many ministries, the Arch exercised a ministry of gratitude. Let me then start by expressing our thanks to God and acknowledging Mr West and his wife, Joanne West. Stuart has been a friend and support of our family, especially when he was head of Herschel, and he has served our Anglican independent schools over a long period of time as an outstanding leader. Mr West, and Joanne, thanks to you both and to your wonderful team for hosting us. Many thanks to the parents, learners and educators for gracing this early morning service. Thank you, Fr Thapelo Masemola, School Chaplain and your team for preparing for this service in this beautiful chapel and for ensuring that a liturgy is crafted perfectly in memory of the Arch Emeritus. 
    As we remember him this morning, in our Anglican Church calendar we commemorate the 19th century British philanthropist, Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, whom we remember as a fervent evangelist and  campaigner against the appalling conditions in which people lived and worked in the early days of the Industrial Revolution. Following in the footsteps of William Wilberforce, the anti-slavery campaigner, Shaftesbury championed the under-privileged and oppressed, advocating legislation which aimed to improve life in the factories and the slums—a cause, like that against slavery, which in its day generated as much controversy as did Desmond Tutu, in and outside this school community, when he fought against the injustices of apartheid. In our case, of course, we have won political, although not economic, liberation, and we need to continue a New Struggle to achieve that. In the case of the UK, I am glad to say that the Church of England has acknowledged its sad past in collaborating with slavery in the West Indies by earmarking 100 million pounds for reparations, with the objective of boosting it to a one billion pound investment. 
    Turning to our readings, the Old Testament prophet Micah is perhaps known best for those words which concluded today's text: 

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good,
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness
    and to walk humbly with your God?”

Both Anthony in the 19th century and Desmond Tutu in the 20th were indeed shining examples of Christian witness who, in the face of the cruel ill-treatment of God's people, indeed did justice, loved kindness and walked humbly with their God. In fact, the preacher at the Arch's funeral in 2022, the retired Bishop of Natal, Michael Nuttall, used this verse as the foundation of his sermon.
    I wonder how many of you know of the role this school played in Desmond Tutu's first major public act in calling for the apartheid government to do justice? It was nearly 50 years ago, in May of 1976, when as the Dean of St Mary's Cathedral he joined other clergy from the Diocese of johannesburg for a week-long silent retreat here. He had refused to live in his official residence, the Deanery, which was just around the corner from here in Houghton, choosing instead to stay in Soweto, and he was deeply worried about the situation there. Since the beginning of the year, teachers were being forced to teach maths and social studies in Afrikaans even though there weren't enough teachers fluent in Afrikaans. In response, 14-year-olds at the  Phefeni Junior Secondary School, close to the Tutu home in Orlando West, had begun a slowdown, then a strike, dumping their Afrikaans textbooks at the principal's door.
    So anxious was the Arch that, sitting in what has been described as his schoolboy's cell-like room at St John's, he spent the week here in silence, feeling called by God to write a 2,600-word letter to Prime Minister John Vorster. In the letter, which he said “more or less wrote itself”, he addressed the prime minister, and I quote, “as one Christian to another, for through our common baptism we have been made members of and are united in the Body of our dear Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ... who has broken down all that separates us... such as race, sex, culture status...” In the course of the letter, he warned that “I have a growing nightmarish fear that unless something drastic is done very soon then bloodshed and violence are going to happen in South Africa almost inevitably.” The prime minister ignored the letter, five weeks later the Soweto uprising began and in the months that followed, at least 650 young people were killed, most of them under 24. South Africa was never the same again, and the Arch's prediction, written here at St John's, propelled him into the front ranks of religious leaders who were opposing apartheid. 
    (As an aside, if you were to ask me where I was in all of this, I was 15 and my family had been forcibly removed from Alexandra Township, alongside Sandton, to Pimvlle in Soweto. So I was spending a lot of my time every day travelling from Pimville to town by train, then by bus to school in Alex, and back again after classes. I only joined the rebellion when it spread to Alex two days after June 16.)
    In Desmond Tutu's letter to John Vorster, he was following the example of the prophet who summoned Israel to repent, recalling God’s mercy at the Exodus, invoking a scene in which God lodges a formal complaint against the people Israel and summons them to listen to His accusation and to prepare their defence against the charges that follow. God remonstrates with His covenant people for their ingratitude and faithlessness, telling them they have treated the Lord as if He had been guilty of injustice towards them; yet they cannot cite any wrong He has done to them, except perhaps in giving them benefits they did not deserve and having delivered them from danger and from all their foes since the days of Moses and Aaron, whom He sent to lead them out of bondage in Egypt.
    Friends, a true and living faith will be evidenced by a will, firstly, to work for justice in accordance with the principles of Scripture revealed as God’s will; and secondly, to love kindness or steadfast love, whether it involves those closest to us, our neighbours or those of God's children who may not share our faith or our nationality. Thirdly, a true and living faith will be judged by whether we are prepared to walk humbly with our Lord, in utter dependence upon God, recognising that any goodness within ourselves is merely a reflection of the goodness of God, not the result of our personal ability or our own merit.
    Moving from the Old Testament to the New, what we heard in the reading from Matthew's Gospel (Mt 5:3-12) is Jesus spelling out in practical terms what it means to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God. In what we call the Beatitudes, Jesus in his teaching ministry unites the exhortations found in the Old Testament into one integrated narrative of a life of Christian character; a life in which the poor, the meek, the hungry, the merciful, and the peacemakers—just to take a random selection—will, as Jesus goes on to say further down in this chapter, become the salt of the earth and the light of the world.
    I must keep this homily short, so let me end by saying two things, firstly—and importantly—by wishing each one of you all well, whether learners, parents or staff—indeed, the whole school community—as you prepare for end-of-year exams.
    Secondly, I leave you with a personal testimony. I have sometimes been asked, especially overseas: Why, in a country in which those such as John Vorster, and others like him, chose in the name of Christianity to inflict upon us colonialism and apartheid—why in such a country do I choose to be a Christian? My reply is that I do so because, to adapt what I said in Faith and Courage, a memoir I wrote some years ago,

“I am a Christian and I remain a Christian because I remember that our faith begins with a young Palestinian on a donkey in Jerusalem, riding to Calvary. Since Roman times we have perverted the Word and the mission of Jesus Christ, and its message about what God is up to in our country and our world. Over the centuries we’ve allowed ourselves to be pointed to imperial agendas. Christ’s message has been attached to national flags, to military might, to the AK-47, and dare I say to Make America Great Again.

        “But that is not the Gospel. Christianity is not imperialism. Christianity is not colonialism, nor is it apartheid. Christianity is how do I love my neighbour as myself and as others. The man who links us to God is he who enters Jerusalem a nonentity, riding a borrowed donkey. He is humble and he is marginalised, but his message of love and simplicity is powerful; powerful enough to challenge the perversion of common humanity that empire and power engender.”

    May God bless you, our country and the world.

    God loves you and so do I. Amen.

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