Last Sunday I mentioned the eulogy that President Obama delivered at the funeral of Rev Clementa Pinckney – one of the nine victims of the recent horrific shootings in Charleston, USA. President Obama gave a remarkable speech. Midway through, he spoke these words: “the killer committed an act that he imagined would incite fear, and recrimination, violence and suspicion, an act that he presumed would deepen divisions that trace back to our nation's original sin”. And then Obama paused for a while and with a little smile said, “O, but God works in mysterious ways”. And the crowd erupted and got to its feet.
School is out! And I am not sure who is more delighted – the children, the teachers who have worked hard for a long term, or the parents who also have a well deserved break from homework, school lunches, and the school run. But, as the school term closes, and we head into a wonderful mid-year break, I am mindful of the incredible privilege it is to have access to education. Every afternoon, when my son complains about having to do homework, I try to remind him how lucky he is to go to school, and have homework, and learn. (He doesn't always appreciate my attempts to improve his attitude, but I am sure you get the point!)
I've been very conscious this week of the accelerating passage of time. You know the feeling, I'm sure. As I write this I'm preparing to go off to Maritzburg for a high school reunion dinner – 25 years since I last wore a school uniform! There'll be lots of laughing and remembering and it'll be good to see some familiar faces again, but there'll also be some serious introspection as we think about what has happened in our lives during the last quarter of a century. Certainly when you finish up at high school, our thoughts are almost entirely forward-looking – 'what will I become'? Decades late...
At the young adults home group on Wednesday night, we watched a Nooma (a short video) entitled 'Dust'. One of the key images of the video was the idea of being 'covered in the dust of your Rabbi.' During the time of Jesus, disciples would spend their days, literally following in the footsteps of their rabbi, as he travelled from place to place, teaching and unpacking the scriptures. By the end of each day, disciples were, quite literally, covered in dust from a day of following their teacher. From this, a phrase developed into a blessing, which says 'may you be covered in the dust of your Rabbi.'
A recent article written by Prof Jonathan Jansen recognises a despair in South Africans across the spectrum of races and cultures – Jansen writes that he is encountering many people who “know that something is wrong, desperately wrong”. The concerns include worries about education, load-shedding and the behaviour of our leaders, but ultimately what worries Jansen is the sense that people are beginning to give up hope. If you know Jansen you will know that despite the challenges that we face, he remains hopeful. His advice is to “run towards the problems” - he says this is what we can do:
As you are reading this, close to twenty three thousand people will be sweating it out on the road from Durban to Pietermaritzburg for the 2015 Comrades Marathon. That's a lot of people, running a really long way! Having grown up in Pietermaritzburg, every year we used to either wake up early and watch the start of the race from the Pietermaritzburg city centre or make our way down to the finish to watch the end-of-race glory and drama. In all my years of watching the Comrades, I cannot say I have ever felt the desire to actually run it :)
I'm sure you've heard us talk about that story when a professor stood up in front of a class with a glass jar filled with rocks and asked the group if the jar was full. He then proceeded to pour in small rocks, then sand, and finally water before conceding that it was now full. Asked for the moral of the story, one student suggested that we can always cram more into our schedules if we try hard enough. 'No', said the professor, 'the moral is that if you don't put the big rocks in first, you'll never get them in'.
Last week Sunday, I had the privilege of joining with the Bluff Methodist Church for Sunday worship. Every year the Natal Coastal District gathers for our Synod, where we discuss the work of God in this place. We met at Manning Road Methodist Church from Thursday until Sunday, and it was good to be reunited with colleagues and friends, and to hear something of the work happening around our district. Synod is also the place we discuss, debate and decide some of the key issues facing us as the Methodist Church, and finding the way forward is not always an easy process.
One of the exciting aspects of local church ministry is that it is dynamic. We may think nothing ever changes in the church (and in some ways this is true!) but in other ways, the church and ministry in the church is always changing. It has to, if we are to continue to be relevant and contextual in the world today. But this dynamic has to be constantly balanced with the solid foundations of scripture, reason, tradition and experience. So while keeping up with current trends and remaining fresh is exciting, it is also one of our greatest challenges: what does ministry in the local church look like today? How can we preach the same message of Jesus in a world whether nothing ever really stays the same?
On Freedom Day this week, our family had such a helpful, happy, productive day. We spent most of the day clearing rubbish out of our garage, laundry and other dark, dusty spots in the house. Then we piled all the trash in a heap and got it ready to take off to the dump. Doesn't that sound like a fantastic way to spend a public holiday? Not your ideal day off?