Oren and his class waiting for their turn to perform backstage at La Fete de L'ecole.
I realize I forgot to mention at least one interesting event from last week that is worth chronicling. I was asked by Jean Baptiste, my former Kirundi teacher to do a talk to a group of high school students on the subject of ‘the importance of peace for success in education.’ Although the topic seemed self-evident, I did understand his interest in the subject.
Jean Baptiste teaches secondary school in an area of the city called Kanyosha close to Ruziba. This is a section of town, primarily hutu, where there is a significant number of supporters of the now exiled political party FNL. Sadly, there have been spates of violence and random killings between partisans of the FNL and the ruling party CNDD-FDD. Jean Baptiste describes nights in Kanyosha as often terrifying with partisan bandits attacking houses and spreading terror in the neighborhoods.
Jean Baptiste’s objective has been to provide forums for conflict reconciliation in high schools and among students as some of them are demobilized child soldiers, whom he fears may be encouraged to become involved in the fighting rather than staying in school.
I was one of about 4 speakers over as many days. I was, in fact, the last speaker. I do confess that my first reaction was not particularly enthusiastic to being invited. Jean Baptiste had actually talked to Rebecca and she ‘volunteered’ me. But as I prepared I became more interested. I have done some study in conflict transformation, and as an educator (albeit dance) for many years I felt I could speak to the importance of education in general. My thesis was less that one needs peace to get an education so much as the idea that both peace and education require an optimistic vision of the future.
I did much of the talk as a dialogue and I asked them who among them was being forced to go to school (no one raised a hand.) I went on to ask, then, what they saw as the benefits and we made a long list. It was easy to observe that pretty much everything on the list was a long, not short term benefit. I talked about the necessity of having a vision of the future that one might attain to.
I had an interesting testimony from my experience in prison ministry. An inmate once told me that he had received a football scholarship to the University of Michigan after high school. Two nights before heading to college from New York, some friends convinced him to rob a store with them, for some spending money. Things went down badly, someone was shot, everyone fled and the police came to his door the next night. The man who told me this story was serving at least his 10th year in prison and had about a decade left. I used this testimony as an example of choosing short-term over long-term goals. The story seem to have a sobering affect on the students; many as I said, were excombatants weighing their choices in the present.
I went on to talk about basic principles of conflict mediation and transformation, but that story, I think, was the clincher.
This week began on Tuesday, as I mentioned last week, that Monday was a holiday. It was good to get both kids back in school again and go swimming! Rebecca and I had a lot of work to catch up on and we had a fairly constant stream of visitors (welcome and unwelcome) to our office. In the afternoon I taught ballet: it was a bit of a drama because of the school spring festival that was happening Saturday where the girls were going to present some dances. I choreographed two small selections from the Nutcracker (Russian and Sugarplum fairy variations) for each of the groups to do. The ‘dress rehearsal’ did not go so well and I found myself yelling at them several times during the practice.
Wednesday was a continuation of the routine, I have a men’s prayer meeting early, and Rebecca has a women’s Bible study mid-morning. It has been the first time back to these things since we were back from Kenya. It was good to start these routines again. We had lunch at Zachee’s house then stopped in to see how Lara Horst (our service worker) was doing in the afternoon as Nathan is out of town at the moment.
Thursday and Friday were more of the same although Rebecca’s workload was definitely greater than mine as she had to prepare a sermon that she was asked to preach on Sunday. She decided to talk about the Kingdom of God as described in the parables of Matthew13, the sower, the woman making bread, and the wheat and weeds. I will ask her to write a brief synopsis below.
Saturday was busy. We had 10 people at our morning exercise class, so the living room was full! Rebecca had a Sunday school training she was hosting for PTI teachers right afterwards, while I watched the kids.At about 3 in the afternoon we headed over to Oren’s school for the spring festival. Oren’s class had prepared a song in which Oren played the crash cymbals. I had my ballet classes presenting. When I arrived at the outdoor stage I found it to be in predicatable chaos. No one had a program order so I could not even tell the kids whether to be in ballet clothes or their other costumes. Somehow, though, at about 1 minute to the start of our piece, all the girls showed up in costume and they did fine. Oren’s class was very cute as well, and I was happy to see Oren participating and smiling even though I am sorry that he still has little comprehension of what he was singing.
David liked the festival as well. I was surprised to see that there were some people dressed as Elmo, Oscar the Grouch, Grover, and Big Bird. I did not know that there were Sesame street costumes in Burundi, but there they were.
Saturday evening we ate out at Ubuntu because we had virtually nothing left in our fridge. (Marcelline had been out all week due to illness and then flooding at her house.)—so nothing was prepared for the weekend. It is a favorite place to go, more for the atmosphere than the food. The highlight for the kids was that we found out that if you ask, the gardener will cut down a coconut from the trees for you. We went home with Oren and David each carrying one. David could barely lift his but guarded it so jealously that he even wanted to take it to bed at night.
Sunday morning before church they begged me to open one. I hacked off the husk for about 10 minutes with a machete before getting to the center, for which I used a hammer. All said it took about 20 minutes to get to an edible portion. Predictably neither of the boys liked the coconut at all as far as food, but I enjoyed it.
We went to church and I took care of David while Rebecca preached. Fortunately he slept during the sermon so I could listen. It was good and well received. Here is her synopsis of the message:
PTI Fellowship has been following a series of sermons on Christian leadership, exploring the characteristics that make for good leaders – things like competence, compassion and contrition. But we keep bumping into tough questions: what do you do when leaders fail, when they are wicked or misled? I was asked to preach this week, and I decided to explore this question indirectly, by thinking about power in the Kingdom of God. What does it really look like, and in light of that, what should our leadership look like?
I have greatly benefited from a book called Kingdom, Grace, Judgment by a sterling theologian and writer named Robert Farrar Capon. His exposition on Jesus’ parables of the Kingdom has been challenging and enlightening for me, and so I wanted to share some of those thoughts. Both here and in North America, many Christians assume that the Kingdom of God looks just like an earthly kingdom (King, subjects, territory, enemies, battles) – except really moral. We fight for our King and win territory for him, etc, etc. But Jesus never describes the Kingdom in terms of warriors and battles and strength. Rather he compares it to farming or fishing or baking.
Throughout these parables, we see the ways that the Kingdom is already present in the world around us, just as the sower (God the Father) sows his seed (the Word of God – Jesus) in every kind of soil (not just the fertile, well-tilled soil). We do not do the sowing – God does it, and does it well! No matter where the Word is sown, even in the midst of hostility, it sprouts up, and does its work. The Kingdom works in mysterious weakness – small and tiny, seeds have to die to do their work. (Consider how the Word was born a tiny baby and died to complete his mission). But when seeds die, they are able to bring forth a huge harvest – the best kind of response. Both of these points are so important for us as Christians. Often we assume that the success of the Kingdom depends on us doing our work well. We think that we have to fight for the kingdom with power that the world understands. But in fact, God’s Kingdom is in very good hands – God’s. And the Kingdom grows best when we do things God’s way.
What is God’s way? I find the parable of the Weeds in Matthew 13 fascinating and challenging. It’s another parable about a man sowing good seed throughout his field (there’s no place where good seed is not sown!). But while he’s getting a well earned, good night’s sleep, his enemy comes and sows tares among the wheat. Please note that tares are a type of grass, which looks basically identical to wheat until harvest time. The workers are troubled by the weeds (and the amount of work it will take to clean up the field) and they ask the Sower if they should pull up the weeds. “No,” he replies, “for you will uproot the wheat along with the weeds. Let (suffer, permit, forgive – are also meanings of this word) both to grow together until the harvest.” Jesus gives this astonishing teaching that in the Kingdom, we bear with evil and forgive it, just as he did ultimately on the cross. This is hard and frustrating for so many of us, who just want to clean house and get the troublemakers out and keep the “real Christians” in. But we forget how the weeds are always and ever mixed with the wheat in our own hearts. We forget Jesus’ patient forgiveness for us. As an example, I spoke about the difficulty of separating the wheat from the weeds in my work as a youth pastor at PUMC; yet God had interesting plans to turn some apparent weeds into fruitful wheat.
This separating of the good from the bad, the “us” from the “them,” the “in” from the “out” is as big a problem in Burundi as it is everywhere. For example, the Pentecostal church here is famous for excommunicating people for simple things like attending a church of another denomination. Protestants and Catholics here generally do not really regard the others as being Christian. It becomes ever more tempting for Christians to try to root out "bad leaders" by any means available. But the end never justifies the means. As we confront leaders, as we speak prophetically, we need to make sure that all our words and actions along the way will give honor to Jesus. Lying, twisting the truth or using violence should never be in our playbook. The Kingdom can take care of itself – what matters is the state of each of our souls when the harvest is brought in. Will our lives be marked by the cross?
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