Reflection on the Seven Last Words

The Seven Last Words of Christ is a service typically held on Good Friday. The service focuses mainly on the seven last sayings of Christ during his persecution and death on a cross. I was asked to share a meditation on the seventh phrase, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" Luke 23:46. This is what I came up with!

“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” According to the Gospel of Luke, these are the last words spoken by Jesus before his death. Jesus speaks these words out loud, but unlike other examples in scripture, he does not clarify who he is speaking these words for. Did Jesus say these words for the benefit of those who are present, like he does at the mouth of Lazarus’ tomb when he says “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me,” or does Jesus say it for his own sake, like in the Garden of Gethsemene, when he asks God to “Take this cup from me”?

Because Jesus is both human and divine, we can assume that he speaks both for our benefit and for his own benefit. When he speaks these words as a human, he speaks them after suffering for nearly 24 hours. The night before his death, Jesus is betrayed by a brother and a disciple, he is brought before Pilot, he is brought before King Herod, Jesus is then punished to 100 lashings, sentenced to death while a known murderer walks free, forced to carry his cross, and then nailed to it. Jesus’ death did not just happen on Good Friday, but rather his death began the at the last supper and continued slowly and with increasing pain every step of the way.

Finally, when the pain had become too much for Jesus as a human to bear, he releases his spirit into the hands of God. Jesus turns to his father, the one who sent him here to die, and he says “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” It is an endearing moment for all of humanity to witness, a moment in which Jesus, the Son of God, who could have been saved, chose to continue his suffering until death so that we would be freed from the power of death. In this moment, Jesus bares his human side more clearly than ever before; he submitted himself to death, just as we all must do at some point in our lives.

Even in the intimate moment of Jesus, fully human, handing himself over to God, we are filled with hope with these words that are spoken for our sake as well. In his divinity, Jesus spoke out loud so that we may fully understand that his dying on a cross was truly an act of defiance. Everything that Jesus had done on earth thus far was in defiance to the way that life had been lived up to that point. Jesus lived in a constant defiance to the ways of the world.

The sermon on the mount of olives defied all the things that people had been told before Jesus’ time. Jesus healing people on the Sabbath was an act of defiance to the laws of the time. Jesus ate dinner with the tax collectors and prostitutes in defiance of what was expected of people who claimed to be holy. Jesus washed the disciples feet in an act of defiance against what was expected of a king. Jesus did not fight back when he was accused, choosing to be passive and loving, an act of defiance in itself. Jesus was the king of the Jews, even the note above his head on the cross said so, but Jesus did not die with the honor of a King, but the disgrace of a common criminal. Fully divine, Jesus chose to die in disgrace in defiance of what would be expected of someone who claimed to be a king.

But how is this final statement an act of defiance as well? The word “commend” means to offer up for judgement or approval, something that the world had already done when they judged Jesus to be a criminal and a heretic and condemned him to death. But by saying “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,” Jesus takes all the power of judgement away from the world and places it in God’s hands. These words, spoken by Jesus in his divinity, are offered up to strengthen the disciples as they were about to head into a more difficult time without Jesus by their side. He proved to them that even though the world had thrown literally everything it had at him, the world will never have the final say, only God will have the final say.

In his humanity, Jesus is broken physically, he has suffered for almost an entire day, his body is dying, and Jesus’ spirit is ready to be taken into heaven by God. In his divinity, Jesus knows that his spirit belongs to God, and that he is going home shortly. He knows that the world doesn’t have a say in his true judgement, and even when the world thinks it has a hold on God, Jesus says “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,” and everything is changed. Christ’s death marks the moment in which the scriptures are fulfilled, the ransom is paid, and the penalty of sin is no more. The act of grace is complete, the love that God has for the world is restored, and the hope for all is shared, but we do not know that yet, not for another three days.

for more information on the seven last words, click here

South Africa: A Christian Nation

South Africa Is a Christian Nation. This isn’t surprising to anyone who knows about the history of Africa and Missionaries. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa is in existence today thanks in large part to missionaries coming through the southern portion of the continent. One question that I have struggled with throughout this year is, how do we live with the fact that South Africa is a Christian nation because of Colonialism? I have had many conversations with my host Pastor about this, and we have stumbled across numerous answers, and even more questions. What would South Africa look like today had the Dutch not landed on the Cape of Good Hope in the 1650’s? Has South Africa becoming a Christian nation really helped the country, or has it made things worse? What do we consider to be civilized?

               

 When white missionaries first arrived in Africa, the goal was to spread the word of God as well as to teach the people to be more civilized. In the book “In Our Own Skins: A Political History of Coloured People,” by Richard Van Der Ross, he attempts to explain what it means to be civilized. In the opening part of the book, Van Der Ross discusses the interactions between the Dutch and the Khoi Khoi people’s, considered to be one of the first tribes of South Africa. Van Der Ross defines civilization as a group of people who are governed by a certain set of laws. By this definition, South Africa has always been a civilized nation. The Khoi Khoi had their set of laws, the Zulu people had their own set of laws, and the Xhosa people had their own set of laws. There was civilization among the people.

              

A reoccurring conversation that I have with Pastor is based around this idea of what it means to be civilized. Pastor Lindo comes from a family steeped in Zulu traditions. He and his wife celebrated a white wedding, much like we would find in a European sense, but they also celebrated a traditional Zulu wedding. The fact that there is a traditional wedding ceremony is a testament to the fact that the Zulu tradition was chalked full of civilization.

Looking at the Khoi Khoi people again, they are the first peoples to have contact with white people in the country. The Khoi was made up of two groups of people, the Khoi, and the San. The Khoi people were semi-nomadic farmers who were more interested in herding cattle, and the San were a nomadic group of people who followed wherever the hunt was. The Khoi were considered the more intelligent peoples, and eventually, a Khoi woman became an interpreter for the Dutch. As is natural in any close quarter situations, a relationship developed between the Khoi translator and a Dutchman. The two were married and had children together. This was a beautiful marriage, but it also caused another problem.  Were the children to be considered Dutch, or African?

The Children were later considered to be Dutch. As the relations between the Dutch and the Khoi people grew stronger, more and more marriages occurred. As the number of mixed race children increased, the Dutch began to notice a problem. After several generations of children being born of Khoi and Dutch decent being considered Dutch, the white men changed their minds and decided that these people were no longer European, they were African. Once again, the European’s attempt to civilize a group of people had literally spawned an entirely new generation of peoples who weren’t considered to be black, but also weren’t considered to be white, they were Coloured.

Missionary work continued in South Africa into the 18^th century, with new people coming from missions all around Europe. The Dutch, the British, and the French all felt it was their duty to come to this country and bring God to the people who needed God the most. Pastor has a different idea about why missionaries were so excited to come to South Africa. Within South Africa there is a wealth of natural resources, including Gold. The bible promises the Israelites a land of milk and honey, a promised land that belongs to them. Hearing Pastor talk about how the bible was used by Europeans to take over the land that isn’t theirs wasn’t new to me, but it did bring up the question of what was God talking about then? Pastor always asks me “Would God really send people to claim a land as theirs that was occupied by other peoples?”

So now, at this point in the history of South Africa, there are a number of problems cropping up, just because the Europeans sought to “civilize” the people of Africa. First, the civilized traditions of people living in Africa were being destroyed because they didn’t live up to the European expectations of civilization. Second, The Europeans had taken many wives from the indigenous people of the Khoi Khoi, produced offspring, and then abandoned those offspring when the number of Coloured people began to outnumber the white people. Third, the attempt to civilize these people were really a mask to get after the resources and the perfect placement of this country, making it a great stop for the East Indian Trading Company, owned by the Dutch.

Skipping over centuries of African people being told that they must change their ways to be like white people, but they will never be like white people, we arrive to the early stages of apartheid. Apartheid was not just a systematically enforced racism; it was a way to completely demolish the non-white people in South Africa. Apartheid government was run by white people, the minority in the country, and forced black people to live in only a small percentage of their own country. The laws were designed to cripple the black people both financially and spiritually. When the missionaries first came to South Africa, the people were told that they must turn away from their traditions and become civilized. With apartheid, they were told the exact opposite. To create more tension between black people, the apartheid government forced blacks to live in certain areas based on their culture. Zulu’s could only live with Zulu’s, Venda’s could only live with Venda’s and Xhosa’s could only live with Xhosa’s.

Once again, people here were told a different story of how they should behave in order to be accepted by white people. First, you would only be accepted if you turned away from your traditions, now you would only be accepted if you lived by your traditions. As you can imagine, once again, this left the Coloured people in an awkward spot. Coloured people weren’t considered white, so the segregation laws still applied, but they weren’t considered black either, so they were stuck in an odd middle ground, creating a culture completely their own.

The difficult conditions faced by black people during the apartheid left an opening for missionaries to continue their work once again. The problems these people were facing were caused because they weren’t Christian, and could be fixed by turning to God. Once again, South Africa is a Christian nation, thanks to these missionaries. German Missionaries, Swedish Missionaries, British Missionaries, and several other missionaries began building churches all over the country and Christianity grew more and more. Bantu schools in the townships were forced to separate even further, they could only teach in the language of their people, not in English or Afrikaans, the languages of power. Eventually, a law was put into place that all the schools were required to teach in Afrikaans, forcing the schools full of students who didn’t know the language to start learning in a language they didn’t understand. The removal of understanding further lowered the education of black people, and again created the standing of “you aren’t like us, but you should act like us.” Missionaries spoke in English and taught people English, a language of power in South Africa (some call it the language of money), drawing people even closer to Christianity.  

The missionaries have helped to create the church we see in ELCSA today. The church in Gelvandale, where I live, was built by missionaries, the church in Bethelsdorp was built by missionaries. There are many signs of missionaries still surrounding us today. The noticeably absent part of the mission in South Africa is the ways in which this life is better than the one that missionaries had “rescued” people from in the first place. Port Elizabeth, where I am placed for the year, is surrounded by poverty, both in the town and just outside in the townships. There are people within the city limits of PE that don’t have paved roads, there is need for food shelfs that pass out almost 700 loaves of bread a day, but yet people are still hungry. One of the highest rates of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome in South Africa is found in Port Elizabeth, and education in government schools is fighting to survive. It is difficult for a black child to attend any other school than a government school, which barely has enough funds to hire teachers, let alone supply classrooms with the right equipment. These are the things I have seen just in one portion of the country, but the issues are spread across all of South Africa.

South Africa is a Christian nation. I am thankful that it is a Christian nation, otherwise I would not be living with a Pastor and my faith would not have been challenged in the ways it has been throughout this year. However, according to Van De Ross and his definition of what it means to be civilized, the people of South Africa have been civilized for thousands of years before the Dutch ever arrived in the Cape of Good Hope and began trying to civilize a nation that was already civilized. 

The missionaries of old were successful in creating a country that was “civilized” according to their standards, but at what cost?

 Where would South Africa be today if people had respected the fact that peoples here were already civilized before Europeans decided it wasn’t the right kind of civilized?

How many of the problems facing the country today were created because Europeans attempted to change the way of life in a way that the people of South Africa didn’t need at that time?