The second Sunday of Advent, we had three baptisms at Presbury United Methodist Church and I felt called to remember the prophetic life of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. It was a lot for a young preacher to attempt in one sermon! What follows is adapted from the sermon I preached.
Scripture
Lesson: Isaiah 55 (NRSV)
Ho,everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and
your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.
See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.
Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
Sermon:
Invitation to Peace
Let
us pray:
Patient
Teacher, let not the Word that goes forth from your mouth return
empty!
Plant
your Word within us this morning,
pour
out your Spirit upon us so that we may bear good fruit;
for
the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
I found myself reflecting this week on the Isaiah text we read together as though I was on Robben
Island in South Africa, a place I visited four years ago. Robben Island is a desolate place. Even now that it is
covered in tourists, it feels empty and cold. You can see Table
Mountain and Cape Town across the water, but it feels so far away. It
was easy to see how such a place could be used as a prison, as it was
used since the seventeenth century until the mid-nineties, for it
feels as though this little bit of land had broken off from
civilization and was drifting off into the sea. And yet, it is a
place that signifies, to me, the invitation to peace we read about in
the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah.
The text is introduced in my translation of the bible as an Invitation to Abundant Life. Yet, for the community who first read this invitation, they must have felt like the prisoners on Robben Island, desolate and cold, cut off from home and community unjustly. Such an invitation to abundant life that we read in scripture or hear in the words of great leaders like Nelson Mandela seems strange. And yet, when I was visiting Robben Island in 2009, I saw it has indeed become a place where it is as though the
mountains and the hills break forth into song and the trees clap
their hands. One of the most powerful things about visiting Robben Island was how the South Africans touring it with us burst into freedom songs.
Now,
I know that not many of us are familiar with South African history---
I never even learned about apartheid in school and I don't know if it
is taught today. But in light of Mandela going home to his ancestors,
joining the great cloud of witnesses, this week, I could not shake
the connection between Isaiah's and Mandela's invitations to abundant
life, characterized by full bellies, joy, and peace. So even though a
history lesson may be strange for a sermon, I hope you can hear the
calls to abundant life within it.
The
first connection I saw between these two invitations is that both
invitations came from people in exile. When we read, “For you shall
go out with joy and be led back in peace,” in the fifty-fifth
chapter of Isaiah, it is a reference to the Babylonian exile, when
important, prestigious, and powerful Israelites were forced out of
Israel when it was conquered. But even after two generations of
exile, prophets believed that they would return home.
So
too the story of not only Mandela but of all South Africa is one of
exile and a longing for home, especially for native black South
Africans. South Africa was colonized by the Dutch and the British
beginning in the 1600s. Slavery, war, and exploitation of labor and
land were characteristics of Europeans' occupation of South Africa.
And, as was the case in our own country, inequality was present from
the beginning. The government run by the white minority established
apartheid, officially introduced in 1948 when Nelson Mandela was 30
years old. Apartheid is a word that means “apartness,” and was a
system of violent racial segregation not unlike Jim Crow in our
country. In it, however, people of color were not considered to be
citizens at all, did not deserve any rights at all, and for whom most
services like medical services were inferior to those for whites.
People of color were to be constantly reminded of their so-called
inferiority, even to the extent that Mandela received short trousers
instead of long pants that white prisoners received when he got into
prison in Robben Island to remind them, he says, that they were
boys.
This system of segregation provided a labor force for the whites in
charge.
Mandela
resisted apartheid from the beginning, and worked for freedom. He
started as a lawyer, often working with poor blacks on things like
police brutality. He urged South Africans to fight for their freedom,
and spread a vision of an egalitarian society where people could live
free of domination based on race. He moved up the ranks in the
African National Congress, a political party that was eventually made
illegal by the apartheid government and was forced underground.
Mandela was constantly harassed by the police, and was eventually
imprisoned for twenty-seven years in that place of such cold
loneliness on Robben Island.
And
yet--- here is the second connection--- yet, leaders like the
prophets of Israel and Nelson Mandela and
Jesus kept dreaming and proclaiming a
different world. They spoke of peace in the midst of violence,
abundance in the midst of hunger, equality in the midst of huge
economic difference. Now, in Mandela's case, this dream was not a
nice, nonthreatening one. Mandela was actually considered to be a
terrorist by our own government until 2008. While I find that
absolutely ridiculous and embarrassing on our part, I must confess
that as a pacifist I struggled reading his autobiography when in it
he talks about his decision in the African National Congress to take
up arms against the white supremacist government. But I still
consider him to be a fighter for peace because, even in his acts of
sabotage he was against hurting civilians, and his presidency was
defined by reconciliation. He was elected president, the first true
democratically elected president, in 1994, and he served until his
retirement in 1999.
Mandela
oversaw the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
during his presidency, where war criminals, those who had perpetuated
the sin of apartheid in South Africa could be brought to justice.
However, those convicted were not thrown in Robben Island's cold
cells. Rather, the commission offered amnesty in return for truth and
breaking the silences around the human rights violations that had
occurred. It offered opportunity not to dwell in the past, but to
break silences that blocked the possibilities for the future.
In
his inaugural speech, Mandela said:
We understand it still that there is no easy road to
freedom. We know it well that none of us acting alone can achieve
success. We must therefore act together as a united people, for
national reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new
world. Let there be justice for all. Let there be peace for all. Let
there be work, bread, water and salt for all. Let each know that for
each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill
themselves. Never, never, and never again shall it be that this
beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another
and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world. The sun
shall never set on so glorious a human achievement. Let freedom ring.
God bless Africa.
That is an invitation to abundant living. While
we do not know the exact impact the invitation of abundant life in
Isaiah had on the exilic community, we do know the impact Mandela's
invitation had in South Africa. I saw the impact in a conversation I
had while in South Africa with a refugee named Fabien from the
Democratic Republic of Congo. One of the things I asked him was why
he thought his country and the countries around him are still plagued
by such violence and cruelty. War is constant in countries like the
Congo. I mean, I had my ideas about how nations like ours continue to
colonize countries like the Congo economically and politically by
encouraging debt and corruption. But Fabien said that the violence
was a result of a lack of leadership.
His
answer kind of dumbfounded me. So simple and yet so powerful. In
South Africa, the first democratic president had been a political
prisoner for almost thirty years: he had been degraded and abused and
yet he and other leaders preached reconciliation. Unity. Peace. These
leaders extended an invitation to build a world like the fifty-fifth
chapter of Isaiah envisions, one in which everyone who thirsts--- no
matter their color, no matter how much money they have, no matter
what--- can come to the waters.
This
Sunday, the second in Advent, is one in which we have already come to
the waters, the waters of baptism. And so, on this Sunday, the
invitation to build a world of abundant life is extended to us. We
prayed together today that through baptism we would be incorporated
by the Holy Spirit into God's new creation and made to share in
Christ's royal priesthood. The new creation is a world of peace and
plenty so complete that the nations of the world run toward it, of
justice and joy so catching that even the mountains sing and the
trees clap their hands. And as ones who share in Christ's royal
priesthood, we are to be leaders, extending the invitation to this
new creation.
Mandela's
leadership demonstrates for us that this invitation is not to an
imaginary place or a vision of the world where we will go when we
die. This invitation is a different way of living here and now when
we speak out and witness, even at great cost to ourselves, for that
which is good and right. This invitation is a different way of living
when we stand up to say enough is enough in the face of bullying and
hate speech. This invitation is a different way of living when we
reach out in love across our differences. There is no easy road for
freedom, but when we work together, we will bring glory to God. So
let us respond to the invitation this holiday season.
I
found a prayer of thanksgiving for Mandela's life that I wanted to
close with. Will you pray with me?
Merciful
God,
Author
of salvation, Giver of every gracious gift,
we give
thanks for the life and witness of your servant, Nelson Mandela.
His
quest for freedom was was a witness to your saving power in our world
– a
power that can break the shackles of sin and oppression and hatred.
And his
commitment to justice gave us a glimpse of what your kingdom should
look like
– a
place where swords of war can actually be traded for the plowshares
of peace;
a place
where bitter enemies can, by your grace, become friends.
Receive
your servant, Mandiba, and grant him the eternal rest of your saints.
May he
rest in your mercy and rise in your glory.
And may
we, your Church, follow his witness of peace and justice marked by
reconciliation.
For
when we do, we know we are also following the ways of your Son, Jesus
Christ our Lord,
who,
with you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns now and forevermore.
Amen.
