2024 02 11 Sunday Sermon
Sikawu Makubalo: Anger and Compassion
[2 Kings 5:1-14; Mark 1:40-45]
Anger and Compassion
//Category: Transfiguration Sunday
//Climbing the Mount of Contemplation
//2023 02 19: Sunday Sermon
Alan Storey: Climbing the Mount of Contemplation
[Matthew 17:1-9]
Prayer for Peace, Hope and Justice by Ian Proudfoot.
Solitude, Stillness and Silence
//
Friends,
The 40 days of Lent begin this Ash Wednesday (22nd February). Lent is wilderness time – desert time. Having spent a week in the Karoo in 40 degree January-heat, I can tell you that desert time is slow-time. No one is rushing about in 40 degrees °C! Lent is slow-time. A time to withdraw from the noise and distractions that keep us detached from ourselves, others and life as a whole. It is time to go inward … so we can re-enter the world more deeply. It is time to seek out the shade of Silence, Solitude and Stillness and to deepen our practices of each.
In preparation for Lent I remind you again of the pattern of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s daily life. A daily life punctuated with prayerful pause. Tall towers are dependent on deep foundations to keep standing. This was equally true for Tutu. His public life of prophetic action and courage was under-pinned by his private life of prayer and contemplation. His life was one of daily discipline. May his example inspire us to shape our own days with greater deliberateness to nurture our inner life so that our outer life may stretch to new heights of integrity, courage, wisdom, justice and mercy.
Here is a summary of Tutu’s daily practice:
04:00 – Personal prayers (weekdays)
05:00 – Fast 30 minute walk or slow jog
05:30 – Shower
06:00 – Devotional reading / reflection
07:30 – Recite formal Morning Prayer in chapel
08:00 – Daily Eucharist
08:30 – Breakfast (a glass of orange juice)
09:00 – Office work / appointments
11:00 – Tea break (again at 15:30)
11:00 – Office work / appointments
13:00 – Personal prayer
13:30 – Lunch and hour-long nap
15:00 – Office work / appointments
15:30 – Tea break
18:00 – Evening prayer in chapel
19:00 – A drink (usually a rum and coke) and supper at home
21:00 – In bed by 21:00 or 22:00
23:00 – Asleep (after Compline prayers)
“In addition to his daily prayers, Tutu fasted until supper on Fridays and observed a “quiet day” every month and a seven-day silent retreat once a year. During Lent he ate only in the evenings.”
It soon became apparent to the staff of Bishops-court that Tutu the ebullient extrovert and Tutu the meditative priest who needed six or seven hours a day in silence were two sides of the same coin. One could not exist without the other: in particular, his extraordinary capacity to communicate with warmth, compassion, and humour depended on the regeneration of personal resources, which in turn depended on the iron self-discipline of his prayers.”
[Summarised from: Rabble-Rouser for Peace – The Authorised Biography of Desmond Tutu. By: John Allen. Pages 174/5]
Grace,
Alan
PS:
Ash Wednesday Service at 7 p.m. on 22 February.
Manna and Mercy: 3-5 March at Rosebank Methodist Church and 5-7 May at Table View Methodist Church.
Things are Going to Get Real
//Sunday Sermon
2022 02 27 Alan Storey
Things are Going to Get Real
[Luke 9:28-43a]
Prayer for Peace, Hope and Justice by Terence Parker.
Family
//
Masters of War by Bob Dylan
(click link for music and full lyrics)
Friends,
Back in the biblical day it was custom for Rabbis to summarise their teaching in a prayer. Therefore what we call The Lord’s Prayer, is more than likely Jesus’ teaching summary. A summary that Jesus’ followers are invited to meditate on and act on. The core of Jesus’ teaching summary focuses on the need for daily bread and the forgiveness of debts. In other words, justice and mercy are central to the Jesus-way of Life-Giving-Living.
Story after story in the Gospels invite us to grow in justice and mercy and to do so not only with our neighbours but also with our enemies. In short, with everyone.
This seems impossibly difficult, yet many of us are both recipient and practitioner of this Jesus-way of Life-Giving-Living on a micro scale maybe without even realising it. In every loving family Life-Giving-Living is practiced through the sharing of daily bread and the forgiveness of debts. Without fair sharing and repeated forgiveness a family would not last.
Returning to Jesus’ teaching summary, we are reminded that it begins with the words: “Our Parent…” Jesus’ teaching begins by informing us that we belong to one human family. To call God “Our Parent…” is to recognise that we are each other’s siblings. Jesus’ teaching summary invites us to claim this as the real reality of every relationship we are in. Jesus knows that unless we are able to recognise each other as family we will not be able to practice the justice and mercy necessary for Life-Giving-Living. The saving of the world will be determined by those who trust and live out the truth of this three letter word OUR.
From Jesus’ perspective of universal family, the language of “love of one’s own” or “these are my people” or “God is on our side” is made obsolete. This language often defines “one’s own” or “my people” or “our side” by nationality, language, culture, skin colour, religion, etc. It leads to the feeling, “When I walk the streets of the Johannesburg CBD, I become a foreigner in my own country”. And this leads to the slogan, “Put South Africans First”. And this leads to the formation of Operation Dudula. It is the language of nationalism, sectarianism, xenophobia and war. It is the language of Vladimir Putin. It is also the language of many of us.
For this reason Jesus kept opening the eyes of the blind. The blind being those of us who fail to recognise a sister and brother in the person next to us and across the way from us. On this Transfiguration Sunday let us pray for our eyes to be opened that our seeing of each other may be gloriously transfigured. This was the amazing gift given to Thomas Merton in Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut … may it happen to us.
“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream…
“This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud…. It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself (sic) gloried in becoming a member of the human race. A member of the human race! To think that such a commonplace realization should suddenly seem like news that one holds the winning ticket in a cosmic sweepstake…
“There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun… There are no strangers! … If only we could see each other [as we really are] all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed… I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other…
“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is so to speak His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship (sic). It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.
“I have no program for this seeing. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.”
With grace,
Alan
Transfigured through Silence
//Alan Storey: Transfigured through Silence
[Mark 9:2-10]; Refer: Maggie Ross – Silence, a user’s guide
Lent
//
Friends,
Today is Transfiguration Sunday. And on Wednesday Lent begins with smudges of ASH. The hope is that the vision we receive on the Mount of Transfiguration somehow sustains us when we are in the wilderness valley surrounded by sickness and suffering and sand and more sand. May this be so…
Our ASH Wednesday (zoom) service will begin at 8 p.m. We will meet every Wednesday of Lent at 8 p.m. for a Lenten reflection. A zoom link will be sent out on the CMM WhatsApp group. If you would like the link please email welcome@cmm.org.za
This past Wednesday some of us gathered online to prepare for Lent. We were reminded of the beautiful documentary called: My Octopus Teacher. The reason for the documentary in the first place was that a certain film maker who was suffering from burnout, made a commitment to enter the ocean every day for a year with the hope of renewal and reconnection to self and Life. In this act of daily “baptism” / commitment, the film maker was doing what people seeking renewal in just about every faith tradition have done for centuries: and that is to deliberately design one’s day to Pause. Pause consisting of a combination of silence, stillness, solitude. This Pause often involved an immersion in nature. We learn from The Octopus Teacher – that when a person honours their journey for healing with deliberate daily pause – they are gifted with renewed reconnection with themselves and Life and all that lives, and over and above that, the world is given the gift of a beautiful reconnecting story.
This Lent we are invited to deliberately design our days with Pause – silence, stillness and solitude. Our Wednesday Lenten reflections will draw partly from these moments of Pause.
Please note: We will not be opening the sanctuary for in-person services any time soon, even though Covid-19 regulations make this possible.
The reason remains that it is still too risky even though we are coming to the end of the “second wave”. In all likelihood there will be a third wave before we have all been vaccinated. And if trends continue, the third wave may prove to be more deadly than the first and second. For example, this week we were informed by our Covid-19 advisory team that “during the first wave it took three months to reach 5 000 deaths while the second wave took only four weeks to reach 10 000 deaths.
We therefore need to be very vigilant in these days. Keep practicing the Trinity: wear a mask, wash hands, keep 1.5 m distance.
In grace,
Alan
Make Jesus smile
//Grace and peace to you
Nathanael said to Phillip, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” [John 1:46]
I was thinking of Nathanael’s question when I read last week about a tiny beach restaurant in Paternoster. And I thought: Can anything good come out of Paternoster? Well apparently so, because Wolfgat restaurant was named Restaurant of the Year as well as top Off-Map Destination at the recent inaugural World Restaurant Awards, held in Paris, France.
Now besides the fact that I am allergic to fish and would only be found dead in a fish restaurant, the truth is that fancy food is totally lost on me. And I mean totally – pass the peanut butter please. Therefore I wouldn’t have a clue whether Wolfgat restaurant was a worthy winner based on the taste and presentation of their food or not. But what I am sure of is how worthy they are of the prize for a whole host of other reasons. Reasons I find extremely nourishing and much needed in our world today.
I believe the inspirational owner and Chef, Kobus van der Merwe, must make Jesus smile. Besides the obvious reason that Jesus was known to hang out on beaches in tiny fishing villages, I think Jesus would smile as a result of the beautiful life-giving choices that knit together Wolfgat behind and before. Here are a few:
- Jesus was always big into small. Wolfgat is small. Deliberately small. 24 people max. (Two groups of 12 he! he!). Small is beautiful. Small is blessed. Small can change the world. As Margaret Mead remind us: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
- Jesus chose locals without any formal theological training to be his disciples – and to be the bearers of good news about a loving, caring, gentle, kind and just God. They knew about fish and Jesus said he would teach them about people. Similarly the six (half of 12 he! he!) female staff have no formal culinary training but yet in just a few years have shown expert abilities and skill. To see the potential in people that others were blind to is Christ-like.
- Jesus said to his disciples “I do not call you servants but friends”. At Wolfgat there are great attempts to flatten the hierarchy and to level the leadership. All do everything. Every person is gift. Every person is treasured.
- Jesus attentively foraged his natural surroundings for sermon illustrations on a daily basis: the beauty of the lilies, the weeds and wheat growing side by side, fig trees and mustard seeds. Similarly, at Wolfgat they forage every day for seaweed, mussels and sea vegetables on the wild Atlantic shore of the Western Cape. Radically local and purposefully incarnational.
- Jesus was not into banting (Sorry Tim.). He loved bread and he kept breaking and sharing bread with everyone. At Wolfgat they make their own bread and butter. Wolfgat is also the bread and butter for its team who live in a highly unequal community where poverty is rife despite the paradise-like surroundings. I am going to ask them one day if I can bring my peanut butter to try out their bread and I have reason to believe that it would make Jesus smile – so I am hopeful.
With gratitude for those who follow Jesus in tasteful ways and who live the Gospel without words,
Alan
A Sermon of Music
//CMM’s Latest Yellow Banner
Frustrated in the traffic?
Imagine not being able to get to work.
Fix our trains so that we can get to work
safely and on time!
Get MetroFail back on track.
Grace and Peace
Today we are doing something totally different. Today the sermon and prayers will come to us through song!
It is a great joy to welcome two choirs who will be leading worship today. The Swarthmore College Alumni Gospel Choir brings with it national and international tours and prestige in the venues of gospel music spirituals and soul. The choir of First United Methodist Church of Germantown (FUMCOG) has performed extensively in our native area, including appearances at the Kimmel Center in 2017, one of a few church choirs to attain that honour. Furthermore, FUMCOG has taken its mission of social justice throughout the world, including Johannesburg, South Africa in 1993, forming a delegation to stand in solidarity with Nelson Mandela, in a voice of freedom to end apartheid.
Today is the last day of their mission pilgrimage to South Africa and it is really a privilege to have them at CMM.
The choirs will present a full 60 minute programme of various American music. There will be three 20 minute sets as follows: 20 minutes for Swarthmore; 20 minutes for FUMCOG; 20 minutes combined.
The repertoire from Swarthmore to be determined, out of the gospel and soul traditions while the FUMCOG repertoire to include: Salmo 150 – Ernani Aguiar; Spirituals by Moses Hogan: I Want to Thank You, Lord; Hear My Prayer; William Billings: Easter Anthem; Mark Miller: I Believe; Oh for a Thousand Tongues; Aaron Copland: Tis a Gift to be Simple; Zion’s Walls. Combined they will do: Freedom Trilogy – Paul Halley; Hope for Resolution: A Song for Mandela and De Klerk – Sean Ivory/Paul Caldwell; Praise His Holy Name – Keith Hampton.
Grace,
Alan
Another water saving suggestion:
This picture shows 60 litres of water that was used for one machine wash on a 28 minute “daily express” cycle!
Please unplug your washing machine’s outlet; check how much water is being used; collect this water for re-use (like flushing toilet).
Listen to 28 January‘s sermon to “Getting to the source of the water crisis”.
Take the third option
//Grace and peace to you and through you
“Fight or flight” are the two options we are easily socialised into believing are the only two options we have when it comes to engaging evil (deathliness) in the world. In myriads of ways we are taught that if we are “big and strong” we should stay and fight and if we are “small and weak” we should run away as fast as our little legs can carry us. As a result of these two options being presented as the only options we have to choose from, many people throughout the ages have attempted to validate either option by suggesting that one or the other is the option God or Jesus favours. Some have said Jesus teaches us to accept suffering without resistance (like a passive doormat) while others have said Jesus calls us to righteously destroy the wicked (like some Old Testament or Apocalyptic warrior).
But to say that Jesus favours either of these options demands a severe culling of the Gospels. The truth is closer to the bumper sticker that advises: “When faced with only two options. Take the third.” In a two-option world Jesus invites us to imagine and practice a third. This third option Jesus taught (in his sermon on the mount) and lived out (on mount Calvary).
Refusing to resist oppression denies our own sacred worth etched with God’s image, while destroying our oppressors denies their sacred worth etched with the same Godly image. Jesus invites us to resist but not to retaliate. In other words, we are to oppose evil without imitating evil. “Satan cannot drive out Satan” says Jesus. Equally, violence cannot drive out violence.
In this world that teaches us to “Do to others as they have done to us” Jesus teaches us to “do to others as we would have them do to us.” Our actions towards our enemies according to Jesus are meant to expose to them the evil (deathliness) of their ways with the hope that their eyes are opened and they change. But if they fail to see and change then our actions are meant to expose their deeds to the surrounding community who through collective action or non-cooperation, make it impossible for them to continue to practice their evil (death-creating deeds).
On the Wednesdays of Lent we will be reflecting on what this may mean for us at a practical level. This coming Wednesday is ASH Wednesday and we will be having a service at 7 pm in the Sanctuary. Each Wednesday thereafter we will be meeting in the Hall (cnr. Burg and Church Streets) for silent meditation at 6 pm and discussion and learning from 7 pm – 8:30 pm.
Grace,
Alan