Homily for St George's Grammar School 175th Anniversary Service

 The Most Revd Thabo Makgoba

Archbishop of Cape Town

St George's Grammar School

175th Anniversary Service

St George's Cathedral, Cape Town

20th April 2023

May I speak in the name of God, who is Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. 

Wow! Our school is 175 years old! What an extraordinary achievement, from your humble beginnings – which I learn were in a shoe shop – through the years when you were housed in this Cathedral precinct, to your campus in Mowbray. On behalf of the Diocese and on my own behalf, warm congratulations on this anniversary. Thank you, Mr Cameron, teachers, staff and learners for all that you do in the school and in our community, and especially for inviting me to this prestigious occasion, and thank you to everyone, including the Cathedral staff, who have helped to plan this service.

Ad Laos - to the People of God - April 2023

As published in the April issue of Good Hope, the newsletter of the Diocese of Cape Town: 

A happy and blessed Easter to you! 

As I said in my homily at the Easter Vigil in St George's Cathedral, we in South Africa today can draw hope and courage from the Easter story. The reading from Matthew's Gospel about the women at Jesus' tomb related how, after hearing the baffling news that the tomb was empty, the women overcame their fear and conflicting emotions to pluck up the courage to defy the religious and political establishments who had crucified Jesus. As the women grew in confidence, they began to shape an almost defiant narrative of new life emerging in unlikely places, encouraging others with the good news of Jesus' resurrection.

Translating the hope of Easter into tangible form for our country, the key to our future is the potential offered by the young people of South Africa. They are, like the women at the tomb, eminently capable of defying the forces of greed, corruption and stagnation, and of bringing about real transformation, a transformation which will bring about equality of opportunity and realise the promises of our Constitution. In my Easter homily, I used a phrase coined by the American civil rights leader, Bayard Rustin, to urge young people to become “angelic troublemakers”. 

What would angelic troublemakers look like in South Africa today? They would be young men and women, of all races, who would come together and organise at all levels of society, beginning in their own communities. They would register to vote, and they would campaign to rejuvenate our politics on a sound ethical and moral basis, guided by the highest ideals of our religious convictions. To this end, I invite representatives of all our youth formations to ask their executives to engage with this challenge. 

It is not only South Africa that has the capacity to bring people to despair. I was shocked to read recently that there are around 40 armed conflicts being waged across the world today. Some nations such as Ethiopia and Myanmar are plagued by numerous conflicts in different regions of their countries. If you are in a church youth or student group, I urge you to look up the Wikipedia entry “List of ongoing armed conflicts“ on the web, to choose a country in which there is fighting and to soak that country in prayers for peace. 

Another source of hope for me recently was visiting the families of those who were killed in the violence at the Marikana mine in North West Province in 2012. Sibanye-Stillwater, the new owners of the mine – with the support of others – are committed to providing housing, education and jobs for the families of victims. A few weeks ago I travelled to Gauteng and rural areas of the Eastern Cape and Lesotho to visit widows and families, where a delegation  representing the groups involved handed over the keys of new houses to widows and families. It is a commendable effort which has generated hope out of tragedy. 

You will know from the past that one of my passions – and a real source of hope – is giving our children a good education. So it always pains me when parents miss the deadlines to apply for the placement of their children in public schools, causing the children to suffer anxiety and tension until they get placements much later. The initial deadline for admission to Grades 1 and 8 in the Western Cape has just passed, but since there is provision for late applications, I ask parish leaders to please urge parents to act soon, and to help parents with applications. 

One of our own historic schools, St George's Grammar School in Mowbray, celebrates a very significant anniversary this month – it is their 175th birthday! School records show that it is our oldest school, established at St George's Cathedral when Bishop Robert Gray came to Cape Town as the church's founding bishop. Warm congratulations to St George's, the learners, teachers and staff and parents! You can expect to see coverage of their anniversary service at the Cathedral next month.

As you celebrate the Season of Eastertide, I pray that you, in the words of our Lectionary, will encounter the Risen Christ, and that your encounter will help you discover the new life which Christ's victory assures.

God bless you and God bless your families and communities.

†† Thabo Cape Town

Archbishop's Homily for the Easter Vigil

Homily for the Easter Vigil

St George’s Cathedral

8th April 2023

Gospel: Matthew 28:1-10

Dear People of God, on this most holy of nights, let us echo the words of the angel: Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen indeed! Again! Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

It is good to be with you, sharing this celebration of Easter in the Cathedral, the mother church of the Diocese and Province. Thank you for being here. Thank you to the Dean, the clergy, the church-wardens, the music director, organist, choir, verger and staff, the flower arrangers, and especially the regular worshippers who maintain this beautiful site of worship, this iconic landmark which speaks in this city of God's presence and God's glory.

In our Gospel reading tonight, it's interesting that Matthew does not specify, as Mark does in his telling of the Easter story, why the women came to the tomb. Mark says they were carrying spices to anoint Jesus’ body, but Matthew leaves the reasons open. His account allows that the women, like those of us here tonight, come to the tomb for many different reasons. Some come overwhelmed by a sense that promises, hopes and dreams have been irreparably broken, that trust has been severed, that anxiety has been deepened, that they have suffered losses too great to be measured, or that the future is bleak. Whatever the reasons that brought the women to the tomb, and whatever the reasons that have brought you here tonight, take heart from the angel's assurance: He is risen!

It is notable that Matthew records that the women feel both fear and joy at hearing the angel's news. That's easy to understand – even tonight, absorbing the meaning of such earth-shattering news as a grave that is empty and a Lord who is risen, forces us too to explore a range of conflicting emotions. Just like the women at the tomb, it is only after we acknowledge and engage with the radical meaning of the Resurrection that we can move on, into the new life of Easter.

Matthew goes on to make a profound point through meticulous use of language. He says in verse 2, “suddenly there was a great earthquake” – some translations say “behold there was a great earthquake”. Note too that in verse 9 it says “suddenly Jesus appeared to them”. Again the translations that use “behold” in verse 2 use it again in verse 9. In using the image of an earthquake, Matthew suggests that things beneath your feet literally shift, they change and consequently the things around you change. By using the same word, Matthew is reminding us that when we meet the risen Lord, “on the road” of life’s journeys, with all its fears and joys, its hopes and anxieties, things change. Perceptions change.

In the case of the women at the tomb, despite the fear, despite the  conflicting emotions, despite the fact that they cannot explain fully what they have seen and heard, what begins to grow in them is courage: a courage that empowers  them to defy the religious and political establishments who have crucified Jesus. Growing in confidence, they are not intimidated. Instead they begin to shape a different, almost defiant narrative of new life emerging in the most unlikely places. They reaffirm the need to encourage others with the good news. Indeed, they resist and defy the culture of death.

So too can we in South Africa today draw hope and courage from the Easter story.

Looking around us, it is easy to despair. Too many South Africans cannot find a way out of the tomb of poverty to live lives of dignity and hope. We are experiencing a near biblical vortex of greed and corruption in which the unscrupulous steal from the poor and swallow the hope of ending inequality. Incompetence leads to bad governance, and money that is available to improve people's lives goes unspent. Too many South Africans are shut up in tombs of community violence, gangsterism and fear, while others are trapped in toxic relationships and live with the horror of domestic violence perpetrated against women and children.

Do our politicians offer any hope? You would think that if they were truly focussed on the well-being of their constituents, they could overcome their differences enough to collaborate in coalition governments to put an end to corruption and provide decent services to our communities. But instead they play in-again-out-again revolving doors, changing mayors and speakers the way other people change their socks. The trickle of disconnected announcements on investigations arising from the theft of money from the President's Phala Phala farm still hasn't explained satisfactorily why such large amounts of money weren't banked, and the ANC's refusal to allow a parliamentary inquiry is reminiscent of the cover-ups of the Zuma administration. If we are to build the nation we want, one based on transparency and honesty, the President needs to give us a single comprehensive account of what happened and why it happened.

The hope of Easter is represented by the rolling of a stone away from a tomb, and we can seize on that hope in South Africa today by rolling away the stones that entomb our society in order that we might have life, and have it abundantly. I like to think that the radical American civil rights leader and gay activist, Bayard Rustin, had this in mind when he wrote that “every community needs a group of angelic troublemakers.”

Who could step up to be the angelic troublemakers of South Africa today? I believe we should be urging the young people of our country to dig deep into the radical roots of the old struggle against apartheid, and to take up the New Struggle, a new struggle for a new generation, a struggle to regain our moral compass, a struggle to end economic inequity, a struggle to bring about equality of opportunity and realise the promises of our Constitution.

History is replete with moments when people failed to read the signs of the times and paid the penalty, sitting on the sidelines watching their societies fall apart and become  ungovernable failed states. But it is also replete with moments when active citizens, especially young people, seized the day and brought about real transformation. We saw it during the North African spring of a decade ago, when the people of Tunisia rose up and others across the region followed them. We saw its potential when students campaigned for fees to fall in South Africa. Recently I have been encouraged to see how young people such as the writer Panashe Chigumadzi, supported by the philosopher Cornel West, have been rediscovering the radical roots of Desmond Tutu and his support for the black consciousness movement of the 1960s and 1970s. I know that some of us fear that talk of revolution implies violence, and most of us deplore the rhetoric which we heard before the EFF's attempt to shut the country down last month, in which tyres displayed on social media ahead of protests were described as “tools of trade”. But, as earlier generations of South Africans demonstrated in the defiance campaigns of the early 1950s and late 1980s, it is possible to wage a revolutionary struggle in a disciplined and dignified manner, one that is all the more powerful because it is waged peacefully. There is no place for violence in a constitutional democracy.

South Africans do not have to continue on our current path. By adopting the New Struggle, we can inspire the multitudes of disillusioned young people who despise politicians, who spurn politics and who won't even register to vote, but instead pursue a rampant consumerism because we have failed to give them a vision which would attract them to public service. Let us urge them to organise in their communities, as well as regionally and nationally; let us urge them to register with the Independent Electoral Commission and to campaign to rejuvenate our politics.

The resurrection account in Matthew's Gospel challenges us to work for justice unceasingly. Once we have rolled the stones of our many graves away, we have a commitment to ensure that the poor, the exploited and the misgoverned are never dragged back to tombs, to history’s worst examples of people’s inhumanity to others. Last week I travelled to Johannesburg and rural areas of the Eastern Cape and Lesotho to visit the widows of those killed by police at the Marikana mine in 2012. There, I am pleased to say, a delegation representing Reimagine SA, the Sibanye-Stillwater mining house, the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, the Socio-Economic Rights Institute and the mine labour group TEBA – supported by kings and local chiefs, especially King Ndamase Ndamase of the AmaMpondo – have  implemented a programme to provide various forms of assistance to those widows and their families. That is commendable.

As people of faith we also have a commitment to work unceasingly for peace in the 40 or more places in the world ravaged by war, unsettled by hatred and denied a future by the greed and power-lust of a few. I have visited some of those areas of war and violence, notably Ukraine last December. We need to continue calling on all those caught up in conflict to give peace a chance, since the only people who gain from war are those who manufacture and supply weapons. Everyone else suffers to the point of death.

A final point. Both the angel and the risen Lord instruct the women at the tomb to tell the disciples to go to Galilee. They are instructed not to stay trapped in the past but to return to the places that marked their lives together, that were infused with energy, where they learnt important lessons, opened their hearts to fresh expressions of faith and had their hope restored. We all need to return to such places for a fresh outpouring of the resurrection life, and to make our congregations and our communities places where those who have been hurt and let down by life and history can find healing and new hope; where those who have been released from tombs can begin again, renewed and restored. That is what an Easter Church needs to look like.

Like the women at the tomb, may we have the courage to go out, not only to proclaim that Easter message but to work tirelessly to make it a reality so that the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and our Messiah.

May God bless you and may you and your families experience richly the joy of Easter. God loves you and so do I.

A prayer for the unveiling of a statue of Desmond Tutu

Archbishop Thabo Makgoba delivered the following opening prayer at the unveiling of a bronze statue of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu at Century City in Cape Town on March 23: 

I greet you in the name of the loving, inclusive God whom Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu worshipped: Good morning! 

Archbishop Desmond was a deeply devout, spiritual and prayerful person, whose alpha and omega was his relationship with our Creator. He believed that each of us was made in the image of this loving, inclusive God, and so he put the happiness and well-being of God's children at the centre of his outreach to the world. If you visited him while ill in hospital, you found that you, not he, were the subject of his prayers. If you arrived early for Mass at his home, you found him deep in silent prayer for the world and its people. In that spirit, we begin the unveiling of his statue, recalling his love for South Africa and the world. 

We thank Mama Leah and the Tutu family for sharing Tata with the world. We also give thanks for Dali and the Tambo family, for the benefactors of this project and for the public servants dedicated to the well-being of our people who have joined us today. 

Adapting prayers that Archbishop Desmond collected in his African Prayer Book, let us pray: 

Lord God, we thank you for our grandmothers and grandfathers who taught us to believe in liberation;

For all those who are great names in our country now, many represented here in this heritage site. 

Many are named with our own names, treasured in our hearts, honoured in our memories, resting both in South Africa and in graves in other lands. 

We thank you for our democracy, for the human rights promised us that we celebrate this week, especially for the right to peaceful protest and to political agitation; 

And we pray that you will strengthen us for the difficult times to come as we respond to the call to be the best that we can be; 

As we engage in the New Struggle, the struggle to realise economic as well as political liberation, to establish equality of opportunity, and to build a nation which will improve the lives of the poorest of the poor, so we end with Desmond Tutu's hymn of hope: 

Goodness is stronger than evil; 

Love is stronger than hate; 

Light is stronger than darkness; 

Life is stronger than death; and 

Victory is ours through Him who loves us. Amen

 

Sermon preached at Trinity Church Wall Street, New York

 ARCHBISHOP THABO MAKGOBA

PRIMATE and METROPOLITAN OF THE ACSA

Trinity Wall Street, New York

12th March 2023

Readings: Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5: 1-11; John 4: 5-42

May I speak in the name of God, who is Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. Amen.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, it is such a privilege to return to Trinity so soon after I was with you at the institution of Father Phil just over a year ago. I am always grateful for the opportunity of being among such firm friends of Africa as yourselves. On behalf of Lungi and myself, thank you, Father Phil, Page and the Church-Wardens for inviting me to be part of this service and for your great hospitality . 

It has been exciting to hear of and see the work that you are doing in this part of God's vineyard: of the ministry to high school students here in lower Manhattan; of your work to grow new leaders; of your initiatives to bring improved understanding among Anglicans internationally; and of your record-setting grant-giving to empower the people of God in this city, this country and around the world. The philanthropy which your patrimony enables is truly the gift which keeps on giving, and those of us in nations which are economically less well endowed will always remain grateful for it.

The references in today's readings to gifting God's people with water are particularly appropriate in our circumstances here today. In my mother tongue, Sepedi we have a phrase “Sekgo sa Metse”.  Literally translated, Sekgo refers to a vessel and metse is water. But the phrase has a much deeper meaning, just as living water, the Holy Spirit, does in John's Gospel.  Sekgo sa Metse not only provides a drink for the thirsty; it also transforms various ingredients into sustaining nourishment; and having done so, it provides thlabego, the yeast, which catalyses the next meal to come. So when you empower other churches in the Anglican Communion to do more on their own, when you help them see how, for example, they can develop their properties into income-generating entities, you not only provide them with something to drink; you provide the yeast which helps them to grow into the future. 

In the story of the Samaritan woman, the image of Jesus sitting at Jacob's well is one challenges me profoundly. Even a cursory reading of the Bible underlines that wells are symbols of thriving communities, of potential for abundance, for life, and in times of famine there is an instruction from God to re-dig the wells, to rediscover what gives life, and to make our broken communities thrive again both in those territories that surround us and those Samarias that are within us. Wells are also places that mark the threshold of new futures, of shared futures. Jacob meets his wife Rachel at a well. When Moses fled from Pharaoh to Midian, he sat by a well where he met his wife Zipporah. They are places rich in new beginnings,  providing hope in the midst of the Samarias that surround us, hope for the Church, hope for the world,  hope for the communities within which we live and hope in our own individual lives.

The Church

First the Church. The very fact that Jesus was in Samaria is powerfully instructive. Jesus's presence there challenged destructive beliefs that had for centuries held neighboring communities hostage to tragic histories. At Jacob's well, Jesus affirms that His life and ministry, the church’s great mission and our discipleship, all begin with a commitment to start a dialogue at the places that speak of human thriving.  He calls a woman to be the best version of herself, and in doing so he challenges taboos, unjust cultural and religious practices and embedded racism and patriarchy. He starts a new conversation, creates a new narrative and opens history to a new direction. 

John would later capture it well: he or she whom the Son sets free is free indeed. In the witness and ministry of this parish in New York and your national church, and in the witness and ministry of my church in the nations of Southern Africa, we dream together of a worldwide Communion which breaks boundaries, enters into deeper relationships with one another, church to church and country to country, nurturing the world. We too like Jesus have to find the wells of our times.

The World

In my conversation with Fr Phil in Jacksonville, Florida at the Episcopal Church Network on Friday, I said that, country to country, we need to address the wider implications of the war in Ukraine for Africa and the world. At home I have come in for a lot of criticism for my outright condemnations of Russia's war of aggression. I visited Ukraine in December to see the consequences of that war, and what I witnessed there was deeply upsetting. Given the support which our struggle for liberation in South Africa received from the United Nations, and the reliance we placed on the UN Declaration on Human Rights to support our demands for justice and democracy, it is galling that my government proclaims neutrality when Russia has flagrantly breached the UN Charter by invading a sovereign country. 

At the same time, those of us living in the Global South have reason to fear the escalating words of war coming from world leaders. The warlike rhetoric coming out of Europe raises the dreadful prospect of Europe and the West dragging us into yet another world war, with all the untold death and suffering it would bring. Many Africans died in both world wars of the last century, and our continent was then dragged into opposing sides of the Cold War. As a consequence there is great suspicion of NATO and of the motives of Western armaments industries. When I returned from my visit to  Ukraine, I was asked: is Africa suffering from grain shortages because American elections are around the corner? 

The issues around the invasion of Ukraine are difficult and contested, but on one thing we must be clear: as the Church, our calling as those who aspire to inherit the Kingdom promised by the Prince of Peace is, no matter the circumstances, to be active peace-makers, and constantly to refrain from being carried along by events into supporting death and destruction.

Our Communities 

To return to the Samaritan woman: although she is never called a sinner in the story, she seems to have been labelled as such because she had five husbands and the man she is with is not her husband. However, scholars today suggest this might have been a remnant of a custom in which the widow of a deceased brother would have to marry the next surviving brother. The scholars now ask whether, when Jesus offers her new life, new possibilities, it is not so much about a sinful woman needing salvation, but a survivor, one who has had to find a way of carrying on in a society that excluded her, a woman who had to look insecurity and prejudice in the face. Such a story is also the story of millions of women in our times who live under the yoke of gender-based violence, human trafficking, exploitation in places of work, disrespect and toxicity in their relationships. Just as Jesus welcomes the Samaritan woman and restores her dignity, so women in our own time are finding ways of surviving the ostracisation, exclusion and discrimination and living thriving lives. 

It is such transformation, such liberation when it is seen in our communities, that is so contagious. As those who suffer come to Jesus at Jacob's well, receive the same release, the same hope intensified and the same inner peace, they are liberated from their places of limitation and confinement, their emotional ghettoes and cultural dead-ends. 

Our own lives

Jesus does the same in our individual lives, healing us inside our deepest recesses, reaching the areas that are out of sync, helping us overcome the obstacles that block us from realising our potential. It is a wonderful statement of the grace of God that the power which can redirect the course of history can also touch those inner areas and redeem us to be what God designed us to be.

Conclusion

It has always been one of the most powerful truths of our faith, that Jesus reveals Himself, shows compassion, reveals His identity to the marginalised, to those at the edges, to those who feel they do not count or have lost their way. It is thus to them that we must give very special attention, if we are going to encounter the Jesus who walks through deeply contested territories, who opened dialogues with the most neglected people and is generous in offering dynamic opportunities.

This same Jesus waits now not at the well but at the altar to do for each of us what he did for the Samaritan woman, to change our lives around, excite his Spirit within us so that we can announce good news, not so much by our words but by our transformed lives. Again He says “it is I” to which our overflowing hearts can only answer “Amen”.

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Launch of Lenten Bible Studies - “The Bible And The Land Called Holy”

Anglican Church of Southern Africa

Launch of Lenten Bible Studies

The Most Revd Dr Thabo Makgoba

Archbishop and Metroplitan

28th February 2023 @ Synod of Bishops 

A very warm welcome to the launch of these Lenten Bible studies this evening: to the facilitators and advocates, to my brother and sister Bishops, and to all the faithful people of God who are joining us.

A special thank you to the team which has ably put them together, headed by Bishop Luke Pato: Canon Janet Trisk, the Rev Edwin Arrison, Ms Dudu Masango, Ms Nonhlanhla Shezi, Archdeacon Andrew Warmback and Bishop Charles May.

As Anglicans who are concerned about the injustices of the Middle East, who are distressed by the pain of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and who long for a just peace for both Palestine and Israel, we have been on a long journey. It goes back many decades, to the visits of our Archbishop Emeritus, Desmond Tutu, in the 1980s and 1990s, to my visits to the Holy Basin, and more recently to the declarations of our Provincial Synod, Provincial Standing Committee and Synod of Bishops. 

Time and again, both our Anglican forums and the SA Council of Churches have emphasised that the situation in the Holy Land demands our concern because it is the place where Jesus was born, nurtured, crucified and raised, and because our own church has both a deep understanding of what it is like to live under oppression, as well as experience of how to confront and overcome unjust rule by peaceful means. 

In expressing our concern, we have experienced pushback from both Jewish and Christian Zionists. Some of the critics within our church imply that because the Jewish people are a nation chosen by God, we must take the side of Israel in the current conflict in the Middle East. But as  these Bible studies show us, the nation state of Israel established by Western powers in 1948 and the Israel of the Bible should not be confused with one another. And we are opposed not to the Jewish people but to those policies of the current government of Israel which oppress Palestinians. I think particularly of the growth of Jewish settlements on the West Bank of the Jordan, an area which is designated as part of a Palestinian state if there is to be a peaceful solution which will allow for the creation of two states, one for Israelis and one for Palestinians. 

As the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, Archbishop Hosam Naoum, who is Palestinian, said at the last Lambeth Conference, Israel is a state that deserves the security and protections of a free state, but just like any other state it is also subject to the demands of international law. And for their part, the Palestinian people have the right to self-determination under the  United Nations Charter. 

So please pray for the land called holy, for an end to the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, and for lasting peace in Palestine and Israel. It is my hope that these Bible studies will deepen our understanding of the issues of the Holy Land and unify Southern African Anglicans in our desire to see both justice for the Palestinians and security for the Israelis. 

We yearn for the peace and wholeness of God to be made manifest in Palestine, in Israel and among their neighbouring countries. So, as we commit our Lenten journey to God, seeking the mind of Christ as we work for a just peace, let us pray the prayer we adopted at Provincial Synod:

Lord God,

Bless the people of the Middle East;

Protect their vulnerable children;

Transform their divided leaders;

Heal their wounded communities,

Restore their human dignity,

and give them lasting peace.

Amen.

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