Nelson Mandela: Lessons for Adventists
INTRODUCTION
Some persons may have a problem with the title of today’s brief study. They may even wonder why I have chosen to weave my presentation from the life of somebody that some Christians regard as a man who is rumoured to have been associated with organisations or societies whose names I have chosen not to mention. Others may not have even shared Mandela’s vision of a free and democratic South Africa, while they were ready to enjoy the fruits that came out of his suffering and leadership as president of a country that is free of legislated racism and domination of one group by another.
THE FOUNDATIONAL PREMISE OF THIS BRIEF STUDY
Before we go into the substance of our subject, I need to articulate the conceptual framework within which today’s brief study has been imagined and fashioned. It is necessary that we place Mandela – despite his shortcomings – on the broad platform of God’s foreknowledge and justice for a fallen world. It is also necessary for us to submit the fact that before Jesus returns to this planet, it is not angels who will manage the affairs of this world but men and women, like you and me, who are the preferences of divinely-permitted political processes even though these processes may be less than ideal and fraught with unpleasantries of various kinds and consequence.
In his prelude to the interpretation of the dream that bothered King Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel presents a principled position on how God regards and interacts with human affairs in our world. In attributing to God his ability to expose the meaning of the dream, Daniel says,
“Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever; wisdom and power are his. He changes times and seasons: he sets up kings and deposes them. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning” (Dan. 2:20, 21 NIV
In her flagship text on true education, Ellen White (1903, 1952: 13, 14) posts the following perspective on the role of divinity in human development. She says,
“The world has had its great teachers, men of giant intellect and extensive research, men whose utterances have stimulated thought and opened to view vast fields of knowledge; and these men have been honored as guides and benefactors of their race; but there is One who stands higher than they. We can trace the line of the world’s teachers as far back as human records extend; but the Light was before them. As the moon and the stars of our solar system shine by the reflected light of the sun, so as far as their teaching is true, do the word’s great thinkers reflect the rays of the Sun of Righteousness. Every gleam of thought, every flash of the intellect, is from the Light of the world.”
I have not found a more profound and far-reaching statement in any other book I have read in my life. I am ready to tell you that this statement includes Mandela and many other icons of this world – in all fields of study and practice – some of whom are Adventists. This fact stands unassailable whether or not some of the ideas and actions of this world’s thought leaders and leaders of nations have been inconsistent with the principles of Scripture.
What am I saying? I am trying to say that moral goodness, social beneficence, the pursuit of justice and reconciliation are not human creations. They enter the human sphere from another realm. No virtues and principles of righteousness reside in the heart of humanity. They come from beyond the universe – where the Creator dwells, for He is the source and foundation of all that is good and just.
The virtues that Mandela has become known and famous for have no other source but God. We too can demonstrate them in our lives. The powerful disclaimer by Christ that without him we can do nothing (John 15:4), does not have a sell-by date. It is an eternal truth, and is as true today as it was when he declared it two thousand years ago.
Therefore, whatever arguments we may fly around to argue for this or that position about, for and/or against him, Mandela did not create the principles that have made him the bright star that has been shining over South Africa’s social landscape in our lifetime. He has simply been the channel, not the fountain of the difference between colonization and self-determination.
No person in his/her right mind can deny the fact that the absence of a bloodbath after the 1994 national elections in South Africa is the product of a process in which Mandela was one of the key role players. Thus, despite numerous challenges that face the emerging post-apartheid democracy, South Africa can comfortably be counted among countries that are politically stable. You and I can walk into this building every Saturday without the slightest fear that some civil authority will come here and question us about worshipping God on this day when the majority of the country’s citizenry worships on another day.
In addition to what we have just said, none of us can fully grasp the depth, breadth, height and richness of the intellectual maturity and spiritual transformation that took place in Mandela’s life as he sat in jail each day and night for almost three decades. Twenty-seven years is not twenty-seven days.
While Mandela goes into permanent silence in 2013, you and I might be closing this same year with lives severely compromised by failure and fractured human relations. Indeed, we should be frightened by the sobering possibility that in the next eighteen days we will be transferring the failures of 2013 to a new and innocent year.
A CRUCIAL QUESTION
As I viewed celebrations of and read articles on Mandela’s life this week, a question arose in my mind. Here is the question:
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Does God, the Creator God of the Bible, enjoy endorsing a person’s decision to be a Christian or a life lived in Christlike service to humanity? [Repeat]
As I meditated on this question, and while I read numerous articles about what and who Mandela was, I grew increasingly aware of my own limitations and failures. It dawned on me that many of us walk through life as half-beings or shadows, if not ghosts claiming to be real beings.
Mandela has admitted his limitations, failures and regrets, in a world in which millions of Christians walk with masks hiding pretence, false innocence and self-righteousness. You and I know that as we go to sleep each night, Paul’s heart-wrecking question barks at us: “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24, KJV).
You know as you sit here that you are harassed by your own inadequacies and failures. You sense that something has cracked in your life; that the screws are loose or lost. But you are not ready to face the humiliation that may accompany your admission of failure and imperfection.
We walk around with false heroism and vain victory, when we know that behind our ever-smiling faces and your diplomatic handshakes, we are souls in turmoil, in tatters and tears seeking relief but refusing to go to the well where the Saviour will uncover your real thirst and give us the authentic life we so desperately need.
We need to be told, before it is late, that this church or fellowship of which we are a part this day may not see the reality that we are; but the all-seeing Eye of the God of all comfort knows the wounds that are festering under behind the masks we wear.
It is time we stopped acting the ghost; acting the shadow. Life is real. It is not a television soapie.
You and I have a God-given privilege and opportunity to embrace the freedom that Christ bled for on the cross. He died so that we should no longer play shadow games with the devil; so that freedom from guilt should be our daily meal and joy. He ultimate truth, however, is that the worst form of oppression or captivity is not political, social or economic. The worst form of oppression or captivity is that which sin conditions us to embrace.
Mark the following:
1. Captivity has nothing to do with being illiterate, poor or unemployed.
2. Captivity has nothing to do with being born in a rural setting.
3. Captivity has nothing to do with being born into a particular racial or language group.
4. Captivity has nothing to do with being a male or female or in claiming that you are a “shemale”.
5. Captivity has nothing to do with being short or tall; big or thin, fat or lean.
6. Captivity has nothing to do with being too young or too old.
7. Captivity has nothing to do with physical disability.
8. Captivity has nothing to do with being a member of a despised or marginalized group lacking means to live a decent life.
9. Captivity has nothing to do with being a member of a national group that has claimed to be superior to other groups or associated itself with privilege and an affluent lifestyle.
10. Captivity has nothing to do with whether you live in a shack or in a four-roomed house in a township.
11. Captivity has nothing to do with the fact that you were underprivileged or abused at some time in your life.
12. Captivity, yes, captivity has something to do with your unwillingness to be greater and better than who you are.
13. Captivity has something to do with thinking that the world owes you something.
14. Captivity is refusing to eat and drink what is healthy and then complaining about a disease caused by what you eat and drink.
15. Captivity is refusing to embrace the greatness and righteousness of forgiveness over the vileness and depravity of perpetual anger and revenge.
16. Captivity is failing and refusing to do what is right and then blaming everybody else for the stressful consequences.
17. Captivity is our perennial unreadiness to be persons of an ever-maturing faith, a growing trust in God.
18. Captivity is the reluctance to love all humanity despite their differences in colour, hair type, language, culture or group disposition.
19. Captivity consists of refusing to exercise boundless forgiveness to those who wrong us even when they see no reason to say that they are sorry.
20. Failure is being missing in action when there is an urgent need and call for redemptive service to those who are less privileged than you.
21. Captivity consists of giving a testimony in church for some material blessing God has given to you because you are blind to the fact that you are blessed, not to testify, but to bless others. We are amused but not edified by your testimony; your blessing edifies us. You receive so that you may give, not so that we may report.
22. Captivity is the joy you derive in telling others how good God has been to you, when you are not willing to be good to other people.
23. Captivity is knowing that to be a master you should be a servant, but choosing to be served above others.
24. Captivity consists of thinking that what you have defines who you are when all you are is being a slave to what you have.
25. Captivity is knowing what you need but going for what you want.
26. Captivity is the suppression of principle by preference and the substitution of conscience with convenience.
27. Captivity is allowing the lower half of your body to direct the upper half of your body.
28. Captivity is failing to wait for the best things that last forever and hurrying to grab what brings pleasure in the passing moment and regret indefinitely thereafter.
29. Finally, captivity is to claim to be an Adventist and ignore what Christ describes as “the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy and faithfulness” (Matthew 23:23 NIV).
WE NEED FREEDOM FROM LACK OF COMMITMENT
Many of us have not and may never spend twenty-seven hours in an island prison; but we have consistently sat in the prison of sin, failure and pretense for many years. Is it not time to go free and drop our shackles on the ground? Freedom is not something we receive; it is something we embrace.
Many of us Adventists, born in this country or elsewhere, have consistently, consciously, cleverly refused and failed to do even the smallest positive thing that Mandela has accomplished for South Africa. We have done this with gross consistent self-contrary reasoning.
•We have claimed that it is not in our mandate to dabble in the affairs of this world, while we have devotedly submitted our children and youth to the same world to educate them. Is public education not part of the affairs of this world?
•We have claimed that it is not in our mandate to dabble in the affairs of this world, while we enjoy the fruits and blessings from the sweat of those who have dabbled in the affairs of this world.
•We have claimed that it is not in our mandate to dabble in the affairs of this world; but not only have we imbibed, we have also practised in our personal lives and denominational culture the same evils that those who dabble in the affairs of this world detest and fight against.
•We have claimed that it is not in our mandate to dabble in the affairs of this world, but we are failing to fulfill the very mandates that are germane to and consistent with Adventist mission. This failure goes against all the biblical injunctions, Ellen G. White statements and resources God has placed at our disposal.
•We have claimed that it is not in our mandate to dabble in the affairs of this world, but we often read the South African population through denominational spectacles instead of seeing people as creatures made in the image and after the likeness of God (Gen 1:26).
THE Imago Dei AND MISSION
It is time that each of us admitted that our intellectual orientation has been tarnished by anti-God doctrines that define and sometimes undermine people according to language, accent, place of origin, culture, pigmentation and rank.
We have become used to burying the biblical inclusive creaturehood of humanity under layers of human-created prejudices.
When Jesus announced his mission statement in Luke 4:18, 19, he was looking at God’s image in human beings. He identified himself with humanity, first on grounds of their divine creaturehood, and secondly on grounds of their emotional, spiritual and material conditions and needs as victims and carriers of the sin factor. Christ did not describe people in biological or anthropological terms. He always saw the image of God in humanity.
Listen to the content of his mission statement:
“The Spirit of the Lord [is] upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”
Christ described people as poor, brokenhearted, captives, blind and bruised, terms that are not found in the legislative texts of this world. In John 4, we read of an encounter between Jesus and a woman with an unfavourable moral reputation. Even while he knew that the woman was a Samaritan, he saw somebody who was essentially thirsty for something greater and more fulfilling than hydrogen oxide. There was nothing Samaritan in her thirst for water.
Christ never worries about whether or not people came from Soweto or Sandton, Zululand or Zimbabwe, Qunu or Quebec, KZN or Kenya. He is above all social or political descriptions we give to people who may not look, speak or behave like us.
Hear the voice of Ellen G. White on page 4 of The Ministry of Healing.
“The life of Christ established a religion in which there is no caste, a religion by which Jew and Gentile, free and bond are linked in a common brotherhood, equal before God. No question of policy influenced His movements. He made no difference between neighbors and strangers, friends and enemies. That which appealed to His heart was a soul thirsting for the waters of life.”
The same sentiments are expressed on page 820 of her book, The Desire of Ages.
THE NECESSITY OF NEW DREAMS
One of the lessons we should take from the man who lies ready for burial tomorrow is that it is wise for us as individuals and as a church to dream new dreams. It is wise and godly to dream of better things and of a better world. The Adventist Church in this country stands in need of leaders, at organisational and congregational levels, who will dream a new dream. We do not need leaders who have no dreams, but who find joy in replaying the nightmares of the past.
Some twenty-five years ago, I read an article by one of the leading lights in the Adventist community. Dr Gordon Bietz is currently the principal of Southern Adventist University in North America. Writing under the theme, “Dream or Die!” in the October 1984 edition of Adventist Ministry journal, and later in the Adventist Review of August 1, 1985, Bietz outlined some challenges the church was facing, noting also that the church was in need of a new dream. In the article, there was a statement that was written in bold type.
It read,
“There is not much to do but bury a church when the last of its dreams are dead. The Seventh-day Adventist Church stands today at a crossroads between the memories of the past and the dream of the future.”
All of us should sense the call and need to live anew in the spirit of a new dream; in the context of new possibilities, as we see the night begin fall on the history of this world.
We are also called to live in personal righteousness and good neighbourliness. In Hebrews 12:14 Paul tells advises us, “Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord” (NIV).
Surely, the following questions are worth our while:
1. In your own personal life, as an Adventist, have you treated other people with justice? Can it said of you, “Hamba kahle Tata”, or “Hamba kahle mama”, or “Hamba kahle Bhuti”, or “Hamba kahle Sisi?”
2. Have we, Adventists in South Africa, been known for justice and mercy?
Did we really need somebody from twenty-seven years of imprisonment to remind us that we are all children of the same Father and God and that we should treat one another as such?
3. Can we declare with clear consciences that our corporate structures, institutions and practices as a church exemplify justice, mercy and faithfulness?
4. What notions and perspectives do you personally hold about people in the church and in society who are different from you in racial classification, tribal association, language orientation, country or continent of origin?
5. Have you read or heard the following lines by Ellen White (Christ’s Object Lessons, page 69)? “Christ is waiting with longing desire for the manifestation of Himself in His church. When the character of Christ shall be perfectly reproduced in His people, then He will come to claim them as His own”
OUR OWN LONG WALK TO FREEDOM
This week South Africans were told that Mandela’s long walk to freedom has ended and that ours has just begun. In tandem with the mission statement of Jesus Christ, have we preached the Good News to the poor? I am not asking whether we have told them about the Sabbath, the sanctuary or the second coming or not? The poor have no need of theology for they are already engaging in a theological quest: Where is God when we suffer?
The poor are waiting for modern-day Good Samaritans who will look upon them with compassion while the Pharisees and Levites of this world pass by in a hurry to deliberate on whether or not there is a sanctuary in heaven, or debate whether or not women should be ordained as pastors.
During the Russian Revolution of 1917, while the country was in serious turmoil as people and some rulers died, bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church are reported to have held a conference to discuss, among other things, the following question: “What happens when a fly falls into holy water? Is the water defiled or is the fly sanctified?
1. Do you know that in this continent 10 000 (ten thousand) people die each day because of hunger?
2. Do you know that one of every three persons you meet in this world goes to bed without supper?
3. How often do you throw food into a dustbin?
4. Do we as a church ever think of inviting the poor to this building to worship and dine with us?
5. For whose benefit are our churches run and our buildings erected?
WHAT MINISTRY DO YOU HAVE FOR THE BROKENHEARTED?
1. When last did you allow somebody to cry on your shoulder?
2. Are your shoulders made of such precious material that nobody can find space there on which to cry?
3. How open is your heart to the cries of the brokenhearted?
4. Can somebody in this very church freely come to you and offload his/her sorrows without being booed or condemned? Worse still: What do you do with the cries of the brokenhearted who come to you – not for money, not for food and clothes – but for comfort and an ear that will listen? For in some instances it is not material help that people really need, but our time, or hugs and hearts that listen.
There may be no political oppression in South African today; but many persons, including some Adventists, are in bondage to habits of mind and body that have brought them lack of peace and freedom.
1. Where do you stand in relation to the use of tobacco, drugs and alcohol?
2. What about that urge for sex that has more often than not, even after praying, has kept dragging you down to a bottomless pit?
Is it not time for you this hour to give in to the Lord since you have consistently failed to give up on your own?
You cannot free others while you are a captive yourself. Late former General Conference President, Robert Pierson, once told a GC Session audience: “A sick church cannot heal a sick world.”
Many of us are addicted to attitudes, habits and “things” that make them conversion-resistant. They are ever in a state of perfect imperfection, with guilt hanging over our consciences like an albatross. You know as you sit here that you are about to step into 2014 with the same old stale and stinking chain of captivity.
There is much talk in this country about the state of public education. What makes us keep quiet about Christian education in the church?
Many of you may not know that the Trans-Orange Conference has lost and /or shut down fourteen schools in 50 years. Some of us have embraced a myth that the best private schools in the country are fitting substitutes for Adventist education. We expect our children to think and behave like Christians, but we commit them to institutions where Adventism is not an option to consider. The best forms of public or private education cannot be substitutes for proper Adventist education. We have spent time and resources applauding what government and other agencies do and have neglected our own Bible-mandated school system.
For how long will we live the lie about being spiritual Israel? I am not talking about the Adventist schools that we complain about. I am talking about the Adventist schools we wish to see.
One of the most powerful lessons we should learn from Mandela is that he did not wait for somebody else to fulfill his dreams. Some of us are afraid of acting our dreams for fear that we may be ridiculed if these dreams fail.
Addressing black people in her book, Black Man, you are bigger than the problem, South African Adventist professional coach, Minah Sindane-Bloem, says that in this world
“We can decide to focus on how unfair life has been to us and go into the grave without contributing anything to our fellow human beings. Alternatively, we can question why, out of all race groups, we bore the brunt of racial prejudice (and) analyse what actually happened and understand and acknowledge the negative impact racial prejudice had on us (and) unplug from using oppression as an excuse for every failure we get, and reprogramme our thinking to move ahead.”
Conclusion
The histories of nations do not always move forward because of the actions of majorities. One individual, filled with vision and zeal for what he can do to better the world, even against odds, can swing the course of history. The biblical Joseph saved a nation from starvation. Moses freed the Israelites from Egyptian slavery and led to the greatest exodus in history.
Joshua and Caleb adopted a minority position in the face of popular opinion. They led Israel into Canaan. Daniel rose to one of the highest posts of government in Babylon. Shadrack, Meshach and Abednego defied an absolute monarch and walked inside a fire that could not burn them. The young queen, Esther, broke rules of protocol. She went into a palace and saved her people from destruction.
With God on our side we too can be the change we desire to see in the church and in our country.
-pr thuli nkosi
Sermon preached in the Sandton and Kelvin
Seventh-day Adventist Churches, Johannesburg, South Africa
14 December 2014
