Sunday, December 8, 2013

An impossible ideal? Far from it - a tribute to Nelson Mandela

DVD’s of films come complete with extras that include the Director’s Cut and behind the scenes accounts of how the film was made.

This morning I want to share a ‘behind-the-scenes’ account of how my thinking has gone this week in preparation for this Second Sunday of Advent, as we light the second Advent candle and think of Preparation.

I settled on the themes for the Sundays of Advent about ten days ago and worked out the readings, drawing on material from Embrace the Middle East as we are this Christmas supporting their Syrian Appeal.

Thanks to encouragement from Judi and Shirley as they have prepared their anthologies of Poetry and Prayers I have moved away from using other people’s prayers on the front of the Order of Service sheet to putting together my own short prayer reflection, seeking to encapsulate the theme of the day, the sermon itself.

And so on Thursday morning I set to.

I would tell the story of John the Baptist in the first part of the service and then focus on the song Zechariah sang at the birth of John, the Benedictus.

The words of the Benedictus touch on the great themes that are at the heart of our Christian faith.



‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
   for he has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them.
He has raised up a mighty saviour for us
   in the house of his servant David,
as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
   that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,
   and has remembered his holy covenant,
the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,
   to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,
might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness
   before him all our days.
And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
   for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
   by the forgiveness of their sins.
By the tender mercy of our God,
   the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
   to guide our feet into the way of peace.’

There are a lot of words there and so I began to look for the key words and themes.

One leapt off the page at me.

‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
   for he has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them

That word ‘redeemed’ means among many things ‘set them free’

That’s what our Christian faith is all about – we are ‘set free’.  A wonderful freedom to celebrate.

The next is a key thought.

He has raised up a mighty saviour for us
   in the house of his servant David,
as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, 

There are those wonderful passages especially from Isaiah that we shall be reading as Christmas approaches.  They map out what it takes to rule in the kingdom of God – they establish what it is that all Kings in the kingdom of God should aspire too.  And the tragedy of those kings is that they failed to live up to these expectations.   The wonder of these passages is that Jesus got it – as he came to usher in the Kingdom of God, to be the King of kings, the prince of peace, he modelled all he did on these wonderful statements.

One such passage is in the beginning of Isaiah 40.

Comfort, O comfort my people,
   says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
   and cry to her
that she has served her term,
   that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
   double for all her sins.

A voice cries out:
‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
   make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
   and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
   and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
   and all people shall see it together,
   for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’ 

A voice says, ‘Cry out!’
   And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’
All people are grass,
   The grass withers, the flower fades;
   but the word of our God will stand for ever.
Get you up to a high mountain,
   say to the cities of Judah,
   ‘Here is your God!’ 
See, the Lord God comes with might,
   and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him,
   and his recompense before him.
He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
   he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
   and gently lead the mother sheep. 

This is what John modelled his ministry on – it is what inspired Jesus.  And it has a wonderful sense out of catastrophe, the catastrophe in the first instance of the devastation of Jerusalem and the destruction of exile, comes a sense of comfort … the Good News Bible captures that finality well.

Encourage the people of Jerusalem.
Tell them they have suffered long enough
and their sins are now forgiven. 

Back to Zechariah’s song, the Benedictus.

I worked through it emphasising all the key words and thoughts and phrases.



‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
   for he has looked favourably on his people and set them free.
He has raised up a mighty saviour for us
   in the house of his servant David,
as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
   that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,
   and has remembered his holy covenant,
the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,
   to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,
might serve him without fear, in holiness and justice before him all our days.
And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
   for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
   by the forgiveness of their sins.
By the tender mercy of our God,
   the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
   to guide our feet into the way of peace.’

The over-riding theme was one of ‘setting free’ and so I felt all the rest filled out what that meant.

For me, the covenant, is the wonderful link of love between the God who is love and the people who are God’s beloved in a relationship of utter love.  And so for me the word covenant suggests the word ‘love’.

I then sought to encapsulate what this song is saying to me in a prayer meditation for our Order of Service sheet.



Lord God,
Mighty saviour
You call us to  be
A people set free
Set free from hostility
Set free from hatred
Set free with mercy
Set free in love
Set free to serve
Set free for holiness
Set free for justice
You call us
To prepare the way for you
A way of salvation and forgiveness
A way of light in a world of darkness
Guide us in that way of peace

It poses then for me a major question.

Is this an impossible ideal?

When God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven this is what it looks like.

Read on into Luke 3 and listen into what John the Baptist goes on to say as the core of his message and he is passionate this is not an impossible ideal.

He preaches a message of justice, of sharing, of caring in following that way of peace.

Read on into Luke 4 and listen into what Jesus has to say in that first sermon in the synagogue in Nazareth and he is passionate this is not an impossible ideal.

Good news to the poor, sight to the blind is the keynote of what he is about.   His message is a message of love for God, love for neighbour, love for enemy too.  Forgiveness is the heart of the Gospel message.



Jesus takes that passage from Isaiah 40 and many others like it that map out what it takes to rule in a kingdom that is God’s and then shapes his whole ministry, his whole understanding of kingdom and what it takes to be king according to that pattern.

He invites us to pray ‘thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ and expects us to take this pattern seriously.

It is not an impossible ideal!

Thursday was a busy day for me.  In the evening we had the Church Meeting that saw the confirmation that our new Governance documents have been approved and sealed and the appointment of our new Ministry Leaders – Shirley Fiddimore for Worship, Karen Haden for discipleship, Jean Gregory for mission and outreach and Mary Buchanan for young people.

The meeting over we set out the chairs ready for our Christmas Café.

We got home and had just started to watch a TV drama when I had a text from my older son with the news that Nelson Mandela had died.

We switched over and were absorbed with the coverage of his death.

I found it most moving for all sorts of reasons.  I come from a family who have always been passionate in their opposition to apartheid.  We did not have South African fruit as I was growing up, we demonstrated against the Springboks tour in 1969 to stop the 1970 cricket tour, my mother had a photo of Nelson Mandela on her mantelpiece through the 80’s.

My mother was looking forward with eager anticipation to the elections in 1994 when she died tragically in a road accident.

A couple of days after the funeral Felicity and I went to a vigil in the Lady Chapel of Gloucester  Cathedral on the day of the elections.  We bumped into the son in law of my predecessor in our Shropshire Churches, himself an Afrikaaner, a personal friend of Desmond Tutu.  It was a moment of triumph touched with my own personal sense of tragedy at the loss of my mother.

At the end of the evening I looked up the journal I had kept of a visit to Johannesburg on a conference for theological educators from all over the world hosted by our mission partnership, the Council for World Mission.

We shared the conference centre with South Africa’s very first children’s parliament.  On the Saturday evening the phone lines were cut off and rumours began to circulate that Nelson Mandela was going to visit.

On the Sunday evening the youngsters were all excited at the prospect of seeing him the next day.

I found myself in conversation with a couple of their leaders outside the squash courts.

What they said I have heard repeated time and again in the last couple of days as tributes have been made.

“The wonderful thing about Nelson Mandela is the way he was able to forgive.” 



We had strict instructions not to go and listen to Nelson Mandela.  I could not keep away.

First, he opened a herb garden of healing.  Nearby was a choir in uniform – it turned out they were prisoners from a local Gaol.  Nelson Mandela ensured that prisoners from a local prison would come when he visited anywhere and he would speak to them.



They were the choir.  How moving it was to hear them sing "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika" in rich harmony.

Nelson Mandela then was driven round to an enormous marquee where he was to address the children.
I listened in from outside the marquee.

What he said was powerful.

When he spoke to the children, he spoke very directly of the fear of illness and of dying – sobering thoughts when you think that a high proportion of those youngsters were living with HIV Aids.

He urged them to he open about illness problems – in talking and sharing is real help.



He spoke of the importance of children to the future of the nation.  In ringing tones he challenged them, and all of us, to fulfil their responsibilities as citizens and to be caring people.

He touched on violence, On HIV Aids and on sickness too.

“Talk about it!  Don’t keep it to yourself,” he said. 

All of this was incredibly moving.  Only a couple of weeks ago I had been at a meeting with our local Palliative Care consultants – they said in the 19th century everyone spoke of death and no one spoke of sex.  Now everyone speaks of sex and no one speaks of death.  They were impressing on us how important it was to speak of death and dying openly.

This was exactly Nelson Mandela’s message.  Very powerful.

Next year I must do Movember!!!

And then he spoke of having TB and prostate cancer.

“They keep telling me to go to the USA and have it treated.

“But I say, no!  What would people think of our doctors and nurses if I said they were not good enough to look after me.

“They are good enough and I will stay.

“When I die,” he said and corrected himself.  “If I die …” he paused and laughter swept through the marquee.  “if I did I hope to go to the place where I will meet old friends.  And when they greet me there I look forward to being directed to the room where I will meet my ANC friends.

“Then I will say, ‘Send my prostate gland suffering from cancer to the USA.  Their doctors are so wonderful; let them treat it then.  When they return it to me I shall be back to see how you are all getting on.”

With more words about the importance of caring he greeted the members of the Children’s Parliament and his speech was over!

Great courage.  Great conviction.

Here was some who took seriously the principles of love for God, love for neighbour, love for enemy too.  He took so seriously the challenge to forgive.

What a difference it made to Nelson Mandela and in the last twenty years in South Africa.  How much it is our prayer that that spirit of forgiveness can prevail there in the months and years to come.  How much it is our prayer that that spirit of forgiveness can prevail in other troubled parts of the world and in our own hearts too.

Let’s pause a moment in quiet and share in reading together that prayer meditation that encapsulates the words of Zechariah’s song, the Benedictus.

Lord God,
Mighty saviour
You call us to  be
A people set free
Set free from hostility
Set free from hatred
Set free with mercy
Set free in love
Set free to serve
Set free for holiness
Set free for justice
You call us
To prepare the way for you
A way of salvation and forgiveness
A way of light in a world of darkness

Guide us in that way of peace


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