I came across this Taizé prayer only recently, perhaps a month or so ago. But since reading it, I have not been able to forget it, it speaks deeply to me, moves me. I can imagine a community of followers of Christ reciting it in rhythm and like the Taizé songs, repeating it endlessly: not to become a dull drone, but a living prayer, a prayer rising like incense to the throne of God.

I have wondered over the past few weeks why this single line so easily became important to me, why I felt an inner compulsion to make it my own.

This simple prayer is almost like poetry; certainly it has a poetic rhythm. And as poetry might, it places two opposites in juxtaposition: Light and darkness. And both of these, the light and the dark, are part of me. Jesus Christ is the Light inside, my Inner Light, and it is to Him that the prayer is addressed.

But the darkness is also mine. Note the possessive pronoun: my darkness. The prayer speaks not of the darkness of some outside threat of sin, nor of temptations to be overcome, but it points at the darkness within.

How well I know that darkness, and the prayer helps me recognize it anew: the twilight zone of envy and resentment; the grey areas of selfishness and childish pettiness; the deep midnight dark of anger and thoughts of revenge; the lack of gratitude that clouds my Inner Light.

But all is not yet said. Note the preposition in the second half of the line: let not my darkness speak for me. Not in me, not to me, but for me. If I am to be a follower of Christ, it is his Inner Light which must speak through and for me, not my dismal darkness. My words must not speak of me, me, me, thereby merely repeating the darkness in me, but they must speak of Him, reflecting his light, my Inner Light.

And therein lies my comfort and the answer to my prayer: He is in me, my Inner Light, and if I pray to Him – Jesus Christ, Inner Light, let not my darkness speak for me – his Light will outshine all my darkness.

Cecile Cilliers

God is God’s Worst Enemy

Preamble:  It is a very great honour to have been invited to give this inaugural lecture in memory of this outstanding and brilliant young theological leader, Steve de Gruchy and as I extend yet again our deepest condolences to his dear parents John and Isobel, we all mourn a wonderful life cut short so tragically.  I must straightaway apologise that this will not be an academic lecture as it should have been.  No, it is going to be the rambling musings of a decrepit octogenarian fast approaching dotage.  It was Steve’s death that prompted my musings and that provoked my title.

I was General Secretary of the SACC when I first visited Taize in France.  I was attending one of their hauntingly beautiful services with their distinctive Taize chanting when as it were out of the blue I was struck by the imagery of Revelation 7 of the 144, 000, the perfect number of the blessed – and inspired to think of sending 144 South African youth of all races  on what would be a Pilgrimage of Hope – 144 would represent  a reconciled South Africa and that they would be an anticipation of a non racial, non sexist, democratic South Africa.  When I returned home this group of young South Africans, the nucleus, the first fruits, this adumbration of a South Africa at peace with itself was assembled, led by the late Bishop Bruce Evans and then Father now Bishop Mervyn Castle.  They visited Taize, Rome and the Holy Land.  Steve was one of those pilgrims.

His father recently told me that that pilgrimage had a profound effect on Steve in shaping his views about what sort of country he wanted.  You know he had a brilliant career as a student.  He went to work in Kuruman and saw what suffering forced removals and the Bantustan policy inflicted on its victims. 

My next encounter with him was when he wanted a foreword for a book in which he was collaborating about human sexuality where he was advocating as you would expect equity for gay men and lesbians.  And then that young pilgrim gained a PhD at UWC and I capped him as the Chancellor.  He was already establishing himself as a distinguished academic and leading scholar and activist.  Knowing his parents one realized he had really chosen well to be endowed with the genes he had inherited.  Lately he was becoming a leading environmentalist which explains the tree planting ceremony before this event.  I read a glowing tribute to him by the WCC.  Now wouldn’t most normal people have said “Wow, this man is priceless – worth his weight in platinum.  He is almost indispensable in an evolving South Africa that wants to be free, democratic, non racial, non sexist?  This one who had experienced a Pilgrimage of Hope had worked where we could see the devastation caused by policies obsessed with race instead of caring for people as human beings, with a brilliant intellect, who realized just how vulnerable our natural environment is – would you not want to draft him into your team?”  But it seems God thinks quite differently.  That dear friends is what provoked the title of this commemorative lecture.  God is God’s Worst Enemy.

What would the Roman Catholic Church have looked like had Pope John 23 lived to see Vatican 2 to its logical conclusion?  What would have been the state of ecumenical relations?  We obviously don’t really know but could extrapolate and conjecture and say it is reasonable to think that they would have been other than they are today.  But Pope John’s life was cut tragically short.  We could multiply examples – John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr, Mahatma Gandhi, Chris Hani, Robert Sobukhwe, Steve Biko etc, etc.  Do you understand the reason for my title?

Further Evidence

Let us start with the biblical evidence.  Virtually all those who are the stars in God’s drama are flawed, some almost to the point of nullifying their good attributes.  None of those playing in God’s team is without blemish.  Joseph, his doting father’s pampered favourite must have been a pain in the neck as he revelled in telling the stories of his dreams predicting his future prominence when his older brothers would end up fulfilling his dream predictions by their obsequious fawning.  His aging father, Jacob was no better having cheated his famished brother Esau of his birthright with the help of a colluding mother both willing to deceive an ailing old man virtually on his death bed.  Even their ancestor Abraham who was God’s friend thought nothing of passing off his wife Sarah as his sister to save his own skin.  Moses had a foul temper.  He smashed the tablets on which God had inscribed the Decalogue because he saw the Israelites dancing around the golden calf which his brother Aaron said had emerged marvellously from the molten precious stones he had thrown into the fire.  David had been almost immaculate until he espied Bathsheba bathing and committed adultery with her and arranged for the killing of her husband Uriah.  Don’t you think Elijah remarkably courageous standing up as he did for Yahweh against Queen Jezebel and her conniving husband King Ahab insisting that Yahweh alone was Israel’s God?  But would you not agree sadly that he blotted his copybook spectacularly when he presided over the slaughter of the prophets of Baal.  Would you not feel much the same about Samuel and Saul?  Saul seems a much nicer person for sparing Agag while Samuel speaking for God is so bloodthirsty as he hacks Agag ruthlessly to death with all his household.

  It really is not much better in the New Testament. It is one of his own disciples who betrays Our Lord and another, who was to become the chief of the apostles denied his master not once but three times.  And they all abandoned Him, leaving Him in the lurch.  The one who was to become the leading evangelist and theologian of the new movement started out as a persecutor of the movement he was to promote and even after his conversion was forever engaging in self justification.

 And just think of the Crusades, the Inquisition, the burning of heretics at the stake.  Christians, Muslims and believers in some deity or other have been responsible for slavery, lynching, for the Holocaust, for apartheid etc.

Someone observed that God’s servants were programmed to fail.  It is in the texture, the make up of this universe that there will be suffering and failure and distress, a feature of the nature of things that evokes the heartrending, anguished cries “But why” or “But why me/us Lord?”  Could this universe not have been planned differently to work out in a way that did not inflict so much and so frequently seemingly gratuitous suffering?  St Theresa of Avila is reported as observing to God “ No wonder your friends are so few considering how you treat them!”  We learn too how Mother Teresa of Calcutta experienced agonizing desolation in her prayer life for most of her life.

Why, Why?

We have heard or even ourselves uttered the agonizing cry “But why….”  In an ultimate sense I really don’t know.  In the end for me as for most of us it is a mystery and I have to accept that I must have a reverent agnosticism.  Why did God create precisely this sort of universe?  I would have to be God to know the ultimate answer.  But there are things that I have noted.  Why would a good God permit such atrocities to happen when they happen?  Most of us have our understanding of power.  Most of us reckon it does mean not being frustrated in achieving your purpose.  We have been socialized to understand that power enables you to get what you want when you want.  We cannot really understand an omnipotence that can be frustrated in achieving its goal. It is one of the abiding mysteries that there can be the oxymoron of a weak omnipotence.  But I think this is the wonder of the God we worship, that God says “I gave you a gift, the gift of free will and I will respect that gift”.  God would not use God’s power to compel us to choose the right.  We really are free to choose, to commit the horror of a genocide or whatever. And God will sit there weeping, making available God’s grace to enable us to choose the right.  But it is grace, it is a gift which we are free to accept or refuse.  It would be contrary to God’s nature to ram God’s gift down our throats.  It would no longer be a gift. This God does behave oddly.  God chooses not the powerful achieving ones, God chooses a motley group of slaves to be eventually God’s Chosen People to accomplish God’s purpose for the world.  This is a God who sides with the poor, the downtrodden, the despised.  That is not the way of the world.  Those God chooses are not deserving.  It is grace, it is a free, unearned, unearnable gift, for which no one can be worthy.  The Christ died for us whilst we were yet sinners, not when we were die able for  – no precisely when we did not deserve it was when God’s gift came.  It is an extraordinary set up.  The Good Shepherd goes not after the good sheep, not after the cuddly lamb as most of our pictures depict him.  He leaves the perfectly well behaved sheep to go and find the obstreperous ram which, having found it, He carries joyfully on His shoulder home.  And Jesus pronounces quite categorically that there is in this God’s heaven more joy over the one sinner who repents than over the ninety nine who needed no repentance.

 There are other standards at work here.  One might say “Couldn’t God have created a pain free universe?”  I don’t know what it would have been like – how would we have learned to be compassionate, gentle and caring if there were none of those whose suffering evoked those attributes in us?  Would a Nelson Mandela have evolved into the magnanimous moral giant he has become without the twenty seven years of anguish and imprisonment?  He went to prison an angry Commander in Chief of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC’s armed wing, believing in the efficacy of violence.  The 27 years of imprisonment burned away the dross and he emerged to become the icon of forgiveness and reconciliation and is rightly feted by the entire globe.  Would this metamorphosis have been possible without the anguish of 27 years imprisonment?

God has placed us in this universe and it is a universe precisely because it isn’t chaos and has laws that make it possible for those who live in it knowing to plan, to predict what to expect – that if a baby fell out of a window gravity would send it crashing to the ground and not miraculously to float upwards.  Why did God not suspend that law to save the baby?  If gravity was suspended we would have a chaos happening.  The regularity of nature enables us to plan ahead knowing on the whole what is going to happen, but it comes at a cost, that generally miracles will not happen that see a suspension of the natural laws.

The Mystery of God

Looking at what has happened as we have made a mess of living in God’s world, God has not given good advice from a safe distance; God has staggered us by entering the fiery furnace because God is Immanuel, God with us.  God with us in joy and in sorrow, in light and in darkness, in success and in failure, in life and in death, this God comes down and participates in our entire existence – this God is born and lives as one of us, the life of the poor and despised and dies, the immortal dies and we are called to share this eternal life.  I don’t understand it.  I just accept it.  Julian of Norwich concerned about the fate of sin is assured that God will make all things well. 

I want to end this by quoting a poem by Isobel who has written an anthology “Making all Well” inspired by her reading of Julian’s Revelations of divine love.

Poem 68   You will not be Overcome – Isobel de Gruchy

In my deep distress, O Lord

I turned to your promises:

I shouted them to you:

I flung them back at you:

    “The Lord protects you;”

    “The Lord will deliver you,”

    “No evil will befall you,

     for his angels will bear you up

     so that you do not dash your foot

     against the stone.”

I clung to these, o Lord,

but there was no protection;

no deliverance – no angels

to lift our son up – only the stones

dashing his head – the waters covering him,

 death claiming him.

     What about your promises-

         O Lord, where were you?

Then I remembered those other promises:

Promises that Jesus made:
    “The gate is narrow and the way hard.”

     “You have a cross to carry daily.”

     “The world will hate you.”

For he did not say,

    “You will not be tempted,

      You will not be troubled,

      You will not be distressed.”

But he did promise,

       “you will not be overcome.”

No easy ride, no special privileges,

Cling only to his promise to love you:

Whether things are going well,

   or, everything is falling apart,

         be strong in your faithful trust,

For you will not be overcome.

The community in and around the town are extremely poor.  What they have and can trade with, are their crops of potatoes – and for this they are grateful. That is why they decided to celebrate their meagre gift of life on a regular basis. “We now have our potato festival every year. It has become an extremely important part of our lives. Not only does it serve as a sign of hope and gratitude, but it particularly gives us courage for the road ahead”, they explained.

The simplicity, piety, sense of humour and specially the creative way in which these people dealt with their circumstances touched the group of friends.  They are people with considerably more social and material privileges, so that they found it difficult not to feel slightly ashamed. At the same time what they experienced, served as a source of inspiration. After their return they decided to follow the ritual they had encountered.   

It is already 15 years since they came across this extraordinary  festival; since then, annually, they celebrate  what they decided to call their festival  of gaining new courage – they arrange to share a “moedskep-naweek”. And what is it all about?

“O, we take to road, we go to some remote place and there we talk, play games, listen to music – classical stuff in the morning and country or rock in the afternoon – build a fire, have a braai, enjoy our wine, look at the stars, listen to the silence, think about our families and neighbours…  we count our blessings and take courage”.

In his book, “Swamplands of the soul” James Hollis reminds us of the value of such self-structured rituals. “These rituals” he writes, “are magical talismen against the unbearable thought that we are in an alien and not always friendly universe”.

Which brings me to the question: what are you living for today? What gives meaning and especially new courage to your life?

Carel Anthonissen

How this happens we clearly see in those gospel stories where it is reported how Jesus searched out different people after his resurrection. This was what Jesus did in the forty days between Easter and Pentecost – to seek those who were lost or got stuck in fear, sorrow and despondency, and to share with them the new life that he had acquired through his death and resurrection.

A well known theologian pointed out that these forty days in which Jesus appeared to various people were working days in which He deliberately went after his lost sheep, his disillusioned and heartbroken followers. In finding them He also shared with them the gift of new life, the fruit of his resurrection. Like God’s people in Isaiah 61:10-11 we may now rejoice in the Lord, knowing that God has clothed us with the garments of salvation and covered us with the robe of righteousness.

What a wonderful and consoling message, because it means that nothing is really lost or hopeless; that there are always new possibilities, unforseen avenues of hope. Because Jesus is alive and is again looking today through his Spirit to find us.

Do you know this? Have you ever considered what this means? More importantly:have you ever allowed God to find you?

Carel Anthonissen

To view more meditations, please visit the meditation section.

We seem presently to have busy schedules and severely fragmented lives; we live, as someone called it, in a “besotted humdrum age of spiritual blindness”. So, nowadays, when I see a Boeing or an Airbus lifting off, I often think: “Wouldn’t it be nice to be that pilot in the cockpit, whose assignment is to do only the one thing, and that is to fly the aeroplane – to get it off the ground, take it to the skies and steer it to its destination”.

Of course I know that a pilot’s ‘one task’ entails a whole range of skills and responsibilities. But, all in all, it does involve a singular focus, dedication to one clear thing only: to keep the plane on course for a long time, patiently, persistently and perhaps, given the technological efficiency of these flying machines, even with a sense of boredom. (I recently heard a tongue-in-cheek remark that pilots are nothing more than glorified bus drivers!)

Well, that is precisely what I am after some days – not having to hurry from pillar to post, trying to manage ten things at a time, but to be committed to one thing only, even if others were to view it as uncreative and boring.

Another word to express this one thing that I long for is, of course, simplicity.

I am sure that similar thoughts must have occurred to you as well. Do we not share a deep longing to be able to focus on one thing only?

According to the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, this is what Jesus had in mind when he spoke of those who are pure in heart (Matt 5:8). To those who have discovered the gift of simplicity, who first seek God’s Kingdom and God’s righteousness as the one thing that matters above all (Matt 6:33), Jesus promises that they will be able to see God.

Which seems to make perfect sense.

Carel Anthonissen

To view more meditations, please visit the meditation section.

In a recently televised talk she made the point that true religion is not about correct dogmas or doctrines but about a specific kind of behaviour, a way of life. In her words: “True religion is about behaving differently. Only then do you begin to understand the doctrines – how they become a summons to action”. In her most recent book she describes this approach to life as one of compassion towards all people.

Armstrong makes an important point, reminding of something we, strangely enough, tend easily to forget. Often we are anxious and desperately eager to defend our own faith, to prove that our tradition or doctrine represents the only and final truth. And then we forget that the essence of the Christian faith is discipleship; it is about following Jesus and imitating his way.
If there is one thing which can convince people that it is worthwhile to believe in this Jewish prophet, then it will be this: living life according to the example he set.

The 19th century Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy, wrote extensive reflections on the Sermon on the Mount in which he stressed exactly this important lesson on lifestyle.  In 1884 he wrote the following to a good friend: “There is one way to live joyously and that is to be an apostle. Not just in the sense of going around and talking, but in the sense that your arms, and your legs, and your stomach, and your sides as well as your tongue, all serve the truth…”
In these words we hear an echo of the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:21 where he expressly states: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven”.

It is indeed about what we do, how our faith is lived, about a way of life.

Carel Anthonissen

To view more meditations, please visit the meditation section.

But whatever the season, the present prosperity or lack of it, there was hospitality in abundance.  Wherever our small company went, we were fêted and fed and provided for in very possible way.  We were invited to explore the activities on the various farms we visited and I was impressed by the farmers and humbled by the organizational abilities of their wives.  And to my delight, in the evenings, at the dinner table, we listened to the stories of the area.

One small tale remains with me.  It was told by a salesman who was spending the night; just a simple telling of a scene he had observed while driving on the back roads of the farms.  But listening, I heard it as a parable – for our daily Christian lives, and even for Lent.

Driving along, recounted the traveller, he saw what he thought was a sad and ironic sight:  there were two fields, separated only by a stretch of fairly high barbed wire.  On the one side of the fence the grass stood tall and lush; the farmer was obviously saving this piece of veldt for when the season would change and become more sparse.  The other side of the fence was badly over-grazed, there was little more than sand and pebbles left.

And up and down against the fence, up and down in this barren field, went an old donkey and an old horse.  They walked together, two old friends, and every now and then they would stop and, lifting their heads over the fence (the donkey needed a bit of a stretch), they would gaze at the riches beyond their grasp.

There was a gate, ended the traveller, I could see it glittering in the distance.  But alas, and his eyes were now both laughing and sad, there was no one to open it….
Yes, I thought, it is a true parable for our time, and for our fragmented society.  But who is to open the gate, if not those who claim to be the followers of Christ?

Carel Anthonissen

To view more meditations, please visit the meditation section.

Christ didn’t come to make us feel comfortable. I want to repeat that: Christ didn’t come to make us feel comfortable. Christ didn’t come in the first place for those who are saved, because they’re not in need of salvation. He came for those who desperately need him because they’re the outcasts, the wretched of society; because they’re shoved to the margins and excluded. The kingdom of God is meant for such people.  That is where Christ positions himself.  As followers of Christ, we cannot want to be anywhere else. As the body of Christ, we, members of the church, need simply to be where he is. That may bring us into some rather uncomfortable places! In the words of Charles Villa-Vicencio:
“It is in the church on the margins and on the edges of the institutional churches and outside of these structures – in the church of the streets – that the hope of Christian renewal is found”.

Christ’s positioning of himself indeed challenges our positioning of ourselves. We may find ourselves being challenged to accept and embody an identity of ‘church of the streets’ and church of and for all those who are excluded.
This is perhaps best articulated through an experience I recently had. One evening, it could already have been early morning, as I was stepping out of a club, a place that is frequented by large numbers of young people; I had a glimpse of what I think the revelation of God in Jesus is all about.

Coming out of the flashing of the neon lights inside, my eyes had to adjust to the darkness outside. The pulsating music and the heat radiating from the moving bodies inside made me feel as if I was being thrust out onto the pavement.  Pausing for a moment to take a breath and looking up, I looked straight into the light-flooded statue of Jesus on the Catholic Church premises across the street. Jesus stood there, facing me, his open arms raised above his head, clearly in a gesture of blessing. He looked radiant. His embodiment reached out to mine. His light became my light; Christ for me, yes, but also Christ for all those out on the streets. Christ was there, moving us to become the church of the streets, the church of and for the excluded ones.

Laurie Gaum

To view more meditations, please visit the meditation section.

Like that evening at a party when a friend suddenly leaned over to me, touched my arm and whispered: “Don’t you please also want to look at my partner while you are talking”.

Without knowing or consciously intending it I was so carried along by one of my own stories that I had ignored his friend and shut her out of our conversation.

But this can happen and it always leaves a bad taste.  Because by forgetting to include the other by looking their way, you actually communicate that they are not important; that the rest of the company  is far more interesting. To experience this subtle form of exclusion while you are supposed to feel part and parcel of a group, can be quite painful.

Fortunately the opposite is also true – that when we look at people while addressing them, we  affirm and strengthen their sense of selfworth and dignity.  In fact, there are few things more exciting and rewarding when meeting other people, especially also strangers, than catching their eyes and noticing support and approval, that familiar spark of trust and affection.

Our Lord Jesus knew the value of looking at people. In John 1:42 we read: “Jesus looked at him and said: ‘So you are Peter the son of John?.You shall be called Cephas’ ”.  And a little while later when Nathanael asked Him: “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you”.

We all need people to see and acknowledge us.

Carel Anthonissen

To view more meditations, please visit the meditation section.

A while ago he exposed his two sons and a friend, all three of them still in primary school, to this in a special way.

They were on holiday near a big lagoon where he challenged them to a new game – one which, in his words, would demand a special kind of courage. One of the boys asked him whether they would have to swim across the lagoon, to which he laughingly answered: “No, not that. What I will ask of you will perhaps require even more courage”. And then he explained.

“Each one of you must find himself a special spot along the edge of the water. I will then draw a magic circle around you. For the next half an hour you have to stay inside this circle and you must try to remain completely quiet. You are not allowed to bring anything into or take anything out of the circle; so, for example, no throwing stones into the water. All you are to do while keeping the silence, is to be alert and watchful – to open you eyes and ears and to become aware of what is happening in and around you”.

Surprisingly, and contrary to his expectations, there was hardly any protest to his proposal. Even more amazing was that when they reunited after half an hour, the boys were eager to tell what they had experienced, what they had seen and heard. One told about tiny insects and interesting stones he had observed in his magic circle, the other about some fish rising to the surface of the lagoon. The crowning moment for all of them had been the sudden call of a fish eagle.

My friend was surprised and deeply touched by what he heard. In his words: “We did not talk about God or Christ. It was not necessary. The silence helped us to become more deeply aware of God’s wonderful creation, and to enjoy it. And that was enough.”
Which emphasised again that we should never forget or underestimate the hidden riches of silence.

Carel Anthonissen

To view more meditations, please visit the meditation section.