more from funerals

In my last post I chronicled the message of the preacher and some of the cultural dynamics at play in a funeral I attended recently.  Yet there are more insights I could share from such an experience.

1.  The event was actually a double-funeral.  The old man from the Bible School was buried alongside his twenty-something grandson. The deaths were said to be interrelated. The stress of hearing that his grandson had been stabbed to death by some of his gangster mates was too much for the old man.  Consequently, the other major dynamic at play in the preacher's message was the predicament of youth in modern South African culture.  This was not the first funeral we have attended for a young man who met a violent end; to my memory we have attended three other such funerals and have known of several other like incidents.  Youth violence among peers thus was the context for the preacher's admonition by way of the text not to look for Jesus "among one's relatives and friends".  "Friends may give you drugs," he said, referring to the known habit of the grandson to smoke dagga (marijuana) with his friends.

2.  The event also included a "tombstone unveiling" for a previously deceased member of the family.  Typically tombstone unveilings among the Xhosa are events separate from the burial of the dead, occurring perhaps a year or more later.  The tombstone unveiling on this day was quite literally an aside, performed in one corner of the large field where the funeral-goers were gathered for the burial, out of sight and earshot for many.  Still, I was able to get some explanation for the procedure.  The biblical justification for the tombstone unveiling was taken from Joshua 24:26-27, in which Joshua sets up a "large stone" as a witness against Israel should they forsake their pledge to "put away the gods that their ancestors served" and "serve the Lord" (24:14ff.).  Previously, I have seen church leaders base the practice on Genesis 35:20, in which Jacob "sets up a pillar" at the grave of his beloved Rachel, or 2 Samuel 18:18, in which Absalom sets up a pillar of remembrance prior to his own death because he had no son to do it for him.  What each of these texts has in common, it seems, is reference to a stone--and that in itself seemingly is enough to justify the practice of unveiling a stone for the dead in the name of being "biblical".

In my own cultural context for funerals, I don't ever recall the setting up of tombstones as something requiring special rationale; I suppose it is taken very much by the religious communities in which I grew up to be a stone of remembrance for the dead.  In the Xhosa context, however, it is clear that church leaders--if they have concerns that the event might be misconstrued by those attending--do feel pressure to explain the practice.  Thus, in this case, the attending bishop explained that "this is not a sin, we are not worshiping.  This is just a stone for remembrance."  He then proceeded by way of Joshua to locate the practice in the Bible, and also added the scriptural reference to Jesus Christ as the true "cornerstone."  I assume that the leader meant to guard against conceiving of the tombstone as a place where power could be conferred upon the dead person's living relatives, such as in the case of another pastor who once told the grandchildren at an unveiling for their grandfather that "now you have a place to come back to.  You can kneel here and be healed."  And so, while I still puzzle over how the stone of Israel's covenant with Yahweh is directly analogous to a stone of remembrance for a family's deceased, some rationale in the direction of memorial over magic is likely better than none.

3.  Xhosa funerals always include elaborate narratives from the person who most nearly attended or "nursed" the deceased in his or her last days or hours.  One of our students divulged to me that these narratives sometimes lend themselves to insinuating blame on others for the death of the person.  It has oft been noted that death in African traditional religion is not due to "natural causes"; there is a human agent of ill-will behind the death of a person.  Thus what in former times may have more commonly been ascribed to a witch (usually an old woman) plotting evil somewhere in the shadows (not that the days of fear of witchcraft have passed) has become in the present the fault of "some old woman who doesn't know how to drive" (my student's example), if the cause of death, for example, had been a car accident. The tendency to assign blame can easily drift into the call for vengeance (we found ourselves in the midst of such a situation at a funeral last year).  No such call was issued at this funeral, and the nearest blame for the death of the grandson was assigned to the grandson himself for not "listening to his parents"--a common complaint in the conflict between generations which deserves its own post.

Funerals are a treasure trove of cultural knowledge.  I am grateful to those African companions who enable me to reach some level of understanding.

-Joe

searching for Jesus

I had the privilege of hearing one of my students preach last Saturday at a funeral for another member of the Bible School.  I liked what he did with his chosen text, Luke 2:41-49.

The preacher fastened on two key lines in the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus' journey with his parents for the Passover in Jerusalem (2:41).  First, the preacher fixed on the fact that, when his parents departed Jerusalem after the festival not knowing that Jesus was not with them, "they started to look for him among their relatives and friends" (2:44).  Second, the preacher emphasized the "anxiety" of the parents when they could not find Jesus; "Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety", his mother says to Jesus after they have found him in the temple (2:48, 46).  The preacher's point was that, in his words, "Life is very painful outside of Jesus", and that the pain of life without Jesus cannot be quelled even among one's relatives and friends.  Rather, the deliverance from the anguish of life comes only in the persistent "search" for Jesus, just as his parents continued to look for him when he was not to be found in the company of their relatives and friends (2:44, 45).  It was only in that persistent search that they "found him" (2:46).

Jesus Among the Teachers, from the Jesus Mafa Collection

The implications of such a message were not lost on the preacher's Xhosa audience, which hung on his every word, many among them encouraging him on with whoops and hollers.  I suspect that the impact of the sermon, the preacher's gospel meeting the people's context, had a lot to do with the continuing tension between loyalty to one's blood family (the text's "relatives and friends") and allegiance to Jesus.  True believers often find themselves having to choose between participating in family rituals that invoke spirits other than or alongside Jesus or hold their ground in the name of an exclusive loyalty to Jesus.  Many Xhosa Christians have found the satisfaction of life with Jesus in a way that was unavailable to them in the traditions of their elders.  The overall persona of the preacher as he spoke about life "outside of Jesus" exhibited an intensity seemingly impossible for one in whom the struggle to honor Jesus above relatives is not real.

Other elements in the proceedings also attested the side-by-side existence of Christian and non-Christian approaches to the challenges of life among those gathered.  Hence, while Christianity and/or the culture of the church has in important senses clearly won the day in this society, one family member of the deceased who made an announcement near the close of the funeral had no compunction about saying that, with the spate of death that had befallen that family recently, he would recommend that they go consult a sangoma (traditional diviner) for a remedy.  This announcement came--and I don't think with any confrontation intended--even after the preacher's clear counsel that Jesus is the answer to life's questions.

Perhaps we can only say that, given the spiritual competitors still vying for our loyalty in this world, our search for Jesus goes on.  Where can he be found?

In details not particularly emphasized by the preacher, Luke's story of the boy Jesus leaves us not without direction.  Indeed, those who were searching for him found him "in the temple", in Jesus' own words, "in my Father's house", "sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions" (2:46, 49).  It is noted that Luke's writings (the gospel and the book of Acts) are perhaps more favorably disposed toward the temple than those of the other evangelists.  Indeed, his gospel ends with the disciples of the ascended Jesus in Jerusalem, "continually in the temple blessing God" (Lk 24:53).  Similarly, the Pentecost community (see previous post) "spent much time together in the temple" (Acts 2:46).  Nevertheless, Luke also records Jesus' pronouncement of judgment against the temple in response to the disciples' adoration of it, and is thereby consistent with the united witness of the New Testament that in Jesus the Messiah, "something greater than the temple is here" (Mt 12:6; Lk 21:5-6).  In the end, the New Testament, both gospel and epistle, relativized place of worship in light of a people which worships "in spirit and truth" (Jn 4:24).  The community of Christ, the church, is the temple, "the dwelling place for God" (Eph 2:20-22; 1 Pet 2:4-5).

It is in that context, therefore, that we might, like his parents, find Jesus "in the temple" (2:46).  Indeed, he is there, "sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions" (2:46).  He is with us, sitting among us and asking us questions, wherever "two or three are gathered in his name", around the story of which he is Lord (Mt 18:20).

-Joe  

the baptized life

Over the weekend I taught on the subject of ecclesiology, the theology of the church, at Bethany Bible School.

I studied and selected several texts for the lesson, one of which was Acts 2:41-47.

Acts 2:41-47 is framed by two statements which speak of people being "added" to the number of the apostles.  First, after Peter's Pentecost Day sermon, about "three thousand people were added" (2:41). Finally, after descriptions of the early life of the apostolic community, the text states that "the Lord added day by day to them those who were being saved" (2:47).  These parallel statements about "addition" also invite comparison between those who were being added.  In the first instance, those who were added were those who "welcomed [Peter's] word and were baptized" (2:41).  In the second place, those who were added were those who were "being saved."  The text begins with addition through baptism and ends with addition by salvation.  One wonders, therefore, how baptism and salvation are related.  

A possible explanation of the connection between baptism and salvation may be found in the description that falls between the bookends of verses 41 and 47.  Verses 42-46 are exclusively about what happened to those who were baptized, those who, like others after them, "were being saved."  After being added upon baptism, the text states that they "continued in the apostles' teaching, the breaking of bread and fellowship, and the prayers" (2:42).  These activities find an echo later in the description that they "broke bread from house to house", the centerpiece of a life of daily worship in the temple, "sharing food with glad and generous hearts, praising God, and having the goodwill of the people" (2:46-47).  Between these parallel descriptions are two other statements which each feature a couplet--the first "wonders and signs" (2:43) and the second "possessions and goods" (2:45).  The first statement says simply that "many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles" while the second specifically enumerates the activities of the early church: "they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need."  The structural parallelism in the text invites the reader to consider whether the "wonders and signs" of the apostles were not in fact the "possessions and goods" which they sold to meet human need.  Finally, in between all of these statements is the summary of the apostolic community: "All who believed were together and had all things in common" (2:44).  Everything else in the text is an illustration of this basic apostolic unity.

It is equally true, of course, that the central unity of the church in the text, around which everything else gathers, is itself the product of the distinct practices in the text which surround that center.  The unity of the church was forged by those who were baptized being devoted to "the apostles' teaching, the breaking of bread, fellowship, and the prayers."  Unity was forged by generosity and mutual aid, the fulfilling of human need.  Those who welcomed Peter's word about Jesus "continued" in that word, in word and deed.  It is that continuity with the message and ministry of Jesus that enabled those were baptized to become truly a church--a community devoted to one another under Christ in service to the world.  And it is those who continue in the baptized life to which the text points who are "being saved."

-Joe