Tag: poverty

CMM, Cape Town / / Epiphany, Reflection


Unlike many of Jesus’ peeps through the ages, Jesus is not hung up on his name. Nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus go round repeating: “In Jesus’ name. In Jesus’ name…” Whether something is Christlike or not has little to do with what it is named, and everything to do with who is served. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Jesus said it himself that “not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven”. (Matthew 7:21)

In fact, sometimes those who shout “Lord” the loudest can be the furthest thing from Christlikeness, while sometimes those who refuse to have that word on the lips can be end up being his most faithful friends. Once again this should not surprise us, because Jesus said as much in the sheep and goat story, we find in Matthew 25:31-46.

This sheep and goat story reminds us that whatever we do to the least (vulnerable and oppressed), we do to Jesus. And therefore this is the only authentic measure on whether something is Christlike or not.

With this in mind I would like to encourage you to subscribe and donate to GroundUp.  GroundUp, according to what I have just said above, is an incredibly Christlike newspaper. Not because it has any association with the Christian faith / church / religion / evangelism or anything Jesus-explicit etc., but because they exist to serve the least – the vulnerable and oppressed of society. Here is how they describe their work: GroundUp is a weekly online newspaper that reports “news that is in the public interest, with an emphasis on the human rights of vulnerable communities.”

GroundUp centers on those who are usually kept to the margins. They amplify the voice of those usually silenced. Instead of representing the interests of the privileged few, they put the hardships and suffering of the overwhelming majority of people in this country into words as well as documenting the resilience of the same overwhelming majority to rise to another day. It is despairing and inspiring reading all at once. The stories reveal how the political plays out in people’s personal lives, in harrowing and heroic ways.

GroundUp reminds me of the truth of my context that I am inclined to ignore and forget. Only when we take the truth they share week in and week out seriously and then respond by doing God’s liberating and healing will of doing justice, offering mercy while walking humbly, will we all be free.

Here are two examples from their latest Friday offering:

  1. Nomathemba Mali, 54, from Extension 8 said she has been renting for many years and could no longer afford it. “I’m a domestic worker and only work a few hours for three days a week. I get R1,440 a month and have to buy groceries, electricity, R24 per taxi trip to work, and R600 for rent. “I’m a single mother living with my 16-year-old granddaughter. For the whole month we depend on this money. The R600 rent we now won’t have to pay will make a difference,” said Mali. Read the full article here.
  2. A R120 chunk of the R350 Nomangesi Ndwayana and Nandile Ngemntu will each receive from the Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress grant will go to pay the driver who brought them 50 kilometres from Peddie to Makhanda to queue outside the post office.The two travelled 50 kilometres from their Peddie village to Makhanda, arriving at 3 a.m., only to find people already queueing. Read the full article here.

 

I give thanks for GroundUp – a Christ-like incarnational newspaper without needing to say Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…

In grace,
Alan

 

P.S. I will be away for the next 10 days, sitting Vipassana.

P.S.S. Please remember to email: welcome@cmm.org.za if you would like the Zoom link for the Sunday Service.

A starting chance in life

CMM, Cape Town / / Ordinary Days of the Spirit, Reflection

Sunday’s Sermon:

2020 11 08 Alan Storey: Foolish! Who us?
[Amos 5: 18-24; Matthew 25:1-13]

 

Early Graduation due to COVID

 

Friends,

It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the tsunami of suffering and need. Even if one wants to make a difference, the question we often stumble over is how and where?

We are told: Location, Location, Location – is the mantra of wisdom when buying a property. Surely, Education, Education, Education – is the mantra of wisdom to escape poverty. This is especially so with regard to the difference Early Childhood Education makes in a person’s life. Obviously, education is not the only thing necessary to end poverty, but we can say for sure that without education we will never end poverty. It has been proven over and over again just what a life-changer pre-school education is. Wherever you can I encourage you to support all forms of Early Childhood Development.

For this reason, I remind us again about Stepping Stones Children Centre. It is a remarkable life-changer. Everyone involved in the school is doing an incredible job to safely operate at the moment. Hats off to all teachers and volunteers especially under the trying conditions of Covid-19 regulations.

Stepping Stones’ Children Centre is obviously just one pre-school of thousands that need continuous support. I had the privilege last week of visiting a number of pre-schools in the Mfuleni area. Mfuleni is about 30 km outside of Cape Town city centre. Ian and Ali Corbett, the founders of Starting Chance and who are part of the CMM community, showed me around some of the early childhood education facilities in Mfuleni that they have either started from scratch, or come alongside in supportive partnerships.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but these photos don’t even begin to capture the wonder of witnessing oasis after oasis of abundant life.

                                                                                Oasis

                                                     

 Recycling Room … “Own your Magic”.

 

Hand Sanitising Stations

 

   

Pre-school Bikers

 

Outside

 

Inside

 

Behind the photos is the slog of many years. Taking the time to build relationships of trust and truth. Planting and watering seeds in partnership with people on the ground. If you have been to Mfuleni you will know that the soil is like beach sand. In other words, it takes patient persistence and creative consistency to keep planted seeds growing. It takes constant work by many hands and convicted hearts.

Here is the story of one of those working hands and convicted hearts: Mrs Princess Mapatalala. I will call her Saint Princess (please refer to Last Sunday’s All Saints Day service.) Saint Princess became a foster mother, looking after children in need together with her own children in her home. When her home became too small due to the increasing numbers of children, she decided to build a small place for herself in her backyard, where she continues to live. Incredible! Becoming a “backyard dweller” on your own property in order to open up more rooms for children. “In my Mother’s house there are many rooms” – said Jesus. Here you can read more about Saint Princess.

You may also be aware that during Covid-19 lock down, people built shacks on almost every piece of vacant land in and around Mfuleni. This is obviously linked to a much bigger story and history, but what it has highlighted is the extreme lack of land set aside (perhaps zero land) by the State for Early Childhood Education in the area. Sadly, it has also placed in jeopardy some of the land that Starting Chance were due to use for new work.

Please check out the Starting Chance website. Read the stories. Look out for their new project – the building of Lonwabo Special Care Centre – you can learn more about it here.

It will cost about R7.5 million. They have around half the total amount and therefore are about to start with the first phase of the project.

Please consider supporting this work which is one way of making a difference in the world.

With gratitude,
Alan

PS: Email welcome@cmm.org.za for the 10:00 Sunday Worship service link.

Time is money

CMM, Cape Town / / Advent, Sunday Letter

Grace to you

The unquestioned mantra of our times is: TIME IS MONEY. The dominant economic order turns everything into a commodity. In our time everything is capitalised. Time is something we “spend”, rather than share.

The Christian calendar – we were reminded last week – invites us to do time differently. To tell the time not according to hours, minutes and seconds and certainly not according to money, but rather according to the inevitable events that shape a life of faithfulness. Faithfulness defined as living life as it was originally intended to be lived: justly, gently, generously, truthfully, mercifully…

Advent-time is when we prepare for the arrival of a Higher Power – higher than any other power. At Christmas time this Higher Power – God – is grounded among us. When we zoom in using facial recognition software we notice this God’s appearance is one of dispossessed disfigurement. God has taken the form of the godforsaken among us. Thus Advent-time is preparing the world to prioritise rather than persecute the godforsaken among us. As Jesus would say when he is an adult: “What you do to the least of these you do to me.” Advent-time is when we reorientate our lives to prioritise the marginalised and dispossessed, the vulnerable and exploited, the frail and the abused.

Advent-time does not deny the ugly truth of the world’s pain but nor is it determined by it. Advent-time navigates the narrow gap between denial and despair by daring to do something different that neither denial can deter nor despair can determine.

Advent-time lasts 4 weeks on the secular calendar – but in actual fact it takes a lifetime for most of us to reorientate our lives to be good news for the poor, if at all. Each week takes a different theme. The first week of Advent-time aims to stretch our imaginations to include the possibility of a different world where the poor do actually hear good news. Without our imaginations stretched in this way we are unlikely to give our lives to realise such a world.

A recent book that goes a long way to help us to honour Advent-time is, Tomatoes and Taxis Ranks by the Consuming Urban Poverty research group based at UCT that astutely notes “we are surrounded by food, awash with hunger”. They do not deny the harrowing hunger that stalks so many but at the same time they dare to dream of African cities where there is enough for all, and of cities run in such a way that “fill the food gap”.

Today we occupy Church Street. Our occupation is in the form of a beautiful banquet prepared for those who are often hungry in this city that is saturated with food. With our many partners we boldly declare this to be, in the closing words of the Eucharist: “a foretaste of the heavenly banquet prepared for all the world”. May it be on earth as it is in heaven.

Grace,
Alan

Suffering of the Ignored

CMM, Cape Town / / Sunday Letter, Third Sunday in Lent
Masiphumelele protesters blocked roads at the weekend, cutting the Cape Town Cycle Tour short.
(Photo: Ryan Johardien, GroundUp)

Grace and peace to you and through you

Last Sunday would have been the 40th Cape Argus Cycle Tour – but at about 6:55 am we were notified that wind had stopped play. There have been enough video clips of cyclists being blown over by the foreshore wind – making us gasp and laugh. A good advert if there ever was one for #WindPower.

An earlier message that most people have forgotten about or may not even have known of, came at 5:39 am: “The cycle tour will be diverted over Glencairn Express Way due to protest action en route. Distance now 78km.” Because of the wind as well as the devastating fire in Imizamo Yethu, Hout Bay, the protest action from some of the residents of Masiphumelele has fallen off the social radar. The unavailability of land, as well as a terrible lack of basic services is the root cause of the rock throwing anger that blocked the cycle route. People are angry because they have not been listened to or taken seriously for years and years. Not only is there enormous suffering which is mostly ignored, but life seems to carry on in a jolly-old-fashioned-way around them … in fact some people – like me – are out riding their bicycles in their very neighbourhood. Surely any reasonable person would snap under such contradictory conditions. As Parker Palmer says: “Violence is what happens when we don’t know what else to do with our suffering”.

Take this as a small taste of what life is going to be like in SA for the foreseeable future! The lives of the rich will be constantly disrupted because that is the only way the poor will secure a moment’s attention. And in this country there is no way to re-route every race or event to escape this … and nor should there be.

Saul Alinsky makes a challenging point in his famous book Rules for Radicals:

Concern for our private, material well-being with disregard for the well-being of others is immoral according to the precepts of our Judaeo-Christian civilization, but worse, it is stupidity worthy of the lower animals. …We now live in a world where no man [sic] can have a loaf of bread while his neighbour has none. If he does not share his bread, he dare not sleep, for his neighbour will kill him. To eat and sleep in safety man must do the right thing, if for seemingly the wrong reasons, and be in practice his brother’s keeper. I believe that man is about to learn that the most practical life is the moral life and that the moral life is the only road to survival. He is beginning to learn that he will either share part of his material wealth or lose all of it…

Let’s be clear that the suffering of the people of Masiphumelele is far more demanding of our attention than wind-swept-cyclists.

Grace,
Alan

The poverty of wealth

Alan / / Pentecost, Sunday Letter

Grace and peace to you …

During the early hours of Tuesday morning a terrible thing happened in this city. A driver — allegedly drunk — lost control of his vehicle and crashed into the Viglietti sports car showroom on Roeland Street. What makes this story so tragic is that a homeless person who was sleeping in front of the showroom was crushed to death in the process.

This sad event is a tragic parable for our times. And as with all parables there are layers upon layers of meaning and, in this case, layers of tragedy.

The first layer is that we live in a world where cars get to sleep inside while some human beings sleep outside. We live in a world where motor vehicles are of more value than human beings — and I am not just referring to Ferraris and Maseratis. We live in a world where the combination of metal, glass, rubber and leather are treated as more sacred than flesh and blood stamped with the image of God.

The second is that we live in a world where obscene wealth and desperate poverty lie down together side-by-side. Every time I drive past this particular showroom at night I see this glaring truth glow guiltily before my eyes. Sports car and homeless separated by a see-through pane of glass. We dare not plead ignorance.

The third is that we live in a world where the poor are the victims of our way of life that has gotten out of control. We are drunk (although we deny it) consuming way too much and the poor pay for our reckless living with their lives.

The fourth is that we live in a world where the poor are seen but not acknowledged or known. They remain anonymous. In the article I read about this event it was so sad to read that nobody knew the deceased’s name. We are trying to see if we can host a memorial service for him.

Grace Alan

________________________________________________

We believe in the Merciful One

who calls us to reject all idols and who seeks a deep communion with us.

We believe in the Merciful One

who is not remote but who is immersed in the life of this world sharing its hope and feeling its pain.

We believe in the Merciful One

who identifies with the poor and the oppressed and those who long for faith and who calls us to stand with them.

We believe in the Merciful One

whose love is vulnerable, whose heart is aching and whose covenant with all people
is unshakeable.

Christian Conference of Asia News1

SABC Radio Broadcast – Lazarus and the Rich Man

Alan / / Sunday Letter

Earlier this year we had a sermon broadcast on SAFM – one of the SABC’s radio stations. This sermon – entitled Lazarus and the Rich Man – was recently rebroadcast, and we have received a few requests for a link to the sermon. You can download the sermon using the download link provided below.

[button type=”3″ link=”https://www.cmm.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/01-Lazarus-and-the-Rich-Man-1.mp3″]Download Sermon[/button]

You can download other sermons by accessing our sermon archive:

[button type=”3″ link=”https://www.cmm.org.za/sunday-sermon/”]Visit archive[/button]

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Credit: Image by Mr. Kris, used under creative commons license.