Proper 18 – September 6, 2015
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; Psalm 125; James 2:1-10,11-13, 4-17; Mark 7:24-37
Sermon preached by the Rev. Canon Linda S. Taylor
There are moments in our lives when we are knocked off our feet. The context may be expected, but we never know exactly when it’s going to happen. The context gives us some clues that it might—for instance, if you’re going to have a baby, you know that there will be things that will surprise you and shock you and will change your life. And if you go to Africa, you have a sense that things might be happening, and that’s what happened to me. I went to Africa since I last saw you. Just a few weeks ago. I’ve been back three weeks, I think. I never intended to go to Africa. It was not on my bucket list. I have a friend and colleague, the Rev. Wilma Jacobsen, who is the rector of St. Jude’s in Cupertino. She’s South African, and she loves to take people to South Africa. Back in April, she and I were sitting together at dinner, and she said, “I need one more person for this trip to Africa.” And I thought, “Well, that wouldn’t be me.” And she continues to talk about the trip and what she hopes for it—that people can get a sense of Africa, that they can see the problems that are there, the challenges that are there, the strengths that are there, how those challenges are being met by some groups and how they are not being met by other groups. And I’m sitting there listening to her, and all of a sudden I hear myself saying, “Well, what if I went?” And I’m thinking, “Where in the world did that come from?” and quickly started to back away. She was going, “Oh, that would be terrific—that would be wonderful!” because that’s the way Wilma is—kind of over the top—and I said, “Wait a minute. Let me give this some thought and prayer, and while I’m gone on my cruise, I’ll think about it and I’ll have an answer for you when I get back.”
Well, I thought surely I could talk myself out of it, but that didn’t happen. So on August 5, I found myself on a plane headed for Africa, and wondering what was going to happen. There was a group of us—there were nine of us all told—and we gathered—because people had come several ways—some had gone on safari first—all kinds of things had been happening—so we gathered in Maputo, Mozambique. One of the reasons that we were there was because they have a new bishop there, and he wants to ordain women, and he thought it would be a fine idea if they could actually see some female priests before they vote on it next month in Synod. So, that’s one of the reasons why we went there. So, Wilma and I collared up, and we looked our most priestly—or tried to anyway—and did what we did at church in Mozambique. Then we drive cross-country through Swaziland to Johannesburg. And then, after a few days in Johannesburg, we flew to Cape Town and stayed about five days there—it all kind of blurs, you know, because it was a very intense, very packed time. And there were moments—there were moments that stopped me in my tracks—and the one that I want to tell you about today happened in Johannesburg.
We were going to dinner in Soweto, which is one of the townships in Johannesburg, and as far as I knew, all we were going to do was go to dinner at this great restaurant next door to Winnie Mandela’s house and up the street from where Archbishop Tutu used to live. And we got there, and we went first to this Children’s Uprising on June 16, 1976. And the context for this uprising was apartheid, and the fact that Hendrik Verwoerd, who was the architect of apartheid, has planned the education for the black people of South Africa in way that would give them basic literacy but no more—nothing to help them grow into the people they were created to be. To that end, the educational system was in Afrikaans and English—not Bantu, the language that the people—the children and their teachers—spoke. They had asked that the lessons be in Bantu, and it hadn’t happened because Verwoerd wanted to ke[...]
