Surprised by the man on the borrowed donkey: Ordinary Blessings

Foreword

Some of us in South Africa have chosen to call our reflections contextual theology, but few of us, if any, have been as thoroughly and painstakingly contextual as Denise Ackermann. She does not make use of labels like contextual theology, but she is deeply aware at all times of the historical, political, social and economic context of her theology, as well as the personal and biographical circumstances and experiences that have shaped her thinking. This makes for a theology that is thoroughly concrete, experiential and spiritual.

In a way all theology is contextual. The difference is between those who are aware of this and those who are not. The classical definition of theology is faith seeking understanding, and we seek understanding by asking questions and searching for answers. Genuine faith questions, however, vary enormously from place to place, time to time and person to person. The questions arise out of our context and experience of life.

Today most theologians are fully aware of this. Too often in the past, though, and sometimes in the present too, theologians have persisted with answering questions other people asked at other times and in other places as if they were the only questions people may grapple with in theology. Those who formulated these questions many years ago were often white clerical males who lived in monasteries, seminaries and universities. They knew nothing of the questions and experiences of women, of black people, of lay people or of the poor, let alone the questions and problems of the world as it is today. The theology of the past had a context, but it is not our context.

A theology that is fully aware of its context and how that is different from other contexts is what we call a contextual theology. Thus feminist theology, black theology and liberation theology, for example, are consciously contextual theologies.

Nor is it only the questions that arise out of our context. The answers are also shaped by the context in which we live and by our biographical experiences. That is not to say that contextual theology is totally subjective and arbitrary. Any Christian theology has to find its answers in Jesus as the incarnate Word of God. However, our particular context and experience of life can give each of us a particular perspective on the meaning of Jesus’ life and death. This perspective can open our eyes to what is already present implicitly in the Word of God. It can provide us with new insights.

The theology of Denise Ackermann’s book is deeply and consciously contextual. And yet it is at every point a book about Jesus, about her honest and personal experience and struggle with faith in Jesus. It is her biography of faith – faith in the man on the borrowed donkey as she calls him.

Of course, if we are honest, we will discover that there are few, if any, easy answers to the questions that arise for us today. Denise is painfully aware of that. She faces the contradictions, the paradoxes and the mystery of it all. She faces her own experience of being diagnosed with cancer and her more recent experience of macular degeneration with its threat of eventual blindness. She writes about the questions that these experiences raise for her and about her search for answers. It is clear that her faith has enabled her to live fruitfully with unanswered questions.

The result is an amazing number of valuable insights into the meaning of holiness, secularism, spirituality, freedom, death, gratitude, listening, greed, sharing and humour, as well as the wonder of God’s creation, especially in the awesome beauty of birds. Looking at her life, her experience and her context with the eyes of faith enables her to see above all else a history of blessings, many blessings. Hence the subtitle of the book: Ordinary blessings.

Albert Nolan

Johannesburg

4 February 2012

Introduction

I believe that all theology is contextual and therefore, in a sense, autobiographical. A theologian’s experience of place, time, culture, history, relationships, and her experience of despair, grace and hope are all interwoven in her life of faith. As circumstances change, beliefs are reshaped, perspectives revisited. My life is no exception. The experience of looking back and sifting out that which has meaning from the trivia of life is a privilege of age. Having faith, reflecting on what this means, and then trying to speak about it can never be done in a vacuum. Furthermore, it is an ongoing task, in which we reflect upon our lives within specific communities and relationships, and this shapes our theologies.

Trying to work out what is meaningful in the life of faith is much the same as the trying to answer the question What makes life worth living? This question was central to After the Locusts, a previous book in which I wrote letters to those close to me about my attempts to live out my faith in South Africa after apartheid. But what do I mean by the life of faith? I am reminded of a humorous little poem by American poet Emily Dickinson (1830–1886):

Faith is a fine invention

When Gentlemen can see –

But Microscopes are prudent

In an Emergency.

The life of faith is not wholly without microscopes. A greater intensity of seeing oneself in the world and finding joy in the small things are fruits of faith. Faith infuses life with significance, and with a surprising depth and abundance of experiences in which love, hope and peace surface. Awareness of the ever-present blessing of grace brings a sense of awe and moments of profound fulfilment. While I marvel at the riches of faith, I cannot claim to be a person who always feels fulfilled, and who is able to sail through life with impunity. Above my desk I have a framed verse: I believe, help my unbelief! (Mk 9:24). I do believe. I also wrestle with the contradictions in the life of faith, and with moments of abandonment. The question What makes life worth living? continues to gnaw at me. This book is a further attempt to find answers as I continue to mull over it.

I also wonder whether there is something like a theological identity? The older I get, the greater my unease with labels, yet at the same time I cannot avoid them. I am a woman, a Christian, a wife, mother and grandmother, a friend, a feminist, a theologian, a news junkie, a lover of icons and sushi, and much, much more, all at the same time. According to our latest census, I am a white South African of European (mostly French) descent. The irony is that my DNA proves that I am originally a native of East Africa! I also come from a mixed cultural background, am a social democrat by conviction, a cultural hybrid, an amateur greenie, a bird watcher, walker – the list goes on. The point is that, like every other human being, my complexities of identity are endless. I belong to diverse categories simultaneously and, depending on the circumstances, one or other category will emerge and engage me. I treasure all my labels. Some of them provide a view from the margins where all the contradictions of life bump up against one another. I prefer this view; it is less stifling, and more open to paradox and contradiction.

As a theologian I have labelled myself a feminist theologian of praxis: Feminist because of a lifelong concern with the dignity and equality of women; praxis because the only valid test of beliefs is how they translate into actions that promote love and justice. These concerns remain central to my theology and continue to shape my perspective from the edge. But they are not the whole story. More recently I further qualified my identity as a theologian by calling myself a ragbag theologian. Why? Women know that ragbags are filled with an odd assortment of cloths that are useful the second time around. I came to theology later in life than many of my colleagues and, as I play catch-up, I cannot resist digressions, particularly when I am not sure where they will take me. So ragbag theology is second-time-around theology – a revisiting of familiar themes from a different experience of life.

Being a ragbag theologian is, in my case, not surprising. Not only do multiple identities reflect multiple affinities but, looking back on themes I have written about, it is clear that my theology does not constitute a neat corpus of concerns. The themes I have tackled are decidedly eclectic. Nevertheless, throughout I write from the critical experience of being a woman, bolstered by my view that our beliefs and actions should be held in creative tension with one another. This book reflects some of the different colours and textures of cloth in my ragbag – a pick-and-choose collection of interests with one binding conviction: my faith in the man who borrowed a donkey all those years ago, and whose life and teaching is found in the gospels.

The drawstring of my ragbag is spirituality, a testament to my belief that theology and our spirituality are inseparable. A profound longing for an ever-closer encounter with God has prompted all the byways I have pursued. In this quest, I have been filled with wonder at how my view from the margins has consistently drawn me to Jesus, the central figure of my faith. The widely divergent themes in this book represent issues that have challenged my attempts to live out my faith in a world that is increasingly unsettled, often violent, filled with poverty and human need, and yet awash with beauty and goodness.

I avoid calling myself religious. It smacks too much of something set in institutions, ritualised, consoling instead of transforming. The word religion is, in the main, useful when referring in general to the different religions in the world. Christian faith, however, is about an encounter with a person, not a religion. Jesus did not call us to a new religion, but to life. I prefer the vulnerability of the word faith – just that and nothing more. I have faith in Jesus Christ and my faith is expressed and nurtured by my spirituality. Unavoidably, this work is deeply personal for it is about what blessing has meant in my life. Because I also believe that conduct is more convincing than words, theology should focus on right actions, an emphasis that will be apparent throughout.

I write in a time when faith perspectives are often subjected to ridicule as self-deceiving, irrational, even deluded, and motivated by a deep fear of death. The woes of the world are often ascribed to religious beliefs and practices. In the case of Christianity, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the unseemly behaviour and ridiculous claims of fundamentalists are often mentioned. The God of the Old Testament is a tyrant, and discrimination against women and homosexual people proves the intolerance of Christian beliefs and practices. Moreover, the development of science, Darwinism, new insights by cosmologists and physicists who probe our enigmatic universe and make us aware of that mysterious phenomenon called dark matter, or neuro-psychology’s revelations of the working of the human mind accordingly prove how primitive faith perspectives are in the modern world.

Of course Christianity has done itself no credit when its adherents are intolerant, warlike, arrogant, unjust, unloving and unable to accept difference. Our history is muddied with dreadful, even barbarous acts in the name of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, scientists are offering new explanations of our world, and uncovering new ways of understanding the complexities of the cosmos and our place in it. All this is exhilarating and to be celebrated.

But people who find the discoveries of science riveting, while at the same time continue to believe in God are, with monotonous regularity, treated with what contemporary American writer Marilynne Robinson calls a hermeneutics of condescension. Self-appointed guardians of scientific truth pronounce judgment on the maturity and the intelligence of these believers. We do not seem able to allow others to be different, to be who they are without apology. We all make our choices. Thus any condescension on the part of Christians towards agnostics or atheists is equally unacceptable. I enjoy my untutored reading of Scientific American, while at the same time I accept Gregory of Nyssa’s (d.385/6) description of who God is: That which is without quality cannot be measured, the invisible cannot be examined, the incorporeal cannot be weighed, the limitless cannot be compared, the incomprehensible does not admit of more or less. Those who dismiss faith perspectives as simply a matter of false rituals and a need for social bonding must be somewhat dismayed by the persistence of the ancient and global truth that such perspectives give meaning to people’s lives that they do not find elsewhere.

This book is not an apology for having faith. It is an exploration of the fruits of having faith in one woman’s life. Human beings have the unique ability to ask questions of themselves and others, questions that matter and that can change our understanding. My theological reflections are prompted by questions. My bias is clear. It agrees with Robinson when she writes: The voices that have said, ‘There is something more, knowledge to be had beyond and other than this knowledge’ have always been right. My questions are about that something more.

I do not think that faith in God is diminishing because of the advance of science or because of the death of God theologies. However, I agree with Robinson that malaise in terms of faith can be caused when the felt life of the mind is excluded. This exclusion, she says, is attributed to […] accounts of reality proposed by the oddly authoritative and deeply influential ‘parascientific literature’ that has long associated itself with intellectual progress and the exclusion of felt life from the varieties of thought and art that reflect the influence of these accounts. A cursory walk down the aisle of a bookshop affirms the popularity of parascientific literature, the authors of which may or may not be scientists. This kind of literature is a genre of political or social theory that makes a case by using the science of the moment to arrive at a set of general conclusions about the nature of the human being, from the beginning to the present, and draws political, social or anthropological inferences from such conclusions.

As the years pass, I am learning that the human mind is infinitely more complex than I can imagine; that human beings have the capacity to wonder as well as to comprehend beyond a positivist view of self and reality; that there is a longing for the beyond that will not easily leave us; that being human is not an argument but an experience; that our knowledge of the world is accelerating as is the universe itself, and that the learning of science is adding to our knowledge as it questions and probes. The source of this book is in what Robinson calls the felt life of my mind – the place where experience and reason meet.

For me, the one enduring certainty is the truth I find in the life and teaching of Jesus. I have no answers to questions of eternity: I know my limits; humankind is ultimately a mystery. I am happy to leave the exploration of our tiny planet, so fragile and blue in a universe that looks like a wavy compact disc dotted with exploding stars and quasars, to the scientists. I wonder at the discovery of dark matter, that mysterious substance that neither emits nor absorbs light. I cannot comprehend what it means that the Hubble telescope has captured some ten thousand galaxies in an area the size of the full moon. Now that the Higgs Boson particle, the so-called God particle, has been found, I am told it is the glue of the universe. What this all means I cannot comprehend. But I am happy that scientists affirm my belief that God is the glue that holds all together! I have only my experience of inexplicable encounters to guide my questions and to temper any assumptions of knowing it all.

This book is a further chapter in my biography of faith and my continuing surprise at its fruits. It is composed of nine chapters, each on a different topic. Although they can be read separately, there is a certain order in their sequence that makes sense to me and hopefully to the reader. The first, Surprised and blessed, seeks to explain the title and the role of Jesus in my reflections, and what it means to be blessed. The second and longest deals with the central truth of the gospel: in order to live the life of faith we have to embrace paradox and contradiction, and learn to live fruitfully with the questions. This is followed by the third chapter, which examines what the call to holiness means in the life of faith. The gospel promises us freedom. The fourth chapter looks at the meaning of freedom and is followed by a chapter that reflects on the indispensable character of discernment in Christian spirituality. Chapter Six focuses on the discovery that gratitude is indeed a blessing. Thereafter, I attempt to deal with what it means to live with enough in a world of want. This is followed by the unlikely theme of incongruity and laughter in the life of faith. It reverts back to the chapter on paradox – our beliefs, when laid bare by realities, are a kind of holy foolishness. We need to be able to chuckle at the unsettling and disruptive nature of our faith in a world that is often unreceptive to the idea that to be wise is to be foolish. The book ends with a short postscript on the blessing of birds.

While I write, I call to mind the many women with whom I have done Bible study in different places over more than forty years. I hope that this book may also be of interest to, among others, students of theology, members of churches, those outside the church who may wonder about those of us who sit in pews on Sundays, and anyone else who may want to read about the blessings of a long life. I cannot help agreeing with a well-known Protestant theologian of the twentieth century, Karl Barth (1886–1968), who remarked: The angels will laugh when they read my theology. Doubtlessly this book will give the angels cause for laughter, while I hope that it will make theology palatable for interested readers. Throughout I am aware of two pressing needs in our times: the first is a political and social need for a more just and equitable society; the second is more inward and personal – it is a yearning for a deeper spiritual awareness. I believe that the God question is the same as the human question. All faiths have their origins in the human heart and in contexts that are at times overwhelming. I cannot separate these two intertwined needs.

The phrase the church is fraught. Can any institution fully represent the man we know as Jesus? There is no one church, one tradition, one set of practices and characteristics. The use of the phrase the church is therefore rather sloppy, but it is intended to cover all denominations that are considered mainline. I am a member of the Anglican Church in South Africa. However, my experience of many different churches in different parts of the world has shown me that cultures, contexts, local traditions, personal tastes and desires all contribute towards a multitude of flavours even within churches with more formal frameworks. Institutions by their very nature have rules and regulations to ensure order. Churches have structures with which they operate, and within these structures hierarchies of authority are quickly formed. When I allow myself to dream of what the community of believers should be like, I know that I am in for disappointment. I understand the church as a place of plurality and inclusiveness, a place where people of all kinds are welcome and at home, because it is a place that is accepting, loving, serving, and exists by the grace of God in Jesus Christ alone.

The ideas in this book do not purport to be original. It is impossible for me to say where they all come from. Throughout, I am in conversation with selected theologians, writers and thinkers across time, many of whom I acknowledge and often elaborate on in notes at the end of each chapter. Dates are given when a specific deceased person is mentioned for the first time in order to place her or him in an historical context. Contemporary writers and thinkers are not dated. The notes at the end of each chapter also flesh out borrowings mentioned in the text. Not every quotation is referenced. However, each chapter concludes with a list of works consulted, in the hope that some readers may find topics of interest to pursue further.

I am not a biblical scholar, though I am aware of the pitfalls in using scripture to bolster arguments. My use of scripture throughout has been prompted rather by the way in which it is read in my Bible study group than by a more scholarly academic reading. All biblical quotations are taken from The New Annotated Oxford Bible, the Revised Standard Version (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

I owe thanks to a number of friends: Geoff Quinlan, retired bishop for reading my manuscript and making many useful suggestions on how to improve it; Karen Sporre, professor of theological education at Umeå University in northern Sweden, who cast a critical and helpful eye on the structure of the book and the themes raised; Francine Cardman, professor of early church history at Boston College, for her incisive reading, her innumerable valued suggestions and for endless encouragement; Albert Nolan for agreeing to write the foreword despite a busy schedule; Denise Fourie for her many helpful suggestions and meticulous editing; and lastly, the women with whom I have done Bible study over many years. Unknowingly they have been my conversation partners throughout.

Last, but certainly not least, to Laurie – my partner for fifty-six years – my thanks for your patient editing of many different versions of this work. If you had not on your retirement started writing your book, this one would not have happened. The book is dedicated to my five grandchildren for whom I pray for a better world, and in memory of friend and priest Luke Stubbs, who started me off on this project but did not live to see its completion.

Works consulted

Ackermann, Denise M., Found Wanting and Left Untried? Confessions of a Ragbag Theologian. In Ragbag Theologies: Essays in Honour of Denise M. Ackermann, Feminist Theologian of Praxis, edited by M. Pillay, S. Nadar and C. le Bruyns, 267-284. Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2009.

Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Edited by T. H. Johnson. New York: Little, Brown, 1960.

Goldberg, Michael. Theology and Narrative: A Critical Introduction. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991.

Pillay, Miranda, Saroini Nadar and Clint le Bruyns, eds. Ragbag Theologies: Essays in Honour of Denise M. Ackermann, Feminist Theologian of Praxis. Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2009.

Robinson, Marilynne. Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.

Sen, Amartya. Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. London: Penguin Books, 2006.

Chapter One

Surprised and blessed

I remember that morning all too vividly. Sitting at the very end of the nave near the high altar of Canterbury Cathedral, I watched the bishops of the Anglican Communion enter and take their seats under the soaring, ribbed Gothic ceiling of that historic building. Clothed in robes of brocade, silk and even gold lamé, embroidered with indigenous themes, mitres on heads, among them a handful of women, they entered the cathedral with measured tread. I found myself straining forward as the doors closed slowly behind the Archbishop of Canterbury. What was I hoping to see? Then I realised and was surprised by the image that popped into my head. I was looking for the man on the borrowed donkey! Where, amidst all this pomp, was Jesus whom I had come to know and love, and who had changed my life?

It was 1998 and I was accompanying Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane to the Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Church as a theological advisor. The phrase the man on the borrowed donkey has since that time been pivotal to my relationship with Jesus. It is an expression that has a touch of the comical, and that is laced with paradox and incongruity when it is used for the central figure of my faith. Jesus, whom Christians attest is the incarnation of the living God, had nowhere to lay his head, washed the feet of his disciples, and had to borrow a donkey for a bitter-sweet ride that ended on a cross. Jesus, who rode that donkey to a criminal’s death, appeared to his disciples three days later. The paradox of humility and power exemplified in his life calls me to account when I confront my own inconsistencies and wispy faith. It becomes my tool for understanding my life and for assessing my own conduct. It holds before me incomprehensible, all-encompassing love. It gives me hope. It never ceases to surprise me. It is the reality of grace at work in the world. And, as such, it has everything to do with being blessed.

I first encountered Jesus as an historical person in a women’s weekly Bible study that I joined out of no more than a passing whim. Previously he had been a remote figure, largely limited to religious paintings and the illustrations in a children’s Bible – which I did not read. In the Bible study he came alive as we read the gospel stories together. As African New Testament scholar Teresa Okure points out, The Bible is essentially a community book, written for people living in communities of faith […]. We need to read together to be able to help one another see with a new eye. And this is what happened. In this group of very disparate women I could question, debate and ponder the relevance for my life of what I was reading. I could not fault Jesus, despite trying to. The more I read, the more I was drawn to the man at the centre of these biblical tales. I found that Jesus then is Jesus now. I was, and still am, challenged by his actions and by his relationships with those who crossed his path.

I had read somewhere that C. S. Lewis (1898–1963), literary critic, essayist and Christian apologist, once said: Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic or Lord and so, about two years later, I decided to give Jesus a try. Perhaps he was Lord. This was no more than a sort of show-me-who-you-really-are move. And he did. Despite my feeble, conditional and ungracious overture, my life changed. Looking back, I am deeply grateful that I encountered Jesus, largely unencumbered by the stuff of our traditions, or by different interpretations and claims. I met the man and liked him very much. The freshness of this meeting has stayed with me through the years and has never wilted, notwithstanding my theological studies and teaching. For me Jesus has never been a dogma. Through his life he showed me what it means to be a human being. He left no written testament. He left a life, a life personified in his words: I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should love one another (Jn 13:34). Okure makes the point by quoting Ignatius of Antioch (born c.35-50–died d.107): Whenever they tell me ‘It is not written in the book’, I tell them, ‘Oh yes, it is written, because our book is a person, Jesus of Nazareth.’

In this book I want to reflect on the surprises I have encountered along the way as I struggle to keep my eyes on the man who borrowed a donkey. I have been surprised by how this struggle, that has been one of the felt life of the mind, has morphed into blessings. I am surprised because the richness of blessing is always unexpected; I remain astonished at how often a sense of blessedness happens in the most unlikely, mundane, daily occurrences. The man on the borrowed donkey has, in some mysterious way, given me new spectacles through which to view life, spectacles that I have to clean regularly when they become fogged up with the junk of self, yet spectacles that I can no longer live without. In other words, I am finding grace that is both ordinary and extraordinary, but more about this later.

* * *

Giving Jesus a try was the beginning of a bouquet of surprises. To begin with I was filled with wonder at just how very human the man on the borrowed donkey was. He taught, healed and suffered as a human being. He got tired, exasperated, hungry and thirsty. He probably had times of feeling unwell. He shed tears and he could get angry. I saw that to deny his full humanity would be to deny what his life, his teaching, his compassion and courage offer us. It is difficult to imagine what an impression he made in an age when conformity was the test of truth and virtue. The great learning of the scribes did not impress him. He did not hesitate to question tradition, and no authority was too important to be contradicted. He did not act like a person who rebelled for rebellion’s sake; he appeared to bear no grudges against the world, but he was not afraid to lose his reputation and even his life. I saw that to deprive this man of his humanity was to deprive him of his greatness.

What struck me next were the kind of people who claimed Jesus’ attention: the poor, the hungry, the miserable, the oppressed and marginalised, lepers, cripples, the blind and the sick, children and those possessed, social outcasts, tax collectors, disreputable people and women from both inside and outside Jewish society. This ragtag band of people seldom allowed him time to be alone. These were people with no rights, people who lived at the bottom of the social structure with no remedies for their needs. It struck me too that the people Jesus chose to be with were, in fact, like the majority of people in my country. He himself came from the artisan classes, although by birth and upbringing he was not one of the very poor. He may, however, have suffered a slight disadvantage of coming from Galilee, since the Jews in Jerusalem tended to look down on Galileans.

When I realised that Jesus was a radical, I loved his freedom to break conventional barriers in his relationships with a variety of women. He was courageous and unbowed by the powerful religious and political forces that opposed him: he enjoyed being with all kinds of people, and combined remarkable humility with true authority. He spoke for himself, and emerges as a man of extraordinary independence and unparalleled authenticity – a man whose insight defies explanation. I was surprised and then hooked. This was someone I wanted to know – understand, fathom, plumb – more closely.

This longing to know led me to become aware of the grace of blessing. As I pursued my quest, Jesus’ promise of abundant life (Jn 10:10) became more real. I found a new intensity to my life. I felt blessed. I am aware that claiming to feel blessed has an overtly pious ring. As I wrote of the blessings that follow in this book, I struggled to find similar words that sounded less religious, words like happy, privileged, favoured, and so on. However, in the end I decided that blessed actually says it all, but does need decoding. To explore blessing is in essence to find out what it means to be a fully free human being. Feeling blessed is not an uninterrupted good feeling. It is not financial security, nor physical well-being. It is not lasting pleasure, nor happiness, nor an unendingly cheerful mood. Being blessed is not some abstract faith concept of spiritual well-being. Being blessed does not mean that life becomes an easy ride. A sense of blessedness is challenged by the exigencies of life. Can one feel blessed if one is in a wheelchair, if poverty or oppression are daily realities, or if one has known depression? I cannot speak for others, though I do know human beings who have risen above pretty awful circumstances and still felt blessed.

The wonder is that by being blessed we are offered the possibility of being like Jesus. I am struck by the well-known words of Irenaeus of Lyon (late second century) that [t]he glory of God is the human person fully alive. I have found that when I keep my eyes on the man who borrowed a donkey, I taste something of being fully alive.

Being blessed is not an abstract theological concept. It is a practice, a way of living, not an esoteric truth. There is nothing majestic or mysterious about being blessed. It is about living in a way that makes the promise of abundant life possible, even in daunting circumstances. Being blessed