Friday, November 1, 2024
Solemnity of All Saints
Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead)
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Cry, the Beloved Country
Those in white robes, who are they and where did they come from?
We’ve made new friends at Grace Covenant Church from South Africa. Soon we are getting together to watch Aerial Africa and other South African geographic videos, and in preparation (so to speak) I watched Cry, the Beloved Country last night. The book’s author Alan Paton lived in South Africa through most of the twentieth century, contributing mightily to the struggle against apartheid and eventually witnessing its downfall.
Those in the white robes are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
While principal of a 600-boy-reformatory, Mr. Paton became known as “the man who pulled up barb wire fences and planted geraniums.” Paton, a fervent Christian, wrote Cry, the Beloved Country with the rhythms and diction of the King James Bible in mind. In South Africa, in fact, his book has sold more copies than any other book except the Bible.
In the book a small town pastor Stephen Kumalo (James Earl Jones) travels to the big city of Johannesburg to find his sister and hopefully also his son Absalom. He succeeds in finding them, but not in bringing them back to their small town in the mountains. In the course of his journey his love for the people and the country multiplies, and Mr. Paton encourages us too to fall in love with what is good and right in his country, although he knows that time could be short. The book begins with a call to the journey.
There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it.
Johannesburg is not lovely at all, and what singing there is must be strained at because here, as in most cities, men and women are ground down by unnatural forces.
In the deserted harbour there is yet water that laps against the quays. In the dark and silent forest, there is a leaf that falls. But behind the polished panelling the white ant eats away the wood. Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools … And were your back as broad as heaven, and your purse full of gold, and did your compassion reach from here to hell itself, there is nothing you can do … However, it was not his habit to dwell on what might have been but could never be.
My good friend Gerard comes from South Africa. Now he is a pastor and spiritual director in Vancouver, British Columbia. He loves his  native country. When he lost his wife he traveled back to their homeland for several months of shared sorrow with the people he grew up with, with the people he had loved the longest.
Gandhi’s honorable title Mahatma was first applied to him in South Africa, where he lived for two decades before returning to India to lead the non-violent movement for independence from Great Britain.
In 1994 apartheid ended, and the South African government instituted the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. If perpetrators gave full disclosure of their crimes against the natives, they were granted amnesty. Stephen speaks of these fifty years before it began:
Pain and suffering, they are a secret. Kindness and love, they are a secret. But I have learned that kindness and love can pay for pain and suffering.
I think of the Jim Crow laws in the United States after the Civil War, and that our efforts to eliminate them did not include this kind of searching full disclosure for whites, nor the consequent release of blacks. Even now much of that work remains to be done. Jesus’ beatitudes call us to the work, every day of every one of our lives.
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Paton’s masterpiece cries out for us to heed these words of Jesus Christ. In 1948 when his book was published, little had yet been done. It was difficult to sustain hope that anything would ever be done. The native population seemed inevitably destined for despair.
I see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and black men come together to work for it. I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating … Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that’s the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing. Nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him if he gives too much.
Paton’s hero Stephen, out of his deep suffering for his family, found a path into the mountains on the dawn of his most awful day. Paton found words for Stephen’s thoughts and prayers at the end of his book.
He calmed himself and broke his cakes and ate them, and drank of the tea his wife had prepared for him. Then he gave himself over to deep and earnest prayer and looked to the east. And the east lightened and lightened, till he knew that the time was not far off. And when he expected it, he rose to his feet and took off his hat and laid it down on the earth, and clasped his hands before him. And while he stood there, the sun rose in the east … as it has come for a thousand centuries never failing.
Nature never fails, even as we fail each other. Nature does not need the pleadings of Jesus, but we do.
When our own dawn will come, of our emancipation, from the fear of bondage and the bondage of fear, why … that is a secret.
And so ends Cry, the Beloved Country, a story both unique to South Africa and universal to all the nations of our fallen world. O God, we lift up our hands!
(Revelation 7, Psalm 24, 1 John 3, Matthew 11, Matthew 5)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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