ICMEP is a non-sectarian organization. This is a sermon Michael preached about the trip he recently led to South Africa (Emmaus Road Mennonite Fellowship, Berne, IN, October 19, 2025). It is intended for a Christian congregation, but hopefully, all people of good will find some inspiration in it.
Reading: 2 Timothy 4.1-5
In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound teaching, but, having their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, be sober in everything, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.
(Sung) Siyabonga. Amen. Siyabonga. Amen. Siyabonga. Amen. Hallelujah. Amen. More on this later.
As you know, I just returned Friday from South Africa with 25 others, 10 states and Scotland, “In the Footsteps of Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela.” In addition to experiencing the beauty of the people and country of South Africa, we were inspired by their resilience and faith fighting apartheid, their unflagging support for Palestine, and learned from their struggles and the work that yet needs to be done there for the battles we are waging for justice. I wrote the sermon in Johannesburg.
My co-leaders, tour coordinator, Deon Kitching, and activist-partner of Archbishop Tutu, Rev. Edwin Arrison, who preached here last year, set up meetings with friends in the anti-apartheid movement, especially in the church. The three of us made a deal three years ago (this was our third trip), one of the goals was to emphasize the role the church played in resisting the official government system of apartheid supported by a racist, colonial Christian theology. We know that all too well here, too. Edwin told us early on, “I am really frightened for the US, for American democracy, for the US church!”
We need look no further than last Sunday when the US president issued an official proclamation declaring Monday, October 13, “Columbus Day.” That was the day our group went to Johannesburg’s Constitution Hill, built on the site of a prison, cells still present, that jailed over 100,000 prisoners during its terrible 90-year history, including Nelson Mandela and a young Indian lawyer named Mohandas Gandhi, then to Soweto, where in 1976, 20,000 school children rose up against being forced to learn their oppressor’s Afrikaans language, during their demonstration, police opened fire, killing 600 children and youth, an important turning point in their struggle against apartheid. The President’s scary proclamation:
“Our Nation honors the legendary Christopher Columbus … and we pledge to reclaim his extraordinary legacy of faith, courage, perseverance, and virtue from the left-wing arsonists who have sought to destroy his name and dishonor his memory.” His “noble mission: to discover a new trade route to Asia, bring glory to Spain, and spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ to distant lands. Upon his arrival, he planted a majestic cross in a mighty act of devotion, dedicating the land to God and setting in motion America’s proud birthright of faith. … Columbus’s journey carried thousands of years of wisdom, philosophy, reason, and culture across the Atlantic into the Americas, paving the way for the ultimate triumph of Western civilization less than three centuries later on July 4, 1776.”
Manifest destiny, erasure of an indigenous population, a racist Christian nationalism – all on steroids. It is shameful that so many churches will gather this morning with business as usual, not even mention this dangerous and deadly heresy, much less stand against it, and many, even more shameful, will support it. What has happened to the church’s prophetic voice?
We met with our friend, Rev. Allan Boesak, who Indiana Center for Midde East Peace hosted a few years ago. Former President of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches during the apartheid years, winner of the 1985 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, Allan and Desmond Tutu stood side by side speaking in churches and anti-apartheid demonstrations. And he gave Nelson Mandela’s memorial service sermon at Washington’s National Cathedral to a standing ovation.
He reminded us, “When Nelson Mandela made his famous statement, ‘South Africa will not be free until Palestine is free,’ it placed upon us as South Africans an obligation, a sacred responsibility,” which was to place justice at the heart of his country’s rebuilding. Our group got the message, America will not be free, I’d add, the church will not be free, you, me, none of us will be free until Palestine is free – the land where our faith was born, ancestors of Jesus still alive today. The church has, we have a sacred obligation to hold the nation responsible to that moral calling. I want to be clear: We are, of course, happy for the ceasefire. But no matter what the President or his minions or the vast majority of corporate media say, it’s not a peace plan, it’s a surrender plan; Palestinians weren’t consulted about it, it was presented to them, take it or leave it; Israel is still murdering Gazans; illegal settlements are still being built, settler violence continues in the West Bank; Israel still controls all the borders and all the aid in and out of Gaza; appointing the UK’s Tony Blair reeks of a colonial past; I could go on and on about this sham.
“Gaza,” Allan says, “is the rock against which all pretend democracies are smashing themselves. The integrity of our politics, the authenticity of our faith, the authority of our witness demands it. If the government closes a space to us, the church must open another.” If the government commits thuggery, declares some illegal, outlaws forms of speech or certain gatherings, like the creative resistance of Gandhi, King, Tutu, like Jesus, like our Anabaptist ancestors, we must go to where the higher law of love takes us, no matter the cost.
“We have come to the Red Sea,” he said, “having liberated ourselves from Pharaoh’s slavery, crossed into the Promised Land, gotten fat from the land of milk and honey, and now have to confront another Pharaoh, one that looks like us.” And again, “When we go before God, God will ask, “Where are your wounds?” And we will say, “I have no wounds.” And God will ask, “Was there nothing worth fighting for?”
I continue to ask myself what price am I willing to pay. Each of us will have to answer for ourselves, I can’t answer for you, but I can ask you the question, which I’m doing right now. What price are we willing to pay? Where are our wounds?
We saw and heard firsthand how the Bible was used to justify the sin of apartheid’s racial separation, and how it’s misused today as a land claim in Israel. Does it really surprise us that in our country the very people who use the Bible to justify Israel’s war crimes also rabidly project their fears, privilege, and prejudice onto a macho Jesus who declares war overseas, people of color, women, and gays, and claim it comes from God? Two Pew polls from 2020 and 2022, show the irony – there are around 80 million self-identified evangelical Christians in the US, almost a quarter of the population; 70% believe God gave the land to Israel, where only 30% of US Jews agree. This political problem is really a church problem, a theology problem, our problem, so we can’t bury our heads in the sand. We have the power. What are we willing to do?
Many of you have heard Archbishop Tutu’s famous line, “When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes and when we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.” Later he added to it, “The missionaries brought us the Bible, but they’ve begun to regret it … because we are now taking it seriously.” It astounds me that American churches aren’t rising up in apoplectic, righteous anger that the Bible, our faith, that Jesus is being hijacked in Palestine and in America, too. Empathy and a prayer aren’t enough. We heard earlier from Paul in 2 Timothy what we need to do. “The time is coming when people will be seduced by teachers who will tell them what they want to hear and turn away from the truth.” Wow! So proclaim the message urgently, in good times and in bad, warn, correct, rebuke, encourage them.”
The most meaningful, most lasting way we can help is, what Edwin calls, “proximity.” Sending money and other stuff is great, advocacy even more, but solidarity means friendship, standing side-by-side with the hurting, invisible, afraid. The first day of our trip, October 4, in his first major document, “I Have Loved You,” Pope Leo wrote it’s not enough simply to feed the poor but to consider them family, “one of us.” As those on the Right hail Medicaid funding slashed, heath care gutted, including women’s and children’s healthcare, and other social programs for the poor, he said, “We must continue to denounce the ‘dictatorship of an economy that kills.’” But it was what he said about immigrants that really set the MAGA crowd’s hair on fire. “Migration is woven into our Christian history.” Abraham set out not knowing where he was going, Moses led his people out of slavery into a wilderness, Mary and Joseph fled with infant Jesus to foreign Egypt.
“The Church,” Leo said, “knows that in every rejected migrant, it is Christ himself who knocks at the door.” Then quoting his predecessor Pope Francis: “Christians must use four verbs for migrants: welcome, protect, promote, integrate. [repeat] Where the world sees threats, Christians see children; where walls are built, Christians build bridges. The church’s proclamation of the Gospel is credible only when it’s translated into gestures of closeness and welcome.” It’s like Edwin said – “proximity.”
Edwin secured a meeting for us with Archbishop Thabo Magkoba, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, one of Tutu’s successors. I had met him at the Carter Center during our conference in July, and we greeted each other warmly. He shared with us a few personal stories, some recent resolutions the South African Anglican Church had passed supporting Palestine. And then I asked him, “Bishop Thabo, why do you personally support Palestine?” He paused, then said, “I’m a Christian … because a young Palestinian on a borrowed donkey led me to God.” You could have heard a pin drop.
Finally, as I mentioned earlier, Edwin was with us a year ago, accompanied by drummers from the Youth Empowerment Drumming Project he works with in the Zweilihle Township where the drummers live – traumatizing conditions, 65% unemployment, and those with jobs average under $2000 a year. They focus on wellness there, and empowerment. Their leader, Siyabonga Vonco, led us in singing, and when he spoke with us, he reminded us his name means, “Thank you.” So when we drummed and sang with those amazing young people, with their infectious smiles and dreams for a better future, “Siyabonga, Amen” became a song of gratitude – for life, for proximity with new friends and what we now mean to each other, for solidarity with Palestine, for work left to be done. As one of our travelers put it, “that people can still have courageous love.”
So in addition to all those very important things, I sang it for you this morning also as a song of thanksgiving, that I, that we are Christians … “because a young Palestinian on a borrowed donkey has led us to God.”