Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane
Naught for Your Comfort Award – Keynote Speech Pretoria,
5 July 2007
Ladies and Gentlemen, distinguished guests, it is a great honour to be with you this evening. I thank you, Dr Guma, for your invitation to give the Naught for your Comfort Annual Lecture.
These words, ‘Naught for your Comfort’, chosen by Archbishop Trevor Huddleston as the title of his influential – even notorious – book, originally come from a long epic poem by the English writer G K Chesterton. ‘The Ballad of the White Horse’ tells the story of the ninth century Saxon King, Alfred the Great, and his desperate, but ultimately successful, battles against the vastly greater forces of the Viking invaders.
It is the tale of hopeless struggle against overwhelming odds. But it is also the tale of hope against all odds, through the faith we have because Jesus is the light of the world, even when all around is completely dark.
I am sure this is why Archbishop Huddleston chose these words, over fifty years ago. He knew that, even in our darkest hour, we have a God who is the source of faith, the source of hope, when there is little human hope or faith to be had.
That hope was proven to be rightly placed, because apartheid came to an end.
You may know the story that in 1993, an interviewer from the UK’s Guardian Newspaper asked him whether he had expected apartheid to last so long. He replied, “No, but I’ve always said I wanted to see apartheid dead before I am – so they’ve got to get a move on.”
And the Archbishop did see the death of apartheid – and himself lived on to 1998, and the grand old age of 84.
So we remember him today, and honour his life, as we honour the history of Christ the King and the community it served through those terrible years. And we thank God for his faithfulness to us, in bad times and in good, and for the working of justice that he brings over oppression, and his eternal promises of hope wherever there is despair.
Now we enjoy the fruits of democracy – yet we do so knowing that though the political
system has changed the legacy of our past remains with us in many ways. There are
the deep-
We do not want to be victims of our past.
But neither can we afford to forget our past.
There is another quote from G K Chesterton that I would like to share with you.
‘The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill, or a high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live, or the time in which they are living.’ (1933)
History is necessary to help us understand where we are today. In particular, it helps us understand how we got here, and therefore how we can go forward.
So we cannot, we must not, forget our history.
But how do we remember, when it is still so raw, for so many of us?
Holy remembering – the remembering of Scripture and of Christian tradition gives us two particular tools.
The first is lament, and the second is hopeful recollection.
Let me start with lament, because, as we so often find in the Bible, it is those who first sow in tears who reap with joy.
Psalm 126 does not say that those who weep will have joy. Rather, it is those who in their weeping keep open to the Lord the possibility of him bringing new life even in the season of grief, who will find that a harvest does come.
So first we must weep, and weep before the face of the Lord.
We weep for ourselves, and for our people. We weep for the history of this church, this place, this people, this country, and we weep for the pains of a broken and hurting world today – the pains of poverty, crime, unemployment, HIV and AIDS and violence against women and children.
Denise Ackerman, in her wonderful book ‘After the Locusts’ reminds us of the importance of lament.
It is not a word we hear much today. But with so many intractable problems around us, lament is something that the Christian world overlooks at its peril.
Lament is about paying attention to the human predicament.
Lament is about being honest with the realities of the world in which we live.
Lament is to walk with one another, in whatever we face, in whatever burdens we bear, in whatever scars we carry, through thick and thin – just as Jesus walked with us two thousand years ago in Galilee and Judea, and continues to walk with us, today, tomorrow and all our tomorrows, through the whole length of our lives.
Lament is about being prepared to listen – to listen with heart and mind and soul, as well as with our ears – to the unspeakable depths of our own stories, and the stories of others.
And in our listening, lament declares that we know that God listens – and we declare to others that God listens to them also.
Lament is to open ourselves to the pain of others. It is to know in our hearts, and not just in our heads, the profound truth of which Paul writes to the Corinthians, when he says of the Body of Christ , ‘if one member suffers, all suffer together with it’ (1 Cor 12:26a)
Because we are all one body, all South Africans need not be embarrassed or afraid to lament together for our past. It is not that only those who particularly suffered may lament, while others must look on.
No, lament teaches us to learn what it is to walk in one another’s shoes – to know something of the brokenness and dehumanisation that the past dealt to every child of this nation.
When we pay attention, we will find that we are not merely talking about, or on behalf of, others and their predicament. Far better, we will truly lament with them, on their terms – and they will lament with us.
And when we lament with others for the pains they suffer, we will find we can also lament for ourselves, and the failings and injustices of today’s society of which we are a part, and in which we are all to some degree complicit.
And we will find that in our lamenting, we become more deeply united in the body of Christ. We need this unity in order better to go forward together. We need to model this unity for the rest of our nation to find a similar unity.
And we will go forward together, as the body of Christ, broken, and yet also partaking in resurrection.
Lament is the vital, fundamental, starting point for resurrection, for the hope that transforms.
This is because lament opens up the full dimensions of our history and its legacy today. Lament lays them with honesty before our Lord, and invites him into every aspect of what it is we face. There is no pretence in lament. And yet when we lament, we know ourselves heard and met, as we truly are, through to the very depths of our being.
Lament requires considerable humility – a quality that the brash, success-
But Jesus Christ ‘though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.’ I am sure you recognise those verses from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, Chapter 2 (Phil 2:6,7). Jesus sets aside his status, and meets us where we are.
This is why the doctrine of the incarnation, Jesus as Emmanuel, God with us, is so important.
It reminds us that God does not do ‘hit and run’ salvation, or deal with us at arms length, from the safe distance of heaven.
No, the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.
This message of ‘God with us’ is at the heart of our second means of remembering.
It is the hopeful, hope-
As Anglicans, we say we look to three pillars of our faith – Scripture, Reason and Tradition.
Tradition is not some dispassionate history of institutional life, the dry and dusty account of some external observer. If that were the case, it would be hard to see why we should pay tradition more than limited attention.
No. Tradition is holy remembering – remembering as Scripture teaches us to remember.
‘Remember how the Lord brought you out of Egypt’ is God’s word to future generations
in the Promised Land. ‘Do this in remembrance of me’ are Jesus’ words to us, as
we meet Sunday by Sunday, breaking bread and sharing wine, and finding ourselves
joined with him and all that he has won for us through his one self-
Holy remembering is far more than casting our mind across a widening gulf of years. Holy remembering is both to recall and to participate. It is to be caught up into the unfolding narrative of God’s involvement with his people in every time and place. It is to recognise God at work in our church throughout the centuries, and to know ourselves in living continuity with his faithful people in every age. To remember is to take our place within God’s story of redemption.
When we look back to the past of the people of this place, and the role of those like Archbishop Trevor Huddleston and the Church of Christ the King, we are challenged to see the fingerprints of God upon our own history.
We too can recognise the hand of God at work in our times, in our own land, among our own people – even in our very own lives. This is a source of rejoicing for his grace to us. This is a reason for declaring his faithfulness to those around. Like Paul we too can say that ‘what we have received from the Lord, we have passed on’ (cf 1 Cor 11:23).
This is what enables us to move from sowing in tears to reaping in joy. We know that God is with us. We know that God has acted in the past. We know that he acts in the present and will act in the future.
As St Paul writes in the glorious upsurge of praise in Chapter 8 of his letter to the Romans, ‘We know that in ALL things God works for good for those who love him, whom he has called according to his purposes.’ And he goes on to add ‘NOTHING can separate us from the love of God that is ours in Jesus Christ our Lord.’
This holy recollection is therefore the source of hope for our future. God was with us, in unspeakably dark times in the past.
How can we not trust him for the future?
In G K Chesterton’s poem, the words ‘Naught for your comfort’ are spoken by the Virgin Mary, who appears to King Alfred in a vision. He asks her for a sign that they will win in battle, but she will not give him that guarantee, saying instead:
"I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.
"Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without
a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?"
God does not give us any guarantees about the future shape that South Africa will take.
But he gives us reason to have faith, and in our faith, to hope – however hopeless or daunting the task before us might seem.
The challenges before the New South Africa are great.
The pilgrim journey of reconciliation and healing has some distance to go.
