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Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
A United Methodist Insight Exclusive
As the world has mourned the death of Nelson Mandela, a number commentators noted the influence of Methodism on his life. Some discerned Methodist resonances within his life and actions. Mandela acknowledged the profound influence of the Methodist Church on his life. He had imbibed Methodism deeply in his youth and remained a member of the Methodist Church throughout his life.
However the significance of Mandela for Methodism does not lie in the influence of Methodism on his life. Rather it lies in the challenge that Mandela’s life poses to Methodists at precisely at the points where it resonates with aspects of his Methodist heritage. Many of these resonances do not simply embody aspects of Methodism but rather reconfigure them in profoundly challenging ways.
One such reconfigured embodiment is found in an account of a communion service in Pollsmoor prison narrated by Harry Wigget an Anglican priest who ministered to the senior political prisoners when they were transferred from Robben Island to Pollsmore in 1982.[1] He describes his first communion service there. The small group of prisoners gathered around the table; at the side of the room observing the proceedings ensuring nothing “suspicious” took place was a prison warder. Wigget describes how he had begun the Eucharist liturgy and had just shared the peace when Mandela interrupted him asking him to stop, he then walked over to the warder and asked him whether he was a Christian, when he replied that he was. Mandela said: “"Well then … join us round this table. You cannot sit apart. This is Holy Communion, and we must share and receive it together."[2] The warder drew his chair to the table and together with the prisoners shared in the communion.
Mandela’s action was no isolated incident; it was part of a pattern of behavior which characterized his relationship with some of his warders. However, its significance lies in the extension of this behavior into the ecclesial and more particularly the sacramental realm. It would be easy to view this incident as embodying the best of the Methodist understanding of open communion – an Anglican priest presides over a multi-denominational communion service during which a Methodist layperson acts to ensure that it is truly open by inviting an outsider to join the group. However, in doing this Mandela subtly but profoundly reconfigures the theology of open communion.
The significance of Mandela’s invitation must be seen in a broader political and ecclesial context. Under apartheid, facilities from public benches to neighborhoods were subjected to legally enforced segregation and discrimination, which ensured that black people received inferior facilities. At a popular level many whites would refuse to use the crockery and cutlery that had been used by blacks.
In the communion event, the warder, Christo Brand, was a white Afrikaner and as such the recipient of the all the political and economic benefits of apartheid. Mandela was a member of the exploited and oppressed majority. Brand was a warder, a representative of the coercive power of the state. Mandela was a prisoner who had been excluded from society and separated from family by this coercive power. He lived each day of his life in unwilling subjection to the power of the prison system.
The system of segregation was not only political it was also ecclesial. Wigget notes that the warder was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC). During the 19th century there was a long debate within the DRC about whether or not the celebration of communion should be racially segregated. In 1857 it was agreed that because of “the weakness” of some segregation could be permitted. This set the church on a path which led to the creation of racially segregated denominations and the development of apartheid theology. While Mandela may not have been aware of all this history when he invited Christo Brand to communion (though given his study of Afrikaaner history he may have been), he was certainly aware of ecclesiastical segregation and the DRC’s theological support for apartheid. While the Methodist Church had rejected ecclesial apartheid, the realities of a segregated society and white racism often resulted in practical ecclesial segregation.
When Mandela made his invitation he did so as one who has been excluded politically and socially, as one who suffered under the domination of apartheid society, and as one who would have been excluded from the white DRC. Mandela not only rejected the segregation in society and the church but he invited the one who represented the proponents and beneficiaries of segregation and domination to come and commune with Christ by joining the rejected ones around the Table of the Lord. It is here that that Mandela’s action provides the first challenge to reconfigure our theology of open communion.
Open communion, drawing on Wesley’s understanding of communion as a converting sacrament, has been understood as the invitation of all who are seeking communion with Christ to come to the table. The focus is on who may join “us” at the table. Mandela’s action reminds us of the role of meals in the parables and praxis of Jesus. Jesus communed with the excluded, the sinners, the poor and the unclean and invited the righteous, the rich and the clean to join him at their table. The older son is invited to join the party for the prodigal. The rich are called to abandon their wealth and join Jesus and his poor followers. From this perspective the open invitation to commune with Christ is not the invitation of those who belong to those outside. It is the invitation from Christ who was rejected and excluded, crucified outside the city, to commune with him amongst and with those who are excluded and rejected. The challenge is how do we give liturgical expression to such an invitation today, given the multidimensional forms of exclusion and subjugation that exist not only in our communities but also nationally and internationally?
A second challenge arises out of the power relationships the apartheid prison. It is Brand who had the power to command, to organize and to invite. Mandela was expected to follow, to submit and to obey. By inviting Brand to the communion Mandela rejected the role assigned to him. He refused to have his identity determined by the dehumanizing ideology of apartheid and the praxis of the prison system, and affirmed his own humanity. He asserted what Wesley described as a person’s ”natural liberty.” By bringing his characteristic rejection of apartheid categories into the sacramental realm, Mandela’s assertion of his human dignity is theologically intensified. It challenges us to reconfigure our understanding of Christ’s open invitation to communion as a rejection of all socially and politically defined categorizations of human beings. At Christ’s table the first becomes last and the last become first, the mighty are thrown down from their thrones and the humble are lifted up. As we commune with Christ there is “no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male and female.”
Thirdly Wigget notes that he saw the warder as “a paid puppet of the state” while Mandela saw him “as a brother, as a child of God, as an essential part of himself in the Kingdom.”[3] Again this is a theological intensification of Mandela’s approach to his warders. He had refused to objectify his oppressors but rather treated them as human being who could be liberated them from their oppressive ways. To achieve this he learned the Afrikaans language and studied the history and literature of the Afrikaner people. He wanted to communicate with them, understand them, and to uncover what motivated and shaped them. When this is transferred into the sacramental realm, to use Pauline terminology, Mandela discerned the body of Christ.
Yet he discerned the body of Christ in a strange counter-intuitive place. Not among the poor, the oppressed and the excluded but amongst the instruments of the state, the lower level officials who implemented the oppressive apartheid policies. Prison warders, such as Christo Brand, were only one category of a host of officials who concretely implemented apartheid laws on a daily basis. For the majority of black people they were the oppressive face of apartheid. Yet Mandela saw that they too were invited to the Lord’s Table. Such an invitation has precedent in the praxis of Jesus.
One of the scandalous features of Jesus’ ministry that has lost its ability to shock through over familiarity is his relationship with tax collectors – the petty officials of the Roman State. They were the ones who were responsible for the very concrete implementation of Roman oppression, the collection of taxes; more than that they had a reputation for abusing their authority for their personal gain. Such a praxis calls into question easy ideological interpretations of Jesus. Christ’s open call to communion with him calls us into relationship with people who uphold ideologies and theologies which we feel are wrong and even reprehensible. Such a call to communion is not a call to accept or affirm what we believe is contrary to the gospel, but to view those whose views we strongly oppose as members of the body of Christ and to seek to understand them and why they believe even as we promote what we believe the gospel clearly requires.
Finally we need to note that Mandela regularly participated in communion while he was imprisoned at Pollsmore. Unfortunately the sources at my disposal do not inform us if Christo Brand also joined him on other occasions. However, this regular participation did not stand in tension with his rigorous pursuit of justice and liberation through political means. Rather it seems to have provided him with strength to pursue this mission. He later noted that “To share the sacrament as part of the tradition of my Church was important for me. It gave me a sense of inner quiet and calm. I used to come away from these services feeling a new man.”[1]
It was during this time that Mandela started a new phase of struggle by entering into secret negotiations with the government. It is possible to speculate that there was relationship between this new phase of political struggle and his participation in communion. Whether or not there was such a relationship remains a mystery. However, the theological challenge of Mandela’s linking participation in communion with the resources he needed for his political struggle reminds us that participation in communion is a means of grace. Through our communion with Christ in bread and wine we are being renewed in the image of God – our sins are forgiven, we are transformed by and for love, we are healed of our spiritual brokenness and empowered to represent God in the world. Hence Christ’s open invitation to come to his table is a promise that in coming we will be transformed, healed and empowered so that we can seek the reign of God and its justice in this world.
[1] Charles Villa-Vicencio,. The Spirit of Freedom: South African Leaders on Religion and Politics. ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.) http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft4p3006kc/ , 147
[1] He describes this in A Time to Speak (Cape Town: Pretext, 2007), 57 and in “He shone with the Light of Christ” in The Church Times” 13 December2013, http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2013/13-december/news/world/%E2%80%98he-shone-with-the-light-of-christ%E2%80%99
[2] “He Shone with the Light of Christ”
[3] A Time to Speak, 57.
Dr. David N. Field is a South African Methodist layman residing in Basel, Switzerland. He serves as Academic Coordinator of the Methodist e-Academy, an online education project providing courses in Methodist Studies for prospective ordained elders in United Methodist and Methodist churches across Europe.