Why no young people at Holy Week services?

Not sure whether it is my imagination but in conversation with younger folk in the church there is an aversion in attending the services of Holy Week. One person was quite frank about the Good Friday service when he noticed we were using “Listening at Golgotha” by Peter Storey as the theme. He said: “Is that one of those heavy services again. I cannot attend those, they are too much for me.” There seems to be a trend in contemporary worship that denies grief, sorrow and mourning an expression in the liturgy of our worship. The Holy Week services intentionally examine the cost of unconditional love and the price of living in God’s will. It reminds us of God’s embrace of our common human suffering. It is invaluable that at times we examine the depths of our faith and what it really means to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. It is not a shining set of drums and how high we can raise our voices but how we intentionally wrestle through our Gethsemane and fulfill the love sacrifice despite of the loss incurred.

The full picture of friendship

Some folk who I have spent prayerful time with have complained that they are lonely and unloved. Nine times out of ten the problem does not lie with other people but with the person themselves. Too often the attempts of making friends have been futile because they have made sure others only see their photogenic side. In doing so we are thwarting friendship by holding unfinished portraits of ourselves before others. Nobody is a fool. We know the vicissitudes of our own soul. We are fearful of those who cannot accept the darker sides of themselves lest they don’t accept the darker side in us.

“We have to be willing to let others know us if we want them to celebrate life with us.” Henri Nouwen “Can you drink the cup”

What do Oprah Madonna and Irena Sendlerowa have in common?

I got quite emotional over the last week reading different articles in “The Witness” (local rag). The one article was an obituary of a 98 year old woman by the name of Irena Sendlerowa. There is a very small and seemingly insignificant photo of her but looks are deceiving. This lady was a Polish resistance fighter during the Second World War who organized the rescue of 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation. She smuggled these children through sewers, in ambulances, under her skirt and she hid them in monasteries, with foster parents and in orphanages. She was later arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, but never gave details of the resistance movements work, nor revealed the children’s name. She was saved on the day over scheduled execution. I also read an article about Madonna the pop star diva who plans to build a multi-million- dollar girl’s school in Malawi for underprivileged children this year. It is on the same scale of what Oprah Winfrey has done in South Africa. Which boasts a state of the art facilities, laboratories, a yoga studio and beauty salon. The latter took my breath away for a moment as I tried to see the importance of a Yoga Studio and Beauty Salon for underprivileged children, but maybe I am way too Methodist! The question is – Who gave the most? The answer is quite obvious in my eyes – the one who sacrificed the most.

The Cable Guy aka Christian Guy

Lets be objective for a moment. If somebody comes to you and says, “I sacrifice my life for you,” or if they give you a gift or do something for you that costs them dearly, what is your true view of them? “Weird”, “Psycho”, maybe terms that come to mind. Bringing over a Pizza when you return from a long journey may be considered kind and thoughtful but sending over a catering company to do your dining room up with candle light, serving Peking Duck with Crème Brulee for desert might make you wish you never came to live in that particular neighbourhood. Christian love may seem for some to be way out of line and embarrassing and we need to be careful how we “Love our Neighbour.” Our needs and motives to be loved ourselves can easily get in the way of loving our neighbour effectively. Our dependence for love, care, and acceptance might lump us in the weirdo category if we don’t watch out. Our love is from a love that is given freely with no strings attached. We ‘truly’ don’t want the glory and so it is easy to give space when space is due, just wave when a wave will do, but be able to surrender everything when everything is due. Those who have seen the movie the "The Cable Guy" will understand.

The Power of Words - Desmond Tutu

Yesterday somebody phoned and hesitantly told me that they felt led to tell me that ‘God loves me.’ They felt rather awkward and concerned whether they would sound like a fool. At the time I was not sure how this well worn Christian cliché was going to make sense in my immediate life. I have a family member who is diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. She is often quoting scriptures and prophesying all kinds of things over my life and I have had to learn a healthy sense of what to take seriously and what not. One has to be so careful not to allow others to manipulate you emotionally with what they deem is happening in your life. On the other hand it is unwise not to listen to those who honestly come to your door with words of encouragement. This morning I was reading the chapter in Trevor Hudson’s book “Touched by Resurrection Love” entitled “Experiencing Resurrection Love.” It shares how Christ calls out Mary’s name and this awakens in her again her masters love. It speaks of the God who really affirms and cares about your life. He quotes from Desmond Tutu who was being interviewed and Desmond turns to the journalist and says, “ God loves you as you are, with your doubts, with your intellectual reservations, with your inability to make the leap of faith… I made you actually, and I made you as you are because I love you. Don’t try to titivate yourself. Just be you and know that I affirm you. You matter enormously to me. You matter as if you were the only human being..”

A wide neighbourhood

Anne Robertson writes a devotion this week that shares her experience with her immediate neighbours. The problems she encounters are ones of noisy, bad behaved, incalcitrant folk who ride noisy off-road bikes past her quite lakefront home and disturb the peace. I don’t know what her neighbourhood looks like on the whole, but I wish my neighbourhood was as homogenous and clear cut. Living in South Africa our neighbourhood includes the starkest of contrasts. Neighbourliness means mingling with many who cannot speak ones language, with those who celebrate when they can get a loaf of bread to eat, with those who live in sprawling mansions fenced shut from the outside world, with those who beg for your last cents, with those dressed in khaki and those in red T-shirts, and those transfixed at boxed sports shrines on weekends. To love ones neighbour in South Africa requires nerves of steel, hearts of gold, and minds that are expansive in there quest to be inclusive.

Strike it unlucky

We in South Africa are being crippled by a national strike. Today in Pietermaritzurg the headlines read “ Total City shutdown, 30 000 to march on CBD; fears municipal workers might join strike.” There are no children at school, there is barely a nurse left in the hospitals, the police and defense force are threatening sympathy strikes. This is a complete meltdown of an orderly society. I don’t want to chew too much on opinions already clichéd by editors of newspapers and social gossip columns. Who’s to blame is not an easy answer to give. There is a new elite in South Africa who if one can generalize have lined their pockets with tax payers money. Corruption and exploitations of government funds is rife. The few have again taken from the many. This is what the strike is all about for me. The forces that are in battle in South Africa are between the powers of opportunistic wealth and the powers of the disempowered working masses. It is an unprecedented voice against the greed of some. But, like all good stories the villains are not easily discernable. Power, in what ever clothes it likes to dress itself, can become as ugly as the powers it detests and tries to mitigate against. The worker who decides to go to work is threatened with her very life. The teacher’s who we entrust our children to are foaming rabid at the mouth. Hospital workers are dancing restlessly outside hospitals with jovial glances whilst bodies who’s hearts once beat are being wheeled down empty corridors into the morgues. The villain is also on the other foot by the looks of it. So where is the redemption is such a stalemate? Does justice have to be so cruel and to what ends will justice fight until it realizes it has turned face and become the one infringing on others rights?

These solutions do not lie in the answers constructed by well-heeled politicians and neither are they answered by those obsessed with equal footing. Justice in itself is not enough to heal a country. The religious will tell you that you are seeking for peace in the wrong quarters. Justice without love is not worthy of the glory it seeks. It might gain the world through all the protests its embarks upon, but without Love it is nothing. It is a Paul may say, a mere clashing gong, but it will lack the treasure it really seeks. The other lesson the religious would argue is that the desire for possessions above love is the cardinal mistake of the human soul. The soul that seeks for fulfillment in the values, hopes and dreams of the physical world will often find themselves in places of dire disappointment and disillusionment. This worldly dream is stilted and always has a end. The hope of a new world order needs to transcend the confines of this world, it needs to reach up into the beyond and declare a world that is not dependent on the human ego, but rather transformed and bent by a greater Justice system that calls on its adherents to lift the ‘rights of others’ above our own.
"Do justice ... love kindness ... walk humbly with your God" ... Micah 6:8

A resurrection proof

Thoughts from - John 13:31-35
The readings on loving one another in the lectionary for this week are at first glance a pattern of words and meanings that seem to be a cliché that even a cliché is not able make cliché. This religious thought is not new as Jesus suggests either. Well, that is in the way we understand new. There are other commands to love, found in the first testament of the bible q.v. Leviticus. I don’t think Jesus (a Rabbi) would have slipped up here. The new would no doubt be the newness that is freshly expressed in the new testament of our bibles viz. the law of love now written on our hearts in flesh. The example given before this text is Jesus washing the disciples feet. A love that is not written down to achieve, but a love that moves from the deep interior of our hearts. A love that is so powerfully entrenched that it sacrificial in its dealings, and is glorified in its death. The latter is because it is a love-death that will never die. The glorification that is evident in the betrayal/death of Jesus is not the death itself. That is the first part of the equation that ends with resurrection proportions. The best evidence of the resurrection of Jesus is the love that is shown in and amongst the disciples. It is a sacrament. It is a command by Jesus that we often neglect because it is firstly not easily done, secondly it is not something we want to do under law, and thirdly we unaware of its connection with the Resurrection. John speaks of a love amongst one another, not a love for the world, or for ones enemies. He is speaking of a love at its source. A love before it streams out to the world and gets bogged down with other meanings and dammed up with selfish intentions. The love that is witness to the Resurrection of Jesus in the world.

Prayer - Let me care

My prayer today is a prayer for my soul to find love in the avenues and byways of all my relationships. To find a heart that cares when people hurt and eyes that are prepared to cry when people leave me. A prayer that I may see in the eyes of each person I know the glimpses of something I can treasure and care for as if it were the most exciting part of my life. As much as I long for the freedom of open spaces, mountain vistas, and silent spaces, may I too long for the joy of sharing my life with the lives of others. May I find peace not only in my own quietness but peace when in the company of strangers and those I know so well. My prayer today is that you will help me to become less satisfied in my own desire and self achievement and better fulfilled in the service of others.

Somebody needs it

John 12:7,8 Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

The table is set for extravagant love. Who would not host the most expensive meal for the one who gave you back your life. Jesus had wept over the death of this man Lazarus, tears more precious than expensive perfume. Tears of life. The costs of things are the discussion at this table. The cost of showing your love through tears, fragrance and abandonment of action. There is no wisdom when appreciating others completely. Surely the poor should get the benefits of a luxurious aroma sold for cash and hard cold coin. Not so with love, its costs are priceless and its timing is divine. This story helps us take the most and give it away to somebody. It is not an exchange for faceless cash in an envelope to be sent to names called poor. Those who we are through guilt made conscious of. Where can I break open the bottle of perfume today. On whose feet will it fall and what will be my excuse not to do it? Who will dissuade me from extravagant love? May our hearts rule.

Unsmothered love

The fruit of life is finding the God who loves you. Knowing this central and core acceptance is reformation to the uttermost. The deeper we are utterly dependent on this love the less we manipulate the attentions of others. The closer this truth rests with us the less we feel we are missing out on something. All life’s fulfillment is found at the feet of the God man Jesus. When acceptance is found others find a peace with us that is warm and reassuring. We no longer look to them for our survival which helps put them at ease. We are not wanting to win their attention for affection which helps them relax. Our acceptance by God is the bridge for bringing others to ease in our presence. The Christian community is bathed in unconditional acceptance. This is our magic, our brew our tea.

God is chicken!

Luke 13:4 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!"

We are given an icon to hold onto. An icon to gaze upon. An icon so significant that it will reverberate with the essence of God. The icon is not easily described by words, because words are rational and develop from logical constructs that for centuries have erroneously been associated with masculinity. The icon breathes other dimensions that speak of heart matters, emotional things that are not easily scratched out on a black-board but are felt deeply in the impression of the hearts. This icon finds itself in the form of everything that is supposedly female, touched with broody emotion, and self sacrificing generosity. This icon has feathers and it is soft, cuddly and warm. You want to nestle up against the icon, the warmth of the feathers, and the shadow the wings make it nurturing and caring. The icon of a Hen and her chicks is the perfect picture of the God who cares for us. It speaks to us of the fussing, clucking and energy involved in keeping her loved ones in eyesight for protection. We should all have a picture of a hen and her chicks up on our walls. Somewhere close where we pray in the morning or evening. So now and again we can look up and without much thinking remind ourselves of God's attitude toward us. God cannot help clucking and fussing over us.

The middle road

I am called to repay a curse with a blessing. The path of non-violence and not non-resistance. I am called not to be silent but to walk as Jesus walked. He chose the path of non-violence and suffering. Working this out in everyday life is the trick. It seems easier when there are clear cut evil boundaries like the sea meeting the land. The everyday dialogue is filled with so much grey, misinformation and smudged boundaries that to speak up and not be resistant to evil is difficult. It is possibly the moment my own heart is troubled by injustice, unfair criticism or is hurt that the alarm bells ought to ring for me to be cautious with my words and my actions. This and at the same time to be aware that it is possibly the time I need to gracefully resist the evil. The disciplines of my faith should be the building blocks of my hearts reaction to the subtle play of evil all around me. The easier route from violent reaction is the other evil, silent hatred. Both are as bad as the other. Help me find the middle road. The path that is bold enough to speak the truth with love. (My thoughts are provoked by 1 Peter 3:8-12 and “Daily bible Study – Adult bible Studies”)