May 2013 - A Discontinuous Gospel

Dear Friends

Easter Season

Amazingly, as I write, we are almost at the end of the Easter Season, with Pentecost just three Sundays away! I have enjoyed celebrating this season with the new focus the Revised Common Lectionary gives us (the Anglican Church of Southern Africa moved from the Common Lectionary to the Revised Common Lectionary in Advent last year), as the readings are more thematic and focused. There is also a substantial amount of good commentary available online, which proves invaluable when one needs an idea or two to kick-start one’s sermon preparation!

Today’s Morning Prayer readings touch on “re-membering” (Wisdom of Solomon 10:1-25), “renewal” (Romans 12:1-12), and I came across this lovely prayer from the Church of England’s Common Worship: Daily Prayer in relation to Psalm 106:

“Holy God, when our memories blot out your kindness and we ignore your patient love, remember us, re-make us, and give to us poor sinners the rich inheritance of Jesus Christ our Lord.”

 It strikes me that re-membering and being re-made is what the Season of Easter is all about. We are reminded of the incredible act of God visible in Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection to new life; the Season of Easter helps us to explore the implications of this for us in our time and context. I have preached in the last few weeks on revolutionary resurrection, hope beyond miracle and inclusive love (these can be listened to or downloaded from http://www.4shared.com/folder/Oj-giFNO/2013_Sermons.html ). Romans 12:2 NRSV encourages us to “be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” What is the will of God in terms of death and resurrection? We may think that we know the answers as we have walked this same seasonal journey over many years, even decades; but what are the implications for today? We live in a very different world from the last century in whose thinking and understanding many of us were formed. We are entrusted with a Gospel that requires us to be transformed, not just spiritually, but to the realities of the world in which we now find ourselves, a 21^st century world that is discontinuous from the last, a space where what made sense no longer is sensible, and where sacrifice and sin are outdated concepts carrying little meaning for many.

We are entrusted to make the Gospel known to this generation, in this century, in this space.

What is “this space”? It is multi-dimensional, multi-Faith, and technologically super-innovative. What are the challenges and implications of Scripture for us in this environment? For example, Jesus’ commandment to love as he has loved us after washing the feet of the Twelve, a group Jesus knew included one who would betray him, another that would deny him that very night? Washing their feet, and then sharing sustenance with them; what is more radical than that? How do we live out that type of extreme acceptance of human fallibility in our own relationships? And the cross, where does that fit in? David Lose, of www.workingpreacher.org says, “Jesus did not go to the cross to make God loving, or to satisfy God’s justice, or to take on our punishment.” If the cross is not about Jesus taking on our punishment, what is it about? David goes on to say, “Jesus went to the cross to show in word and deed that God is love and that we, as God’s children, are loved.” In today’s space we need to unpack how crucifixion (one of the most brutal innovations of human torture ever conceived) makes God’s love manifest in our world. Implicit in David’s comment is that Jesus' death was not a sacrifice, but a loving gift given to humanity by a loving God; a gift given under the most horrendous of experiences. I struggle to get my mind around the concept of love that embraces the betrayer, the denier, and the cross. In a world that increasingly places emphasis on the rights of the individual, proclaims happiness as the goal of life, where does such love fit? And how do we proclaim it? And what are the implications of resurrection, of death outmanoeuvred, out-flanked by life beyond our own experience? That is a part of challenge of “this space”.

We need to re-member, re-create, the Gospel message. Tweaking, re-stating the Gospel of a previous generation is insufficient. We require a discontinuous Gospel of hope for the discontinuous world in which we live.

Your thoughts?

Blessings

Mark

October 2012 - Spectator or Participant?

Dear Friends

Vision in a Vacuum

I reported in detail last month on the progress made in reviewing our vision and mission for the Parish, specifically what had come out of our Parish meeting in mid-August. I have since wondered if we did actually print it, such has been the underwhelming response! I expressed my concern to Parish Council, and I reiterate it here, that this process of review should not be the Rectors’ vision and mission for the Parish, but ours as a collective. What are your thoughts on what I shared last month? Does what the August meeting came up with excite you? Demotivate you? Surprise you? Give you hope? Do you think the ideas shared touch on important issues or miss them? Do you see your experience of Corpus Christi, and your hopes for the Parish, reflected in what was discussed? Have we missed anything? Please, fill the vacuum!!

Leadership

October is leadership month, and as you will see in the Diary section we will be holding elections for Churchwardens and Parish Councillors towards the end of the month. Having spent September focusing on Stewardship, we now have an opportunity to be good stewards of the gifts of Leadership. Standing for Churchwarden or Parish Councillor is an act of stewardship, a giving of our time and skills, a utilisation of these resources. All confirmed members of the parish are eligible. Please be prayerful and take time to encourage people you know and trust to stand for election.

What are we about?

Within the broad context of reviewing our vision and mission, our September focus on Stewardship, and our need to elect new Parish leadership for 2013 this month, along with the Synod of Bishops and Provincial Standing Committee meetings that took place last week, the upcoming Anglicans Ablaze Conference that will focus on exploring the Anglican Church of Southern Africa’s vision, mission and priority statements adopted in 2010, along with my own search for meaning and relevance, I am conscious of asking the question, “What is it that we are about?” … as Christians, as Anglicans, as South Africans, as Africans?

I spent some time today reading an address by Trevor Manuel, then Minister of Finance, to the Anglican Synod of Bishops in August 2004. In it he reflects on the need both in our wider society and within Government for the Church as an ecumenical movement to provide leadership, not by basking in the golden decade (1984-1985) when the Church was bold and articulate, and fully committed to bringing about democracy, but by embracing a sustaining and durable theology of reconstruction and development based on the premise of involvement and not spectatorship.

What are we about as Church? Manuel’s perspective back in 2004 was of the wider Church, largely uninvolved in the needs of society, occasionally attempting to broad-side government with accusations of failure from a spectator’s vantage point. I am wondering, reading this document in 2012, where the Church stands today on these issues? Do we continue to see responsibility for reconstruction and development as the preserve of Government, or are we acknowledging that we have a role to play, and are we playing it? Recent events at Marikana demonstrate that employers, Trade Unions, Government have lost the trust of the working class, and that they are even suspicious of the Church. Why is this? Is it, perhaps, because the wider Church has somehow lost its ability to be present to society? Manuel’s interpretation is that there is a powerful element – the Church Pty Ltd – in the wider Church environment that implores us to forget the concrete or contextual nature of incarnation, that leads us away from discovering our cause, our raison d'être, in serving the nations of Southern Africa, and the new South Africa in particular. In offering an alternative, Manuel identifies five pillars that, for him, needs define a Church with a cause. We need a Church that is aware of itself in the following ways:

• A Church aware of what defines it – traditionally that of healer, intermediator, discoverer and uniter;
•  A Church exploring its role as Convenor of itself and its congregation – re-motivating ourselves in order to lift the burden from the poor;
•  A Church as keeper of values – building the norms of caring, campaigning against crime and corruption, helping society understand the difference between values and cash cost;
• A Church as constructor of communities;
•  A Church as the conscience of Society.

Manuel also quotes Thabo Mbeki, then president of the Republic, speaking to the South African Christian Leaders Assembly in July 2003, “… you bravely and at great cost to many among you, chose a path through the contextual understanding of your mission. Once again, your mission calls for a reappraisal on the basis of the real conditions that face all our people.” It strikes me that Trevor Manuel, a fellow Anglican and senior Government Minister, touched on key issues for us as a Church back in 2004, and that senior Church leadership has responded to these challenges, certainly within our Anglican context: the Provincial social development arm, Hope Africa, was expanded and better resourced; our Diocesan social development arm, Tumelong Mission, has been refocused; Bishops and Clergy throughout the Province have been exposed to social development training through courses run by Hope Africa; a vision, mission and priority statements have been adopted for the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. But how is this finding traction at grass-roots level in the wider Church environment? How do we experience a commitment to the reconstruction and development of our society in the more specific context, for example at Corpus Christi? Is our involvement with Louis Botha Homes, Iren Homes, Tumelong Mission, a sufficient commitment in this regard? How many of us actually pitched up and participated in the Environmental Clean-up day a couple of weeks ago?

An additional challenge is how we respond as the Church to the National Development Plan 2030 (see http://bit.ly/RxCSVx)? I have just read the vision statement, a powerful and profound statement of the Nation I believe we all want to be but are not yet, and I suspect, fear we will never be. It is written in the present tense and planted in 2030, and is a call to build our Nation. It proposes a powerful cycle of development approach to change designed to build social cohesion around three important cogs: active citizenry, effective government and strong leadership. I suggest that the Church, in a wider ecumenical context, can be a powerful force in encouraging active citizenry and participating in giving strong leadership. The vision statement begins with the words:

We, the people of South Africa, have journeyed for since the long lines of our first democratic election on 27 April 1994, when we elected a government for us all.

Now in 2030 we live in a country which we have remade.

We are suspicious of Government, often with good reason. But as God’s people we are people of Hope, people of passion, people committed to seeing the purposes of God, the goodness of God triumph in our world. Pre-1994 as Anglicans we sided with the politically poor and oppressed. In today’s world we need to side with the economically poor and oppressed. If we sit back and choose to be the spectator Church, the uninvolved Church, then we allow the Julius Malema’s of the world to set the agenda. As an involved Church we can participate with other committed parties, which include Government, in building up our communities and our Nation. As participants we can have a voice and we can make a difference.

In Conclusion

In the midst of all the above, who are we as Corpus Christi Anglican Church in Garsfontein? What defines us? What is our vision? What is our purpose? And how are we utilising our core practises of worship, care and fellowship, education and discipleship, service and witness to serve God in our world and serve those made in God’s image who populate our lives?

Blessings

Mark

December 2011 - Hope and Expectation

Dear Friends

Advent

Our new Church Year has begun with our celebration of Advent Sunday last week. We have begun a new journey of Faith on a well travelled road; a journey of reflection and expectation. We will journey this year with the Gospel of Mark, a book built around the arresting conviction that there is no keeping God at a distance. The writer of Mark’s Gospel asks us to reflect on where God is to be found, and suggests that God is not to be found in the expected places: in heaven, in church, in special and magical events. It is not that God is not in these places, but that God is not confined to these spaces, and that these may not in fact be God’s favourite spaces. Now there’s a thought!

Mark’s Gospel, the Good News, is that God is in the ordinariness, the everydayness of life.

I am not sure I want to meet God in the everyday; I suspect I’d be more comfortable keeping God for those special moments in life, when I need God to be GOD. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with God being in the midst of a family disagreement, or in the intimacies I share with my wife. I am not comfortable with God being around when I succumb to road-rage, and share a few choice thoughts with the taxi driver who has just – suddenly – stopped in front of me. Am I comfortable with God being “around”? I’m not so sure.

But I find myself asking, “God, where are you?” Where are you when the person I love is murdered violently? Where are you when I NEED you? Where are you when my loved one is ill? Where are you when natural disasters kill thousands? Where are you when war wracks our world? Where are you when the collapses of national economies make the world sneeze and catch cold? Where are you when famine and civil war overtakes our continent? WHERE ARE YOU, GOD?!

“I am around ...”

Hope and Expectation

God is around, in our midst, incarnate, with us. Advent is lived in the expectation that God will act because God has acted. The incarnation (God born in human form in Jesus) took place over two millennia ago, and seemingly paradoxically – believing as we do that God is already with us through the presence of the Holy Spirit – we prepare for his return. Our Church Year is based around the re-enactment, the remembering of the restoring acts of God in history. It will again, but unique to the present context, remind us that God is with us. And so as we prepare this Advent: what are our expectations; what is our hope? There is always the temptation to demand that God act as we want him to act. The challenge is to allow God to truly be God, and to open our lives to that reality, and to seek God in the brokenness of our lives and society, in the everyday, in the ordinariness of life.

Christmas & New Year

If the speed with which this year has sped by is any indication, Christmas will be here in a blink of an eye! And the New Year will be in swing before we know it. Our Parish Christmas Tea was a huge success last Sunday: a little early, perhaps, but an opportunity to come together as a community before we all head off in different directions for the Christmas break. For those who will be around, please join us for our Christmas Carol Service on Sunday 18 December 2011 at 6pm where we will explore something of the history lying behind some of the better known Carols. There will be the traditional Crib Service at 6pm and Midnight Mass at 10pm on Christmas Eve, followed by a said Christmas Mass at 7am and the Christmas Family Eucharist at 9am on Christmas Day. If family or friends are visiting, please bring them along! For those travelling over this period, please drive carefully and responsibly; and return safely to us in the New Year.

A very blessed Christmas and New Year to you all!

Blessings

Mark

October 2008

Dear Friends,

Challenging Times

I spent ten days in the Richtersveld this month, followed by the Men’s Fly-Fishing weekend in Belfast. In this brief time our political landscape has changed dramatically, and I have returned to civilisation to find ourselves in a new phase of political transition. The rights and wrongs of the recent actions of the ANC in recalling President Thabo Mbeki from the Presidency can be debated, but the reality is that we are moving into a transition phase that will only find some resolution after a national election is called early next year.

During times of transition, complexity, confusion and uncertainty, we need to remind ourselves of our role as Christians within the broader society. Firstly and foremostly, we need remember our first loyalty is to God through Jesus Christ, that our confidence and security is in God and not in the material world around us. Secondly, that we are ambassadors for Christ in the World, and therefore need to allow our Christian values—not our very real human fears—to dictate our words and our actions: we are called to be symbols of hope in the midst of uncertainty. Thirdly, we are called to be people of prayer and instruments for God’s divine intervention in our society: our words and actions should at all times flow out of our daily times of prayer and devotion.

Paul, in 1 Corinthians 13:13 (TNIV) says, “… these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” He comments on the nature of love, “It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13:7; TNIV). In these uncertain times let LOVE be our watchword.

The Richtersveld

I spent a wonderful ten days in the Richtersveld with my father-in-law during September. We were with a group of nine vehicles (eighteen of us plus four young children), and spent a great deal of time driving. We entered through Namibia and spent a night under the most massive cliff I have ever seen on the Manchab River Eco Trail. The Richtersveld itself required regular use of 4x4 (I am definitely “shaken, not stirred”) and some “hairy” moments on some very steep and rocky passes. The scenery was enchanting, and so different. One valley would be incredibly lush, and half a kilometre further the next valley quite desolate. Bare mountains, on closer inspection, were full of life, and the most amazing variety of plants survive in gravel. Klipspringer, Dassies and Ground Squirrels were in abundance, and birds—while few—were all new to me. Two of our camps were on the banks of the Orange River, and one high in the mountains. Some intrepid fishermen managed to haul out a Yellow Fish and Cat Fish were in abundance. We covered over 3,500km in the ten days (500km in the Park), set up camp too many times, but nonetheless it was a truly marvellous experience.

Synod 2008

Next time I write we will be on the other side of our Diocesan Synod. Looking through the Agenda Book there are some interesting topics up for debate, and Synod promises to be a productive time. Please keep this time (2-4 October) in your prayers and thoughts.

I look forward to seeing you all at the Diocesan Family Day service on Sunday 5 October 2008, where we will also be celebrating Bishop Jo’s 10th Anniversary as Bishop of Pretoria.

Blessings
Mark