1. Introduction
My dear sisters and brothers who are members of this Synod from various Parishes, Guilds, CR Sisters, SSM, Order of Holy Cross Mariya uMama weThemba, The College of the Transfiguration, Honourable Premier and your Executive Council, Executive Mayors of Cacadu and Amathole, and Executive Mayor of Buffalo City and Makana Municipality, Members of National Tourism Department, President of ECPCC, Chief Ngangomhlaba Matanzima of the House of Traditional Leaders, and all Honoured Guests, I greet and welcome you all to this 65th Session of the Grahamstown Diocesan Synod.
Grace and Peace be to you from God Our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
It is an honour, privilege, and very humbling to stand here today. I thank the people of the Diocese of Grahamstown for allowing God in Jesus Christ to call me to lead and serve you. Thank you that you are partners with me in Gospel, as we seek afresh to discover what it is to believe and practise as a church the life that reflects love for God, neighbour and the environment in our time, here and now.
I thank God for:
Achievements:
A lot is being done in our Diocese, but I would like to mention a few achievements.
Let us pray: All this day, O Lord let me touch as many lives as possible for thee, and every life I touch, do thou by thy spirit quicken whether through the word I speak, the prayer I breathe, or the life I live. Amen (Mary Sumner’s personal prayer).
In the words of St Paul "We feel we must be continually thanking God for you, sisters and brothers, quite rightly, because your faith is growing so wonderfully and the love that you have for one another continues to grow, and among churches of God we can take special pride in you for your constancy and faith under all the persecutions and troubles you have to bear. It all shows God’s judgment is just and the purpose of it is that you may be found worthy of the Kingdom of God, it is for the sake of this that you are suffering now" (2 Thess.1:3-5).
Organizations and institutions cannot function properly without leadership. The church is not an exception to this. We give thanks and welcome the new leadership that God has raised in our church, some of whom are attending the Synod for the first time in their new roles. At the same time we look back with thanksgiving to God for the contribution of those leaders of our Church who were members of this Synod, who have either retired or gone to their rest. Their names will appear in the record of the Synod.
Let us pause and remember those who have gone to their rest. We pray "Rest eternal grant unto them O’ Lord and let light perpetual shine upon them". (APB pg 562.)
2. Theme: The demands of God on the last Judgement Day
I have chosen this topic as the main theme for our Synod which reads thus “The Demands of God on the Last Judgment Day”. Our text is drawn from the wonderful story in St Matthew’s Gospel (Matt 25:31-46) which is about the last judgment day. The story shows us that God will judge us on that day through the Mediator Christ. All three persons of the Holy Trinity will co-operate in this process. The honour of judging is conferred on Jesus Christ as a reward for his accomplished mediation work.
Persons, individuals, without any regard to their nationality will come to Jesus who sits on the throne and account for their life and actions. Jesus says there will be two groups of people on the last judgment day. One group will be called the sheep who follow and trust their Saviour Christ and who are meek and obedient. The other group will be the goats who are people that are belligerent, unruly and destructive (Hendrikson: p. 886-887).
The Judge Christ would want both the Sheep and Goats to be accountable in five areas:
It is interesting to see that Jesus does not mention sinful deeds such as idolatry, murder, adultery, theft etc, but he mentions sins of omission which are enumerated as sins of neglect (Heb 2:3). This neglect proves that these people have not believed in the Son of Man. For this unbelief, thus demonstrated, they are condemned.
St Matthew records that Jesus on the last judgment day will affirm, acknowledge and save those who care for the least of these, such as feeding the hungry, give them a drink, welcome strangers, clothe the naked, heal the sick and visit those who are in prison. Why will Jesus save them? Because of their faithful discharge of humble duties pertaining to everyday living.
For Jesus those who neglect the hungry, those thirsty, strangers, naked, to visit the sick and those who are in prison are the goats. He will separate them from the sheep. He will impose everlasting punishment on them. Jesus will place them in the everlasting fire, in the outer darkness and outside the wedding feast of the lamb. God is indeed a presence of love everywhere. It is from this presence of love, patience and warning that the wicked are banished forever.
Gutierrez believes that love for God is unavoidably expressed through love of one’s neighbour. Moreover, God is love in the neighbour. Neglect of the neighbour is the neglect of God, because you cannot say you love God and hate another human being. If that is the case you are a liar. St John suggests that if you do not love the person whom you have seen, it is not possible for you to love God whom you have not seen (1 John 4:20). Gutierrez continues to say that the Son of Man is the ideal human being, the archetype of the new humanity already present in each individual. Gutierrez argues that we need to avoid individualistic charity. The “neighbour” is not only a person viewed individually. The term refers also to a person considered in the fabric of social relationship, to a person situated in economic, social, cultural and racial coordinates. It likewise refers to the exploited social class, the dominated people, and the marginalised. The masses are also our neighbour.
The love for God is expressed in a true love for person themselves. This is the only way to have a true encounter with God. That my action towards one another is at the same time an action towards God, does not detract from its truth and concreteness. The Spirit will lead us to complete freedom, the freedom from everything that hinders us from fulfilling ourselves as human beings and offspring of God, and the freedom to love and to enter into communion with God and with others. It will lead us along the path of liberation because “where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor 3: 17).
Nolan argues that Jesus’s teaching on Love of God and Neighbour takes the form of a kind of courtroom drama, in which the Judge must separate the good people from the bad, the sheep from the goats. The basic teaching comes from Jesus, but the use of final judgment as a technique for dramatizing the teaching belongs to Matthew (2006: p 159).
Nolan continues to argue that the criterion of Judgment in this story is how those who appear before the Judge have treated their fellow human beings. The activities that form the core of the judgment are what one would call “works of mercy”. Did you feed the hungry, give drink to thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit those who were in prison? That is what loving your neighbour means in practice, that is the criterion for judging whether you love your neighbour or not.
The second aspect of this judgment story is that love for neighbour is seen to be in practice the same as love of God, whether the person being judged is aware or not. So when you feed the hungry, give a drink to thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, nurse the sick or visit the prisoner, we do it to God. And when we refused to help the hungry, the thirsty and the naked, when we do not welcome the stranger or when we ignore the sick and the prisoner, we neglect to do these things to God, whether we are aware of this or not. The identification of God and neighbour could not have been expressed more powerfully and effectively.
Another aspect is that the Judge identifies himself with the victims who were helped or not helped. God clearly identifies with every human being, so that whatever we do to any of them we do to God. But this is also what Jesus did. His oneness with all other human beings could not have been expressed better than in the words of the Judge. “Whatever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters you do to me”. Whatever was done to another human person Jesus experienced as done to himself.
To become aware of this is essential, because loving one another arises spontaneously out of the discovery and continued awareness of our oneness with one another. The bond of kinship is the origin of the love of neighbour in Hebrew Scriptures. In Leviticus your neighbour is your kinsman or kinswoman (Lv. 19:18). You would be expected to love them as you love yourself. This can be extended to the stranger in your midst, the foreigners who live with you (Lv. 19:34, Dt. 10:18-19) but not to anyone else and certainly not to your enemies.
Jesus extended the solidarity of kinship to the whole human race. “You have heard that it was said ‘you shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy,’ but I say to you love your enemies” (Matt 5:43-44). He saw them all as his brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers, uncles and aunts. He identified with them no matter who they were. “Whatever you do to any of them, you do to me.”
In a nutshell, we are warned by the Lord Christ that he will be coming on the last Judgment Day. He will judge us in the manner in which we were treating each other as human beings.
We are called to be God’s presence in the world, to live a faithful life that informs us not to omit and neglect the neighbour every second minute, hour, day, and night, otherwise we will be punished in the everlasting fire and be placed outside the wedding feast of the Lamb.
With all this in mind and what have been mentioned above, how can we seek to apply it to our present-day context, the Diocese of Grahamstown, Southern Africa and worldwide? When we came in to the Episcopate we inherited a Diocese with a beautiful Vision, Mission, and Strategic Goals. We are happy to adopt this endeavour and committed to take it forward. To implement this Vision and Mission, and Strategic Goals, we need to create a 10-year programme on each strategic goal, in a form of a business plan that would be costed continually, monitored and evaluated through the Diocesan Council and our Synods.
As the church we are called to participate in God’s mission on earth (Missio Dei) and these are the areas which I believe need our attention.
Faith:
We need to reflect a faith that will demonstrate the love of God, of neighbour and the environment which we live in, as revealed in Jesus Christ. We need to have a faith that will enable us to deepen our lives and those of the whole Diocesan family into the life of the Trinity. Faith is our brand, it is what the Church is standing for.
Education and Training:
Education and Training has become a priority in our way of doing God’s mission as we are living in post-modern times, and in a young Democratic South Africa. I suggest we need to:
Health:
The church, since her inception in Africa, has taken health seriously. I believe we need to continue and uphold that legacy which is also derived from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Land:
We give thanks to God that He has created us in his image and made us to be co-creators and managers of his creation, so I believe we are called to reflect on how we utilize the 354 hectares of unused land belonging to our Diocese.
Tourism, Heritage and Properties:
As the Church we will continue to participate in Tourism initiatives by upgrading our historic sites as centres of life.
Finance and Administration:
Our main goal is to have a Diocese with sound administration and proper financial systems, this means a transparent, accountable, effective system, undergirded by Christian principles.
Partnerships:
As the church we cannot accomplish God’s mission on our own. Together with God Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Diocesan family and other partners (USPG, Biko Bowcott Trust, Government, House of Traditional Leaders and others) who are doing the above-mentioned, we should work together for God’s glory for the betterment of our Diocese, the community and the environment we live in.
The Unity We Seek:
As the Church we need to keep and uphold sound relations with ACSA and the rest of the Anglican Communion, and to promote our Anglican identity with emphasis on our unity in scripture, worship, tradition and God’s mission. As a Diocese we will continue to participate in the dialogue concerning issues in the Anglican Communion that threaten to divide us, in finding solutions that will hold the Communion together such as:
As Bishops of ACSA we will continue to pronounce on issues of morality as a collective voice, in particular on Southern Africa, and worldwide.
Family Life:
We pray and encourage the clergy and all members of our Diocese to strive to fashion their own lives and households according to the way of Christ where women, men and children will find an acceptable and peaceful environment to live in.
Ecumenism:
To continue to participate in ecumenism in bodies such as CUC, ECPCC, SACC, ACC, WCC, USPG etc.
Faith-based Organisations:
As the Church we need to continue to participate in dialogue with other faith religions, so as to learn from their traditions and values, as they learn from us as well for the betterment of all the human race.
Unity will always be our priority, so as to realize the prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ "I pray that they may be one" (Jn. 17:11b). This will enhance our prophetic collective voice.
Conclusion:
I call upon the clergy, various Diocesan Organisations, our Social Responsibility Organisations, the Diocesan family as a whole, our Development Agency Capraway, our Partners and our Donors to facilitate and encourage the running of this 10-year programme.
I pray that we may be a Diocese that lives and demonstrates love for God, neighbour and environment, that we may not fall into the trap of neglecting the needy, especially the hungry (food security, unemployed, spiritual poverty), the thirsty (Education, Health & Welfare), the stranger (neglect to offer properties and centres of life for prayer and hospitality). The neglect of the naked and the sick (Social Responsibility) and the neglect of those that are in prison (broken hearted, the oppressed, and the voiceless, in particular women and children).
Love for God and neighbour extends beyond our Diocese, as I believe we are called into a broader context, South Africa and the world. The theology of God, neighbour and environment will enable us to address the challenges that we face as a country and worldwide, those of moral decay and political instability, issues of justice and reconciliation, lack of housing, unaffordable electricity hikes, unaffordable medical costs, unemployment, xenophobia, the Millennium Goals, human trafficking, domestic violence and child abuse etc.
I pray that we do not neglect government and other role players who are called to bring relief to the social ills and challenges facing our country. Instead we need to join hands in God’s love, and pray with Government and other role players, so as to get the grace necessary for serving God’s people (the Laos).
In this Synod the question that one needs to ask is: Do we have love for God, neighbour and environment? If not, we need to have the mind of God revealed in Jesus Christ, the champion of authentic spirituality which is losing our lives into God, humanity and the cosmos, so each of us may be accountable to God the Almighty on the last judgment day and avoid everlasting fire and eternal death.
Let us pray that God may endow us with the mind of Christ, so as to be able to target the whole human race in our way of doing God’s mission, irrespective of nation, race and language. Let us be Christ’s servants. Christ, who identifies himself with God’s humanity, and who exists for the salvation of all souls, invites us to co-operate with him in devising life-giving and life-changing strategies in dealing with the various challenges we encounter.
With all this in mind, I think maybe it is time that our Diocese follows the example of its Master Christ and dies for the people. We have lived for ourselves too long. I pray that our Diocese which I love dearly, not perhaps as it is but as it might be, should have the motivation to assist our people to be what at their best moments they desire to be, that is, followers of the standard of Christ, which is identified with values that Jesus would approve. A church that is charitable and not crippled by the spirit of exclusiveness, but that exists and lives for the love for God, neighbour and environment.
I would like to end with the prayer of St Teresa de Avila:
Christ has no body on earth but ours, no hands but ours, no feet but ours. Ours are eyes through which we look out Christ’s compassion on the world. Ours are the feet with which we are to go about doing good, Ours are the hands with which God blesses now. Amen T
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