St George's Cathedral, Cape Town

A sermon preached by The Revd Bruce W. B. Jenneker in the Cathedral Church of St George in the City and Diocese of Cape Town on the Third Sunday of Lent 11 March 2007

There she lies, an irresistible ball of soft fur and gentle purring, with eyes that beckon yet warn you that she's in charge even in this moment of powerlessness. She's the boss now and will always be. Clearly the product of some street tryst, no Siamese or Abyssinian she, just a cat. Your neighbour, cousin, friend who's been saddled with six of them is tempting you. 'They look after themselves', you hear him say, 'she'll be no problem. She likes you.' And so you have a cat. What shall you name her? T. S. Elliot made fun of the cat-naming predicament in an amusing poem – perhaps you remember it from your childhood:

The naming of cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm mad as a hatter
When I tell you a cat must have three different names.

First of all, there's the name
that the family use daily,
Such as Victor, or Jonathan,
George or Bill Bailey —

But I tell you,
a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that is peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he
keep up his tail perpendicular,
Of names of this kind,
I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quazo or Coripat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellyrum —
Names that never belong
to more than one cat.

But above and beyond
there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you will never guess;
The name
that no human research can discover —
But The Cat Himself Knows, and will never confess.

Whether it's naming a cat, or changing from Jan Smuts to Oliver Tambo, or from Pretoria to Tswane, names matter. I have been thinking a lot about names just recently, mostly because I have been caught up in the international nostalgia about Carl Linnaeus. He was the eighteenth century botanist, the 300th Anniversary of whose birth the world will celebrate on May 23 this year. This erudite and prodigious scholar is known as the father of taxonomy and acknowledged as one of the first pioneers of modern ecology. His most valuable contribution to modern science was the method he developed for identifying plants and animals. It is the one we use today still – the pattern of two names, one – a generic name for the family and the other - a specific name for the species. Let's talk flowers for a moment: asters, daisy or sunflowers belong to the Asteraceae family of which there are more than 20,000 recognized species. Whether its bugs or rodents, roses or proteas, we know which ones we are looking for thanks to Linnaeus.

But there is a dark side to names as every bully or tyrant knows – moffie, whitie, nigger, kaffir, sissy, wop, nerd. Besides the more innocent naming of plants and animals, Linnaeus was also a pioneer in defining the concept of race. Identifying people first with place of origin – Americans, Asians, Africans and Europeans, he moved very quickly to skin colour. Needless to say his classification was skewed to in favour of Europeans – and the rest is a tragic, grotesque and enduring blot on the history of civilisation. We here on the southern tip of the continent that saw the birth of humanity know at first about the prejudice and oppression, domination and exploitation that came from this naming.

From out of the burning bush God's name is announced to Moses – I Am is God's name. That which is, reality beyond and outside of which nothing is imaginable or nameable, the life at the heart of all things, the power that moves everything, the love that holds the universe together. God's name is huge and enigmatic. So big that it is beyond our imagination. So mysterious that we cannot grasp or fathom the reality it names. And yet, all the time and in every way, we are eagerly trying to pin God down. God is the luck that can determine the fall of the dice, the ring of the slot machine, whether I win the lottery or not. God is the power that can strike down tyrants or raise up heroes. God chooses sides between Palestinians and Jews, Pakistanis and Indians. God churns up tsunamis and rains down devastating floods. God is the power that cures his cancer and lets her die. Magician, magistrate, magnate, mother of all. We seek to pin God down, fence God in. The vast open spaces of God's grace perplex and confuse us. The stubborn promiscuity of God who loves everyone and anyone frustrates us and fills us with resentment. The creative, surprising, always new and becoming power of God undermines our neat categories and complacent assumptions. What is the name by which I approach the wonder and mystery of God that is beyond the telling, outreaches the knowing and breaks out of all my definitions? Have I found that name, am I seeking for it, dare I speak it – in prayer, and as I try to unravel the meaning of my life and the life we share? Or have I imposed upon God the name that suits my prejudices, reinforces my assumptions, extends the range of my smugness?

From out of the two parables Jesus speaks two realities that need naming. The first is the deeply unsettling phenomena of human suffering. Go and stand in The Link for a moment before Ronald Harrison's moving painting of an unforgettable moment of horror It was photographed by journalist Sam Nzima on June 16, 1976 in Soweto. Speaking of that moment Nzima said, “I saw a child fall down. Under a shower of bullets I rushed forward and went for the picture. It had been a peaceful march, the children were told to disperse, they started singing Nkosi Sikelele. The police were ordered to shoot.” Hector Pieterson, was the young boy who was shot. He was picked up by Mbuyisa Makhubo, who, together with Hector's sister, Antoinette, ran towards a press car. There they bundled Hector in, and rushed him to a nearby clinic, where he was pronounced dead. The moment has been preserved in Nzima's now legendary photograph, which is the inspiration for Harrison's painting. Standing in front of it all the horrors of the inhumanity of men and women to their own kind assault one's mind and heart. Almost lost in a vast and beautiful world of earth and sky, dwarfed by its beautiful immensity in fact, there they stand, an intimate trio of tragedy, caught up and sacrificed by the vaster calamity of a humanity that has no heart. What is the purpose and meaning of human suffering, how shall we name it, make sense of it?

But into this dark reality Jesus speaks another name, that all is not yet as it will be. This darkness is not yet the bright light that is already breaking into it. This hopeless situation of a young teenager reckless with the potential teeming within him is not yet the flowering of responsibility and discernment that is already germinating in the good, rich soil of his soul. This society of violence and corruption, crime and selfishness is not yet the civil society of reconciliation, restitution and renewal that is coming to birth. 'Let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, then you can cut it down.' Jesus speaks the name of patient, unconditional love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And it is name we all need, for we are broken, faithless, unable to do and be the best we would like to do and be. The I AM at the heart of all things, the reality that holds the universe together, Jesus tells us, is a love that knows whereof we are made, is patient with our sluggishness, generous in response to our thick-headedness, ready to give another chance, forgive, forget and continue to hope.

What does all this mean for you and me who don't sit where they make the big decisions and are not partners with those who give our public life its shape. I usually don't know too much about how to effect global and momentous change. But I do know that Mahatma Ghandi was right when he thought that one man walking all the way to the sea would make a difference. And I do know that Martin Luther King was right when he said 'one and one and two and twenty make a million, so we'll see that day come round, we'll see that day come round.'

So today, in the words of another poem – this one poignant and compelling in its indictment of us and our inhumanity - today we have naming of parts. On our Lenten pilgrimage naming the parts that participate with the Love that holds the universe together to make that love real, right here right now. For me it means giving up the cocoon that protects me from what happens around me. We all have the soft threads that protect us from the world – our drug of choice, sex, power-games, rage and resentment, shopping and our love of things, wallowing in our own bad-luck or arrogantly trumpeting our self-importance. Whatever they are, we are skilled at weaving them into a safe of cocoon to protect us from the harsh realities around us. It lets us read the newspapers and go, 'Tut, tut.' It lets us see homelessness, poverty and hunger and say that the Church, the Government or the UN really should get on with it. Can we break out of our cocoons, wreck the cherished threads that isolate us in our self-importance?

So today we have naming of parts. The parts of me that need the vastness of the great I AM, the parts of me that are challenged by the mystery, the ambiguity and the ever expanding reality of God. My little theological arguments, my neat categories and tidy systems. I must name them in the context of the name God gives Godself – and be judged. Today we have naming of parts. The parts that hide from social evil, put on blinkers in the face of corruption – here I am not talking about corruption in high places, I am talking about the false and deceitful choices we make at home, in our relationships, at work as we build our careers, among our friends and acquaintances as we score off others, indulging in petty exploitation and crude manipulation. Today we have naming of parts. The parts of me, once tender and vulnerable, now calloused over and carapaced into cruel spite and ruthless malice. The parts that yearning for love and intimacy, but starved of it through pride and fear, now only seek for dominance and yean for control. The names that shape our identity, the Scriptures tell us today, are the great I AM of God, the incomprehensible mystery of suffering and the boundless steadfast love of the Lord. These names are the parameters in which I must choose my own, and you yours. God give us grace to choose well.

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