Month: September 2019

Weird Travel: The German Soldiers Commemorated in A Country Where They Committed a Genocide

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Swakopmund Marinedenkmal.jpgSwakopmund always feels a little odd, like a piece of Germany somehow teleported into Namibia’s remote and thinly populated Atlantic Coast. Even in that context, the presence of the Marinedenkmal in the centre of town feels utterly weird.

The statue memorialises the German marines who died in the suppression of the uprising of the Herero and Nama peoples in what was then German South West Africa in 1904-5. Although the plaque states that they “Mit Gott für Kaiser und Reich Kämpften” (fought with God for Kaiser and Empire), it is widely accepted that the German suppression of the rebellion was the 20th Century’s first major genocide. German troops killed not only indigenous fighters, but non-combatant men, women and children in intentional acts of collective punishment. Others were driven into the desert to die of thirst and exposure, or simply allowed to die of exhaustion. Survivors of the massacre were put into forced labour camps. Around 50% of Nama and 80% of Herero died in the revolt and the three years of collective punishment which followed.

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Sermon at Christ the King, Johannesburg, 8 September 2019

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Sermon Preached at Christ the King Anglican Church, Mondeor, Johannesburg (Diocese of Christ the King) on Sunday 8 September 2019 (Twelfth Sunday After Trinity)

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be my disciple”. (Lk 6.26)

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes even the most Bible-based of Christians encounter a passage of Scripture that offends much of what they take as given about the Christian faith. Often it is a saying of Jesus Christ Himself. When that happens, there are two natural reactions: one is to try to minimise the importance of that passage; the other is to try and rationalise away the obvious meaning of the words, to somehow force them to fit a more conventional understanding.

This morning’s Gospel reading contains just such a phrase, and I ask you to avoid either of those temptations, and to allow for the possibility that Jesus Christ will have known exactly how disturbing and uncomfortable these words will have been. They will have been disturbing to the devoted and strong families of both the Jewish and Roman Imperial cultures of his day. Beyond that local context, this passage is offensive and disturbing to people across the vast chasms that separate us from the world that Jesus Christ walked, for these words strike at the heart of the closest human relationships that are most treasured by people in every place and time. God can only have inspired these words as Holy Scripture knowing them to be offensive.

In early 21st Century Christianity, family values have come to be seen as being at the very heart of the faith. I do not for a moment wish to decry strong family values. Those of you who live in homes shaped by them are truly blessed – give thanks to God for your fortune and pray that he will guide you so that this will continue. But there is a strong warning here that we must not make an idol of our families and, indeed, that we must not make an idol of any of our preconceptions of what living as a Christian means. None of us can ever perfectly and completely understand the message of the Christian Gospel – that perfect knowledge belongs to God alone. We Christians are not perfect, and there is a great temptation to pick out the parts of Scripture that are comfortable for ourselves. It is a natural temptation to pretend that we already at least very close to what God wants us to be. Instead, cherish these difficult parts of Scripture, and allow God to provoke you out of your comfort zone, driving you forwards to become ever more like the people he has made you to become.

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