I greet you all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Let me start by saying MmaNepo, children and Thami’s family, be comforted by the sure and living hope in Christ Jesus that your beloved is in the merciful keeping and hands of our Creator. “We should not grieve as those who have no hope” 1 Thess 2:13f. Paul says we thus come here not to mourn but to celebrate a life of a servant of God who tirelessly and at great costs to his life and family, discovered the Cross of Christ in his life journey and so to bring the Resurrection Hope too many. He touched many a life with his high church spirituality, his sermons and accessibility.
Archbishop Ndungane, who fondly remembers his student days with Thami, which was not a saintly period, sends him message of condolence. He assures you of his love and prayers and I read from his message, a profound greeting of comfort to you all and especially to Nontobeko. “…… in the name of Jesus, who wept at the death of His friend Lazarus, in the name of Jesus, who wrestled in Gethsemane with the reality of His own mortality, in the name of Jesus, who died in agony on the Cross for us, and in the name of Jesus, who was raised, so that death might be for us the gateway to the glorious life of heaven.” (Ndungane 2006), be consoled by this knowledge, Incarnate God who weeps with you at your loss.
The Archbishop further says, in sending his condolences, we should read what Paul says from 2 Cor 1:3-4, “blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in our afflictions, so that we may be able to console those that are in any affliction, with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.”
Thami enjoyed scripture and the sacraments. Paul’s letter Ephesians 3:10-11 captures “Him” (read) today I will not spend much time talking about him nor exhorting the believers or recruiting converts, but I will attempt to continue where he left, and in a feeble way explain the paschal mysteries, of death and resurrection, mysteries that Thami and all of us struggled to comprehend but only have partial knowledge thereof. He indeed, spent his whole life (bachelor) on these as he attempted to bring God’s people to God and God closer to God’s people. Bachelor, because our systems in Home Affairs Department say he was married but unsure to whom and that Nontobeko was never married. [To digress - on Wednesday when I visited the family, I reminded Nontobeko that regardless of what Home Affairs Department says, this is a funeral and not a post-humus marriage.” She retaliated and only Nontobeko can do that even to a Bishop, “Bishop when you visited eighteen months ago, you called us to the altar and said you must renew our marriage, you might have erased our records, by that act.”]
Returning to the Gospel that was read this morning Mark 16:1-18 (cf John 20:1-18 cf Luke 24:1-12 cf Matthew 28:1-8) depicts a resurrection account. I say a resurrection account because the other three depicts this same account with slightly varied details.
1. Very early on Sunday morning some people went to Jesus’ tomb (we are not quite sure which people because the Gospel writers all name different ones) but whoever these people were, they went to the tomb and found it empty and thus the resurrection, but what does an empty tomb in about 30CE mean to people who live in 2007CE? If empty, those who went to the tomb could not find Jesus’ body, why is that good news for you and me today? Empty tombs are not really good evidence of resurrection. For example, if someone you know died this week, and after the funeral you went back to the grave and found it empty would your first response be: Oh she is risen from the dead? Hardly.
2. So maybe, trying to explain the resurrection one would want to say something like this: after Jesus’ death, a rather motley band of followers, broken, frightened and in hiding, experienced something that made them convinced that Jesus was alive in a new way; so alive in the fact that they felt compelled to tell everyone they met about this amazing Man. Well that is true, but what makes the story different from any other weird sect where a few charismatic speakers gain a new following?
3. So may be one might want to suggest instead that one has experienced the Power of God in one’s own life, and that has led one to believe that death is never the end. No-one can discount that experience, but one only has to look at the state of the world, with the political turmoil, poverty (Mahatma Gandhi says, “poverty is the worst form of violence”), the rising Aids deaths and countless other tragedies and horrors of our twenty-first century, to wonder just how powerful this life-giving love of God is.
4. The Gospel writers were faced with a rather similar dilemma. How do we make sense of this mysterious thing we call resurrection in such a way that it is relevant and convincing for those who saw Jesus die?
5. Mark deals with a question in a way that is quite different from any of the other Gospel writers because he ends his Gospel with the words: “… and the women fled from the tomb for they were bound by the fear and astonishment and they said nothing to nobody for they were afraid ” (I know the grammar is not good but that’s the way Mark writes it with this double negative/nothing to nobody – emphasizing his point) and that’s where Mark’s gospel ends. About a century later some Christians did not like the frightening silence with which he ends and the added verses 9-20 of Chapter 16, but that is not a way Mark wrote it. His version of the resurrection ends with three frightened women running away from an empty tomb, too afraid to say anything to anyone, and that’s what he calls good news. Not much there to celebrate, is there?
6. Mark tells us earlier in his gospel that these same three women stood at the foot of Jesus Christ, when all His male friends had fled. They had stood by Him whilst He was dying in a humiliating, degrading and painful way. [To digress, in the hospital when I visited, in church when Thami was not well and would go out, Nontobeko was there. A little story this Wednesday: Nontobeko says to me “Bishop, I said to my attendants, I have not seen my darling for a week, I last saw him at ICU, take me to Ngoma … I get there, there was my husband, you know, I knew he was handsome, but he looked more handsome with a smile as if he would wake up.”]
7. The women in today’s gospel also went to the tomb, to anoint Him - to perform the last ritual for Him, when they got to the tomb, they had to face the reality of this terrible death, and looking up they see that the stone has been rolled away. The Greek phrase Mark uses actually implies that they looked again, and with the second look they suddenly get the picture. And, for those three women it is a terrifying picture. Why terrifying? Because by looking again they plunge themselves into the whole new way of seeing, a new reality. Nontobeko saw a new reality at Ngoma, however hopeless today.
8. We all like stories that have happy endings, where everyone lives happily ever after, or if we can’t have happily every after then at least we want stories we can understand where all the parts fit together. Happily every after is not a possibility in the face of Jesus’ death, but these women would probably have preferred a body in the tomb to the vast emptiness which confronts them. Dead bodies they know what to do with, but they suddenly see that they cannot live with this safe ending. Something more is being required of them and they are terrified.
9. What Mark is suggesting about the resurrection is not that it is a happily ever after story nor is it a simply answer to a question about death. I think what Mark is suggesting is this: that we will inevitably encounter death and fear. And in the face of death we can choose either to run away, as Jesus’ disciples did at the crucifixion, or like the three women, we can enter the most fearful tombs of life, places we will rather not go. But if we take courage and approach those tombs, the things we fear most, we will encounter the mysterious new life God offers, and we will be changed.
10. Its hardly happy news, but it is good gospel news. There are no easy assurances. It is all risk and mystery. Somehow I trust this good news, this rather bleak mysterious gospel of Mark, more than the easy answers some would have us believe. It seems to fit better with life experiences. Somehow it is a Resurrection story that makes more sense in a world where many thousands of people face starvation as a daily reality, where young children are victims of rape and abuse, where women are terrified for the physical safety just because they are women, where 40 thousand children die daily from preventable disease, where when you look at the Millennium Development Goals, or global lack of peace and militarisation, competition over resources, marginalisation of the majority of the world and growing disparity between the rich and the poor abound.
11. This kind of world suggests there are no easy answers. Mark suggests that if, like the women we stay with our painful experiences, as they did at the foot of the Cross; and if, like their journey to the tomb, we are prepared to encounter the most fearful places in our lives, speak prophetically against these ills, we will, quite amazingly, at the heart of it all discover a mysterious life-changing reality about which not much can be said, except that it is God. In the end the joy of Resurrection is indeed worth celebrating – not in a brash, over-confident way, but in a deeply trusting and faithful way. Thami in an (overly) humane matter lived his life this way.
The invitation to us to love beyond pain, to trust beyond death, to notice the smallest flicker of dawn at the end of a long dark night, this is the Power of Resurrection. I want to conclude with a quote from a book Beyond Terror. This best sums up the ministry of Fr Thami, as I have come to know him, “if the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying, it cannot be done”, (Peter Ustinov). Fr Thami, an expert in the things of God, believed to the point of his death, that it can all be done, we can play our part in nation building, in our heritage and making the world a better place through the Power of the resurrected and ascended Lord. “Hayi Bishop wami, kunzima but we will do it.”
Menze aphumle Ngonaphakade Nkosi,
Menze aphumle Ngonaphakade Nkosi
Menze aphumle Ngonaphakade Nkosi
AMEN.
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