My time in Africa is teaching me that, in terms of work, I am as much preacher as anything else. And as I ply that trade, I find myself increasingly accountable to the words I utter in the midst of the congregation; I sense increasingly that God wants to re-enact the story of scripture in my own life. I experience this as a privilege and yet a fearful thing.
I have observed that, just after I am close to a breakthrough in communication, I receive an inexplicable "attack." The first one came last May.
I had just delivered a passionate teaching about servant-leadership in the Bible school. Specifically, I had called for pastors to share the load of ministry, not to hoard responsibility for the sake of glory. The model, of course, is Jesus, whose ministry lasted but three years in order that we might take it up through the power of his Holy Spirit.
The next day, resting in the confidence of a successful teaching even as the level of my having been drained tempered my joy, I heard a knock on our door. There stood one of our neighbors. His face was grim.
"I'm going to be straight with you, Joe. Did I see you teasing my dogs."
I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. But the depth of his consternation induced a deep guilt nonetheless.
As it turns out, my shock and earnest confusion quickly convinced him that he had not seen what he thought he had. The heaviness in his face gave way to the lightness of a smile. We exchanged polite conversation for the next two or three minutes even as my head continued to spin in the confusion of the original accusation.
After he left I came to a realization of what he might have seen. A few boys from the neighborhood had earlier asked to borrow our pump for their soccer ball. I walked up the lane by the neighbor's house, past the ever incessantly barking dogs, pump in hand to where some other boys were waiting with the ball. They pumped up their ball. I returned the same way pump in hand past the dogs. What the neighbor thought he saw was me teasing his dogs with a "stick" of sorts.
I decided to go to our neighbor and clarify that he had indeed probably seen me, that the stick was the ball pump, but that there was no intention of teasing the dogs; indeed I did not even know that it could have appeared that I may have been swinging the pump as I wandered down the lane. His heaviness returned. Yet he "assured" me that "I'll do what Jesus would do and forgive you." My clarification was now apology; I was guilty. But I would have to be content with the guilt/absolution equation worked out for me.
One line from the original encounter kept haunting me. "Teasing the dogs," was unacceptable because "I believe that we need to be the leaders of the country."
What in common had I with this man? Who together were "we"? And as opposed to whom were "we"?
I was being tested to confront in myself what I had just proclaimed to others. Was I to seize the mantle of leadership, perpetuating in the sphere of my own relationships, the status quo of privilege along lines of ethnicity, age, or gender? The words spoken by my neighbor held out this option.
Or was I to persist in the laborious task of convincing an historically disempowered people that it was they--and not simply those whom they had always viewed as masters (literally "boss")--whom God, in love, had entrusted the responsibility of leadership. The words of the One whom I call "Lord" hold out this.
Beneath the glare of the gospel, there are deficiences in the leadership models operative in the various divisions of South African society. As God holds my life accountable to the words I preach, may others be drawn to give their lives so that all may truly live.
-Joe
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