PREACHING ABOUT POVERTY:
Ubuntu
Preached
June 16, 2002
at the First United Methodist Church of Germantown
"Hey Fred, How was your
trip?"
I could tell you stories.... In fact, that is what this sermon will be more
than anything else. And with one recurring theme and overriding image. Hope. Because never
in my life have I encountered such boundless positive spirit, and against many reasons to
hold to the contrary.
The first week of the trip was more familiarization than
anything else. Barely off the 16 hour plane ride we headed off to Soweto, the most
historic of the black townships, particularly during the struggle to overthrow apartheid.
This is the home of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. First, we saw what we would call a
shanty town – a hodge-podge settlement
of one room homes made from scraps, old sign
boards, left-over lumber and blocks, and corrugated tin. Ironically, in American terms,
Soweto is suburban Johannesburg, though the economic and social status are opposite the
privilege we associate with suburbanites. If there is any privilege that built Soweto, it was, and is, the white privilege of racism. Soweto
is home to more than 4 million South African blacks, the largest portion of the population
of Johannesburg. Soweto itself, mostly in this shanty town state, has twice the population
of Philadelphia and four times that of Detroit.
I looked and saw homes no
larger than my bedroom. There is a good possibility that a dozen people may call
such a hovel home. Too many homes to count. I could see a single water faucet every so far
and wondered how many families used it.
We drove by Freedom Square where the
ANC held the gatherings which led to the new constitution. In my mind, I saw and heard
Steve Biko speaking. Today, a group of children played soccer there. We stopped at the
Hector Peterson Memorial which commemorates a 12 year old student shot by police in 1976
for being part of a demonstration against the use of Afrikaans as the only official
language for schools. I remember the picture of his limp, contorted body being carried by
another student that became a symbol of apartheid’s oppressive injustice and gave
rise, where I was standing, to the anti-apartheid movement.
We stopped at the home of Winnie
Mandela during the twenty five years of Nelson’s imprisonment. Now in a more
prosperous part of Soweto, as cameras clicked at the smallish four room house, children
gathered to check-out this strange bus load of mostly white visitors. They began to dance
and sing for our attention. The guide pointed out Desmond Tutu’s house just around
the corner. Looking at the faces of the children in the viewfinder of my camera, I am
wondering who from among these, or the children on the soccer field, will be the next Tutu or Mandela or Bosek or Biko.
I met someone who might be him the next
day.
He meets us on the steps of a pre-school related to one of the six churches on his circuit as a Methodist elder in the Ivory Park township between Johannesburg and Pretoria. His name is Simanga Khumalo who sums up his ministry and mission here in a sentence. "There is a God who loves you and is working in the world to transform your situation." Such a message and inspired shepherd as Simanga has seen the circuit grow from 50 to 1000 people since 1990, when as apartheid laws started to be dismantled and new residential areas began to develop around squatters and shacks.
Transformation for Pastor Khumalo and
the people mean daily worship and prayer accompanied by day care, pre school education,
health and hygiene education, and a variety of social services – feeding, Aids
education, a computer training center ("without our offering people basic skills,
poverty will continue and we will have missed a chance") and the opening of an
orphanage already filled with children of parents lost to the sub Saharan AIDS pandemic.
"We cannot give up hope, because God is a God of hope and new life," he says. He
exudes what he says and reminds me of the poster that says "Preach good news at all
times. When you must, resort to words."
How is one person the pastor of six different churches, you
ask? Khumalo uses the old Wesleyan
strategy of training a few lay people to be day to day, even Sunday church leaders and lay
ministers (he gets to each church twice a month for preaching and sacraments, the lay
ministers are in charge the rest of the time) while he looks for and develops new
opportunities to bring "there is a God who loves you and is working in the world to
transform your situation" to life in some new place.
The cost of school in these churches is
about $10/month. Teachers may or may not be paid depending on whether enough tuition has
been paid. Since jobs are so scarce, people seem to be willing to take jobs for no pay in
the hopes that someday, the for-pay job will develop.
My best keep sake from the trip comes
from Ivory Park. At one of the churches on the circuit, the women of the congregation make
what they call the "Peace, Hope and Justice Candle." The candle is set in a
wooden base and wrapped in barbed wire (the most common fencing one sees in South Africa).
The women told us that the light from the candle represents the brightness of God’s
love that penetrates and outshines harshness and violence in our society, especially
against women and children.
I wondered in my heart of hearts not
only if I’d ever known the depth of darkness these folk were journeying through, but
also if the light that I knew was as bright as the one they were holding to.
That light of hope against hope
was also brightly evident in a place called Edenvale, where in a very different
setting, this time a white middle class one, where the Pastor Cecil Rhodes says, " We
want people to experience the love of God through our compassion and care, particularly
those who are struggling and suffering." There are the usual and expected soup
kitchens and job training programs (not unimportant!!!!) But what stands out is an outdoor
sanctuary space, a lovely garden they maintain for community people in search of some holy
space, some prayer space; and an AIDS hospice
now under construction that will have twenty beds and all sorts of respite and support
services for care givers. True to what Cecil Rhoads says is their mission, the self-avowed
atheist who is the construction manager of the home being renovated into the hospice has
since, working with the Edenvale church people been baptized and is emerging as a leader
in the church.
At Edenvale Church we saw a poster that
we were to see somewhere at about every church thereafter. It was pasted prominently in
the narthex. It said simply, in bold letters and dramatically "The Church has
AIDS," with the scripture text below – "If one member suffers, all suffer
together...." Distributed by the South African Council of Churches, the projections
and statistics are daunting in frightfulness and horror. The United Nations says that
there are 8 million currently orphaned in South Africa, 12 million in the sub Saharan
region. 8000 people in the region die every day. Currently, 4.7 million in South Africa
are effected, that number increasing 2000 per day to orphan 43 million by 2010. The life
expectancy in the townships is now 40 from in the 50's. And it is said there are no more
graves in major cities like Durban and Johannesburg. The word is that cemetery lots are
now being recycled. The apex of the pandemic is not expected to be reached until 2030.
Indeed the church has AIDS.
If we think 9/11 changed the world, how will this holocaust of disease change this global
village. I spoke to FUMCOGer Huntly Collins,
who has been in Johannesburg since the Fall of 2001 working on a feature story for the Philadelphia
Inquirer and facilitated a connection between Huntly and Bob Edgar of the National
Council of Churches for some dialogue about what the NCCCUSA is doing to support the SACC
in this.
But the most poignant moment for me was
the one I mentioned to the confirmands last Sunday – the story of the two teenagers
we met in Oukase. They were walking home from school. They were drawn to me by the video
camera. "What do you want to do when you finish school," I asked. "I want
to be a doctor," one replied. "Why a doctor?" I asked. "So that I can
find a cure for AIDS." And the other
spoke up saying, “I will be the pharmacist to make the vaccine."
We cannot forget South Africa and the
region in this struggle. There are complex political and economic factors to be sure. But
there are real human lives too– lives that we must admit, no, confess and repent!!!
that we have disregarded because of their dark sin. If the church in South Africa has
AIDS, FUMCOG has AIDS as well. If part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers.
Before leaving Johannesburg, I was able
to visit the pre-school and day care program FUMCOG got involved with when our delegation
visited South Africa 10 years ago. That program is called FLOC (For the Love of Children)
operated in the Central Methodist Mission downtown. FLOC works with children like Lindo,
who was abandoned and later lived in a shelter with 25 other children -awkward and
withdrawn, stunted physical development. Floc has been able to turn that around to some
health, self assurance and placement in a home. We support FLOC through our Julia Morgan
Fund. The leaders and teachers send their greetings! - especially to Melody Porter, coming
to the FUMCOG staff in a few weeks. Melody spent a year working at FLOC as a United
Methodist mission volunteer. Do I even need to say small world.
The second phase of the trip
began on Saturday June 1 with a move to Durban, a city on the west coast of
Africa. This is where the Jimmy Carter work project with Habitat for Humanity would begin
on Monday at sun-up and commence to build 100 houses in a week. Habitat had gathered 3000
people from around the world – wherever there is a Habitat House, to complete the
project. When you look at my pictures, you can see the beautiful and glorious landscape of
South Africa we saw on the 7 hour bus trip from Johannesburg to Durban – it put me in
mind of riding across the plains in the American west, complete with flat top mountains
like Devil’s Tower. And riding through the Drakensburg Mountains made me think of
Psalm 8 where it says something like:
I look at the enormous skies,
your own hand made jewelry in sun, moon and stars,
the reaching-high and holy mountains
and the bountiful plains rich with fertile possibility.
Then I look at my micro-self and wonder
Why do you bother with us?
Why do you give us a second
look?
The mystery and miracle of God
bothering with us, repeating and renewing the Genesis charge to be co-creators with God
was evident right away. I spent Sunday morning visiting the Central Methodist Church where
I came in late to the traditional service (almost empty) but stayed for Zulu service,
where with praise, dance and preaching, I experienced the closest thing I have of
Pentecost – hearing the world proclaimed in a foreign language but understanding it
in my own. Feeling the presence of the Spirit! It was because of the hope and unbridled
joy in the music and the movement and the beating of the hymnals like drums or for rhythm
sake. They invited me to speak. I offered them your greetings and told them about FUMCOG.
The afternoon was about as Pentecostal
in the mass gathering of 3000 to dedicate themselves to the completing the 100 houses.
Speeches by the Housing Secretary of the South African government and from Jimmy Carter
and Millard Fuller, Habitat’s founder, paled in comparison to our singing N’kosi
Sikelele Afrika. All those voices joined in God bless Africa - the tears from awe and joy
and repentance and release I felt are the only way I can describe it.
The Habitat part of the trip then began
at 5 am on Monday when the 3000 of us descended on a section of Durban called Sherwood
Park. There, 30 years ago, a settlement of squatters was forced to move out of this middle
class white section. There were pictures posted at the sight of the government bull dozers
that came to destroy the settlement and drive the people back to the townships. But today
a new thing was beginning and in three years there will be 300 homes on this site –
affordable housing paid for by a no interest mortgage held by Habitat International for
people who, are currently in sub standard housing, who hold a job with enough income to
repay the no interest mortgage, and who provide "sweat equity" with the team of
volunteers building the house.
The National Council of
Churches house was No. 941 Elephant Way and as all the houses, as we arrived at
sun up, had a slab poured and corner posts (block) set. 18 of us, including Clarice, (our
homeowner, domestic worker, single-mother of five) started. Like the rhythm of the
creation saga in Genesis, with evening and morning of each ensuing day the house went up.
Block walls, scaffolding, framing, roof, drywall, ceiling, plumbing, electric, tape,
spackle, paint, landscape. An African-Amish barn raising repeated 100 times in 7 days.
Look up the Elephant Way and there’s a house with a Korean Flag being built by that
Habitat Chapter. And French, German, Indian, Pakistani, British, Dutch, Australia, et al.
from every country I could think of. I
wondered if it sounds the same in Korean as I say when I miss the nail and hit my thumb?
And there are dozens corporations form around the world who sent a team for the week. And
of course there is President Carter who is just down the block – the word is that he
has a team of Mennonite professionals from Indiana (ringers!!!) he brings every year. No
wonder he is ahead. But wherever one house falls behind, everyone else pitches in so that
when Friday comes, we can hand over the keys.
A marvelous image of this was at one
house where they had fallen behind there were folk taken off other houses to help put on
the roof tiles. There was an assembly line to hand the tiles from the ground to the top of
the roof. And in this assembly line was a glimpse of the kingdom – an Indian handing
to a Pakistani to a white European to a black African, a corporate person to someone with
hardly a job (if at all), a Hindu to a Christian to an agnostic to a Muslim, black to
brown to yellow to olive skinned to white – an assembly to put the roof on, to seal
the sanctuary and shelter from rains and floods and winds. A house built on the rock
indeed. And if here, why not other places. God made us for this more than for the other
assembly lines we busy ourselves with. Without even mentioning the product.
When Clarice was presented with the
keys to her house and a Bible signed by Jimmy Carter and Millard Fuller, she looked at
them with the awe of a person who had received a new life.
I have to think about ending this for
now (there will be so much more, when our friends Alan and Susan Raymond help me put the
video together). But the most divine inspiration of the two weeks came to me in the words
of a Zulu chief, who in a cultural show about the native people of South Africa and their
homes, said "We always built our homes and villages in the round, in the shape of a
circle. There were no right angle buildings until the European missionaries came. And it
was like a bolt of lightning struck me. These people think in circles and I think at right
angles. They see round, I see corners. These people see life as a circle and cycle and I
see it as something to order, control, even seize. There is a deep spiritual gift for us
to receive in this.
Bishop Tutu talks about ubuntu.
We have "Weltanschauung," Black South Africans have ubuntu. He says that ubuntu
is difficult to render in Western language but that it speaks to the heart of our
humanity. Ubuntu is to be friendly and generous, hospitable and caring and compassionate.
To share what you have. But those things are more the results of ubuntu than ubuntu
itself. Ubuntu says that my life is caught up in your life. That your life is caught up in
my life. That we are inextricably bound to each other. Bishop Tutu says, "We belong
in a bundle of life." Ubuntu. "A
person is a person through other persons." Right
angled logic says, "I think therefore I am."
Ubuntu says you are a person because you belong, you are part of something,
you share.
I am still amazed that with the
dismantling of Apartheid, the people of color in South Africa are not angry and bitter and
resentful. Ubuntu helps me understand the soul of why that is possible – that life
belongs to a greater whole, and is diminished when others have been humiliated and
diminished, when others are tortured and oppressed, or treated as less than they are.
This means that harmony, friendliness,
hospitality and community are great goods. Anger, resentment, lust for revenge and
aggression are corrosive to this good. To forgive then isn’t only to be altruistic
but in self interest because what goes around, comes around. What dehumanizes you
dehumanizes me. And so Bishop Tutu is
speaking ubuntu when he says there is no future without forgiveness.
God send us some ubuntu to the very
soul and loose your spirit in our circles. Like what happens to me on most trips like
these, I go to offer something and come home with more gift and blessing than I could
possibly have given.
South Africa faces an awesome,
overwhelming challenge as a new nation, with economic apartheid, AIDS, poverty, education
and housing and the striving and believing in the rainbow of its people more than any
other place I have been. My heart and soul have been deeply touched and moved by these
people and their homeland.
Praying and hoping and dreaming
about that future, the words martyred by El Salvadoran Bishop Oscar Romero shape
my bidding for self and South Africa:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seed already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects
beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything
and there is some liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete but it is a beginning,
a step along the way, an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results
but that is the difference between the builder and the master worker.
We are the workers and not the master builders. We are ministers and not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
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