Archbishop's Charge to Diocesan Synod, Cape Town

The Archbishop’s Charge to the 64th session of the Synod of the Diocese or Cape Town, delivered at the Opening Eucharist at St Cyprian’s Church, Retreat on Thursday, 14 August 2014:

Who is the Church?

Discerning God’s holiness at work and for the living of these days in the everyday life of the saints

Ezekiel 12:1-16

Judah’s Captivity Portrayed

The word of the Lord came to me: 2 Mortal, you are living in the midst of a rebellious house, who have eyes to see but do not see, who have ears to hear but do not hear; 3 for they are a rebellious house. Therefore, mortal, prepare for yourself an exile’s baggage, and go into exile by day in their sight; you shall go like an exile from your place to another place in their sight. Perhaps they will understand, though they are a rebellious house. 4 You shall bring out your baggage by day in their sight, as baggage for exile; and you shall go out yourself at evening in their sight, as those do who go into exile. 5 Dig through the wall in their sight, and carry the baggage through it. 6 In their sight you shall lift the baggage on your shoulder, and carry it out in the dark; you shall cover your face, so that you may not see the land; for I have made you a sign for the house of Israel.

7 I did just as I was commanded. I brought out my baggage by day, as baggage for exile, and in the evening I dug through the wall with my own hands; I brought it out in the dark, carrying it on my shoulder in their sight.

8 In the morning the word of the Lord came to me: 9 Mortal, has not the house of Israel, the rebellious house, said to you, “What are you doing?” 10 Say to them, “Thus says the Lord God: This oracle concerns the prince in Jerusalem and all the house of Israel in it.” 11 Say, “I am a sign for you: as I have done, so shall it be done to them; they shall go into exile, into captivity.” 12 And the prince who is among them shall lift his baggage on his shoulder in the dark, and shall go out; he shall dig through the wall and carry it through; he shall cover his face, so that he may not see the land with his eyes. 13 I will spread my net over him, and he shall be caught in my snare; and I will bring him to Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans, yet he shall not see it; and he shall die there. 14 I will scatter to every wind all who are around him, his helpers and all his troops; and I will unsheathe the sword behind them. 15 And they shall know that I am the Lord, when I disperse them among the nations and scatter them through the countries. 16 But I will let a few of them escape from the sword, from famine and pestilence, so that they may tell of all their abominations among the nations where they go; then they shall know that I am the Lord.

Matthew 18:21-19:2 

Forgiveness

21 Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant

23 “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; 25 and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. 26 So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27 And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29 Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30 But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. 31 When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32 Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ 34 And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. 35 So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. 2 Large crowds followed him, and he cured them there.

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

Dear members of the Diocese of Cape Town, dear sisters and brothers in Christ, dear friends, I greet you all in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and welcome you to the 64th Session of our Diocesan Synod. I extend a warm greeting to all our special guests, including Archbishop Brislin, my Roman Catholic colleague and friend; thank you for being with us. We also greet Prof Geoff Everingham, thanking God for his faithful service, for which it is our privilege to honour him today with the Order of St Simon of Cyrene. Welcome to your family too, Professor Everingham.

Let me also convey my greetings and acknowledgements, and my profound thanks to everyone who helps the Diocese and me with our ministry: to Lungi, and our two teenagers at home; to the staff at the Diocesan Office – especially to the team headed by Archdeacon Horace Arenz who ably organised this Synod; to the other teams – the synod advisory and small groups teams and the legislative team – who helped us prepare for it; to Bishop Garth and the Dean, for your friendship and support always; to Mr Francis Newham our Diocesan Registrar; to the Provincial staff, especially those in Rob Rogerson’s office; and to all my staff at Bishopscourt, Gail Allen and especially John Allen, who aids me in communications matters. 

My thanks also to Chapter and all the diocesan bodies, the Diocesan Standing Committee and all the ministry teams, our schools and homes, our chaplaincies, the warehouse and the media teams. Thanks to the heads and chaplains of our Anglican schools here present and the work they do for our country in education.

Congratulations too to our own Trevor Pearce and the team which supported him, especially from this Diocese, for hosting a successful Anglicans Ablaze conference last month. Archbishop Justin Welby, as he left for OR Tambo after his visit, told us: “This Anglicans Ablaze is a good ministry”. My challenge to you all now is to organise a diocesan “Ablaze” on liturgy and ministry, and on all forms of worship and teaching, both traditional as well as new forms of doing things the Anglican way.

I also want to extend a special thanks to clergy, their spouses and their families, for making this Diocese of Cape Town a Christian community that enables us and others to experience tangibly the redeeming love of God at work in us. I never cease to thank God for the privilege of being your archbishop and serving God with and through you. Thank you all for your prayers and support, for this very daunting but deeply rewarding vocation of witness, worship and service. We meet in the Month of Compassion, and I want to commend parishes for their continued efforts to observe this important ecumenical initiative every August, which it is so easy to overlook amid our busy parish activities. Just a few days ago I was reading about how St Stephen’s, Pinelands, has been organising “Hunger Suppers” at which participants eat simply then donate their savings to works of compassion. It is also of course Women’s Month in South Africa, and it is with great pleasure and pride that we congratulate the Revd Dr Vicentia Kgabe of Johannesburg on her appointment as the new Rector of the College of the Transfiguration from January next year. 

In this vocation, there is never a dull moment – and I will refer later to some of the frustrations of being an archbishop in this litigious age in which some lawyers appear ever too ready to encourage clergy and laity to ignore the injunction that Christians should not threaten to drag one another into the courts. But equally there are uplifting times, for example when I ask my intercessors’ group to focus their prayers on a particular matter, enabling me to get a better perspective on it, or getting feedback on bishops’ forums. There are exciting moments too – such when we raised our first one million rand for the Archbishop’s Theological Education Endowment Fund, or launched the e-Reader project – and encouraging moments such as I experience during Clergy Formation Week, at archdeaconry teas, or parish visits for confirmations, or when we license clergy, lay ministers or hold children’s parties at the end of the year.

Some of you know that I enjoy orchestral music, jazz, theatre and of course rugby too. I have in recent times enjoyed the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra, the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic conducted by Richard Cock, Maria Schneider’s jazz compositions at the National Arts Festival, visits to museums in Britain and the United States, the Tate in London and walks in botanical gardens and forest slopes in Aspen and Makgobaskloof. All these inspire me and give me the space and permission to imagine and sometimes to touch that which I imagine. 

Recently at a jazz performance I attended, a player had dropped his saxophone on his way to the venue and was anxious that it would not play well – but, heartwarmingly, the conductor affirmed him. He produced good music. Key to music at its most uplifting is that all play their part to the best of their abilities, celebrating their different gifts together in a way that brings harmony and joy to their listeners.

Over the next three days, we have been given verses from Matthew’s Gospel to ponder and reflect upon: from Matthew 18 and 19 tonight, in which we look at forgiveness; from Matthew 19:2-12 tomorrow, in which we will look at grounds for divorce and understanding sexuality in God’s law; and from Matthew 19:13-15, in which we look at protecting children and beyond that at the cost of discipleship. 

But before I look at Matthew, we might do well to ponder together, what is a Charge? Here I run the risk of being told, as my children do: Dad, get to the point! But the question is worth asking. Is a Charge about where we have been or come from? Or where we are now? Or where are we going and what is missing in our actions, and perhaps from our vision? I suggest that even if we don’t seek to address all of them explicitly, we need to keep all three in the back of our minds, but seek especially to focus on the third. Please see my reflections in this Charge as a work in progress, an unfolding story, just as our journey in faith is an unfolding story as we catch in a mirror dimly the riches of God’s grace.

So what is missing? Let’s first look at our vision. We are guided by our diocesan and provincial mission statements: in the Province we say we are– 

Anchored in the love of Christ, Committed to God’s mission and Transformed by the Holy Spirit (ACT); 

and in the Diocese we aspire– 

To be a community rooted in the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ, To bring God’s Healing with Joy and Compassion.

I want to assert that at the core of these aspirational statements, which we call vision, is the question: Who is the Church? – which is the theme I have given to my Charge this evening.  The Psalmist evokes for us a sense of the longing we experience to fulfill God’s aspirations for us – notably when he tells us that “By the rivers of Babylon – there we sat down and there we wept, when we remembered Zion... How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” and also in Psalm 39:12-13, “Hear my prayer, O Lord… do not hold your peace at my tears… that I may smile again, before I depart and am no more.” The Eucharist too, is about this holy longing, a vision of where we want to go and what is missing. Archdeacon Groepe in his circular about Synod to his archdeaconry representatives, writes, “Synod is a Pentecost event. We gather as the varied people from the Diocese to seek the mind of Christ, to hear, listen and act together on what God puts in our hearts and minds at this Pentecost.” Yes, as we are in the season of Pentecost, let us be reassured that there is no reason for excessive worry: we have been carried all the way by the Holy Spirit, and we will get where we are going through the work and power of the Holy Spirit. Of course that doesn’t mean we can afford to lounge around; in seeking to follow Jesus, we need actively to work to identify what it is that is missing.

You will recall that from Chapter 17, the Matthean Jesus, as he moves towards suffering, death and resurrection, spends a lot of time teaching or disciplining his core group of followers. With his imminent departure at hand, in Chapter 18 the succession debate raises its head, as well as questions of rank, status and position. If you want greatness in the kingdom of heaven, we learn, you must have childlike humility: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

We bandy this virtue around too easily, often expecting that the humble should be timid and allow us always to have our  way. When we admire our neighbour, saying, “Ain’t they humble,” we actually mean, “Ain’t it great that others are timid,” letting us get away with perceptions, stereotypes and sometimes unhelpful attitudes. In an attempt to answer the question I have posed, Who is the Church? I want to argue tonight that the church is called to be a community which is childlike in its exercise of radical and true humility. What might that true and radical humility entail for the saints in the living of these days?

True humility in the Christian community is displayed when we care less about power, status and wealth and become known for our redemptive actions and attitudes towards our brothers and sisters who have wronged. I spend a lot of time reading notices of court action in which, as Metropolitan, I am named as the first respondent. I am always challenged to the core of my being when I read these. My immediate response, the unmediated one, is to pull rank and deploy all the best canon lawyers, registrars and chancellors at my disposal to protect my rank and status from these wretched erring clerics or laity. And I suspect I am not the only one who struggles with this instinct – it probably happens to clergy who are challenged by laity, and to laity confronted by clergy. But then who is the Church, and what of the forgiveness we have read about today, and the humility I am advocating?

The Church is a Christian community whose vocation, amongst many, is to live and display the true humility which is seen in redemptive actions and attitudes to neighbour, to foe and to all of creation. The challenge we face is: As church, how should we live with the in-between – in the knowledge of the reality of incarnation on the one hand, and the certainty, in eschatological terms, of the end on the other. This tension is key to the redemptive attitudes and actions which should be at the core of being a Christian community. Like a coin, redemptive actions and attitudes – which I call true humility, childlike humility – have two critical sides to them: reconciliation and forgiveness. As I shared the implications of this with a small group that met with me to think aloud through this Charge, over and above the question I was posing, “Who is the church”, we came up with the sub-theme: “Discerning God’s holiness at work and for the living of these days in the everyday life of the saints”.

So what does humility in the Christian community involve? Let’s get away from the metaphor of a coin, especially as we seek to honour Matthew’s teaching on denouncing power, rank, status and wealth. I want instead to suggest that as Christians we replace the word “coin” with the word “heart” for our metaphor. So tonight and forthwith, I will talk about both sides of the heart instead of both sides of the coin; asserting that the heart, as opposed to Caesar’s symbol of power, the coin, is more biblical. Heart is the source and seat of life (“mpilo”) and true power. 

The one side of the heart of redemptive action is reconciliation. Matthew 18:15-22 paints a picture for us. It is the opposite of vengeance. It is a heart-rending process. You have to look at the erring nearest and dearest, the wrongdoer and allow them the opportunity to recount their mistakes and perhaps repent of them. Without going into details, I recently had to look at the colleague in the eye and listen to him tell me why he betrayed the confidentiality of one of the processes laid down by our canons, costing us thousands of rands in legal fees. I was deeply disappointed, fuming in fact and had the right to show him the door. Two of us sat with him for hours, listening to him tangle, then finally untangle himself, and come to a point of confessing and asking for forgiveness. You may want to call this indaba, as I have argued elsewhere in the Anglican Communion. Over the last couple of years, I have come to realise how litigious we have become as a society and of course as the church as well, wasting money that should be used for mission on lawyers. My call is that we should respond in accordance with this Matthean passage. If we don’t, Jesus says the consequences are dire in the here and now and at the end. At the provincial level, we have set up the Canon Law Council, whose task is to be Matthean in approach and remind us of “Who is the Church” when it comes to brothers and sisters who have erred. In the Diocese, we have set up a legislation committee as a result of our last Synod. 

Forgiveness as a redemptive action cannot be a legal matter only. So, within the Church and the wider world, we also promote redemptive attitudes and actions in many other ways, either unseen on a one-to-one basis or publicly in high profile initiatives. We do it, for example, when we hear confessions as clergy, intervene in Manenberg’s gangster conflicts, campaign against the scandalous peddling of drugs in poor communities, pursue initiatives in our social responsibility groups, share God’s love through our ministry to people living with HIV and Aids, show our concern for the environment, undertake walks of witness to where people are suffering, whether as a consequence of fires or flooding in Langa and other places, or forced evictions in Lwandle, and even when we arrange events to honour Nelson Mandela Day, or Madiba’s life when he died. The openness with which we challenge one another – whether across divides of gender, race, religion, culture, or in our Walk of Witness from District Six to Parliament on Holy Saturday – can also bear witness to the kind of redemptive actions by which we can pursue reconciliation with one another and with our difficult past.

At the heart of living redemptive attitudes and actions must be a special concern for the dispossessed. During the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown last month, I was asked to speak on housing and family life at the SpiritFest Winter School organised by the cathedral. It led to vigorous discussion, which confirmed my view that we as the Church need to take far more seriously the call to engage in reconciling acts that bridge the kind of inequality we see in our physical living conditions in South Africa. We all know only too well the broad outlines of the appalling conditions in which huge numbers of our people live, but some of the challenges are worth restating, again and again – not only here but in our pulpits, our Bible studies and our social responsibility groups.

Not only has our government in the democratic era inherited a legacy of very low rates of formal housing; society has been urbanising rapidly over the past 20 years. In 2004 already, the government noted that a fifth of people who lived in urban areas were first-generation residents and that this trend was set to continue. The backlogs in housing have generated overcrowding and squatter settlements, and led to land invasions in urban areas. Most of us who are in the middle classes become inured to the suffering involved in the way many people live, because the legacy of segregation has served, in the words of one expert, to “hide debilitating poverty.”

The desperate shortage of housing is of course but one of many challenges in our communities; another is the woeful lack of services in informal settlements. Poor sanitation and the failure to deliver safe water in under-developed communities is a stubbornly persistent problem, not only in Cape Town but across the country. We have heard more than enough about open toilets in the Western Cape and the Free State – some people call me “the toilet archbishop” because of my concern over water and sanitation. In some parts, we still have a bucket system of removing sewage. Not too long ago a school child died after falling into an open latrine in Limpopo. And we can’t even always maintain the infrastructure we do have, as shown when people in Bloemhof died from contaminated water. 

As I said in Grahamstown, our failure as a society – and I would add here, as the Church – our failure to get to grips with these challenges is a failure to address ourselves to upholding basic human dignity. I am no fan of the tactics of some activists and politicians in Cape Town in drawing attention to these problems, but we cannot deny that in one sense the excesses of Cape Town’s toilet wars have been a good thing: they have woken us up to the reality of how our brothers and sisters live. John tells us that the truth will set us free: well, we know that reconciliation which tries to gloss over the effects of past inequality is but avoidance and untruth – it is not reconciliation at all. If Christian communities are not up to facing this challenge, then who will? 

Nor should we limit our ambitions to speak out and act where we can to issues of housing and sanitation. We have seen in the platinum miners’ strike how some of our fellow citizens feel so squeezed and so desperate that they have to resort to actions that can bring the economy to its knees. Their plight is but one example – seen closer to home in the conditions facing seasonal workers on farms – of how we have come to be one of the countries in the world where the gap between rich and poor is highest. Yet many of us spend more time bemoaning how the strike has caused ratings agencies to downgrade us as an investment destination than analyse how this shocking inequality has come about. And we have seen recently that concern about the environment – so well reflected in our Diocese – is not simply a concern of the wealthy, but that it is the poor and the un-empowered who are often most vulnerable to the effects of climate change and the contamination of our natural resources. 

William Edgar Stafford, an American poet, in a poem A Ritual to Read to Each Other, ends by saying, and I quote:

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give - yes or no, or maybe -

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep. 

Put differently, how can we make a contribution to addressing these challenges which is distinctively Christian, reflecting our faith in Jesus? Well, we could start by practising the same openness and transparency that I demanded of President Zuma on our Holy Saturday Walk of Witness. The moral pollution I spoke of then, the collapse of values and standards which infects parts of our government, is not confined to government. The absence of transparency which generates a lack of trust is also seen outside government too. When I addressed President Zuma, I was also addressing all South Africans, including ourselves. 

And the questions which I put to Mr Zuma can be adapted for all of us: 

• Are we willing to explain to our constituencies how we make decisions involving our common welfare?

• In our public lives, which constitutional values do we use in reaching those decisions?

• How do we plan to respond to the historic levels of distrust that permeate our society?

• What is our plan for holding conversations about our values, so that we can make our decisions in good conscience?

I am calling for a Renaissance of Trust in our society. Trust is the cornerstone of reconciliation. Redemptive actions build trust in God, in each other and help us to forge a common destiny as a Christian community in South Africa. If we don’t ask these questions, build trust and teach our parishioners to speak out truthfully to power, we are planting the seeds not of reconciliation but of destruction, and we will reap what we have planted. 

The other side of the heart of redemptive action is forgiveness. We can move forward here if we repent and reconcile, not to immobilise the Christian community, but to pierce the smelly, festering wound that no one wants to face because it may spoil our artificial context, and so to heal ourselves and move forward. Forgiveness means that we don’t hold grudges. We don’t hoard ill feelings. We forgive without measure. The story we heard in tonight’s Gospel has this at its core. The consequences of not forgiving are dire – dire for individuals, families, children and communities. Forgiving someone 70 times seven – a total of 490 times – is a radical expression of humility in a Christian community, a redemptive action and attitude required of us.

When I was a newly-consecrated suffragan bishop, my diocesan, Bishop David Russell, quoted our archbishop emeritus, Desmond Tutu, so powerfully that it has remained with me ever since. We had gone to the place of King Sandile of the amaRarabe to offer an apology for how the British had treated him in the 19th century, holding him on Robben Island and forcibly sending his children to Cape Town – first to Bishopscourt and then to Zonnebloem College – to be educated in Western ways. How do you say, “Sorry, please forgive me,” when you have forced your will on a people in this way; when you have rewritten their place in history and made them poor and uneducated in the country of their birth? Bishop David told the story of the bicycle: of how you can’t steal someone’s bicycle, then ride it to the person’s home, say forgive me for stealing it, and then ride it back home. You have to give the bicycle back first, and then ask for forgiveness for stealing it. Showing redemptive attitudes and taking redemptive action as in the Matthean examples involve the equivalent of returning the bicycle. They heal both the wronged and the wrongdoer. They create a space for indaba, for humble listening, for two hearts to hear the same pulse, for one to get to know the other’s story, and for the two to take the walk to Emmaus together, leading to the full realisation of Jesus’ power to heal the divisions we have created. We are humble or we show humility as a Christian community when we live and enact these redemptive virtues.

The importance of this focus on redemption is shown in our first reading tonight, from Ezekiel. We need to be careful to avoid being like the prince and the people in the passage we have heard, who fail to get with the plot. They fail to understand God’s servant, Ezekiel, as he signals the pre-exilic signs, the discord and disharmony that are about to befall the people of God. My dream and longing for God’s church and people is never to miss the Ezekiel signs of our disconnectedness from God, from our neighbours and ourselves but to be ministers of reconciliation and forgiveness. This is who the church is called to be in our times.

However, if we are serious in exploring and implementing what it means to live out redemptive attitudes and actions, we can live in confident hope for the future. But just as I said earlier that we cannot lounge around waiting for the Holy Spirit to act, we must talk about hope with caution. Denise Ackermann says that hope is a lived reality in the life of faith, here and now; that its means never surrendering our power to imagine a better world – but also that hope is not magic; it confronts wrong and the abuse of power and it is risky and requires patience and endurance. 

From what do we derive our hope and confidence in pursuing reconciliation and forgiveness, and why do we do this? In the segments that we will read over the next two days, the answer is: for the common good. Because, as a Christian community, we have commitments and a responsibility to one another other and to Christ. We seek the flourishing of all and of ourselves in the here and now and the hereafter. 

At this moment in human history, pursuing climate justice has become one of the ways in which we are called to exercise our responsibility to one another and to Christ. Next year, God willing, a number of bishops from dioceses around the world which are already experiencing the impacts of climate change will come to Cape Town to help develop a global strategic plan on the environment, as part of a Communion-wide effort which has been dubbed the "eco-bishops initiative". And I commend for debate in the coming days the resolution on encouraging our people to become “eco-congregations”. These initiatives demonstrate, as a joint Lutheran/Anglican statement has said, and I quote, that 

“As Christians, we do not live in the despair and melancholy of the tomb, but in the light of the Risen Christ. Our resurrection hope is grounded in the promise of renewal and restoration for all of God’s Creation, which gives us energy, strength and perseverance in the face of overwhelming challenge. For us, this promise is more than an abstraction. It is a challenge to commit ourselves to walk a different course and serve as the hands of God in working to heal the brokenness of our hurting world.” - Joint statement of the Episcopal Church, the Church of Sweden, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, May 2013

The flourishing we desire is for everyone, not only South Africans, so we should also give attention to situations beyond our borders. Pray for justice, reconciliation and the peace that will flow from those everywhere. Pray for the girls kidnapped in northern Nigeria, and for the victims and families of those killed in the almost daily attacks ravaging that country. Surround and lift up the people of Palestine, including Gaza, and Israel, in prayer. What we have seen on our television screens during the Israeli bombardment of Gaza is deplorable and deeply shocking; just as shocking is the fact that similar indiscriminate killing of men, women and children in Nigeria continues month after month with a fraction of the outrage expressed over the conflict in the Middle East. We might ask: Why does the United States not erupt in outrage over what is happening in Gaza? And why do Africa and the world not erupt in outrage at the slaughter in Nigeria?

Many articles and books have been devoted this year to the lessons of World War I. Margaret MacMillan, a Canadian historian who is now the warden of St Antony’s College, Oxford, has written that the war still haunts us 100 years after it began partly because of the scale of the slaughter – 10 million combatants and countless millions of civilians died – but also because experts cannot agree on how it happened, and therefore on how to avoid such a catastrophe in the future. Pointing to how our great-grandfathers miscalculated the significance of changes in the nature of warfare, she gives us this sobering warning: “A comparable mistake in our own time is the assumption that because of our advanced technology, we can deliver quick, focused and overpowering military actions – the ‘surgical strikes’ with drones and cruise missiles, ‘shock and awe’ by carpet bombing and armored divisions – resulting in conflicts that will be short and limited in their impact, and victories that will be decisive.” Far from seeing easy victories, she adds, we are seeing wars with no clear outcomes, in which well-armed forces fight what she describes as “a shifting coalition of local warlords, religious warriors and other interested parties” across countries and continents.

In this context, Who is the Church? Let us go back to the parable of the unforgiving steward: as the followers of Jesus, we can avoid being too quick to judge others and their motives, we can have mercy on those who have wronged us, and we can forgive our sisters and brothers from our hearts. As Robert Kennedy said at the University of Cape Town in 1968, few of us will, in his words, “have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation…” We too can contribute to what he called the “numberless diverse acts of courage” which shape the history of humankind. 

We will be judged by how we contributed to making this a forgiving and reconciled world: by whether, when we saw war, we tried to stop it; by whether, when we saw wrong, we tried to right it; and by whether, when we saw need and suffering, we tried to bring healing. And succeeding is not as important as acting: As Madiba put it, “Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”

Let me end with a confirmation blessing that I regularly use, but slightly rephrased as follows: 

“Go into the broken and unreconciled world as the Christian community, sow the seeds of reconciliation and repentance so that you may in joy reap the fruits of forgiveness and fulfillment. 

“For Christ’s sake, Amen.”

21

Sermon Preached at the Church of St John, Bellville South

The text of a sermon preached at the Church of St John, Bellville South, on the occasion of its Sesquicentennial Anniversary and Festival Service. During the sermon, the Archbishop repeated his call on South Africans to vote on May 7, and expressed concern at the abduction of schoolgirls in Nigeria:

Isaiah 6:1-8; Ps 97; 1 Jn 1; Jn 21:20-24

I greet you all in the name of God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen. It is also still appropriate, this being Eastertide, to say “Christ is risen, He is risen indeed! Alleluia!!”

It is an honour and a privilege to have been asked to share with you the Word of God for this historic milestone in the life and witness and ministry of the parish of St John. Thank you to Father Fred, Dorothea and the parish leadership for inviting me. Thanks to Bishop Hess and Myfawny also for welcoming us, Lungi and my staff present this morning in your diocese.

If I want to dodge taking responsibility for my failings, I can say blame them – warts and all – on Fred and Dorothea, who helped to guide my formation and foundation, theologically and spiritually. Father Fred, for those who don’t know, taught me New Testament and Spirituality at St Paul’s College as a raw first year student, still full of Science theories from University.

Once again, thank you Father Fred for who you are and what you bring into this parish, diocese and our church. Your close, deep connection with God and with others, as well as with nature, maintained by rhythmic and regular retreats, silences, reading and teaching of the mystics and theology, ignited in me, those 27 years ago, an insatiable quest; a holy longing for seeking always to expose my inner life to God’s Holy Spirit. Strengthened in this way, I am able to confront the external world; to be a witness of God in his world and then to return to the inner world, not to run away but to expose it further to God’s love and lavishing – or as I said on one occasion, to be “disinfected by God”.

Today, I join with you in thanking not only Father Fred but in thanking God for all those faithful clergy and people who have served within your church and your community through these 150 years. Indeed, I congratulate the parish for 150 years of unceasing prayer, witness and service. It has not always been easy but it has been a time of continual and often radical change. For example the statement made by the vestry of the Church of the Transfiguration, where you were birthed, at their meeting in Easter 1957, bears testimony to this where it reads, and I quote: “That the vestry meeting fearlessly bears witness that we do not accept racial discrimination in the churches of our parish…”

However, as the theme for your sesquicentennial patronal festival attests, God has been faithful and has seen you through the ups and downs of life and will continue to strengthen and encourage you in all the changes and challenges that lie ahead. Today’s celebration is thus also a recommitment of ourselves to God’s mission and to extend God’s love to all of creation.

At the beginning of this homily I read “The Lord gave the Word,” and you responded “and great was the company of preachers.”

Sandra further read: “Grant Lord, that those who preach in this place may proclaim the crucified and risen Christ and interpret your word with sensitivity and insight.”

And we responded: “Enable us to hear that word inwardly and to respond to it generously in all our lives, this we ask in name of Jesus Christ, your living word. AMEN.”

How do we do that? And how do we, like the vestry of the Parish of the Transfiguration in 1957, not only say these words with our lips but also enact them through the service of our lives as “we fearlessly bear witness that we do not accept discrimination” in all its forms?

Staying with your theme for the celebrations: How do we – like those who have come before us – bear witness in our time? How do we bear witness to God’s steadfast love and goodness and our life together as God’s people in the here and now? Is this possible or is it desirable? If so, why so?

In the Old Testament lesson set for this morning, (Is 6:1-8), the prophet Isaiah in his dream or vision unveils and sets a useful pattern to follow. Isaiah remembers the burden of personal frailty and sinfulness, and yet being called to declare otherness, the apartness and holiness of God to rulers who had strayed from God’s ways. As aptly also captured in 1 John 1 v 8 -9, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness”.

Isaiah says: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts!” One of the seraphs touches his mouth with a hot coal, cleans his mouth or absolves him, and later we are told he is sent on behalf of the heavenly hosts. Isaiah bears testimony because amongst other things he had this vision of God cleansing him and sending him. He was also in a context where he could observe and as an eyewitness see the atrocities God’s people were suffering.

Anointed, transformed by the experience and encounter, he then goes out into a hostile world. He testifies or bears witness, boldly and fearlessly, to God’s message of restoration and deliverance of his people from oppression. He risks being ridiculed as someone of whom people could say: “Is it not the man with unclean lips?” He does not let this inner feeling of unworthiness or past sinfulness deter him. This vision leads to inner transformation and outward courage in confronting his own ills and those of his society.

Again in today’s gospel passage, especially in John 21:24, we hear the gospel say this about your patron saint: “This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them and we know that his testimony (that is, his witness) is true”. This dearest disciple, who was loved by Jesus, was not educated in writing on complex Torah matters. He may have not written these things, but what is key for me is that he saw and heard and tasted the presence of Jesus in his life. He now shares this eyewitness account with the Hellenistic Jews in Asia.

Don’t let anyone discount your testimony of what the Word of Life – that is God in Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit – is up to in your dreams and visions, in your life and your community. Equally do not be embarrassed or be afraid to declare his good news, his love, wherever you are sent to be. Archbishop Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, said at the last Lambeth Conference, make every opportunity an opportunity wherein the good news is revealed. Dare I add, including to yourself.

The second lesson, 1 John 1, again highlights the theme of testimony or witness. In verse 3, “…we declare to you what we have seen and heard...” and verse 2, “...and [we] testify to it”.

What have you seen and heard and are testifying to as we celebrate your sesquicentennial service? John Suggit, in a beautiful book he named “The Wonder of Words”, phrases this question differently. He asks: “What is this text saying to you today; and what is our response to the Word of God today?”

On Friday, I invited two young families to join me in welcoming the King of Lesotho on a courtesy visit to Bishopscourt. One of the families had three young children and after the king left, their eldest - a nine-year-old - started engaging Lungi and an ordinand in a series of questions - not about the king but about the archbishop. “What does an archbishop do?" was his key question. They tried to answer and after a while he said, “I get it, he is a fire fighter." Then they explained further, and after a pause he said, "Oh!! I get it now, he is a super fighter.” The conversation continued, to be followed by another pause, then he said: "He is actually like superman."

At that stage a gap appeared, and Lungi and the ordinand said, "There's the archbishop. Ask him what he does." He came to me and said, "Archbishop, what does an archbishop do? What is your work? I said, "I pray." "Pray?" he asked, as he looked at me in exasperation and squinted his eyes. I said, "Yes, I pray when there are fires, and for people, for schools, for kids, for an end to drought, for rain, for more food when there is a lack of food, for those in prison and those who are hurt by those in prison. I pray for university lecturers and for students, for mine bosses and for striking workers, for presidents, kings and rulers, and for them to be honest and transparent, and for the powerful and the powerless.” He looked at me and then he was whisked to my chapel to be shown where I pray. As he and his parents left, he rolled down the car window and said, “I will be praying for the archbishop so that he may continue praying for all of us." This youngster responded by acknowledging the need and importance of prayer for the archbishop. What is your response to God’s love for you, to his Word and his cry through others or creation?

Simon Peter in today’s gospel responds by asking, possibly with self-doubt as to his role and importance and closeness to Jesus, or with envy or understated jealousy: “Lord, what about this man?” Jesus seizes this opportunity to point Simon beyond himself to eternal ideals, to life beyond the here-and-now and Simon’s “sent-ness”. Are you still following or do you now have your personal agenda? Follow me.

In the past while I have been reflecting deeply on what it means to follow Jesus and to be a witness to God’s love in the world. One way is to acknowledge and confess in the hope of being restored like Isaiah or Simon Peter. Assured of the steadfast love and transformation we are promised, I have in recent weeks joined others in what we have called a “walk of witness” – in which like John we testify to what we have seen with our own eyes and what we have been told. We encounter the pain, the stench, the hopelessness and fear, of God’s people. We come face to face with forces of darkness and encounter the helplessness of those who are made to suffer for being different. We live with that tension and acknowledge our part in people’s pain and our silence in not declaring the God who is light and in whom there is no darkness.

Let me return to where I started. How do we witness to the love of God in our context, especially at St John’s today? To witness is to attest, to vouch, to guarantee, to show, to profess, to reveal and to testify; it is to respond to the Word of God in your life and context.

The parish leadership wants you to recommit to God’s mission and extend God’s love to all of Creation. The Anglican Church of Southern Africa, as we say in our mission statement, wants you to be Anchored in the love of Christ, Committed to God’s mission and to be Transformed by the Holy Spirit. I want to share a few examples of where these may find tangible expression.

1. In three days’ time, we will be exercising our hard-earned privilege of voting. As archbishop and as the chair of the Electoral Code of Conduct Observer Commission, I have been telling people: Go and vote on May the 7th. Too many people have suffered and died for us to stay away out of apathy. There will be 29 parties from which to choose on the national ballot. Examine the policies of the parties and the behaviour of their leaders and vote your conscience; make a choice of the one that best represents your values.

2. I want to re echo the 1957 vestry statement: Do not fear. Act in ways that acknowledge your own shortcomings and ask God to forgive, but don’t end there. Like Isaiah, speak out against all that demeans, corrupts, is not transparent and lacks accountability.

3. Call for and join walks of witness as we demand action for the sake of peace.

4. Give voice to your outrage at the killings in northern Nigeria, and at the recent abduction of hundreds of schoolgirls there. It is deeply shocking that 276 girls between 12 and 17 are reported still to be missing, three weeks after being abducted. We are one continent and these girls are our children. Why has the world not erupted in outrage at this crime? Where are our Ubuntu values when girls are kidnapped at such a tender age? All of Africa, and especially South Africa which has benefitted from the hospitality and generosity of other nations, must rise up and demand their release.

May you be touched by God this day as we receive the body and blood of our Lord Jesus. May his Word be a light for our earthly pilgrimage until that day when we shall see him face to face. May this parish and diocese and each one of you be strengthened for service as you recommit to be his witnesses in the Lord. May God engrave a legacy of love and service through you in this parish, his world, and forever more.

A blessed 150th anniversary celebration to you all.

To the Laos – The Church Reclaims Her Prophetic Vocation – April 2014

Dear People of God

Firstly, a Happy Easter to you all. Christ is Risen!

Since Holy Saturday, when religious leaders carried out a Walk of Witness from District Six to Parliament to demand transparent governance and accountability, I have been reflecting on what it is to be witnesses to God’s love in the world. At a meeting after Easter of the Central Committee of the SA Council of Churches, it became clear that I am not alone. I am grateful that the Church at large is reclaiming her prophetic vocation, committed like Christ to demand justice. It will not be easy but in Christ we trust and have our confidence and assurance.

In preparation for preaching on South Africa’s Freedom Day on April 27, I sent out an appeal through the Bishops for you to share with me what your dreams for South Africa were 20 years ago, and what they are now. Your thoughtful insights ran to pages and pages. Thank you all for holding my hand and equipping me to preach a homily at inter-religious “Jazz Vespers” at St George’s Cathedral in place of Evening Prayer on April 27. I offer you the text as preached:

Isaiah 43:8-13

Bring forth the people who are blind, yet have eyes,
who are deaf, yet have ears!
Let all the nations gather together,
and let the peoples assemble.
Who among them declared this,
and foretold to us the former things?
Let them bring their witnesses to justify them,
and let them hear and say, “It is true.”
You are my witnesses, says the Lord,
and my servant whom I have chosen,
so that you may know and believe me
and understand that I am he.
Before me no god was formed,
nor shall there be any after me.
I, I am the Lord,
and besides me there is no savior.
I declared and saved and proclaimed,
when there was no strange god among you;
and you are my witnesses, says the Lord.
I am God, and also henceforth I am He;
there is no one who can deliver from my hand;
I work and who can hinder it?

Thank you all for attending this service. Let me first start by thanking the Dean and his team for organising this service and for all the artists who are present here.

Tonight, we pause and reflect as we celebrate 20 years of democracy in South Africa. What is there to celebrate, some may ask? Celebrations are an opportunity to recall, to reflect and to recommit. Indeed, starting from the last point, they are for us, in this year particularly, an opportunity to recommit to the ideals and values for which so many fought and died, in order for us to enjoy and live in a democracy.

As an archbishop, I always have to drink from my own well, starting from scripture, before I reason and then move on to share and bring my and our experiences before God in prayer. Today’s text, Isaiah 43:8-13, a text that sustained me and many of us in apartheid times, reminds us of a God who interferes in the politics of His people. He meddles, because even “politics” is but an aspect of His created order. He intervenes and interferes in the plight of His people in exile. Those who have been displaced before, or have been in exile in its broadest sense, know the feelings of alienation that exile brings.

God says, I have noted and am pained by the brutality and fierceness of the Babylonians' repression and treatment of you, my people. I have heard your cry and lamentations. In Isaiah 43, 1 and 4, he says, Do not fear, I have redeemed you. I have called you by name, you are mine, and precious in my sight. You are honoured and I love you. God says, your dignity, freedom and destiny are certain, they are non-negotiable. No other gods will be allowed to oppress you and take you back into captivity. In verse 10, God charges us with the responsibility of acting in ways that demonstrate that “You are my witnesses... and my servant whom I have chosen". Do not succumb to the Babylonian state machinery, that blinds you even when you have eyes and makes you deaf even if you have ears to hear.

What are the implications of this clear message of restoration and liberation, and of our vocation to be God’s witnesses in the world? What are they for us here in the Western Cape and in South Africa, particularly as we celebrate 20 years of emancipation from apartheid and the dawn of our freedom?

At this critical point, post “Babylonia”, it is easy to forget the exile experience. It is easy to be seduced by power and wealth as well as status and forget God and the poorest of the poor. It is easy to turn a blind eye even if we have eyes to see, and it is easy to say “It is our turn to eat,” and focus on ourselves. It is equally easy to discount the sacrifices of many and to want to rush to what we call “normality”. It is easy also to adopt a "get on with it" mentality, for after all, some would say, "We are born-frees and do not want to be dragged down into our parents' issues."

Today, we pause. We avoid shallow analysis or politicisation of our pain for partisan gains. We pause and go down deep, where there is still fear, anger and possibly hate, yet where there is also longing, hope and a desperate need to let go of the past. We pause and reflect, as part of our celebration.

Going back to where I started: What is it about South Africa’s 20 years of democracy that demands celebration? What is it about marking these 20 years that demands lamentation, liberation and restoration?

There is much to celebrate. There is indeed a good story to tell. Even when we were at the point of a knife 20 years ago, it did not pierce our souls. It cut us, yes, and we still need to heal this cut, but it is possible to do so.

Today we can celebrate above all our Constitution, which guarantees us nearly everything else we laud as achievements: to name just a few, the right of black people to vote; equal rights for all individuals, black or white; the provision of housing, sanitation, water and electricity; and the independent institutions set up to guard democracy and promote good governance under Chapter Nine of the Constitution – the Office of the Public Protector, the Auditor-General and the Human Rights Commission.

As one who grew up in places such as Alexandra Township in Johannesburg and Pimville in Soweto, and as one who has seen both rural and urban deprivation where I have worked in Queenstown, in Grahamstown and now in Cape Town, I acknowledge the progress we have seen. We have hundreds and thousands of new houses and many new clinics. I know some of our infrastructural development is cosmetic, and also that unscrupulous contractors sometimes build houses that fall down, but we really showed the world what we are capable of when we hosted the 2010 World Cup: the new stadiums, the upgraded airports and the improved roads.

Our considerable achievements, however, have to be seen against the backdrop of shocking levels of inequality in our society. There are huge differences between the wealthy parts of our cities and nearly everywhere else in our land. We live with massive disparities of income, largely based on race but increasingly based on whether you have made it into the middle class. Black economic empowerment in many instances is contributing to inequality rather than closing the gap between rich and poor.

The result is that your opportunities in life still often depend on who your parents are and whether they are privileged or not. If you are poor, the chances are that you will struggle to escape the kind of lives your parents lived. But the rich, whether black or white, will hand on to their children a legacy of privilege. Families who have resources will continue to have resources, those who have benefitted from patronage will pass down the benefits to their children, and the unequal distribution of power will still plague our economic and national life.

Despite experiencing after 1994 the longest sustained period of economic growth since World War II, we have not spread the results of the growth to the poor. Spatial apartheid still persists in our society. Whether you have adequate water and sanitation depends on your class and socio–economic status. A year ago, I joined a group of eminent South Africans to visit schools in the Eastern Cape and was shocked to find that, 19 years after the current governing party took responsibility for education, classes were still held in mud-brick schools with poor sanitation. The recent Carnegie Three report on poverty, and the multiple index poverty scale, evoke feelings of deep distress at the persistence of a sea of debilitating poverty around islands of the excessive wealth enjoyed by a tiny minority.

The poorest of the poor are losing hope of ever sharing in the dividends of democracy, and some are being brutally killed by the state when demanding basic services which the privileged take for granted. I am still struggling to make sense of how such a horrendous massacre as Marikana happened. Those killings are still a running sore in our national life, a wound in the side of democracy which reflects human lives being sacrificed for money.

This week I sent out a message to all the bishops of our Province and their dioceses. I asked them two questions: Firstly, What was your dream for South Africa 20 years ago? And secondly, What is your dream for South Africa for the next 20 years?

Paraphrasing some of their answers, they told me they dreamed of a South Africa where justice will not be determined by wealth and power; for God to raise up women and men of stature to lead our nation past where inequalities and injustices still prevail; of a South Africa where people no longer have to live in squalour and overcrowded shacks; where churches play a more active role and are more visible in moral regeneration; where we move beyond racial divisions and build one united nation; where we become the hands and feet of God to eradicate hunger, poverty, corruption and crime.

Where, then, do we go from here?

I have been thinking recently that one of our problems is that for the past 20 years we have had a ready set of answers to what we believed 20 years ago were the right questions to ask about our society. But I think the problem is actually not the answers, it is the questions.

Our questions are outdated, and therefore the answers are outdated. We need to be looking for new answers to new questions. Let me start by suggesting a few, starting with some broad questions and then narrowing them down:

Firstly, why has democracy brought with it such inequality? Why has the economic system that has generated so much growth been accompanied by so much poverty, and such a huge social distance between our leaders and their constituencies? Can we really be said to be enjoying the fruits of democracy? And is our current economic system worth holding onto if this is its fruit?

Another set of questions concerns our values. What are the values reflected in our Constitution? What are the values that Madiba's generation bequeathed to us? How can they be given expression in our current context?

Furthermore, how do we move away from a daily existence in which we suffer from a lack of transparency, not only in the Nkandla debacle but in other tiers of our government? Shouldn't we now be looking at all the Public Protector's past reports from before Nkandla and holding all those implicated to account? How do we nurture and rekindle a renaissance of trust and responsibility and be God’s witnesses as today’s scripture demands?

I want to end with two appeals, firstly one to young people:

You know that we hold this world and country in trust for you. Please engage with the way society and government is run, for your and your children's sakes. Be engaged: report corruption, care for the environment and hold yourselves and us accountable for the destiny of this country and your destinies.

Lastly, I want to go back to where I started and appeal to all of you:

South Africa is God's miracle. Make it work for God’s sake. Go and vote on May the 7th. As I said at the Easter vigil, too many people have suffered and died for us to stay away out of apathy. And while nothing stops you from spoiling your ballot paper in protest, you shouldn't have to: there will be 29 parties from which to choose on the national ballot. Examine the policies of the parties and the behaviour of their leaders and vote your conscience; make a choice of the one that best represents your values.

Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name.

YOU ARE MINE, declares the LORD.

Happy Freedom Day!

May the risen Christ be with you all. To South Africans, happy voting!

God bless you,

+Thabo