This address was given on Saturday 18 May 2013, at the Annual Certificate Celebration, at the Centre for Contextual Ministry, Pretoria
Good morning everyone. Let me begin by greeting the Dean of the Theology Department, Prof Johan Buitendag, and Deputy Dean, Prof Dirk Human, together with all who are present today. I express particular thanks to Dr Stephan de Beers, Director of the Centre for Contextual Ministry, for your invitation and warm welcome.
This morning I want to address our theme of ‘Prophets and Healers in Broken Communities’ by reflecting on how this connects with my own spiritual and personal contexts. I shall draw on Scripture and church teaching, and set this alongside my own journey as a member of the broken community of Makgobas of Makgobaskloof. The challenge of dealing with these past pains has opened up new possibilities of redemptive grace, shaping me as a channel of prophecy and healing to others. I hope that bringing my own experiences into conversation with the Bible and Christian tradition will help you to find your own ways of engaging with hurt and brokenness in service to others as healers and prophets.
Yesterday, as I was preparing to come here today, I was prompted to reflect further the last chapter of St John’s gospel, after reading the part that was set for Anglicans for the daily Eucharist. It is the account of Peter and six other disciples going fishing, and meeting Jesus. This happens after Easter, after the resurrection. The seven of them have returned to Galilee, where they take a boat out on the Sea of Tiberius.
They catch nothing, and then encounter the risen Jesus on the shore, though at first they don’t recognise him. He tells them to throw the net on the other side of the boat, and they get a huge catch – at which point they recognise him. He invites them to breakfast; and though they know it is Jesus, they are very shy to speak openly with him. Finally, Jesus and Peter have a conversation by themselves. Three times Jesus asks Peter if he loves him – and in response to Peter’s affirmation, Jesus tells him ‘Feed my lambs’ then ‘Tend my sheep’ then ‘Feed my sheep.’
All of us are in the business of tending and feeding God’s lambs and sheep. All of us, whether ordained or lay, in full-time or part-time ministry, are engaged with showing God’s love to God’s people, and teaching and encouraging them in their faith. It is our task to help them to grow in knowledge and love of God, and in sharing that knowledge and love with the world around, through lives of faithful witness and service.
We should teach our people to integrate the good news of Jesus Christ into their daily life, whatever that is. God is the Lord of all creation – and so we should never fall into the temptation of dividing life into two separate compartments, the religious and the secular. Not at all – God has an interest in every part of his creation and every activity of human life.
We know that God does not call all Christians to be clergy or pastors. We know that instead God calls for his people to lead godly lives as teachers, doctors and nurses, civil servants, politicians, business leaders, entrepreneurs, factory workers, bus drivers etc; and as family members, neighbours, friends. Whatever people do, wherever they find themselves, they are to be God’s salt and light in the world.
I am reminded of the words of one of my heroes: William Temple, who was Archbishop of Canterbury during the second world war, 1942-4. He was a great Christian, and a great social reformer, who was criticised by both Christians and politicians for taking stands on political and social questions. In response, he argued that the church was ‘bound to “interefere”’ in these issues, because, he said ‘it is by vocation the agent of God’s purpose, outside the scope of which no human interest or activity can fall.’
Furthermore, he said, ‘nine-tenths’, 90%, of this ‘interference’ by Christians in political, social and economic questions, should and would be done, not by the church formally – but through the influence of individual Christians in their capacity as engaged citizens. They would bring Christian values to bear in every area, through their work, and through their involvement in the networks of their communities. And therefore, said Archbishop Temple, it was the job of the churches to equip their people to do this, by teaching Christian principles which Christian citizens can then apply in whatever circumstances they find themselves.
How then are we to do this? The passage from John 21 points us in the right direction. For Jesus makes clear that loving him comes before tending and feeding his sheep.
As some of you may know, I spent almost 40 days earlier this week away on retreat. At the heart of the retreat was a period of 30 days spent in near silence, following a programme of guided meditations and prayer that were developed by St Ignatius of Loyola. He was the founder of the Jesuits – the order of Catholic priests of which the new Pope, Francis, is a member. All of us around the world have been impressed by this man – by his holiness and simplicity of life, and by the way his deep, deep, spirituality is also matched with a deep, deep commitment to the poor and needy. This is the life that St Ignatius tried to help people discover, through this long retreat, known as the Full Spiritual Exercises. Its aim is to help people come close to Jesus. By reflecting on God’s creating and redeeming love; and by reflecting on Jesus life and ministry and self-offering on the cross, we find ourselves drawn into the love of God, and therefore also drawn to share his love wherever it is needed.
We too are called to self-offering: offering ourselves in love to Jesus, and in service to the world. This is the two-fold action at the centre of this passage. We have to love Jesus first, in order to be able to feed his sheep.
During my retreat, through spending time reflecting on various passages from the gospels, I felt myself shaken to the core by encountering Jesus with a new freshness and depth. And through this – though it may sound odd for an Archbishop to say this – I felt refreshed, and I feel renewed, in my vocation as a Church leader in ordained ministry. It was a call that I needed to hear again, as Peter needed to have those hard questions ‘Do you love me?’ I too needed to put myself back in that place where loving Jesus and receiving his love came first of all.
For, looking back, I came to realise see that I had often been trapped in understanding ordination too much as being about ‘doing’, about being a ‘professional’. And so I worked hard at the best presiding at the Eucharist with every detail correct, making the best pastoral visits, conducting the best funerals… At times, it was as if I saw myself as a sort of NGO in the religious sector. It felt as if I’d got my mandate from God, and now he could step back while I got on with it myself.
It is like the disciples – they had encountered the risen Jesus for themselves, but now he had ascended, they went back to running their lives the way they knew best – by being professional fishermen. They all, like Peter needed to realise that being a Christian was not merely doing their own professional thing, and saying they were dedicating it to God. Instead they needed a radically new way of living, which was entirely focussed around following Jesus, and obeying his call.
My retreat helped me to see clearly what I had been doing – that I too had fallen into that same trap. But it also turned me round, and radically changed my perspective, I hope, for ever. God touched my heart with an amazing sense of the privilege of ordained ministry. This is something of course I’d known in my head – but I’d never integrated my head with my heart in this way before.
God calls all of us here today in this same remarkable way. He invites us to allow ourselves to be set apart, for a particular life of faithfulness. It is above all, fidelity to God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity. We are to abide in God’s love, shown in Jesus Christ – and letting it burn in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whose coming we celebrate again tomorrow. Through abiding in their love, we come to see and hear and feel, more clearly, more dearly, the God who is Trinity.
We also come see and hear the Trinity in ourselves, and in other people who are also made in God’s image. When we truly see the beauty of God in others, and in nature, we can serve God in them in new ways. Indeed, it is as if I and the other are together caught up into the love of the Trinity, as the ‘God in me’; and ‘God in the other’ resonate together in holy love. This is a very precious mystery.
Yet to abide in such love is demanding. Most of all it demands that we live with an attitude of openness and vulnerability, before God and even before one another, before those we serve as Christian leaders. For if we are to be ‘Prophets and Healers in Broken Communities’ – the title which I was given for this address, then we need to experience for ourselves God’s compassionate touch on our own brokenness; and we need to share what this means for us. In this way we can be living models of how God deals with us in our woundedness and pain.
During my retreat, I found myself drawn to acknowledge and explore how deeply I am wounded by the past history of the Makgobas. I knew it mattered, but had not realised how scarred I was, bearing deep anguish within me at events of the 1880s. After the first Anglo-Boer war, which the Afrikaaners won, they came into conflict with many of the local people. They fought the Makgobas between 1883 and 1885. Finally the king was captured and beheaded, and the clan was scattered. Today we are still wrestling to get out land back; and we are still trying to find the King’s missing head.
I need to acknowledge the woundedness of my whole family, my ancestors, over more than a century, and the pain that we cannot live on our own land, with the freedom we ought to know. Even with land returned, and the head found, we would still remain scarred and traumatised.
We need God’s compassionate touch upon us continually. And if we – if I – can be open to receive from him in this way; then, I show others what it means to live like this – so they also can receive his compassion.
It is as St Paul writes in the first chapter of 2 Corinthians:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.
So then, let me sum up: to be prophets and healers in broken communities, we must reject secular styles of ‘strong man’ leadership. We are to abide in Christ, above all else – to immerse ourselves in the sort of prayer that helps us rest in him, and grow in receiving his love, and especially in the most wounded and broken places of our lives. For in our own woundedness and brokenness we will then receive the consolation of God, which we can then share with the wounded and broken people, communities, and country, to which God sends us.
So may he bless you with this fresh call upon your lives; so that you may grow in his love, and be a blessing to others. Amen
Showing posts with label Retreat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Retreat. Show all posts
Monday, 20 May 2013
Sunday, 31 March 2013
Easter Vigil
This is the sermon from the Easter Vigil on 30/31 March 2013, at the Cathedral of St George the Martyr, Cape Town.
Rom 6:3-11; Luke 24:1-12
“Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ”
Alleluia, Christ is risen! – He is risen indeed, Alleluia!
Dear sisters and brothers in Christ – it is a great joy to be sharing this Easter celebration with you, in the mother church of the Diocese. It is particularly special to be sharing with ou Archbishop Emeritus, Desmond Tutu, safely back from his ‘Semester at Sea’, and looking so young and relaxed. Father, I am jealous of the life you are enjoying in retirement, you look so well on it!
Mr Dean, clergy, wardens, lay-leaders of the Cathedral (both licenced, and those who conduct the music, and all the other ministries that are run from here) – thank you, for all you are, and all you do. And thank you, everyone, for being partners together in the good news that, as St Paul reminds us, Jesus Christ has died and been raised from the dead, so that we too may share in his resurrection to newness of life.
As you probably know, I have had a unique start to this year. Normally, there is barely enough time after Christmas to recover from the exhaustion of the old year, before being thrown into another year of busy activity. This year I took a very different route. Just after mid-January, I went away ‘to the desert’. In fact it was frozen rural North Wales! Including travelling, it was pretty much 40 days in this ‘secluded place’ – 38 of them in a tiny attic room of the retreat centre (with wonderful views over the mountains of Snowdonia, the Irish Sea, and, if I leaned out into the cold and snowy air, even to Liverpool).
I was there to follow the ’30-days Full Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola’. St Ignatius was the founder of the Jesuits, and it is his spirituality that guides the new Pope – with his firm commitment to a deep prayer life that finds expression in a humble ministry of service, especially to the poor.
I travelled to this secluded place in order to make an inward journey – to explore what God was wanting to do in my life. Through the 30-day retreat, we followed various themes, and were guided in our reflections by the Bible.
The journey, the retreat, began with an invitation to recognise the enormity of God’s love – and to accept more fully, how much we need God and God’s love. I found this, in itself, a profound challenge. We then spent more than week ‘walking with Jesus’, in Spirit-led prayerful imagination, with passages from the Annunciation through his life and ministry – praying to be caught up into sharing in Christ’s ministry. And then we spent another week-plus contemplating Holy Week and the Passion: praying to see, feel, touch, smell – and so understand – more clearly all that Jesus bore for us; all that Jesus won for us. Finally we came to the Resurrection – and to the time to return, in the midst of this exploration of the Resurrection, to our normal lives.
The way God met me, challenged me, and changed me, in that time away was strange, even weird, but amazingly powerful. Often it was very uncomfortable, because I know that I like to be cerebral, and to think about these passages and what they convey. But it was as if God kept saying ‘Thabo, I want you to feel what is happening!’ Letting myself connect with the feelings that these passages stirred up in prayer, touched my innermost being, in healing and liberating ways. Some of what I encountered shook me to the core of my being, as passages I thought I knew well, and had preached and taught, impacted upon me in new ways, with new meaning. I am still trying to make sense of these encounters with, and lessons from, God – and expect I will go on absorbing them, drawing on these deep wells, for the rest of my life.
And so now, I am back in Cape Town feeling a little wobbly at times – and wondering how God will lead me to integrate all I’ve experienced and learnt into my ministry and life. I have to admit that though life is very plain and simple on retreat, there is an element of luxury in being at a distance from all the pressures of daily life! And I certainly came back to find an awful lot had been going on. There were so many terrible deaths. Anene Booysen, the Mozambican Taxi driver, and Reeva Steenkamp, so tragically killed by our sporting star, were just the tip of the iceberg. I came back to find the Farlam Commission still unfolding, with heart-breaking agony, the events at Marikana. Around the world chaos and conflict continue – in Syria, and on our continent: with only last weekend the deaths of South Africa’s soldiers in the Central African Republic (there for reasons that are certainly not clear to us all). I found I had missed Jacob Zuma’s state of nation address, and I even missed one of our own parishioner’s [Mamphela Ramphele’s] launching of a new political platform. More than that, I had also missed the test series v Pakistan, and the scandal of kangaroo-meat-in-boerewors!
But the over-riding lesson of my retreat is that God, in his redeeming love, is everywhere. Nothing is beyond his care, or his desire to bring healing and new life to you, to me, to everyone. Furthermore, coming home almost in the middle of our reflections on the resurrection drove home this point: wherever there is greatest need for resurrection, that is where we are most likely to discover Jesus at work, and find our own invitation to join him. If you truly want to know what Easter is all about, look at the places where there are tough challenges, difficult issues, hard wrestling, painful contexts – and where God’s people nonetheless dare to go, and to stay for as long as it takes, witnessing to light and hope and life.
I know that in the Cathedral – especially for the Clergy, Wardens and Council – you must often wish you could just focus on beautiful music, beautiful liturgy, beautiful sermons – and forget the strains of money and building and personnel and so forth. But for us to bear witness to Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord means to be ministers of his resurrection in wherever there is sin and death, negativity, difficulties, hardship and pain, in our own lives – as individuals, within our families, in our congregations. If we are ready to go – even in fear and trembling – into those painful places, bearing the light of Christ, we will find his resurrection power at work. We cannot preach this to the world around us, if we are not prepared to live it for ourselves. And when we live it for ourselves, we will find that it is not something we merely claim to know in our heads. We will also feel in our hearts – and so be able to proclaim with the directness and conviction that come from personal, powerful, experience.
Pope Francis washed the feet of young people in a correctional facility – young people who probably felt they were headed on a downward spiral, with society giving up on them. His message was that the church is in the service, especially, of those who think that hope has run out – because Jesus offers hope to the hopeless, faith to the despairing, light in the darkness, love to the unlovely.
This is resurrection at work among us. This is the resurrection work to which we are called, for, as St Paul wrote, we have been buried with Christ in Baptism, and so will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. Therefore, let us be bearers of hope, beacons of light, spreading the Easter message far and wide.
Tonight, especially, join with me in declaring this Easter message of hope and light in a special way to those who are about to be baptised.
And let us also declare this Easter hope and light – with much love and many prayers – to Madiba, and his family, asking for God’s tender, healing touch, on him.
“Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ.” Amen. Alleluia.
Rom 6:3-11; Luke 24:1-12
“Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ”
Alleluia, Christ is risen! – He is risen indeed, Alleluia!
Dear sisters and brothers in Christ – it is a great joy to be sharing this Easter celebration with you, in the mother church of the Diocese. It is particularly special to be sharing with ou Archbishop Emeritus, Desmond Tutu, safely back from his ‘Semester at Sea’, and looking so young and relaxed. Father, I am jealous of the life you are enjoying in retirement, you look so well on it!
Mr Dean, clergy, wardens, lay-leaders of the Cathedral (both licenced, and those who conduct the music, and all the other ministries that are run from here) – thank you, for all you are, and all you do. And thank you, everyone, for being partners together in the good news that, as St Paul reminds us, Jesus Christ has died and been raised from the dead, so that we too may share in his resurrection to newness of life.
As you probably know, I have had a unique start to this year. Normally, there is barely enough time after Christmas to recover from the exhaustion of the old year, before being thrown into another year of busy activity. This year I took a very different route. Just after mid-January, I went away ‘to the desert’. In fact it was frozen rural North Wales! Including travelling, it was pretty much 40 days in this ‘secluded place’ – 38 of them in a tiny attic room of the retreat centre (with wonderful views over the mountains of Snowdonia, the Irish Sea, and, if I leaned out into the cold and snowy air, even to Liverpool).
I was there to follow the ’30-days Full Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola’. St Ignatius was the founder of the Jesuits, and it is his spirituality that guides the new Pope – with his firm commitment to a deep prayer life that finds expression in a humble ministry of service, especially to the poor.
I travelled to this secluded place in order to make an inward journey – to explore what God was wanting to do in my life. Through the 30-day retreat, we followed various themes, and were guided in our reflections by the Bible.
The journey, the retreat, began with an invitation to recognise the enormity of God’s love – and to accept more fully, how much we need God and God’s love. I found this, in itself, a profound challenge. We then spent more than week ‘walking with Jesus’, in Spirit-led prayerful imagination, with passages from the Annunciation through his life and ministry – praying to be caught up into sharing in Christ’s ministry. And then we spent another week-plus contemplating Holy Week and the Passion: praying to see, feel, touch, smell – and so understand – more clearly all that Jesus bore for us; all that Jesus won for us. Finally we came to the Resurrection – and to the time to return, in the midst of this exploration of the Resurrection, to our normal lives.
The way God met me, challenged me, and changed me, in that time away was strange, even weird, but amazingly powerful. Often it was very uncomfortable, because I know that I like to be cerebral, and to think about these passages and what they convey. But it was as if God kept saying ‘Thabo, I want you to feel what is happening!’ Letting myself connect with the feelings that these passages stirred up in prayer, touched my innermost being, in healing and liberating ways. Some of what I encountered shook me to the core of my being, as passages I thought I knew well, and had preached and taught, impacted upon me in new ways, with new meaning. I am still trying to make sense of these encounters with, and lessons from, God – and expect I will go on absorbing them, drawing on these deep wells, for the rest of my life.
And so now, I am back in Cape Town feeling a little wobbly at times – and wondering how God will lead me to integrate all I’ve experienced and learnt into my ministry and life. I have to admit that though life is very plain and simple on retreat, there is an element of luxury in being at a distance from all the pressures of daily life! And I certainly came back to find an awful lot had been going on. There were so many terrible deaths. Anene Booysen, the Mozambican Taxi driver, and Reeva Steenkamp, so tragically killed by our sporting star, were just the tip of the iceberg. I came back to find the Farlam Commission still unfolding, with heart-breaking agony, the events at Marikana. Around the world chaos and conflict continue – in Syria, and on our continent: with only last weekend the deaths of South Africa’s soldiers in the Central African Republic (there for reasons that are certainly not clear to us all). I found I had missed Jacob Zuma’s state of nation address, and I even missed one of our own parishioner’s [Mamphela Ramphele’s] launching of a new political platform. More than that, I had also missed the test series v Pakistan, and the scandal of kangaroo-meat-in-boerewors!
But the over-riding lesson of my retreat is that God, in his redeeming love, is everywhere. Nothing is beyond his care, or his desire to bring healing and new life to you, to me, to everyone. Furthermore, coming home almost in the middle of our reflections on the resurrection drove home this point: wherever there is greatest need for resurrection, that is where we are most likely to discover Jesus at work, and find our own invitation to join him. If you truly want to know what Easter is all about, look at the places where there are tough challenges, difficult issues, hard wrestling, painful contexts – and where God’s people nonetheless dare to go, and to stay for as long as it takes, witnessing to light and hope and life.
I know that in the Cathedral – especially for the Clergy, Wardens and Council – you must often wish you could just focus on beautiful music, beautiful liturgy, beautiful sermons – and forget the strains of money and building and personnel and so forth. But for us to bear witness to Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord means to be ministers of his resurrection in wherever there is sin and death, negativity, difficulties, hardship and pain, in our own lives – as individuals, within our families, in our congregations. If we are ready to go – even in fear and trembling – into those painful places, bearing the light of Christ, we will find his resurrection power at work. We cannot preach this to the world around us, if we are not prepared to live it for ourselves. And when we live it for ourselves, we will find that it is not something we merely claim to know in our heads. We will also feel in our hearts – and so be able to proclaim with the directness and conviction that come from personal, powerful, experience.
Pope Francis washed the feet of young people in a correctional facility – young people who probably felt they were headed on a downward spiral, with society giving up on them. His message was that the church is in the service, especially, of those who think that hope has run out – because Jesus offers hope to the hopeless, faith to the despairing, light in the darkness, love to the unlovely.
This is resurrection at work among us. This is the resurrection work to which we are called, for, as St Paul wrote, we have been buried with Christ in Baptism, and so will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. Therefore, let us be bearers of hope, beacons of light, spreading the Easter message far and wide.
Tonight, especially, join with me in declaring this Easter message of hope and light in a special way to those who are about to be baptised.
And let us also declare this Easter hope and light – with much love and many prayers – to Madiba, and his family, asking for God’s tender, healing touch, on him.
“Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ.” Amen. Alleluia.
Chrism Eucharist
These are the notes from the sermon at the Chrism Eucharist for the Diocese of Cape Town, held on Maundy Thursday, 28 March 2013, at St Aidan's, Lansdowne.
Introduction
‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring good news…’ (Lk 4:16)
This morning I want to share with you something of my personal spiritual journey so far this year.
But let me first say ‘Thank you’: to all of you in this Diocese, for the part you play – often in the little things you do – so that God may be revealed in, through, and among, you. Especial thanks to Bishop Garth, who, I like to say, does all the practical work so I can spend more time in prayer! A deep thank you to him, and to Chapter, for taking on the every-day business of the Diocese.
Normally, after the busyness of Christmas, I’ve hardly recovered of the past year when New Year holidays are over, and it is back to work again. This year was wholly different. I went ‘into the desert’, travelling to a secluded place in rural Wales. For 38 days I stayed in a tiny room, with the most beautiful views over the mountains of Snowdonia, the Irish Sea, and, if I dared put my head out into the snowy cold, Liverpool.
A Journey
I travelled to this secluded place in order to make an inward journey – in order to explore what God was wanting to do in my life.
The journey, the retreat, began with an invitation to recognise, and accept more fully, the enormity of God’s love – and to recognise and accept more fully, the enormity of our need of God and God’s love. I found this, in itself, a profound challenge. I realised that, as Archbishop, it is far too easy to fall into seeing myself as ‘playing God’, for in so many ways I find myself as a ‘last court of appeal’ with people asking ‘Archbishop, please decide for us.’
Through the 30-day retreat, we followed various themes, and were guided in our reflections by the Bible, with texts from Genesis and creation, onwards. We spent more than week ‘walking with Jesus’, in Spirit-led prayerful imagination, with passages from the Annunciation through his life and ministry.
The way God met me, challenged me, and changed me, was strange, even weird, but amazingly powerful. Often it was very uncomfortable, because I know that I like to be cerebral, and to think about these passages and what they convey. But it was as if God kept saying ‘Thabo, I want you to feel what is happening!’
Letting myself connect with the feelings that these passages stirred up in prayer, touched my innermost being, in healing and liberating ways. I am still trying to make sense of these encounters with, and lessons from, God – and expect I will go on absorbing them, drawing on these deep wells, for the rest of my life. Some of what I encountered shook me to the core of my being, as passages I thought I knew well, and had preached and taught, impacted upon me in new ways, with new meaning.
Palm Sunday, Holy Week, the Passion
As we reflected on Jesus’ ministry, we had prayed to be called to love and serve others as he does. Then we came to pray through the Passion. At this point, the way we approached our prayers changed. We were ‘to watch and observe’. For someone like me, who I often think has undiagnosed Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, because I am always looking for action, this was very hard.
We asked God for the grace to help us, in our prayer times, to see Jesus more clearly– so that we might grasp more fully all he has done, and at what cost. We asked to be ‘taken captive’ by the readings and live inside them.
For, when we have a greater understanding of what it means for Jesus to be incarnate, take on mortality, and embrace sin, suffering and death, then we have a greater capacity to grasp the promise of resurrection and redemption: newness of life in our humanity, in the face of our sin, suffering, mortality.
If you had asked me to talk about the incarnation, I would readily have done so, with help from google, and drawing on various papers where I’ve written and spoken about it in the past. But now we were invited to walk alongside the incarnate Son of God, to smell, touch, taste, feel, the challenges that he faced, as he embraced sin, suffering and death – including our own sin, and the sin of the world of which we are a part.
My spiritual director invited me to mourn and weep for my own sin, and the corporate sin around. I said to him that he should have asked the opposite, because often when I should weep, I dry up, and when I should dry up, I weep. But I found myself walking around the hills of North Wales, crying and crying, often for things I’d thought were dealt with in my life. I even cried for things that happened before I was born, such as the beheading of King Makgoba in 1895, and the fact that his head has still not been found.
I felt touched by sins of the past, and old hurts, that I thought I’d put behind me. Perhaps I had, in my head. But many pains were still buried deep. And in our week of praying through the Passion, God brought them to the surface, to my conscious awareness.
And he challenged me to bring each one to the cross – to the illuminating light of Christ, which liberates us from sin and death into newness of life. I have now come back feeling I have found a true freedom, able to walk as my true self with Jesus.
The Call to Serve Jesus – 1 – Renewed Vocation
It may sound odd for an Archbishop to say this – but I feel fresh, I feel renewed, in my vocation.
When I look back, I can see that I had often been trapped in understanding ordination too much as being about ‘doing’, about being a ‘professional’. And so I worked hard at the best presiding at the Eucharist with every detail correct, making the best pastoral visits, conducting the best funerals… At times, it was as if I saw myself as a sort of NGO in the religious sector.
It felt as if I’d got my mandate from God, and now he could step back while I got on with it myself. But this retreat helped me see what I had been doing, and has changed that perspective, I hope, for ever.
God touched my heart with an amazing sense of the privilege of ordained ministry. This is something of course I’d known in my head – but I’d never integrated my head with my heart in this way before.
God calls us in a remarkable way. He invites us to allow ourselves to be set apart, for a particular life of faithfulness. It is above all, fidelity to God, the Holy Trinity – and to abide in God’s love, as those days in St Beuno’s enabled me to do in a new way. Through abiding in their love, we come to see and hear and feel, more clearly, more dearly, the God who is Trinity
We also come see and hear the Trinity in ourselves, and in other people who are also made in God’s image. When we truly see the beauty of God in others, and in nature, we can serve God in them in new ways. Indeed, it is as if I and the other are together caught up into the love of the Trinity, as the ‘God in me’; and ‘God in the other’ resonate together in holy love. This is a very precious mystery.
My spiritual director, Stan, who was in a wheelchair, insisted that I spend time drawing what I was feeling through my praying. I objected! How can one draw what is abstract? But he was adamant that I should draw them, or take clay and mould them. Well, I worked at it, and though I cannot say that I came back having discovered a hidden artistic talent, I did discover what it means for creativity – and also walking – to be part of my praying life.
When I came home, my daughter, who knows that I am prone to talking at length in abstract ways, asked me ‘Dad, in summary, what did you do while you were away all that time?’ I said ‘I was caught up in a precious mystery.’ ‘Yes, Dad, but what did you DO?’ Ignatian spirituality is sometimes described as ‘A mysticism of love and service’. It encourages us to express the love of God in deeds, more than in words; and prayer is fundamental in our ability to do this. But unless we pray with resolve to work for justice and peace in society, we will find our praying and our whole prayer life lacks a vital element.
Throughout our retreat we were encouraged to pray for the graces of openness, humility and freedom – especially freedom to step back from being driven by status, power and wealth. So I have returned to Cape Town feeling a little bit wobbly – wanting to be faithful to what I have learnt in the context of the Diocese, the Province, and Southern Africa. I am praying that I can still strive and pray to know that openness, humility and freedom in my life and ministry here.
It was a particular privilege to be in England last week, and participate in the enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury. It was a chance to weave in all that comes from my Anglican roots and identity with what I have been learning on my St Beuno’s journey.
The Call to Serve Jesus – 2 – The Life of Ministry
You may have been reading about Pope Francis and his Jesuit spirituality, with its focus on deep prayer and discernment that is then lived out in serving others, especially the poor. It is rooted in precisely these ‘Spiritual Exercises’ I have undertaken.
I know we all have different spiritualities, but if you can, I do urge you to find time to ‘go into the desert’ for such an encounter with God in some way. For when we experience his love this deeply, and feel ourselves carried by his love, then we will be enabled to share his love in the life of ministry.
This is an important balance to remember – because, on retreat, there is a particular joy of being ‘in the desert’, away from all the hassles of everyday life, family, parish, church, etc! And I certainly came back to find an awful lot going on, and a lot of catching up to do. There was the heartbreak of so many deaths. Anene Booysen, the Mozambican Taxi driver, and Reeva Steenkamp, so tragically killed by our sporting star. were just the tip of the iceberg.
I came back to find the Farlam Commission still unfolding, with heart-breaking agony, the events at Marikana. Around the world, Syria remains in desperate chaos, with millions, half of them children, suffering – and we hope the BRICS summit this week will make a difference so aid can get to them.
I found I had missed Jacob Zuma’s state of nation address, and I even missed one of our own parishioner’s [Mamphela Ramphele’s] launch of a new political platform. More than that, I had also missed the test series v Pakistan, and the kangaroo-meat-in-boerewors scandal!
But the over-riding lesson of my retreat is that God, in his redeeming love, is everywhere. Nothing is beyond his care, or his desire to bring healing and new life to you, to me, to everyone. Indeed, one of the overriding lessons I learnt on retreat is that wherever we most find a need for resurrection, that is where we are most likely to find Jesus at work, and our own invitation to join him.
The Call to Serve Jesus – 3 – Equipping for Ministry
This was a huge undertaking – once in a lifetime. It is definitely not to be attempted more than once a decade! Earlier this week, I was speaking with someone who followed this 30-day retreat 15 years ago, and says that she is still drawing on that time. Not all of us can do it, but all of us can keep walking the journey of deeper inner exploration, led by God.
Within ACSA we have designated 2013 as ‘The Year of Theological Education’. This is not only for our educating heads, but for our whole formation. We need to spend time with God, to let ourselves be challenged, let God take us outside our comfort zones.
Perhaps you can read a book that stirs us up. Perhaps, instead of going to Wales, you can make a pilgrimage, even to Zonnebloem where Bernard Mizeki was baptised. Perhaps you should go to where you were born, or the place from which you were forcibly removed, and claim it in prayer: feel and claim and own the pains that you still carry, and then bring them to the cross so you can find healing for the hurt, and be set free to move on. Perhaps you can go to the Holy Land – though, I emphasise, not as a tourist! We need to travel ‘naked before God’, with a Bible in one hand, and newspaper in other
May today – at Maundy Thursday services this evening, Good Friday, Easter – be the first steps of this journey for you.
Conclusion
As I conclude, I am thankful that I have been able to hold in check the welter of emotions around this journey that I have made, while still being able to share with you something of the depths of what I have felt and experienced on this journey.
Today we are here to renew our ordination vows: to hear afresh his call of love to us
• We say Yes: to this privilege of profound mystery, lives set apart for fidelity and grace.
• We say Yes: to let God love us more, and catch us up into the life of the Trinity
• We say Yes: to let God heal us more, to bring us greater liberty, freedom
• We say Yes: to let God reveal himself to us more deeply, in ourselves, in others
• We say Yes: to letting ourselves be called to join in Christ’s redeeming work
‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring good news...’
Introduction
‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring good news…’ (Lk 4:16)
This morning I want to share with you something of my personal spiritual journey so far this year.
But let me first say ‘Thank you’: to all of you in this Diocese, for the part you play – often in the little things you do – so that God may be revealed in, through, and among, you. Especial thanks to Bishop Garth, who, I like to say, does all the practical work so I can spend more time in prayer! A deep thank you to him, and to Chapter, for taking on the every-day business of the Diocese.
Normally, after the busyness of Christmas, I’ve hardly recovered of the past year when New Year holidays are over, and it is back to work again. This year was wholly different. I went ‘into the desert’, travelling to a secluded place in rural Wales. For 38 days I stayed in a tiny room, with the most beautiful views over the mountains of Snowdonia, the Irish Sea, and, if I dared put my head out into the snowy cold, Liverpool.
A Journey
I travelled to this secluded place in order to make an inward journey – in order to explore what God was wanting to do in my life.
The journey, the retreat, began with an invitation to recognise, and accept more fully, the enormity of God’s love – and to recognise and accept more fully, the enormity of our need of God and God’s love. I found this, in itself, a profound challenge. I realised that, as Archbishop, it is far too easy to fall into seeing myself as ‘playing God’, for in so many ways I find myself as a ‘last court of appeal’ with people asking ‘Archbishop, please decide for us.’
Through the 30-day retreat, we followed various themes, and were guided in our reflections by the Bible, with texts from Genesis and creation, onwards. We spent more than week ‘walking with Jesus’, in Spirit-led prayerful imagination, with passages from the Annunciation through his life and ministry.
The way God met me, challenged me, and changed me, was strange, even weird, but amazingly powerful. Often it was very uncomfortable, because I know that I like to be cerebral, and to think about these passages and what they convey. But it was as if God kept saying ‘Thabo, I want you to feel what is happening!’
Letting myself connect with the feelings that these passages stirred up in prayer, touched my innermost being, in healing and liberating ways. I am still trying to make sense of these encounters with, and lessons from, God – and expect I will go on absorbing them, drawing on these deep wells, for the rest of my life. Some of what I encountered shook me to the core of my being, as passages I thought I knew well, and had preached and taught, impacted upon me in new ways, with new meaning.
Palm Sunday, Holy Week, the Passion
As we reflected on Jesus’ ministry, we had prayed to be called to love and serve others as he does. Then we came to pray through the Passion. At this point, the way we approached our prayers changed. We were ‘to watch and observe’. For someone like me, who I often think has undiagnosed Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, because I am always looking for action, this was very hard.
We asked God for the grace to help us, in our prayer times, to see Jesus more clearly– so that we might grasp more fully all he has done, and at what cost. We asked to be ‘taken captive’ by the readings and live inside them.
For, when we have a greater understanding of what it means for Jesus to be incarnate, take on mortality, and embrace sin, suffering and death, then we have a greater capacity to grasp the promise of resurrection and redemption: newness of life in our humanity, in the face of our sin, suffering, mortality.
If you had asked me to talk about the incarnation, I would readily have done so, with help from google, and drawing on various papers where I’ve written and spoken about it in the past. But now we were invited to walk alongside the incarnate Son of God, to smell, touch, taste, feel, the challenges that he faced, as he embraced sin, suffering and death – including our own sin, and the sin of the world of which we are a part.
My spiritual director invited me to mourn and weep for my own sin, and the corporate sin around. I said to him that he should have asked the opposite, because often when I should weep, I dry up, and when I should dry up, I weep. But I found myself walking around the hills of North Wales, crying and crying, often for things I’d thought were dealt with in my life. I even cried for things that happened before I was born, such as the beheading of King Makgoba in 1895, and the fact that his head has still not been found.
I felt touched by sins of the past, and old hurts, that I thought I’d put behind me. Perhaps I had, in my head. But many pains were still buried deep. And in our week of praying through the Passion, God brought them to the surface, to my conscious awareness.
And he challenged me to bring each one to the cross – to the illuminating light of Christ, which liberates us from sin and death into newness of life. I have now come back feeling I have found a true freedom, able to walk as my true self with Jesus.
The Call to Serve Jesus – 1 – Renewed Vocation
It may sound odd for an Archbishop to say this – but I feel fresh, I feel renewed, in my vocation.
When I look back, I can see that I had often been trapped in understanding ordination too much as being about ‘doing’, about being a ‘professional’. And so I worked hard at the best presiding at the Eucharist with every detail correct, making the best pastoral visits, conducting the best funerals… At times, it was as if I saw myself as a sort of NGO in the religious sector.
It felt as if I’d got my mandate from God, and now he could step back while I got on with it myself. But this retreat helped me see what I had been doing, and has changed that perspective, I hope, for ever.
God touched my heart with an amazing sense of the privilege of ordained ministry. This is something of course I’d known in my head – but I’d never integrated my head with my heart in this way before.
God calls us in a remarkable way. He invites us to allow ourselves to be set apart, for a particular life of faithfulness. It is above all, fidelity to God, the Holy Trinity – and to abide in God’s love, as those days in St Beuno’s enabled me to do in a new way. Through abiding in their love, we come to see and hear and feel, more clearly, more dearly, the God who is Trinity
We also come see and hear the Trinity in ourselves, and in other people who are also made in God’s image. When we truly see the beauty of God in others, and in nature, we can serve God in them in new ways. Indeed, it is as if I and the other are together caught up into the love of the Trinity, as the ‘God in me’; and ‘God in the other’ resonate together in holy love. This is a very precious mystery.
My spiritual director, Stan, who was in a wheelchair, insisted that I spend time drawing what I was feeling through my praying. I objected! How can one draw what is abstract? But he was adamant that I should draw them, or take clay and mould them. Well, I worked at it, and though I cannot say that I came back having discovered a hidden artistic talent, I did discover what it means for creativity – and also walking – to be part of my praying life.
When I came home, my daughter, who knows that I am prone to talking at length in abstract ways, asked me ‘Dad, in summary, what did you do while you were away all that time?’ I said ‘I was caught up in a precious mystery.’ ‘Yes, Dad, but what did you DO?’ Ignatian spirituality is sometimes described as ‘A mysticism of love and service’. It encourages us to express the love of God in deeds, more than in words; and prayer is fundamental in our ability to do this. But unless we pray with resolve to work for justice and peace in society, we will find our praying and our whole prayer life lacks a vital element.
Throughout our retreat we were encouraged to pray for the graces of openness, humility and freedom – especially freedom to step back from being driven by status, power and wealth. So I have returned to Cape Town feeling a little bit wobbly – wanting to be faithful to what I have learnt in the context of the Diocese, the Province, and Southern Africa. I am praying that I can still strive and pray to know that openness, humility and freedom in my life and ministry here.
It was a particular privilege to be in England last week, and participate in the enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury. It was a chance to weave in all that comes from my Anglican roots and identity with what I have been learning on my St Beuno’s journey.
The Call to Serve Jesus – 2 – The Life of Ministry
You may have been reading about Pope Francis and his Jesuit spirituality, with its focus on deep prayer and discernment that is then lived out in serving others, especially the poor. It is rooted in precisely these ‘Spiritual Exercises’ I have undertaken.
I know we all have different spiritualities, but if you can, I do urge you to find time to ‘go into the desert’ for such an encounter with God in some way. For when we experience his love this deeply, and feel ourselves carried by his love, then we will be enabled to share his love in the life of ministry.
This is an important balance to remember – because, on retreat, there is a particular joy of being ‘in the desert’, away from all the hassles of everyday life, family, parish, church, etc! And I certainly came back to find an awful lot going on, and a lot of catching up to do. There was the heartbreak of so many deaths. Anene Booysen, the Mozambican Taxi driver, and Reeva Steenkamp, so tragically killed by our sporting star. were just the tip of the iceberg.
I came back to find the Farlam Commission still unfolding, with heart-breaking agony, the events at Marikana. Around the world, Syria remains in desperate chaos, with millions, half of them children, suffering – and we hope the BRICS summit this week will make a difference so aid can get to them.
I found I had missed Jacob Zuma’s state of nation address, and I even missed one of our own parishioner’s [Mamphela Ramphele’s] launch of a new political platform. More than that, I had also missed the test series v Pakistan, and the kangaroo-meat-in-boerewors scandal!
But the over-riding lesson of my retreat is that God, in his redeeming love, is everywhere. Nothing is beyond his care, or his desire to bring healing and new life to you, to me, to everyone. Indeed, one of the overriding lessons I learnt on retreat is that wherever we most find a need for resurrection, that is where we are most likely to find Jesus at work, and our own invitation to join him.
The Call to Serve Jesus – 3 – Equipping for Ministry
This was a huge undertaking – once in a lifetime. It is definitely not to be attempted more than once a decade! Earlier this week, I was speaking with someone who followed this 30-day retreat 15 years ago, and says that she is still drawing on that time. Not all of us can do it, but all of us can keep walking the journey of deeper inner exploration, led by God.
Within ACSA we have designated 2013 as ‘The Year of Theological Education’. This is not only for our educating heads, but for our whole formation. We need to spend time with God, to let ourselves be challenged, let God take us outside our comfort zones.
Perhaps you can read a book that stirs us up. Perhaps, instead of going to Wales, you can make a pilgrimage, even to Zonnebloem where Bernard Mizeki was baptised. Perhaps you should go to where you were born, or the place from which you were forcibly removed, and claim it in prayer: feel and claim and own the pains that you still carry, and then bring them to the cross so you can find healing for the hurt, and be set free to move on. Perhaps you can go to the Holy Land – though, I emphasise, not as a tourist! We need to travel ‘naked before God’, with a Bible in one hand, and newspaper in other
May today – at Maundy Thursday services this evening, Good Friday, Easter – be the first steps of this journey for you.
Conclusion
As I conclude, I am thankful that I have been able to hold in check the welter of emotions around this journey that I have made, while still being able to share with you something of the depths of what I have felt and experienced on this journey.
Today we are here to renew our ordination vows: to hear afresh his call of love to us
• We say Yes: to this privilege of profound mystery, lives set apart for fidelity and grace.
• We say Yes: to let God love us more, and catch us up into the life of the Trinity
• We say Yes: to let God heal us more, to bring us greater liberty, freedom
• We say Yes: to let God reveal himself to us more deeply, in ourselves, in others
• We say Yes: to letting ourselves be called to join in Christ’s redeeming work
‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring good news...’
Thursday, 12 August 2010
Letter to the People of the Diocese of George
Letter from the Archbishop of Cape Town, 10 July 2010 (Please read this in conjunction with the Letter to the Laos, in the posting below.)
To God’s faithful people in the Diocese of George
Greetings
In January 2009 I was informed about administrative mismanagement within the Diocese of George. The document informing me of this mismanagement was signed by the majority of the Trust and Finance Board as well as by all the Archdeacons. The document asserted that mismanagement was a result of the Diocesan Bishop, Bishop Donald Harker, not carrying out his fiduciary responsibilities in a responsible manner. This document was generated in accordance with Canons and Constitution of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.
Since then three Provincial Teams have visited the Diocese of George to investigate more fully the assertions. What became clear was that significant fraud and theft had taken place in the diocese of George and that a Forensic Audit was required to ascertain the extent of the amount embezzled. Messrs PKF, an audit company operating in Port Elizabeth, was contracted by the province to undertake the audit which was completed some five months after the original engagement date. The delay was largely brought about by the number of fraudulent transactions. In most Forensic Audits fraud is limited to approximately 15-20 transactions. In the case of the Diocese of George this figure was approximately 1000 counts of fraud or suspicious transactions.
At the conclusion of the visit a report including recommendations was provided to me. As a result of the recommendations I have taken the following actions:
1. I have visited the Diocese of George and met with Bishop Donald Harker and his wife, Mrs Joan Harker. During the course of our discussion, Bishop Donald Harker agreed to step down as Diocesan Bishop with effect from the 10th of August 2010.
2. Consequently, I have appointed the Revd Canon Brian Marajh as Vicar General to act on my behalf until a new bishop is installed. The mandate of the Vicar General will include the implementation of good governance structures and the oversight of legislation.
3. I met with the Rectors and Churchwardens of the diocese to share the general findings of the forensic audit and the measures taken to normalise the present situation of uncertainty.
4. I have appointed a small team under the chair of the Diocesan Registrar, Mr Kenneth Peters to determine whether individuals named in the report would face civil or criminal liability and to report back to me by the 10th August 2010.
5. I have dissolved the current Board of Trustees and Finance and have appointed an interim Board to oversee the asset management of the Diocese until the next sitting of Diocesan Synod.
6. Furthermore I have agreed to lead a clergy retreat as part of the process of healing and renewal.
Having visited the Diocese, I am reassured that the remedial steps taken to date are providing a firm foundation for the management and good governance of the Diocese and the steps above will further enhance this process.
And now unto him, who is able to keep us from falling and to present us without blemish before the presence of his glory with rejoicing to the only God, our Saviour through Jesus Christ our Lord be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time now and forever. Amen.
Yours in the Service of Christ
+Thabo Cape Town
Thursday, 17 July 2008
Inspiring Retreat Addresses in the Cathedral
Today the day started well, I have managed to meet up with almost all of the ACSA bishops and some of their spouses. Both bishops and spouses began the day with worship. After Bible study, the bishops were bused to Canterbury Cathedral for their retreat, lunch and evening prayer.
Members of the cathedral choir always make great melody with their voices and the sung evensong was uplifting. The Archbishop of Canterbury's retreat addresses - two of them today - were inspiring, reflecting on ideas and messages from Paul’s letters and how they define the bishop as a centre of unity and the imperative for social justice concerns, healing and hope.
Lungi is attending the launch of Jane Williams' book, "Marriage, Mitres and Being Myself" tonight and I am writing these reflections.
Although it was a grey day today, it is still light outside and the time is 8.45pm.
The campus is full of media and after our retreat we had one protester outside the cathedral gates, with a vulgar poster. So far so good. My thanks to Rob Rogerson, who has made our journey smooth.
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