Into Africa: We are all God’s Children
Sermon preached by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Musonda T.S. Mwamba
Bishop of Botswana
At the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Gaborone, Botswana
Sunday, 24th July, 2011
The collect for the 17th Sunday of the year: Lord of heaven and earth you sent your Holy Spirit to be the life and power of your Church: sow in our hearts the seeds of his grace that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit in love and joy and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.”
Where ever I travel in the United States or the United Kingdom when people realize I am the Bishop of Botswana, the first question they ask is about Mma Ramotswe, the heroine of the bestselling series of books: The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, by my friend Alexander McCall Smith. Mma Ramotswe has made Botswana famous in the world.
In the company of Anglicans or Episcopalians who ask me of Mma Ramotswe, I delightfully tell them that she is in fact an Anglican! I also tell them this incident in the book, In The Company of Cheerful Ladies, where she attends a service in this very Cathedral. As I am preaching, Mma Ramotswe is not concentrating on the sermon as her mind is wandering on how to solve a case involving a pumpkin. She stops herself and thinks, ‘This is not the way to listen to Trevor Mwamba’! I hope your minds this morning are clear of pumpkins.
On Friday I welcomed our young brothers and sisters from the Dioceses of Newcastle and North Carolina, by saying you are home, but I did not explain why I said that. Let me explain now.
Has it ever crossed your mind that we are all Africans? This is not a trick question! Fourteen years ago a Journal called Cell published results on DNA testing done on Neanderthal man in an attempt to prove that he was an evolutionary dead end. The tests showed a large difference between modern man and the Neanderthals.
The team leader, Dr Svante Paabo, of the University of Munich, said that modern man first appeared in Africa, migrating to Europe and displacing the Neanderthals. The bottom line Dr Paabo stated was that ‘We are all Africans’. This was a finding of major importance.
Two years ago at Heathrow Airport I picked up The Economist: Intelligent Life with the headline: We are all Africans Now. Every one of us has African ancestors it said.
Let me take you back to Mma Ramotswe, that wise woman of ‘traditional build’, in The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, she thinks about humanity, “God put us on this earth. We were all Africans then, in the beginning, because man started in Kenya, as Dr Leakey and his Daddy have proved. So, if one thinks carefully about it, we are all brothers and sisters...”
So welcome home my fellow Africans from the Dioceses of Newcastle and North Carolina! This explains why I said to you welcome home, on Friday!
Being home you may have begun to discover something about yourselves. Indeed life as a journey is always about discovering ourselves. The great United Nations Secretary – General Dag Hammarskjold was once said, “The longest journey is the journey inwards.” The journey to discover ourselves in the places we go, in the books we read, in the music we listen to, in the people we meet, in all that we experience. We are always on a journey of discovery in life. And subtly we are always changing moment by moment in this journey.
We must journey in life because if we don’t then we remain stagnant. We remain stale. We do not expand in our inner lives and our outer lives. We cannot discover our potentials within us, and so lose what we could have become. In this awareness the journey of our lives is really about journeying towards God. It is a journey of Faith.
In the journey of Faith we discover a very important truth that we should never forget and it is what St. Paul points to in the second reading we heard from Romans 8:28. “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.”
So God journeys with us, in fact God began our journey in life before we were born. It is because of this we have come together over this couple of days from different countries and cultures and experiences but all linked together by the love of God. That is the common denominator. We have come led by God in our journey of Faith. In this journey we can be assured that God is working His or Her magic for our common good.
God is always about opening our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
Sometime ago I came across this true story by an American lady named Mary A. Fischer, entitled Change of Heart. Nineteen years ago, she watched TV news reports of an African- American Rodney King speaking to the press after four officers accused of beating him in 1991 were acquitted which led to riots in Los Angeles. As King spoke to reporters, he sadly asked, “Can we all get along?”
Mary A. Fischer thought then it was not possible to get along. She lived in a neighbourhood of Los Angeles called Highland Park, which was being transformed by waves of new immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, the Philippines and Vietnam, and for the first time, she was in the minority and was convinced racial harmony was impossible. She was convinced she had nothing in common with her neighbours and fortressed herself in her lovely pink Spanish house on the hill. Any attempts at interacting with her neighbours were on the basis of trying to bring them into compliance with her values.
Then something happened that changed her and how she lived in the neighbourhood. In a matter of two days, she lost the things that mattered most to her. Her well paying job came to an end and her relationship with a man she loved ended badly. Suddenly, all her anchors were gone and she sunk deep in grief.
The losses she experienced humbled her and made her vulnerable, but as a consequence she began to connect more fully with her neighbours and the world around her. She discovered how extraordinary they were. They were nothing like the biases she had made them out to be. They were hard working, honourable people, who like her, were just looking to live well and experience some measure of happiness.
Today, she would answer Rodney King’s question differently. She would say that it is possible for us to get along if people from different cultures don’t make the mistake she did. When she moved to her neighbourhood she neglected to view her neighbours as individuals and saw them as different and apart from herself. She now sees how their lives and hers include experiences universal to us all: loss, disappointment, hope, and love. She sees a oneness with others.
Mary’s life opened to an understanding of herself and the world around her. We can perhaps see also at work what St. Paul points to in Romans, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose” in what she experienced.
We can perhaps see that she discovered that we are all children of God.
In this discovery we can get along in this life which is a gift from God. In this life the borders within us, our parish, our diocese, our province, and our Communion can be dissolved. We can also celebrate in this life the spirit of oneness, of love, of friendship, of uniqueness, of diversity, of what we share in common, to enrich each other.
In the discovery that we are all God’s children we journey into the experience of today’s prayer that the God of heaven and earth, the Great I AM, has sent His Holy Spirit to be the life and power of His Church. Let us pause for a moment: in other words God has sent His Holy Spirit to be the life and power in our lives. This is what St. Paul meant in Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”
How deeply profound this is. So our earnest prayer is to allow the Holy Spirit to sow in our hearts the seeds of His grace that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit in love and joy and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
I see this prayer in the words of Megan a gifted poet from the Diocese of Newcastle:
So much suffering in the world.
So much hate.
A shocking rise in death rates.
What is earth?
Is it Heaven or Hell?
So many beautiful things,
like the ringing of the church bells.
But so many ugly things,
Which threaten the world.
Sick torturing things that make my stomach curl.
If people just cared that little bit more,
Maybe we wouldn’t have to, if we just opened God’s door.
God’s door has been opened, your time here from your adventurous drive from Johannesburg and getting lost on the way; to the International Conference of Young Anglicans in Serowe; to the exciting safari in the Tuli block; your visit to American Embassy and Dinner with the British High Commissioner, to the Workshop on HIV and AIDS, to this worship now, it all a opening of God’s door; so all of us, God children in our dioceses and together as companion diocese can step into His world and make it a better place for all.
I know we can because God’s door opens out to where all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.”
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