by Revd Duma Caluza
We have just emerged from 46 days of Lent. So much has been said, so much has been heard, and so much has been learnt. The ultimate lesson of Lent is articulated in the prophet Joel’s prophecy, which is read on Ash Wednesday, the day on which Lent begins: “Rend your hearts and not your garments and return to God.”
How we rend our hearts and return to God depends very much on our comprehension of this prophecy — that is, our awareness of our distance from God, our sinfulness in practice and in the eyes of God, and our willingness to open our hearts to God’s word. The prophet calls us to take a risk and leap into an encounter with difference: to abandon the familiar environments that offer us a sense of security and to embrace that of which we are uncertain, while trusting in the promises held out as a reward for willingly encountering difference.
The problem with difference is that it can be frightening and can provoke responses that may hurt those who are different from us. For instance, sometime in 1979, I was walking up Ferguson Road with my cousin. He was a few years older than me, so he walked faster, creating a distance of at least ten metres between us. Then, suddenly, I saw someone crossing the road in our direction. She came and stood between me and my cousin. I was immediately consumed with fear, and I stopped, looking for another way to go. Then my cousin looked back, only to find that I was now about twenty metres away. He called me to hurry up, and I started screaming, telling him I was afraid. He asked, “What are you afraid of?” and I pointed at the person standing between us, calling her a scary creature, because I was truly terrified.
My cousin came back and picked me up in his arms. He walked past the “scary creature”, telling me with dismay that she was not a scary creature at all. After we had passed her, he put me down, and I ran much faster than I had before she appeared.
I was on school holiday in Port Elizabeth, visiting from Butterworth, when I first encountered this difference. We moved to Port Elizabeth in December 1980, and sometime in 1981 or 1982 I saw the same person again, not very far from where we lived. As with my first encounter with her, she looked extremely pretty and was dressed so elegantly — but this time she no longer scared me.
She happened to be the difference into which God plunged me, and that encounter would shape my perceptions of things and situations unfamiliar to me. As a result of this experience, I became sceptical of fear of the unknown. Instead, I became inquisitive in my approach to encounters with difference, to the extent that, whenever I am confronted by unfamiliar situations or people, I remember what my father always said: “Think before you act.” If you do the opposite, you might endanger yourself or even hurt yourself and others. I do not know whether the woman I called a scary creature heard or saw me, but if she did, I hurt her badly. The positive impact of this encounter on me is that I learnt to embrace change, and also to change in order to embrace difference, for my heart has rejoiced at the sound of difference ever since.
An encounter with difference is surely a call to a change of heart and mind. It is a life experience that cuts across all human relationships — whether in marriage, religious fellowship, romantic relationships, work, or school. And for that encounter truly to succeed, we need to be bold in opening our hearts to difference. For hardened hearts, we might need sharpened swords or even dynamite, but the easiest approach to Joel’s call is first to listen and then to take to heart the promises that come with it.
Joel says that if we rend our hearts and not our garments, and return to God, He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and He relents from sending calamity. Who knows, says Joel, He may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing — grain offerings and drink offerings for the Lord your God.
If God can be moved by our repentance, how much more might those who are different from us be moved if we encounter their difference with compassion and graciousness, and if we embrace our own difference with the mercy and love with which Jesus embraces us through his death on the cross and his resurrection from the grave. Therefore, an encounter with difference is a challenge for us to take on the likeness of Jesus in our relationships with God, humanity, and nature.
Lastly, to satisfy your curiosity regarding the “scary creature”, perhaps it is right that I let you know that she was in fact a girl living with albinism. It was my first encounter with a light-complexioned person living with albinism. And in that encounter, I began to learn that what we fear may, in truth, be a gift inviting us to grow.
Christ our Way
Revd Duma Caluza