Sunday 29 August: Anglican Worship African Style

The opportunity preach and preside at the Cathedral in Ikageng this morning was every bit as memorable as I’d hoped it might be.

I have never before, I think, been the only white face in a worshiping community, as I was this morning. Once, in the mid-1980s, Cathy and I attended the New Testament Chuch of God in Handsworth, Birmingham, as the only two white faces. But this morning I was alone. Yet I felt utterly embraced in warm affection. I do hope that a solitary black stranger at worship in Lichfield Cathedral would feel equally welcome. It was also, just by the way, the first time I've worn one of those headset style 'Madonna mics'. Never a good look on a preacher in my opinion, and certainly not designed for shaven-headed types, I feel.

The African sense of time is well known, and this morning was full of illustrations. Like a dutiful westerner, I was all set and good to go at about 6.50, for the half hour drive from Klerksdorp, where Bishop Stephen and his family live, to Ikageng. In fact it was 7.10 before we got away, and even then we had to make a detour to drop off one of the children at another church. We arrived at 7.50, for a service which was due to start at 8, but which of course did not. Some singing started then. But I was left to sit in the vestry until I was called, which was at almost 8.15. Nobody minded of course. The service began when everyone and everything was ready, and what’s 15 minutes here or there? I might try applying that view to Choral Evensong at home one day and see how it goes down…

Bishop Stephen had briefed me last night about what I could expect and he lent me a Prayer Book of the Anglican Church of South Africa so that I could prepare. I wrote my sermon in the evening last night, and was relieved that it seemed to come together well. The lectionary in use here is the same as the one we use at home, of course, which helped; and it meant something to me that the same bible readings would be used in the Cathedrals of both Ikageng and Lichfield today.

I had been forewarned that the Diocese of Matlosane is ‘high church’ Anglican. So I wasn’t at all surprised that the first thing I was asked to do was ‘cense’ (ie, waft incense around) the Holy Table. It was a service of Holy Communion (or a ‘Eucharist’). There is usually a choir, but its members were all away today at a festival somewhere. But you’d still have to call the service a ‘Sung Eucharist’, given the prominence and exuberance of the congregational singing. I suppose there were about 400 people in church. It was a hybrid occasion: when I spoke it was (with the exception of two carefully rehearsed phrases) in English; when anybody else spoke it was in the local indigenous language of Setswana. So at the start of the service, for example, I greeted the congregation with the words ‘The Lord be with you’, and they replied ‘And also with you’ – in Setswana. Or a little later, the people said their confession in Setswana and I pronounced the absolution in English!

By the grace of God, I think I pitched the sermon about right. I wanted to convey greetings from Lichfield and to say something about Chad (the saint, I mean, rather than the African country) and our history, and something about my impressions of my visit. But I was determined also to try to say something about our Gospel reading. I had the impression people were engaged – they even laughed at the places where I intended that they might! I was speaking with an interpreter, which is a bit of an art. It wasn’t quite a new experience – when I visited the Dioceses of West Malaysia, Kuching and Sabah in 2008 I spoke to Malay, Iban and Chinese congregations in that way. But I’m not very used to it, and once or twice the interpreter and I stumbled over each other as it were: either I spoke on while he was still translating, or we both fell silent. But it was fine.

Presiding was a bit dicey. I wasn’t always sure what was coming next and what was expected of me, and how far the slight sense of chaos at one or two points was my doing, or was perfectly normal. I had a helpful server to keep me straight, but once or twice he dug me in the ribs as if to remind me what to do next, and I couldn’t see what that next thing might be! But we got there without too much unwanted drama, carried along by an enthusiasm in singing that I’d gladly bottle and take home with me if I could. The idea that the service might last 3 hours proved to be an exaggeration. We were done in two and a half hours. Though, of course, if the choir had been absent not only would the administration of communion have taken longer, but the singing would no doubt have done so too…

Afterwards there was much talk about the general strike. Things seem to be developing in ways that are extremely serious. Teachers and hospital workers have been on strike for two weeks now, which has resulted in school closures at just the time when high school students are approaching the equivalents of GCSEs and A levels – their ‘mocks’ were cancelled last week. And in hospitals, even emergency services have been cut and patients are dying. Now it emerges that the police are joining the strike next week, as well as local government workers. From Monday there will be no refuse collection either. The largest union in the country has threatened to make the nation ungovernable, and people in church (including a police officer I spoke to) seemed certain that they would implement their threat. It’s already a national crisis and there’s a growing sense that South Africa could descend into chaos in the coming days. Certainly among the township congregation, it was clear that sympathy is entirely with the strikers and not with the government. Promises were made in 2005, which should have been implemented apparently in 2007, but were put off until after the World Cup. Now the government is saying it can’t afford to keep the promises it made and the unions are saying, ‘We waited three years in good faith. Now its time for you to deliver’. The mood was pretty dark over coffee, but there was also a sense that the government will have to bend in the next two or three days. I do hope a resolution can quickly be reached… it’s the sort of country in which I could imagine that order might be hard to restore if it is lost.

Bishop Stephen is out in the garden at present, making the South African equivalent of a BBQ (a braai). Then we’re due for an early night. We going to get up at 3am tomorrow (yes, 3am) to drive to a game reserve at Pilanersberg. I’m looking forward to it.