~ by Melvin Bray
In the previous edition:
Disheartened with apartheid in South Africa, a young man went to a remote area of his continent as a missionary seeking to bring the gospel to the people there. He had considerable success. However, in order to protect his small group of faithful believers from "evil" influences, he excluded both an Islamic trader and a traditional African medicine man from the community. His supervisor back home instructed him to find these two men, and listen to what they had to say.
Now read on . . .
The missionary sought to do as his supervisor instructed. It was not as difficult as he had imagined. Many in his parish knew exactly how to find both men. In fact, some in his congregation had been quietly practicing the devotions of Islam while learning to walk in the way of Jesus, and some had sought out the medicine man when they were sick. Through these parishioners, the missionary visited each man.
The missionary was surprised at the grace and generosity each man extended to him. He had not expected to be welcomed. He spent some 30 days with each and joined in celebrations and holy days as they came, listening and laughing, sharing meals and dreams. They spoke about the African continent and its challenges and exchanged many hopes. It was an intimacy he had thought impossible between those of such drastically different beliefs.
Upon his return to his African parishioners, the missionary began to share anew the story of the gospel in light of the things he had learned. When he spoke of the way of Jesus as “unavoidable forgiveness,” the people of his community saw this forgiveness being extended to the missionary by Nikondeha, the medicine man. When he spoke of being a peacemaker, the face of Abijar the trader, and the quarrel he had with the missionary which he had abandoned became their frame of reference. And the oft-forgotten sacraments of confession and humility became far more tangible in the life of the missionary himself, as he realized that there was no virtue in feigning certainty in his choices or long-held beliefs.
Notwithstanding, this was no longer enough for the South African Dutch missionary. He wanted more than just to better understand the things of God, like repentance, peacemaking, confession and humility. He wanted to live these truths the way Jesus had. He wanted, as he would later speak of it, to walk "in the way of Jesus"—a way of "others-interestedness"—to "seek first the kingdom of God and God's justice" in the earth, beginning with his beloved Africa. Yet he had no idea of how to make this happen.
He decided to share his questions with his two new friends. Trader Abijar immediately voiced his growing concern for orphans in territories in which he and his fellow merchants traveled. Many of them were compelled to run for their lives to avoid conscription and sexual assault. This prompted medicine man Nikondeha—whom the missionary learned to refer to by his appropriate title, "laibon," meaning "spiritual leader"—to propose that his people were known for their generous hearts. Why couldn't they be inspired to give these wandering orphans refuge? The missionary noted that if Abijar and his colleagues could smuggle the children into Maasai territory, with Nikondeha's people's nomadic tendencies, the children would be difficult to track. With Nikondeha and Abijar's help the missionary thought that they might even be able to convince the elders to modify the community's seasonal travel path in order to intersect more frequently with smuggling merchants. The wandering orphans that they would take in would be Enkai's (God's) new "cattle" that she had charged them to shepherd and keep.
And they did this and many other things together. Not the least of which involved the Maasai parish sending a delegation of Il-murran (warriors) to a neighboring territory to create protected space for peace talks between warring factions that Abijar, as a trusted third-party, was able to bring together. Creating such space for Africans to dream their way forward was something the missionary had been touting as the Western world's continuing responsibility to a formerly colonized Africa. It was Nikondeha's suggestion that, as followers of Enkai in the way of Jesus, his people had no excuse to wait for the West while more died. Thus, in this spirit, more and more people in and around Maasai ancestral territory journeyed with God: more orphans were given homes, more hungry were fed, more wells dug, more sick healed, more injustice removed, more peace waged and all the Christians in the South African Dutch missionary's small nomadic parish grew more committed and more in love with the way of Jesus.
In the midst of his many new endeavors, the missionary wrote to his supervisor:
I am beginning to believe that those who promote life and live goodness are all striving to get to the same place, we've just given different paths to take (with varying nomenclature, understandings and sensibilities), but we're all headed the same "way." Once we get there, I imagine that whatever misunderstandings, errors, oughts and hurts that remain will be satisfied, and the Truth will be unmistakable and irresistible. Thus, I was able to appreciate the faith walks of these two men as not in the least bit threatening to my own or threatening to the God who initiates all walks of faith. In addition, I now suspect that should we learn to walk in love for one another, there shall be far fewer confusions and misunderstandings for God to satisfy than there are now. Nonetheless, I am glad to report that this Sabbath I will be baptizing the first ten people who are dedicating their lives to “the way of Jesus” as practiced by our new kind of Christian community. Nikondeha and Abijar are coming as well, to celebrate and bless us all.
And in revising his memoir he included this passage that would have seemed so foreign or heretical to him just a few short years before:
People of faith change the world, and it is, I believe, for the good of the world that we discover the commonality inherent in our hopes, instead of living out of the disparity between them. If our religions remain sets of exclusive, immutable propositions, then of course they will exist in contradiction and conflict with one another. In such a climate, war seems inevitable. However, if religion is seen as our best attempts to embody God's dreams for humanity as partially as we may understand them, then it becomes easy to seek peace and justice for one another—together.
The kingdom of God is like unto a South African Dutch missionary who went deep into the bush to not only to reveal, but also to find God.
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