Author, Keith Parkins wrote this story about a Easter sermon given by Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Easter Sunday, Februray 22, 2004.
One Sunday morning after little sleep I awoke and turned on the radio and listened to the news followed by the Sunday morning service on BBC Radio 4, which that morning was broadcast from the Chapel of King's College, London. The service was led by the Dean of King's, the Revd Dr Richard Burridge, the sermon was delivered by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who was at the time Visiting Professor in Post-Conflict Societies at King's.
Part of the vision of a previous Dean of King’s, Sydney Evans, was to bring people from South Africa, so they could study at King's and then return to serve their country and church. Archbishop Tutu was a student at King's in the 1960s.
It was an amazing sermon, with a powerful and moving message, it reiterated what I had recently been reading in What's So Amazing About Grace? by Philip Yancey.
I wrote to Desmond Tutu, and he kindly sent me a copy of his sermon, which I reproduce below.
But first the context, Mary discovering the empty tomb of Jesus, read that morning from John 20:11-18:
Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to
look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the
body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet.
They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They
have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’
When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there,
but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why
are you weeping? Who are you looking for?’ Supposing him to be the
gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me
where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her,
‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means
Teacher). Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not
yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am
ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”’ Mary
Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’;
and she told them that he had said these things to her.
God’s Dream - by Archbishop Desmond Tutu
In St. John's Gospel our Lord says the highest title he can give his
disciples is to call them friends. Therefore what he says to Mary
Magdalene after his resurrection stands out prominently. And he's
talking about people, one of whom betrayed him, another denied him not
once but twice, and they all deserted him, like craven cowards and were
now skulking behind closed doors.
photo by Kristen Opalinski
Just listen to what he says to Mary Magdalene:
"Go to my brothers and tell them that I am ascending to my Father and
your Father. To my God and your God."
Now that really is quite unbelievable. This craven despicable lot - my
brothers indeed! But clearly Jesus meant this to be taken seriously.
That we, his followers, belong in one family - God's family. Is there
anything else in the bible that seems to support this assertion?
This Jesus came - not to an ideal world - but came to a world that was
polarised, fractured, divided. Divided into hostile and often alienated
groupings. There were the much hated occupying Romans, resented by the
subject natives, and Jews did not share a cup with the Samaritans. The
Jewish community of His day was stratified, fragmented. There were the
Sadducees and Pharisees, the zealots and the collaborating tax
collectors. There were the rich, the poor, male, female, young, old -
and there was a sharp divide between Jew and Gentile, represented by a
wall of partition in the temple precincts to go beyond which spelt
death for the Gentile unbeliever.
And people saw a veritable miracle happening before their very eyes
with the advent of the new community of the followers of Jesus. They
saw those who were formerly alienated and hostile flocking into this
new fellowship. And they marveled and remarked "How these Christians
love one another."
It would have been revolutionary for a slave to have been accepted as
the equal of his former master. But no, they were not just equals - no,
they were brothers. They were sisters in one family. An equal you can
acknowledge once and forever after ignore. You can't do that with your
sister or brother.
You don't choose who your relative will be. Sometimes we wish we could,
given just how difficult some of them can be. Well, we don't always
know what they think of us! No - we don't choose our family members.
They are God's gift to us, as we are to them.
Do you recall when Saul went to Damascus to arrest Christians there and
was blinded? And the Lord asked Ananias to go to Saul's lodgings to
pray for him to have his sight restored. Do you recall Ananias quite
flabbergasted telling the omniscient Lord "Lord, do you know this man?
He has been harassing your people and came here to arrest us. No, Lord,
you can't be serious." Well Ananias went, and when he arrived said
about this persecutor of the Christian community "Brother Saul".
Yes, I believe the words of the Lord to Mary Magdalene to be his most
radical utterance. We are family - all of us. We belong in God's
family. There are no outsiders. All are insiders.
When Jesus spoke of being lifted up on the cross he said "I, if I be
lifted up will draw.." - he didn't say "I will draw some" - he said "I,
if I be lifted up will draw
ALL - draw all to me to hold them" all of
us drawn into the divine embrace that excludes no-one - black, yellow,
white, rich, poor, educated, uneducated, male, female, young, old, gay,
lesbian, so-called straight - yes it IS radical. All, all, ALL belong -
Arafat, Sharon, Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, George Bush, Tony Blair,
Palestinian, Israeli, Jew, Arab, Protestant, Catholic - all, ALL, all
belong in this family.
And in a healthy family the rule is from each according to their
ability, for each according to their need. And so if we are serious
about being family we would not spend obscene amounts on budgets of
death and destruction, when we know a small fraction of those budgets
would enable our sisters and brothers - members of our family - God's
family, God's children - EVERYWHERE - they would have enough to eat,
clean water to drink, adequate health care, education.
Go and tell my brothers. Go and tell my family. We are all, all family
God's family. The human family.
There is probably none who understands grace and forgiveness better than
Desmond Tutu. When Nelson Mandela left prison after 27 years, he could
have called for vengeance, retribution against the Whites, he did not,
he called for forgiveness. He called upon his old friend Desmond Tutu
and asked him to chair the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The
rules were simple: the perpetrators had to tell the truth, the whole
truth, and their victims were given the opportunity to forgive.
Many of the atrocities were truly horrific. A policeman called van de
Broek told of how he and his fellow officers shot an 18-year-old youth,
then burnt the body. Eight years later they went back, took the father,
and forced his wife to watch as he was incinerated. She was in court to
hear this confession and was asked by the judge what she wanted. She
said she wanted van de Broek to go to the place where they burned her
husband’s body and gather up the dust so she could give him a decent
burial, van de Broek agreed. She then added a further request, “Mr. van
de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love
to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and
spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him. And I would like Mr.
van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him
too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real.”
Spontaneously, some in the courtroom began singing Amazing Grace as the
elderly woman made her way to the witness stand, but van de Broek did
not hear the hymn, he had fainted, overwhelmed.
LOVELAND MAGAZINE HD VIDEOS
ARE ON YOUR HOMETOWN TV STATION
Recent Comments