News from New Zealand - 3

Monday 29 October – The cloud could not contain the rain today. So after lunch I walked to a shop and bought myself a purple umbrella. The choice of colour, I hasten to add, had nothing to do with episcopal concerns. It was just the most practical the store had.

The cathedral is about 7 minutes, a gentle uphill walk, from the hotel we stay at. So we are not only nurtured spiritually with the word of God and daily Mass, we are also being kept fit. We walk the route at least twice a day, from the hotel to the cathedral and back. And if you want a siesta, like I did today, succumbing to jet lag, you walk four times 7 minutes, up and down to the cathedral.

I have enjoyed walking with Louisa Mojela ,our lay representative, and catching up on Anglican Global South matters , as she also represent our Province in this structure. I also walked with the Bishop of Ceylon and began to understand some more about his context. On another occasion, I walked with a bishop from Tanzania, and really enjoyed connecting with him. Last night, I also spoke to a retired bishop from Tanzania , who, like Judge Albi Sachs and Fr Michael Lapsley, was sent a letter bomb by the apartheid forces and he too lost his hand. He was an amazing man, who talked with no regret nor bitterness for the atrocious act of the past, but spoke fondly of his time in Lesotho, Swaziland and Lusaka as an Anglican chaplain with Umkhonto We Sizwe. I remain grateful for all those who sacrificed their lives and, literally, body parts for our liberation.

This transformative and redeeming spirit was expounded by Archbishop Rowan, when he started today’s morning session with a quiet time and an exposition of 2 Cor 2:14-17. He said the context is that of Paul seeking to respond to his own challenging context, which may have been both similar and uniquely different to that faced by those I mentioned, with its pain, anger, suffering, and marginalization. Paul seeks to respond in a gospel shaped way. This takes the form of acknowledging our deep-seated emotions: in Paul's case his blazing anger in his letter to the Corinthian church. He then has to step back to critically reflect on these emotions. We must ask ourselves too, is our anger at a thing, a person, or a community? Acknowledging that God is faithful to both us and to others, is to reveal God' s passionate faithfulness in us, in that ‘while we were still sinners’, he sent his only son to liberate us, rather than to condemn us. And so we are challenged to ask ourselves whether our anger is more about passionate self-righteousness than faithfulness to God and God’s communion with us and who or whatever is ‘the other’ in our anger. Archbishop Rowan then called for critical faithfulness: critical because we believe in God’s redeeming presence, and faithfulness because ‘He who calls us is faithful and he will do it.’ He is faithful and will not go away, but will always be there. And so the church is called to ‘be there’ in God’s world, not to run away but offer this presence for all in need. This comes at a cost. The fragrance of death of which St Paul writes is an indication that something has to die in us, and the fragrance of life indicates that we are being transfigured into the likeness of Christ as we critically and faithfully serve God in the other.

The Anglican Communion’s Secretary General, Kenneth Kearon, in his opening address, took a similar line to the above reflection while speaking independently. He drew the analogy of the ACC and communion members as glass. We are required to cooperate and work with one another as we radiate, reflect, refract what communion is about. Doing this, like having stained glass windows in our cathedrals or parish churches, comes with a price. The cost of belonging requires transformation, which entails death to stagnant positions, because none of us can fully capture the whole picture of who God is and what communion is about. He concluded, ‘We each bring our own piece of stained glass and add it to the window alongside that of others, and so reveal the fullness of the glory of God in our broken and hurting world.’

The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia is in effect a unity of three churches, or three ‘Tikanga’ as they call them: the Maori, Pakeha (ie of European descent) and Polynesian. Even in their negotiated settlement, there is this cost and this value; and so their fuller picture should be seen as a bright collage which is distinctive in its differences and yet one. So tonight we ended the day by having dinner at the Maori church, which displayed its traditional food, lovingly served for the good of the communion and extension of God’s mission. We sat and ate together and shared sweet fellowship. I found myself reflecting that if this is possible, in this place which also faced past divisions, yet came to acknowledge their pain honestly, then it is possible for South Africa to stay on course with reconciliation in spite of the current mining sector and other challenges. In the same way, it is also possible for our Communion, and even the world, with each bringing our unique pieces into forming this picture that is open, loving, transparent, and able to serve God with critical faithfulness, confidently knowing that he will never abandon his church or his world. He is faithful and this is the reason for my joy. What about you? If you examine yourself, what emotions do you have which need to die and be replaced with the aroma of Christ? And what about our church and our country?

God bless, Arch Thabo

Mass of Thanksgiving - Fr Michael Lapsley SSM

Note: On 28 April 1990, Father Michael Lapsley, SSM opened a letter bomb. On 1 May 2010 Archbishop Thabo Makgoba preached and Archbishop Desmond Tutu presided at a Mass of thanksgiving for his survival and for all that God has enabled him to do during these last twenty years, including through the Institute for the Healing of Memories, and to pray for all victims of violence and torture.

Readings and Collect from the Feast of St Michael and All Angels: Job 38:1-7; Rev 12:7-12; Mt 18:1-10

May I speak in the name of God, who sends his angels to watch over us.

Well, Fr Michael, you have caused your Archbishop to find himself in a state of confusion! First of all, today is the Feast of St Joseph, but you choose the readings for the Feast of St Michael and All Angels, almost 5 months away – though we do understand that St Michael is the patron saint of the Society of the Sacred Mission. Second, you invite us to a service of thanksgiving. But how are we to greet you? Normally on such an occasion, one would say Happy Birthday, or Happy Anniversary or something similar. But somehow Happy Bombing really does not sound right!

But it certainly is a privilege to be here today. Thank you, Fr Michael, for inviting me to share with you – and with the many people around the world who are holding us in their thoughts and prayers. As the many messages in the service booklet bear witness, we have so very much to give thanks for. We give thanks, dear Fr Michael, for your survival of that terrible deed of premeditated violence, perpetrated upon you twenty years ago by agents from within the apartheid government. So perhaps our greeting is Happy Survival!

And we give thanks that God – through the subversive triumph of the cross and resurrection – has enabled you to turn that act of evil into a stepping stone to redemption: not only in your own life, but to others, through your testimony, through the witness of your living example, and through your vision for the Institute of the Healing of Memories and the work in which you have led it so effectively.

For myself, I give thanks for many years of friendship and collaboration in the gospel which we have shared. I particularly remember the time, 18 years ago, when you stayed with me, and Lungi, my new bride, in the Rectory that had previously been your diocesan offices, Archbishop Tutu. Fr Michael, you should have known the uncertain ways of old church buildings and their plumbing. But you used the spare shower that we had never tried out – and we soon found ‘living water’ seeping through the ceiling of the kitchen, the dining room, the lounge ... No, Lungi and I, will never forget that visit! Thank you also for our partnership as chaplains to Anglican students, where I succeeded you as Provincial; and for the many blessings I have received from the Society, for which I am privileged to be Visitor.

Today I want to reflect on the glorious mysteries of God’s transformative love and power, through which he has turned an act of deliberate hatred and cruelty reflecting all the evil of the apartheid regime, into a beacon of compassion and hope that shines far, far brighter; far, far wider. Around the globe, wherever evil and violence are perpetrated, we know they will not have the final word.

Yet even so, our hearts grieve that brutality and torture still continue today. We do not understand why it is that our all loving, all powerful, heavenly Father, does not step in and thwart such evil in its tracks. Nor do we understand why it is that one man survives devastating explosives, deliberately intended to murder; while a student who walks in on a burglary in his own home, is stabbed to death, as happened in this city two days ago.

The purposes of God are beyond our ability fully to grasp. Job recognised this, when, after wrestling to find answers to his own suffering, he encountered the Lord speaking out of the whirlwind. He received a glimpse into the unknowable – enough to see that there is a whole spiritual realm where ultimate truths of good and evil, life and death, are played out.

There is deep mystery here. We cannot fathom it all – but we can encounter enough to know that it is so, and that, as is recorded in the Revelation to St John, ‘now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah’. We do not need to understand – we need only to believe and trust.

As our gospel tells us – we need to become like children: not childish, but child-like. When my children were small, they used to love to run and throw themselves into my arms. They knew I would catch them. They didn’t worry about how, they just trusted that I would not let them fall.

Fr Michael – in your life, you are a vivid challenge to us to do the same, to trust ourselves unconditionally, as little children, into the hands of the living God, who will not let us fall. We do not know what life will bring – I don’t suppose that when you first left New Zealand, you had even the smallest idea of how events would unfold. But you dared to say an unconditional yes to God’s future for you.

Any of us may find that terrible things do happen. But you are a living demonstration of the truth of Romans 8:28 – that ‘all things work together for God for those who love God’. This is not to say that all things are good. By no means. But nothing is so terrible that God cannot work in it for good, if we let him.

Indeed, I want to go further and say, however great the evil, the good that God can bring is greater. Easter shows this. The glory of the resurrection more than trumps the devastation of the cross.

And you, Fr Michael, show us this is true in your life. The good that has followed – because you dared to keep on trusting God as his little child – the good that has followed has been far greater than the evil that began it all.

We thank God for his amazing goodness at work within us all – and especially as we see it displayed in your life, Fr Michael. Therefore, let us in turn entrust ourselves into the hands of God even as we boldly root out mediocrity, corruption, greed, malice, inequality, racism, and anything that undermines, demeans and marginalises God’s people and harms our planet in our lifetime.

So we thank God for his angels that watch over us, and – in the words of the collect – we ask that as they inspire us in our worship, they may also strengthen us as they have strengthened you, dear Fr Michael, in our fight against evil.

Now may the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip us for every good work, so that we may always live ‘to the glory of God, in the doing of God’s will’. Amen