LENT COURSE: SESSION 2

SECOND DISCUSSION 23 FEBRUARY 2016

The disciple citizen and God: the place Creator dreamed for me in a political, social and economic world. 

Rendering unto Caesar: who is Caesar and what must the disciple citizen render unto him?

Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations”

Psalm 139 : 13 “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb”

Is it possible to imagine that the Creator dreamed for me a body, a soul, family, a home, talents – every set of circumstances surrounding me, but excluding the country ( or countries) where I live, work, and exercise my faith? This seems unlikely. Surely we have a specific niche, a particular role to play, as citizens as well as parents, children, siblings, neighbours, employers, employees, parishioners, disciples?

What is this place, South Africa, where we need to draw on our faith to discover our role, what shapes us and what we can shape?

Let’s start this journey of discovery by looking at the hymn our national anthem is based on, the full-length isiXhosa version of Nkosi Sikelele.  (The link http://www.endarkenment.com/kwanzaa/nkosi/versions.htm  will give you isiXhosa, isiZulu, Afrikaans, English and Sesotho versions)

God Bless Africa 
Original Lovedale English Translation 

Lord, bless Africa;
May her horn rise high up;
Hear Thou our prayers And bless us

.

Chorus

Descend, O Spirit,
Descend, O Holy Spirit.

Bless our chiefs
May they remember their Creator.

Fear Him and revere Him,
That He may bless them.

Bless the public men,
Bless also the youth

That they may carry the land with patience
and that Thou mayst bless them.

Bless the wives
And also all young women;

Lift up all the young girls
And bless them.

Bless the ministers
of all the churches of this land;

Endue them with Thy Spirit 
And bless them. 

Bless agriculture and stock raising
Banish all famine and diseases;

Fill the land with good health
And bless it.

Bless our efforts
of union and self-uplift,

Of education and mutual understanding
And bless them.

Lord, bless Africa
Blot out all its wickedness

And its transgressions and sins,
And bless it. 

(If you like, you can compare this with other, more bloodthirsty anthems. I think it was Pieter Dirk Uys who described the Marsellaise as “Music for dondering the English” http://lyricstranslate.com/en/la-marseillaise-song-marseille.html

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/u/uks+national+anthem/god+save+the+queen_20983467.html )

DISCUSSION : If all you knew about South Africa was this anthem, what would you think about the country? How would you update it – what blessings would you ask for the country as it is today?

For the Romans, citizenship seems to have been a serious and also rather a grim business. “Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori” “It is sweet and glorious to die for one’s country” (This link will give you Wilfred Owen’s First World War poem of the same name : http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html ) We have to do something much harder than dying for our country – we have to live in and for it. And surely we should be doing this with delight, at least some of the time?  This is how the psalmist tells us how to do it :Psalm 37 3-4 “Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord” Alan Paton titled one of his books ‘Ah but your land is beautiful’

How do we recover for ourselves the beauty of our land? Perhaps the Stellenbosch students had the right idea, when they called on us to #Luister – Listen. We need to listen with that phrase of Michelle’s – the ears of our heart. The scale of the media and public discussion is filled on one side with what is negative. Without denying what is negative, we need to balance it by seeing what is positive, and then sharing this.

DISCUSSION Perhaps your group could draw a scale, and put the different images, drawn or written, of the country, into both sides of the scale. Or put together a collage of pictures on a mask – the outside being the way the country is portrayed publicly, and the inside being our own experience, when we look and listen as disciples.

DISCUSSION What shapes our perceptions of our country? How do we shape other people’s perceptions? What is our role as disciples in this? If we apply the St Paul’s Lent theme of faithfulness to our country, what are we required to do?

(Bobby and Gillian Godsell, February 2016)