Among the Shona people of Zimbabve,
this is how they greet one another.
“Marare hare?”
Did you sleep?
“Ndarare kana mararawo.”
I slept well if you slept well.
“Ndarare.”
I slept.
“Makadii?”
How are you?
“Ndiripo makadiwo.”
I am here if you are here.
“Ndiripo.”
I am here.
~ by Melvin Bray
In the previous edition:
Disheartened with apartheid in South Africa, a young man went to a
remote area of his continent as a missionary seeking to bring the gospel to the
people there. He had considerable
success. However, in order to protect his small group of faithful believers
from “evil” influences, he excluded both an Islamic trader and a traditional
African medicine man from the community. His supervisor back home instructed him to find these two men, and
listen to what they had to say.
Now read
on . . .
The missionary sought to do as his
supervisor instructed. It was not as
difficult as he had imagined. Many in
his parish knew exactly how to find both men. In fact, some in his congregation had been quietly practicing the
devotions of Islam while learning to walk in the way of Jesus, and some had
sought out the medicine man when they were sick. Through these parishioners, the missionary
visited each man.
The missionary was surprised at the
grace and generosity each man extended to him. He had not expected to be welcomed. He spent some 30 days with each and joined in celebrations and holy days
as they came, listening and laughing, sharing meals and dreams. They spoke about the African continent and
its challenges and exchanged many hopes. It was an intimacy he had thought impossible between those of such
drastically different beliefs.
Upon his
return to his African parishioners, the missionary began to share anew the
story of the gospel in light of the things he had learned. When he spoke of the way of Jesus as
“unavoidable forgiveness,” the people of his community saw this forgiveness
being extended to the missionary by Nikondeha, the medicine man. When he spoke of being a peacemaker, the face
of Abijar the trader, and the quarrel he had with the missionary which he had
abandoned became their frame of reference. And the oft-forgotten sacraments of confession and humility became far
more tangible in the life of the missionary himself, as he realized that there
was no virtue in feigning certainty in his choices or long-held beliefs.
Notwithstanding, this was no longer
enough for the South African Dutch missionary. He wanted more than just to better understand the things of God, like
repentance, peacemaking, confession and humility. He wanted to live these truths the way Jesus
had. He wanted, as he would later speak
of it, to walk “in the way of Jesus”—a way of
“others-interestedness”—to “seek first the kingdom of God and
God’s justice” in the earth, beginning with his beloved Africa. Yet he had no idea of how to make this
happen.
He decided to share his questions with
his two new friends. Trader Abijar
immediately voiced his growing concern for orphans in territories in which he
and his fellow merchants traveled. Many
of them were compelled to run for their lives to avoid conscription and sexual
assault. This prompted medicine man
Nikondeha—whom the missionary learned to refer to by his appropriate title,
“laibon,” meaning “spiritual leader”—to propose that his
people were known for their generous hearts. Why couldn’t they be inspired to give these wandering orphans
refuge? The missionary noted that if
Abijar and his colleagues could smuggle the children into Maasai territory,
with Nikondeha’s people’s nomadic tendencies, the children would be difficult
to track. With Nikondeha and Abijar’s
help the missionary thought that they might even be able to convince the elders
to modify the community’s seasonal travel path in order to intersect more
frequently with smuggling merchants. The
wandering orphans that they would take in would be Enkai’s (God’s) new
“cattle” that she had charged them to shepherd and keep.
And they did
this and many other things together. Not
the least of which involved the Maasai parish sending a delegation of Il-murran
(warriors) to a neighboring territory to create protected space for peace talks
between warring factions that Abijar, as a trusted third-party, was able to
bring together. Creating such space for
Africans to dream their way forward was something the missionary had been
touting as the Western world’s continuing responsibility to a formerly colonized
Africa. It was Nikondeha’s suggestion that, as
followers of Enkai in the way of Jesus, his people had no excuse to wait for
the West while more died. Thus, in this
spirit, more and more people in and around Maasai ancestral territory journeyed
with God: more orphans were given homes, more hungry were fed, more wells dug,
more sick healed, more injustice removed, more peace waged and all the
Christians in the South African Dutch missionary’s small nomadic parish grew
more committed and more in love with the way of Jesus.
In the midst
of his many new endeavors, the missionary wrote to his supervisor:
I am beginning
to believe that those who promote life and live goodness are all striving to
get to the same place, we’ve just given different paths to take (with varying
nomenclature, understandings and sensibilities), but we’re all headed the same
“way.” Once we get there, I
imagine that whatever misunderstandings, errors, oughts and hurts that remain will
be satisfied, and the Truth will be unmistakable and irresistible. Thus, I was able to appreciate the faith
walks of these two men as not in the least bit threatening to my own or
threatening to the God who initiates all walks of faith. In addition, I now suspect that should we
learn to walk in love for one another, there shall be far fewer confusions and
misunderstandings for God to satisfy than there are now. Nonetheless, I am glad to report that this
Sabbath I will be baptizing the first ten people who are dedicating their lives
to “the way of Jesus” as practiced by our new kind of Christian community.
Nikondeha and Abijar are coming as well, to celebrate and bless us all.
And in
revising his memoir he included this passage that would have seemed so foreign
or heretical to him just a few short years before:
People
of faith change the world, and it is, I believe, for the good of the world that
we discover the commonality inherent in our hopes, instead of living out of the
disparity between them. If our religions remain sets of exclusive, immutable
propositions, then of course they will exist in contradiction and conflict with
one another. In such a climate, war
seems inevitable. However, if religion
is seen as our best attempts to embody God’s dreams for humanity as partially
as we may understand them, then it becomes easy to seek peace and justice for
one another—together.
The kingdom of God
is like unto a South African Dutch
missionary who went deep into the bush to not only to reveal, but also to find
God.
~ by Melvin Bray
“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” Revelation
2:7
The kingdom of God is like unto a South African Dutch missionary who went deep into the bush and served God faithfully for 20 years. He was fed up with the apartheid of his homeland, saw little hope of
bringing it to an end, and refused to be in collusion with it any longer. So he went to share Good News with Africans outside of his country, determined to treat them as his brothers and sisters.
The missionary achieved notable success in his endeavors, so much so that he was asked to write a memoir as a teaching tool for other missionaries. Because of the remoteness of his location, mail only came and went every 6 months. Notwithstanding, he faithfully wrote everyday.
When the next mail arrived after he had sent his initial submission, he was eager to hear what his supervisor thought. Exchanging mail with the courier, he immediately spotted the package from his supervisor. It was large. Opening it with sweaty hands, he saw that she had read his draft with eagerness and she praised his courage living amongst the bush people. Two incidents in particular stood out to her. One was the missionary’s “need” (she wrote, quoting him) to expel the local “witch-doctor before the message of Christ could really take root in the hearts of the tribe’s people.” The second was the showdown the missionary had with a Muslim tradesman who had begun to make converts to Islam on his regular visits to the village.
The South African Dutchman’s supervisor then made what she called “a strange request.” She wanted him to read up on certain major world events that had taken place since the beginning of his missionary endeavors. She listed the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the end of Apartheid in South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the war in Rwanda, 9-11 in the US, the great Pacific Ocean tsunami, the Sudan conflict, and Hurricane Katrina. To this end she enclosed a gift, “probably the most significant change that had taken place in the industrialized world since his departure: a laptop computer with a mobile broadband card and satellite signal booster.” He didn’t know what any of those words meant, but her instructions were clear enough that he eventually got the equipment to work, and he began his research on what his supervisor called “the Internet.”
The missionary did not write much during the next six months because of his research. Much more had taken place during the previous 20 years than his supervisor’s list suggested, but her list was a great
start. Many nights he read and read. His little generator required increasing fuel to serve his growing appetite for world events. The world had evolved in dramatic ways since he had come to the bush where time stands still.
By the time his supervisor’s next letter arrived six months later, he was a changed man. Thus, her next request did not come as much of a shock as it would have, had it come a year earlier. She gave the South African Dutch missionary an assignment. She wanted him to track down the medicine man he had ostracized 19 years earlier to seek his forgiveness for the way he had been treated and to ask permission to spend a month learning from him. Under no circumstances was he to attempt to convert or teach the medicine man religion or anything else. He could participate in conversation if questions were asked of him, but not as one self-assured. His task was primarily to observe and to listen. After that he was to seek the Muslim merchant he had interdicted from trading with his parishioners, and do the same. Then write about it. And he did.
To be continued . . .
Melvin Bray is a grateful husband and a proud father, living and
working in Atlanta, GA, with his wife, Leslie
and 3 kids. He is a
learner, teacher, writer, storyteller, lover of people, connoisseur of
creativity, believer in possibilities, director of a US Dream Academy
learning center and founder of Kid Cultivators.
