the passion - to see or not to see

Passover 2006 equates to my memories of the New Year’s Eve of 1999―it will always remain in a class of its own. Watching Mr. Gibson’s The Passion after experiencing my first Jewish Seder lead by a family of Messianic believers dramatically affected my perspective on the events portrayed in this film.

I have never eaten horseradish in my life before, not to mention straight up on a tiny piece of Matzos. I had tears running down my face before tasting the bitter herbs just at the thought of how God instituted this unique menu in the time of Moses with the purpose of revealing Himself to us. Like a mom giving her little girl her first doll to “play” with―on the surface it seems insignificant, but on a deeper level she intentionally prepares her daughter for an important purpose later in life. The mother steps out in faith from her perspective, based on several assumptions that she will have no control over; will she grow up to see the age of puberty and adulthood, will she find a husband who chooses her to become his bride, will God grant them the gift of children?

As I switched on the DVD I braced my heart to look upon the most significant event in humankind, still lost upon most of God’s chosen people living in the Holy City today.

Hearing Christ pray ancient Psalms written by His human predecessor, David, in vulnerable cries to His Almighty Father under the full moon, my thoughts raced back two thousand years from that point in time to the moment when God called Abram from his moon-worshipping culture to become the first Jew. How sad Jesus must have felt there in the garden to see the suffering ahead for the Jews who would not understand His sacrifice and consequent salvation. Why does He allow some to see and some not, I wondered. When He wakes his disciples for the second time, they don’t get it either. They respond in human logic at His arrest and think that swords will solve this misunderstanding and preserve Jesus for his destiny to free them from Rome’s oppression.

I found two motives repeating in my mind throughout watching this film; Christ’s human submission to human abuse despite His divine dominion over all creation and the irony that the least likely human souls who began to understand His true identity were gentiles who knew nothing about the Passover Lamb but still Jesus treats the misguided Jews involved with loving forgiveness.

Some of the moments that I recall the best are these:
● When Judas and the mob shows up and asks Jesus to identify Himself, he answers before Judas points Him out, almost as if He wants to protect His betrayer from committing that sin.
● When Peter cuts off the ear of the Sanhedrin’s soldier, I see Jesus rebuking His own disciple for wanting to interfere with God’s plan for His life and responds with gentle love to the frightened man who listened to the wrong religious leadership.
● The inquisition before the Sanhedrin tore my heart apart as I thought of how easily we judge the disbelief of Judaism today. When the most educated scholars of the Law and the Prophets asked Jesus if he was the Son of God and He responds with the same Name that Moses spoke to the Pharaoh―I AM―the Sanhedrin tore their robes as a sign of obedience to their understanding of what Yahweh expected from them when somebody blasphemed His precious Name.

At that moment I was sobbing over every Jewish man and woman on this planet who did not recognize Yeshua as the Meshiach. I still don’t understand why God showed me-a selfish nobody-the grace of seeing who He is. I still don’t know what I can say or do or pray that might reveal the God of Israel to Israel today. “Lord, have mercy on Your people! Use me!”

Watching the Roman soldiers rip Christ’s human body apart I felt the Spirit touching my own in a gentle reminder that I do exactly the same through the words I speak and write. When this torture ends periodically, these men who were given life through the Word of His drags Jesus' limp body across the white marble paving, smearing His blood like a brush stroke before the dirty sandals of the feet He came down from heaven to wash.

I remembered the drops of wine against the white of my plate next to the striped and pierced matzos. With my pinky finger, I lifted out dark red drops resembling the plagues of Egypt from my cup during the Seder. Every harmful word I have spoken or written in my life and every one I will after this moment lay splattered on the stone of that courtyard two thousand years ago.

love

architecture

people

animals

colour

light

water

I want to serve those who serve

Have you ever considered volunteering with a relief agency that serves in places where human need is so bad that everybody is just trying to keep those people groups alive to begin with?

Imagine joining a team of non-religious doctors, mechanics and councilors who need your testimony and Christ-driven encouragement to sustain a feeding program in a refugee camp in Uganda, or counsel a thirteen year-old prostitute dying of AIDS after a failed abortion necessary while she tries to earn enough money to feed her younger siblings after losing their parents to landmines or genocide.

I don’t want to be a missionary.

Working on my main project for one of my classes here at DTS, I have done three month’s worth of research on the current reality in Africa’s refugee camps, the statistics of health-related epidemics and the inter-connectedness between political unrest, violence against women, and the blood-diamond-trade paying for small arms that (stolen and enslaved) child-soldiers use. “What are Christians doing about this?” I wondered.

I studied at a secular university for seven years. Today the Christians who have the most fruit hanging on their trees planted among corporate business decisions and political reform were not the tokkelokke (nickname for theology majors who always had to wear ties to classes) but the guys doing medicine (most of them took up smoking to get the smell of formalin off their fingers), counseling (some of them also spending time in the dark valleys of depression) and the engineers (either the wild party-animals who liked extreme sports or the socially evasive ones who never left their desks).

The athletic physiotherapists who invested long hours helping African kids who had never walked properly because their moms carried them on their backs since birth and their hips never recovered or their insufficient diets prevented them from developing completely. The aspiring teachers who sat under trees in the dust to encourage exhausted nurses from a mobile clinic that had to send patients back untreated every time.

Dr. Pocock requested a response paper to our annual World Evangelization Conference and the only vivid response that rang in my mind was: I don’t want to be a missionary!

I have no personal desire to preach and the idea of handing out tracts to strangers and never seeing them again does not appeal to me either. I have endless hang-ups with the stereotype of how a “missionary” is supposedly different from any regular Christian. I avoid recruiting agents from mission agencies who try to psyche me up with opportunities to manipulate Christ’s return by reaching x numbers of people groups somewhere in the jungle or 10/40 window. When I find myself forced to hear sincerely missionaries speak and still leave with the impression that missionaries are the only faithful Christians obeying the Great Commandment, I cringe.

Who are we (yes, I do consider myself a sent-one into foreign cultures) to proclaim that we know the only solutions to stop the world’s sickness, violence, and immorality? Where are the mission agencies at WEC-week who support our incarnations to reach prostitutes or drug-lords in our own suburbs? Who teaches the new languages of post-modern executives stuck in the chains of first-world economies?

Maybe my skin color (white) and citizenship (South African) contributed to an early disillusionment with this coveted ministry description when I ventured as a teenager into poor black settlements during the Apartheid years giving away Bibles in their local dialect.

After everybody (whether they could read it or not) had received their free copy, basic explanations about who Jesus is were often interrupted by someone’s wheezing cough from TB lungs or an urgent request for a new borehole with a water pump to replace the dangerous well in which a toddler almost drowned again last week. Granted, our outreach usually included shared meals, gifts of books, clothes and pens for the kids going to school but we paid taxes and voted for government officials to deal with the long-term needs of these grateful souls or the hopelessness of their unemployment.

Please hear my heart on this: nothing is worth anything in life without knowing Christ.

While reading the DTS statement of purpose during spring break I found myself asking the next question: if training those of us who choose to remain in our professions (outside the church?) is considered a secondary purpose to those who plan to do vocational ministry (inside the church?), are there other DTS students with specific passions, gifts and perhaps even professional qualifications who also feel suffocated by the prescriptions of many mission agencies about who draws the boundaries concerning Christian involvement as appropriate, or not?

I want to serve those who serve; by working alongside non-institutionalized teams of relief-workers albeit feeding displaced Israelis or distributing medicine to Palestinian patients, or drawing Christ’s parables with my finger in the red African dirt to entertain forgotten orphans dying of malaria.

Perhaps these affiliations forfeits any chance to recount my good works before financial committees and apply for tax-deductible donations, God owns all the cows on all the hills in every capitol on this planet.

I want to share the Truth behind my eternal source of hope who helps me love even machete-bearing mercenaries and zealous car-bombers.

pretty dirty feet

There’s a story in the Bible, in John’s gospel around chapter 9 of a blind man who had trouble seeing life for what it really was. He begged Jesus to heal his eyes. God restored his sight and everybody in the region knew that a miracle had occurred. The educated, high society of the day had many explanations. These skeptics argued that his disability was the just consequence of his parents and/or his own sins. Jesus disagreed. When asked to defend the reason for this poor man’s suffering, humiliation and pain during all of his life, the God-man responded: “No, it was allowed into his life for the sake of God’s glory…”

On the last Sunday before I left South Africa, this passage was branded upon my soul. It defined the unspoken question confronting me as an African leaving for a foreign land in search of greater understanding.

Is Africa poor, hungry and left desolate to suffer alone because of her own sins or those perpetrated by her colonial parents?

I believe Jesus’ reply would be the same: “No, but that the glorious power of the Living God might be revealed to all the earth.”

How will I respond to this challenge?

May each day of my life tell His story of sacrificial love. May I never cease to inspire every mortal He sends across my path to put their trust in Him. May I grow in skillfulness and influence to mobilize more souls as part of His supernatural solution to the need of Africa!

being an alien in Texas ain't for sissies

This is the first year in which I’ve had the privilege of seeing winter set in TWICE! It’s only Fall according to the locals, who’re still walking around in short sleeves (mostly migrants from the North) while I have already reached the limit on polar items in my wardrobe. Stuck in bed with a Texas-size cold, I’ve time to ponder life in America again…

11.5.2004, Friday : sick but warm with all of life’s luxuries

Toast with apricot jam and Earl Grey tea… Just over four years ago, I emigrated for the 2^nd time into uncharted territory. I took all my belongings that could fit into “Wittes” (white one) my ’62 Series II Land Rover and settled in a magical land of endless horizons where I discovered freedom in simplicity. Living in a rugged desert country the size of Texas with only 1,6 million individuals to crowd one’s space brought the assumption of having drinkable water, immediate electricity and shelter into a new light.

In Namibia, I decided that toast is the ultimate artifact of the civilized world.

In order to enjoy a slice of warm toast with butter and apricot jam the following blessings are implied : I have enough means to have bread, I am living in a dwelling with connected electricity, I own a toaster or any other sophisticated appliance to grill my piece of bread. Adding the excess of putting butter and jam, implies that I have some means of keeping my butter cold and the added lavishness of a good rainy season protected from pests for my apricots to be edible and the time to make jam. Making tea in the bush is less problematic, but still, it relies on a few critical parameters that are not a given to my fellow Africans.

So…let me raise my mug and celebrate another splendid day of basking in my Father’s sufficiency! A toast to Thomas Edison, to Tannie (auntie) Rita Rautenbach, a lady on a farm in Mpumalanga (where the sun comes from – in Zulu) who could make the best apricot jam in all of Africa and the clever people working at Zicam LLC Phoenix in Arizona, for making this funky “in your nose” medicine that enables some of my taste buds to participate in this grand occasion! To ya’all!!

11.3.2004, Wednesday : long lives the president (again)

“DRUG FACTS : When using this product – drowsiness may occur….excitability may occur..” How can this be true in both cases? Am I drowsy or am I excited? My eyes avoid the prescribed text books as I reach for the sponsored toilet roll on the floor where a small colony of used white bundles are resembling what I suspect snow could look like. Amidst (not too unpleasant side effects of my Tylenol Cold) my theory is proven again : Americans must have a genetic resistance to this stuff induced by many years of use. If they knew how potent it is on an unsuspecting central nervous system I might be required to sign an agreement not to use medication containing Acetaminophen while I’m a studying representative of this seminary.

11.2.2004, Tuesday : election week seen from the southern hemisphere

“Do you know who’s boss yet?” asks my dad in his good night email before I get into bed.

Will this man be God’s instrument in the AIDS crisis of my continent? Will his voice remain silent about our neighbor’s insane dictatorship that is preventing placement of the last peaceful puzzle piece in Southern Africa? Being the boss isn’t easy, but somebody’s got to do it…

9.29.2004, Sunday : Mormons under cover

Still shopping for a local congregation, one of my 3^rd floor neighbors and her visitor from Austin offered me a lift today. Getting lost has become a given on our journeys about town, as neither of us have ever lived here before. We finally found the friendly building and received a warm welcome at the door.

Assuming that my neighbor and her friend was married, the lady made a comment implying different sermon, Sunday school and seating possibilities for the various visitors. Simplifying all the choices the Austin man responded “They’re both my wives, we’re Mormons”….she remained hospitable after a shocked silence and invited us both to their next women’s retreat. I loved the place and the people but it’s to far away…

9.2.2004, Wednesday : online shopping for idiots

After spending four weeks investigating the different options in laptop computers, I have decided that I have to put an end to this non-stop argument in my mind : Mac vs. PC, PC vs. Mac…all the fancy functions plus the software for making movies at twice the price for six years or half the price for all the fancy functions with the software to edit videos at half the price for four years.

The final verdict is as follows : PC, HP (no support for Dell back home) ASAP!!

I stumble into the basement where my AV hero works. He knows how to do all sorts of clever tricks with a computer and has been the patient soundboard of endless technical enquiries. Today I shall spend the most money on a single item ever!

He confidently waits for the telephone sales operator somewhere on this continent to complete all the necessary details. My palms sweat and I want to cry for not being able to do this on my own. I am trusting a stranger who is speaking to another stranger to get my thousands from a strange bank in order to have a piece of equipment I don’t know how to work, with a plug that will never fit in the wall sockets back home!

9.20.2004, Monday : farewell to the men with their green meal trays

I have been the happy employee at the cafeteria for more than a month. Since school started, and real life dawned plus reading requirements, assignments due and trying to learn Greek from scratch, my RAM has been exposed to unmanageable levels of intensity! Thus, I am terribly sad to say, that I resigned today.

No more fashion-statements in my hairnet, no more sauna sessions in the kitchen with my cooking colleagues, no more last minute chance of orders to the ever popular and safe but boring choice of “grilled chicken sandwich” with some curly fries on the side to my friendly customers after a long, hungry afternoon.

What memories do I take with me from this lavish career in the catering ministry? You get apple-stick-lovers, adamant veggie-sticks-lovers, undecided eaters that couldn’t be bothered by either seasoned or unseasoned sides, the explosive sports channel watching crowd who always go for the whole spectrum of prepared beans and hot tortillas, with appetites the likes I have never seen before!

10.8.2004, Friday, : chamomile tea amidst geraniums at midnight

A kind group of warm hearted Americans invited me to join a social sacrament where authentic hospitality leaves a sweet scent everywhere you go. Pizza’s and Friday nights seem to go together in most households here and this one gave me my very first taste.

I was staring at the star studded night sky with some American girlfriends on the hammock. We were completely carefree for a few hours. Talking nonsense and pretending to be back in our own home back yards, wherever “home” was for each of us. Hearing the dog muffle for attention and the screen door open to get orders for the after-meal tea and coffee. The candle lights were beginning to flicker more rapidly as a soft breeze picked up. Kind hands offer a lovely big mug, prepared just for me and served with the love and dearness of a father. For a brief evening I was feeling safe at home…content.

10.9.2004, Saturday : lovers and friends, bubbles and chocolate

My first American wedding! What a rush…a whole mass of classy black dresses and suits lined up in front with three little angels slanting down like organ pipes in white. A proud dad and teary mom, a grinning groom and a peaceful bride with her Spanish eyes locked onto her man, staring dreamily and floating through the ceremony. I sat next to the two grandmothers of the party, ancient, wrinkled and powdered. Both of them wearing screaming pink and lime green somewhere in their sophisticated silk scarves and Jackie O outfits…what a treat!

The reception was at the top of a very tall building with bright orange fall colors sprinkled over the tables. Even the bathrooms had a view over the entire city, like the dining room in three directions. The room buzzed as the couple entered and I stood in awe at yet another miracle completed before my eyes. Two human beings chosen from different corners of the world, being friends for years and one day seeing each other for the first time. I cried and I smiled as Sting sang his beautiful song : I must have loved you…

10.14.2004, Thursday : drumming black America all the way to Africa!

The pastor and his wife at my local church are great “normal” people, in the sense that their heaven centeredness do not disable their earthly use to God. They invited me to join them for a performance of the first female troupe of djembe drummers all the way from Guinea in West Africa. At the last minute, it became clear that the pastor and his wife would not be able to go and I tried frantically to get two other culture vultures to come along. Everybody seemed very busy and I was beginning to wonder why I thought I was available to go in the first place…what homework was I not aware off!!

Well, the show was incredible! We were about twenty white people in the packed audience and everybody was clapping and dancing at the end. I felt like I was back in the dust covered markets where live chickens and goats wander among the merchant stalls. The musicians’ bright costumes shone like textile turquoise with tiny shells and beads dancing at the ends of their cords to the rhythm of ancient ancestors. I was missing my black brothers and sisters…but proud to be an original from the precious reputation of drums and dance they’ve given to Africa.

10.15.2004, Friday : my first Halloween

Pumpkins everywhere and straw stuffed scare-crows guarding front doors along the hallways of our apartment complex. Halloween masks and costumes crowd the stores and I still can not believe that people actually want to have their front lawn look like an unearthed graveyard with skeletons emerging from below…what exactly is the point? Our Fall Fest at school presented a more digestible flavor of celebrations…providing endless amounts of food, drinks and entertainment for old and new. I sent an unexpecting baby boy crying hysterically when I unknowingly put my dark glasses on while making smiley faces at him. Oops…

10.29.2004, Friday : home alone

I was sad today. Yesterday was my brother’s birthday. Had he been on earth, he would have turned 28, but he’s been in a state of glory for fourteen years. As a family, my parents and I always go out for dinner on his birthday, celebrating the guy he was. We speculate about how he’s worshiping in heaven and smile about how close we feel to him in certain places where we used to spend time together. Mostly we recall how faithful the Triune God’s been in the remainder of our earth years together, affirming our faith to each other and remind ourselves not to hold back any expression of love and appreciation to anybody, not being certain that all of us might be around to do it later.

Two wet loads of clean laundry lies in anticipation beside the couch and I’ve just been invited for an ad-hoc ladies night up stairs with my two pregnant girlfriends…decisions, decisions!

- White Chocolate -

a moment in the life on an legal alien

29 July 2004, passenger plane entering, New York, JFK
“ …please ensure that your seats are in the upright position and…”
I am offered my last taste of biltong (dried raw meat) by one of four young guys in the middle seats to my right as they try to stuff down a month’s supply of a traditional snack before reaching this port of entry, forbidding any perishable foods from foreign countries.

1 August 2004, Sunday! What does a church look like in North America?
I pull the dark green towel over my face in an attempt to filter out the day-and-night light and droning of yellow cabs crawling along the Avenue of the Americans, The Village, Manhattan. So this is what jet lag is like: feeling brain-dead when the sun-shines outside and getting a head-ache as soon as your nose hits the sticky humidity outside the freezing air-conditioned buildings.

2 August 2004, my 1st Starbucks coffee under code orange
With gratitude for waking up after my first experience of a Korean diner with my hosts, I inspect the collateral damage inflicted upon my winter-white skin by the local colony of mosquitoes. Hmm, the locals appear addicted to my applied Peaceful Sleep (indigenous insect repellant). Two more days of surviving the city with its dirty sidewalks where fellow pedestrians don’t look you in the eye. I still do not understanding why I am supposed to go downstairs, across the road and then pay someone else to get me my first cup of tea for the day. Don’t Americans use electrical kettles at home?

3 August 2004, in transition…with the entire Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir!
Flying over suburban Chicago, I am relieved to see some “natural” vegetation again. Upon arrival I am frantically sent from one point of a very large U-shaped building to the other. The load of my earthly treasures are protesting against my shoulder blades as I consume three open chairs waiting to board a plane to Texas. Everybody seems to be chewing gum. I am dizzy and tired. On board I’m seated besides a thirteen year old boy all dressed in pink. He’s on his way home after visiting with his dad for the holiday. The practical jokes end as the movie screens fold back before descending into Dallas.

…still 3 August 2004, waiting for the shuttle with a soldier from Arkansas
Recognizing the Beach Boys in the air outside the terminal makes me feel welcomed into the South. My heart is sad as I wave to this young father as he takes a mournful drag from his cigarette. It is a sunny Tuesday afternoon, as he leaves for another desert country. I like the heat and openness down here. I would never have survived the winters had I decided to go to Moody!!

4 August 2004, landing on planet DTS…
“…Huston, this is Tranquility…”
I must be early. There’s nobody else to be seen outside.
Student services are amazing and I am ushered into the smartest dwelling I’ve ever been privileged to live in. I’ll be sleeping on the floor and eating out of a mug, but I feel like the Queen nevertheless. The living area looks out upon a pool ,shimmering in peace before the on-slaught of bopping babies, tired mothers and tanned girls.

17 August 2004, boot camp : immigration laws, identity theft & free wallets
The annual gathering of American visa holders for Fall 2004 is now in session : official representatives round up the sheep and explain everything before two ’o clock. Tomorrow the sheep will be driven to the social security office and we’ll become part of the manual-mass-monitoring-machine. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to apply for phone lines, electricity services and a banking card in two to three weeks. For now we should just be patient in our disconnected, dark little world until further notice.

19 August 2004, it’s raining people!
Excited, they’ve come from all the corners of this country! We’ve presented ourselves as western as possible with the outfits available this side of the Pacific. Everywhere you look, you see arms, food, drinks and confused people. We hear awe-inspiring messages from giants who’ve gone before us. We learn songs and names I’ve never heard of and we are sent home with the anticipation of a tomorrow, drenched in tests of all sorts…

two weeks somewhere in 2004, “…two lost souls swimming in a fish-bowl…”
It seems like class started half a year ago and I’m still trying to decipher the titles of my text books! Only eight days of formal training and I’ve learned much about myself, the orbiting sub-cultures of Satellites: Swiss, Lincoln and Sterns, and that with only one eye open you can see further than most people do with both.

- White Chocolate -

pass over legal aliens

Wearing blue jeans and white T-shirts

Mexican protestors ignore the red pedestrian light

Carrying toddlers on their shoulders―strengthened by years of cheap labor

Running across Live Oak waving their Stars and Stripes smiling

Hosanna to the kings of America

Safe us!

I AM

youthful beloved

Jewish

Lion, Lamb, Liberty

how do I love?

at any cost

Love

Forgiveness, Friendship, Ferocity

how do I love?

in all ways

Suffering

Distance, Days, Delays

how do I love?

under every circumstance

all your heart, all your soul, all your might

our thoughts, our prayers, our hopes

sustained obedience, determined completion, enduring patience

pleasing You