August 2012 - Change is in the Air

Dear Friends

Change is in the Air

As you will likely have heard by now, either through the Churchwardens’ communication or the grapevine, Dawn and I are moving to Cape Town where I will take up the position of Rector of St Andrew’s in Newlands from 1 November 2013. We are both excited about the opportunities that lie before us as we step into a new phase of life and relationship. Our new home, on the Church property, looks onto the mountain and is bounded by a stream flowing from the Newlands Ravine into the Liesbeek River. We are looking forward to regular walks on the beach and through the forests, a new community and fresh challenges.

It is always difficult to leave, no matter how exciting the future may be. Pretoria has been home for both Dawn and I in different ways over a substantial part of our lives; our time at Corpus Christi has seen our children grow up, and while Nathan has flown the nest a few times over the last eight and a half years and most recently landed in Durban, Cassie will be pushed out and required to fly for the first time as she wishes to remain in Pretoria. It is with a mix of emotions that we move on.

I often wonder about the legacy I will leave. As a Christian Community we have grown together and transformed together over these last eight-plus years. I am very aware that Dawn and I step out of a community very different to the community we entered in 2005. There have been physical changes to the property from a major upgrading of the car-park to the extension of the Church, and more recently the reupholstering of the pews and some major repair and maintenance activity which has seen the Church and Hall repainted. More importantly, the transformation of our community has been marked as we’ve sought to adapt to the changing demographics of eastern Pretoria. I have enjoyed watching our Parish community become increasingly cosmopolitan, and the leadership structures adapt accordingly. I hope that my time in your midst has laid strong enough foundations that this cosmopolitan nature of what we have become will strengthen in the future, and that people – no matter their culture or class – will continue to find a Christian home at Corpus Christi.

I really do encourage you all to trust God and each other fully as you move into a time of interregnum during which you will prayerfully seek God for a new Rector to lead Corpus Christi into its next phase of growth and development. The Churchwardens will be meeting with the Bishop in the near future to begin this process, one which is about finding the right person who will not only be good for Corpus Christi, but will also fit the ethos of the Diocese. Don’t despair when the process seems to be taking time, but know and trust that God will provide.

Remind yourselves constantly of our mission to be role-models and risk-takers for Christ where we live, work and worship; and of our vision to be passionate disciples for Christ as we seek to live our Faith in daily life!

Blessings

     Mark

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

May 2010

Dear Friends

A “new thing” in our midst

Last month I said “I’d love to know what your perception is of the “new thing” that God is doing in our midst.” Due to the complete lack of response I’m wondering if we have our heads firmly buried in the sand, or whether we hope that by not acknowledging “new things” they will disappear and life can continue as normal? Or perhaps God has passed us by, and we have been left in some backwater, marking time?

I’m reading a book – as part of my studies – by Ron Martoia Morph! The Texture of Leadership for Tomorrow’s Church. In it he makes the following insightful comment:

“In our postmodern culture, people are looking for experiences to bring them closer to God. Why have we been so unimaginative? Postmoderns aren’t looking for principles to die for; they are looking for practices to live by” (page 58).

The challenge we face as Anglicans, along with other so-called “main-line” Churches, is that we have been shaped over centuries by a worldview that raises “principle” on a divine pedestal, and is often suspicious of “experience”. Postmodernism is a worldview that forms the outlook and expectations of many younger people (mostly those under 50) and these people are often drawn off to Christian communities that offer a more experiential faith dynamic. It is not that principle is unimportant, it is just no longer pivotal.

Rules and regulations are the pedestal that upholds principle, and Martoia comments that the postmodern perspective associates rules and regulations “leading to dull, monochrome lives” (page 58), and thus to a dull, monochrome faith. As Anglicans we are often nervous to venture too far into the experiential realm, finding our comfort and security in transcendent truth and principle. We are suspicious and critical of other denominations and many of the newer “break-away” communities that appear to reject the sense of dignity that principle engenders in worship and life. And we are nervous to let these ideas through the door: the very thought of them makes us insecure.

Another book that I have been reading – Systems-Sensitive Leadership: Empowering Diversity Without Polarizing the Church by Michael Armour and Don Browning – suggests that postmodernism encompasses at least four emerging worldviews (thinking systems and values), themselves discontinuous, that the Church increasingly needs to take cognisance of. While there is far too much detail to go into here, the key issue is that “main-line” Churches like ourselves need to begin exploring ways to incorporate and make space for people who have an increasingly different perspective and expectation from that which has shaped our Church-life over centuries. Statistics strongly suggest that in the Western world the Church as we have known it is dying, especially when attendance figures are married to population growth. Research suggests that this is not due to a decrease in interest in spirituality – which interest remains high among postmoderns – but is rather an inability (unwillingness?) to transform in order to meet the needs of a new generation, a generation whose needs are discontinuous with the past.

And so, perhaps, I got the question wrong last month, and I need to ask instead, “What new thing does God want to institute in our midst?” – do you have any thoughts?

Blessings

Mark

June 2008 - Transformation, Identity & Xenophobia

Dear Friends

from Transformation to Identity

The theme I have constantly returned to during the Easter to Pentecost journey has been “Transformation”: the transformation of Life itself through the death and Resurrection of Jesus; the transformation of the Jesus of History into the Christ of Faith through the Ascension; our transformation through the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost. The Feast of Corpus Christi (The Body of Christ) takes us the next step: identity.

Transformation, Identity and Xenophobia

I have grappled with the resistance I have had even to using the term “Transformation” in relation to our parish life. In reflection I realise that underlying this resistance is the issue of identity: who am I, who are we? What is it to be Human, African, South African? What is it to be a person/community of Faith, Christian, Anglican, a member of the Body of Christ? What is it that primarily defines who I am, who we are?

It strikes me that often we define ourselves not in the more universal terms of being human or Christian, but in terms of particular aspects of our existence: we highlight ethnic priorities or specific traditions; and these have led, ultimately and sadly, to Xenophobic violence in our country. This “Us” verses “Them” dichotomy leads to the breakdown in community relationships. This is true in South African society and in the Church, even at Parish level.

Somehow we need to embrace a concept of “Us” that does not create a “Them”; an “Us” that revels in embracing different perspectives in creative balance; an environment where “They” are “Us”. Perhaps this ultimately is the source of transformation, a transformation where, from a Christian Faith perspective, we become ever more Christ-like, and in so doing become ever more human, recognising that we all are made in God’s image, in the image of the Creator.

Xenophobia and a new Way of Living

The horror of recent and ongoing Xenophobic events in our country point to a failure in Government – but also to the failure of the Church – to build a truly democratic, free society. Yes, the number of refugees from other parts of Africa has reached intimidating levels with the statistic of up to 25% of informal settlements being made up of foreigners. Yes, service delivery has not impacted on the poor in ways they find meaningful. Yes, crime is sometimes perpetrated by foreigners. However, it is largely our own children, the so-called “Born Free” generation – who are estimated to make up 70% of all unemployed people in our country – that are perpetrators of much of the recent upheavals. We as Government, as Civil Society, as Faith Communities, have failed to instil a moral core into our young people; we have failed to give them an identity of which they can be proud; an identity onto which they can build a solid moral code.

And so it hurts that we at Corpus Christi, we who carry the name “Body of Christ”, are so resistant to facing up to the call to be transformed. Within our Parish life we have a wonderful opportunity to explore our diverse cultural heritage, to experiment with what it means for “Them” to be “Us”; to build transformed relationships and community in a way that offers HOPE to our wider society, to our Nation. I hear, “Don’t rock the boat”; I hear, “Things are going well – don’t spoil it”. But what do I see?

What do I see?

Despite verbal resistance, I see transformation in action; I see greater involvement from groupings in the Parish that previously were less visible; I see people who struggle with change reaching out across perceived barriers; I see new relationships germinating; and I feel … yes … sense a new ownership of Parish life growing in people’s hearts. I see a community struggling to find a new path, a transformed identity. We are not there yet, but we have begun a journey. Let us persevere, together.

Blessings

Mark

April 2008 - The Transformation of Resurrection

Dear Friends

The Transformation of Resurrection

In my letter to you all last month I spoke of transition. Easter speaks of something more: transformation! Some may say, “Yes, yes, it’s all words …” and you’d be right. However, each word gives us a different perspective, highlights a different facet of the diamond that is life in God. How has your life been transformed, how is it being transformed, as you grow in relationship with God and God’s people? Are you encountering God in life, in worship, in relationship? Where are you encountering God in your involvement with Corpus Christi? Do people encounter God as they encounter you? You and I, we … are called to be instruments of transformation in our families, our friendships, our society and our nation, our world. To be transformed by the resurrected life of Christ is to be the same, but different; to be aware that as we accept Christ into our lives we, too, are risen! At Corpus Christi our primary core purpose is to be a place where others meet Christ: how is your life an instrument of love in the world of others?

I encourage you to dwell on these questions as the answers may not always be immediately obvious, but they are there.

A Dream

In my reflection last month on our need to be a community in transition towards greater inclusivity I shared that for me it is “a dream” that as yet has no great clarity. In further reflection I realise that the exposure I have received as an Anglican Priest forms the foundation of my vision for our future. Perhaps I need to share something of my journey …

… a Stretching Journey

I was dragged up in a largely liberal-English fashion in a home where people were always acknowledged as people, no matter their creed or colour, and a grandmother who had been an active Black Sash member. My early life was, however, marred by Apartheid in that few opportunities arose in Apartheid South Africa to meet and interact meaningfully with so-called “non-Europeans”. My exposure to other South African cultures was sadly lacking. I became conscious during my two years of mandatory National Service in the mid 1980’s that for me black people had no individuality, and that I needed to set this right. This led to an overnight move at the end of my two years in the South African Defence Force to living in Garankuwa (North-East of Pretoria) and sharing a mission house together first with Kabelo Thlokoe (who sadly never made it to Priesthood) and then with Gilbert Mashiane (from Mamelodi) and Johan Viljoen (the son of an Apartheid Ambassador), while studying Missiology part-time in Pietermaritzburg with some very radical young black fellow-students.

This move was probably the most stretching of my life as I was immersed in anti-apartheid structures and conscientised for the first time in my young life to the realities of life on the other side of the Apartheid coin, a painful place. My worldview was transformed, and left me in a lonely place: my friends no longer understood me, and seemed uncomfortable with my new perspective on life; my new environment was an uncertain and uncomfortable place; a position in which I had chosen to immerse myself. This journey also absorbed me in the breadth of Anglicanism, and especially in the invigorating worship environment of township communities; and new friendships in a new environment; new, different insights into what it means to be a Christian in South Africa. A stretching journey that began to inform my desire for a comprehensive, broad Southern African Anglican inclusivity.

In White River, my first posting as Rector, I had responsibility for a largely English-colonial community in town, and responsibility for the township parish in Kabokweni made up largely of Swazi people, as well as mixed African-cultural groupings in Bushbuckridge and Shatale. I was then posted to Nelspruit, a largely English and Indian parish, while also having responsibility for Kanyamazane. I was in Nelspruit towards the end of the 1990’s and we saw a number of black folk move into town and into the parish during this time, which for some reason was more threatening to the Indian community than the English. As Chaplain to Uplands College I encouraged tutor groups to lead the prayers, and individuals had the right to use any language they chose – the most challenging (and creative) moment being when a Muslim student stood up and prayed the Lord’s Prayer in Arabic! Now at Corpus Christi, the most integrated Sunday community I have ever served, I also carry responsibility for the Anglican community in Stanza Bopape.

Stanza Bopape, as those who occasionally join me there from Corpus Christi will attest, is an amazing experience of inclusive language: the Psalm is said antiphonally, the odd verses in Setswana/Sepedi and the even verses in isiZulu/isiXhosa. The Eucharistic responses happen in all four languages at the same time, and the Lord’s Prayer in English (I think for my benefit).

The point I am making is that in twenty years of ministry my weekly/monthly worship-life has always been diversely inclusive, even if in quite culturally-specific congregations; regular worship in different languages and cultural patterns is “normal” for me.

Ministry in the Anglican Church and specifically in the Diocese of Pretoria has given me, from the earliest days of my training, a vision for what we can be as the people of God, for the unity that is possible in the midst of our huge diversity.

Possibility

As I look out over our Sunday congregation at 9am I see for the first time in twenty years, in a congregation I serve, a real possibility of being reflective of the unity we find in Christ in our fuller diversity as Anglicans and as Southern Africans. And thus my pressure on us to reach out towards a greater inclusivity in worship styles and cultures. I am aware that this is a stretching vision for us, one with which many in our community are not comfortable, and that even limited use of other languages has created distress. I am an eclectic at heart, which possibly adds to the discomfort, as my desire to piece together the best of our diversity often lacks specific focus and so appears to raise its head in creative disorder.

We have the building blocks; each of us is resourced with language and cultural experience and a relationship with God through Jesus Christ; do we have the will to make it work? And do we have the courage?

It requires a letting go … of what has been “normal” at Corpus Christi … and what has been “normal” in our diverse congregations-of-origin. Do we have the courage to let go … and be transformed?

POST SCRIPT – Thank you

Thank you to all at Corpus Christi and Willow Glen for your generous Easter gift to me – I greatly appreciate your love shown in this very concrete manner!

POST SCRIPT – Sudan

As the Chairperson of the Diocesan Companion Links Committee I will be attending the enthronement of the new Archbishop of the Episcopal Church of Sudan (ECS) in Juba. As a Diocese we are attempting to develop a Companion Link with the ECS Province, and so I will hopefully also be able to explore possibilities for this relationship – one the recently retired former Archbishop was keen to develop – with them while I am there. Please keep the new ECS Archbishop, Daniel Deng Bul, in your prayers as he leads the ECS during a critical phase in the national life of Southern Sudan. Please keep me in your prayers, too. I will be away from 16 to 24 April 2008.

Blessings
Mark