Sermon for Pentecost Sunday

Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Acts 2

 

In the name of God, whose Spirit teaches us everything. AMEN.

 

 

Ungadinwa nangomuso---this is a Zulu proverb.

It means “Do not be weary even tomorrow.”

 

This is a wearying time of year.

In the church, today, we come to a triumphal, glorious completion to our Eastertide celebrations.

Here at Memorial, we have honored the Sunday school and musical production.

We have honored our Education for Ministry graduates.

Next week we will honor our grand choir.

And in June we will have a picnic with our children and parents.

Beyond the church, there are year-end events galore—from dance recitals to awards ceremonies.

Graduations and weddings galore.

Much like our cultural lead up to Christmas, we have a plethora of opportunities.

Somedays it is easy to be weary.

 

And our readings today….indeed, the description of the beginning of the church in the Book of Acts seems like a prescription for the chaos of Babel in Genesis.

All those people talking at once—in different languages—all together—excitedly.

 

For those of you from Emmanuel, my family and I spent three years in South Africa.

Since that time, whenever I hear the Pentecost lectionary, I can’t help but think of my time in South Africa.

The first few months were indeed wearying.

Everywhere I went—if I could manage driving on the other side of the road with the stick shift and rear view mirror on my left side and not my right—I felt like I was in the chaos of Babel.

I couldn’t seem to understand a thing—even in English.

Terms were different. Candences were different.

At the end of the day, my head hurt from trying to make sense of everyday errands—the grocery store, the bank.

Ungadinwa nangomuso---each day seemed to hold a new frustrating, tiring challenge.

Culture shock is hard.

But in the midst of that hard and tiring learning is a true gift.

And the gift of culture shock is a gift of Pentecost, a gift of Christian spirituality.

 

The gift of Pentecost is humility.

 

Humility—that great lynchpin of the Benedictine life and spirituality—is one of the hardest gifts to accept.

Indeed, humility is all about acceptance.

As great Benedictine writer Esther de Waal writes:

 

Yet this giving of self does not mean that one forgets or honors who one is.

In fact, the gift of humility requires an acceptance of self and a refusing to run away from oneself. 

Humility goes hand in hand with the gift of stability in the Benedictine tradition.

Esther deWaal suggests that humility and stability

 

 

My time in South Africa forced me to begin to struggle with this very idea.

How do we accept the great cultural differences in our world, allow ourselves to reach out to others, enter into community with others that seem so very different from ourselves—that we can’t even converse with through language—and not lose the sense of who we are.

It’s so much easier to run away, to escape.

To go back home where everything is culturally tidy and understandable.

 

While I was in South Africa, Nelson Mandela was President of the country.

A beloved, admired, amazing man.

In his autobiography, A Long Walk to Freedom, is an example of the Christian walk of taking the gifts of humility and stability to a spiritual freedom and peace.

Mandela has always said that his 29 years in prison were critical to his leadership of South Africa at apartheid’s end.

Mandela had the ability to reach out across deep divisional lines in love and understanding without losing his strong sense of self that reflected the many oppressed people of South Africa.

His time in prison honed this skill.

And to hone the skill of humility requires a seemingly dogged pursuit of getting up each day and trying again.

Ungadinwa nangomuso.

 

Throughout his life—especially in prison—Mandela’s life was always at risk.

It would make sense for him to stay as under the radar from his oppressors as possible.

Yet he didn’t.

In fact, his warders engaged him in conversation and he took them up on it.

He writes:

 

I never initiated conversations with warders, but if they addressed a question to me. I tried to answer. Usually, these questions were posed with a kind of exasperation: “All right, Mandela, what is it you really want?” Or, “Look, you have a roof over your head and enough food, why are you causing so much trouble?” I would then calmly explain our policies to the warders. I wanted to demystify the ANC for them, to peel away their prejudices.

 

In 1969 a young warder arrived who seemed particularly eager to get to know me. I had heard rumors that our people on the outside were organizing an escape for me, and had infiltrated a warder onto the island who would assist me. Gradually, this fellow communicated to me that he was planning my escape.

 

In bits and pieces he explained the plan: one night, he would drug the warders on duty at the lighthouse to allow for the landing of a boat on the beach. He would furnish me with a key to get out of our section so that I could meet the boat. On the boat I waws to be equipped with underwater diving gear, which I would use to swim into the harbor at Cape Town. From Cape Town, I would be taken to a local airport and flown out of the country.

 

I listened to the pan in its entirety and did not communicate to him how far-fetched and unreliable it sounded. I consulted with Walter (sisulu) and we agreed that this fellow was not to be trusted. I never told him that would not do it, but I never took any of the actions required to implement the plan. He must have gotten my message, for he was soon transferred off the island.

 

As it turns out, my mistrust was justified, for we later learned that the warder was an agent of the Bureau of State Security, South Africa’s secret intelligence agency. The plot was that I was to be successfully taken off the island, but killed in a dramatic shootout with security forces at the airport as I tried to leave the country. The entire plan had been dreamed up by BOSS, even the rumors that reached me about the ANC’s planning an escape. It was not the last time they would try to eliminate me. (Long Walk to Freedom, p. 398)

 

So, what kept Mandela from running away from prison?

What kept him getting up each day for years and years in a prison routine and having hope?

What allowed him to reach out to his warders and build relationship even when he could be killed on any day?

It was his deep sense of self acceptance—knowing that he was a beloved child of God and not running away from himself—and his humility—accepting where he was---in a dangerous multicultural situation—where the authorities saw diversity as a Babel situation when Mandela saw that it could be Pentecost situation.

And his deep humility yet strong sense of self that he honed in prison shown through as he took his country to a place a freedom—political and deeply spiritual.

 

I think the turning point for me during my time in South Africa came—as it often did—when I was in a clergy meeting.

We were a small diocese and we met every few weeks with Bishop Peter.

We always closed the day with Eucharist.

On that day, I had again lost track of the discussion in the meeting when my colleagues began to talk in catch phrases from all different languages—Africaans, Zulu, Sotho.

My head hurt again.

But then we entered the liturgy—the Anglican liturgy—that was so familiar.

And when we reached the Lord’s Prayer—and Bishop Peter invited everyone to say the Lord’s Prayer in his or her mother tongue—I found Pentecost in the midst of my Babel.

For as I said those old familiar words blazened on my soul, I heard phrases from Zulu there and Sotho here and Africaans—and it was a beautiful melody.

The Lord’s Prayer became richer and deeper.

And what might sound like a cacophony sounded like a sweet melody of the spirit.

But in order for it to work, we each had to know the Lord’s Prayer in our own Mother Tongue inside and out…we had to know who were we in Christ and be humble enough to accept the Christ in one another.

 

On this Pentecost, as we all go forward into the world,

Ungadinwa nangomuso—Do not be weary even tomorrow.

God’s Spirit guides us in what we should do. AMEN.