Feast day at Molepolole

Bishop Trevor, censing the altar at St. Paul's, Molepolole.

Today St. Paul’s Church in Molepolole is celebrating the feast day of the Conversion of St. Paul, which was Friday.

I travel to Molepolole, some forty miles west of Gaborone, with Bishop Trevor Mwamba and the new dean of the cathedral, James McKeran. It’s a beautiful, sunny day, already getting hot. The Bishop’s car’s air conditioning works better than mine.

The service is superb, wonderful choruses in Setswana, a fine ‘farewell’ sermon by Bishop Trevor, even special prayers for the paramount chief of the Bakwena, who stands before him.

It is commonplace to ask guests to bring greetings, and I do so, naming the Bishop of North Carolina, Michael Curry. But I also mention that North Carolina just held its annual convention Friday and elected a suffragan bishop, Anne Hodges-Copple, and so I bring greetings from her too. I make sure gender is not lost on the congregation; I mention ‘her election’ and ‘she’ to underscore the point. I trust it is duly translated.

This will not be disturbing to the people in the Diocese of Botswana. They have wanted to be able to ordain women for quite some years, and there has been some complaint that there are no women in our first intake of students at the St. Augustine Theological School. The Diocese is asking once more that the Church of the Province of Central Africa – which includes not just Botswana but also Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia – permit dioceses who wish to do so to ordain women. This has been a successful practice elsewhere; Kenya is a case in point. We’ll see. The provincial synod is in February.

There’s a good meal afterward. The chicken is tender and spicy, with a good dose of vinegar and pepper, like my Mama used to fix.

A Botswana ordination

            Today Sefularo Mogopodi is ordained a priest.

The Cathedral of the Holy Cross here in Gaborone is packed, not least with clergy at the benches ringing the wall at the altar. Mongezi Guma, the former cathedral dean, has traveled up from Johannesburg, and Benjamin Moleko, the former diocesan secretary, from Pretoria. Nick Darby, another former dean, is visiting from the Diocese of Newcastle, in England. And many clergy, familiar faces, from within Botswana join them.

Fr. Sefularo is a Motswana, thus adding to the very short list of priests from Botswana itself. He finished his studies at the College of the Transfiguration in South Africa a year ago. And he is young. His wife is invited forward toward the end of the service, carrying with her their baby girl. The infant is wearing a lacy white dress, and has a small band of white cloth wrapped around her head. She stares out at the congregation with interest, no doubt wondering what this is all about.

Bishop Trevor presides. He is busy preparing to leave Botswana in slightly over a month. This is his last ordination.

‘You stand here today as God’s dear child,’ he begins his charge to Fr. Sefularo. I especially like the words that come later: ‘Remember your own frailty.’ Perhaps that comes after nearly 25 years in the priesthood and 70 years of life.

It is a glorious celebratory service. True, it lasts a bit over three hours, and some of my African friends complain about it. But still….

I wish this young man well. And when he gathers years from now to reaffirm his ordination vows – as we do each year during Holy Week – I hope he will say with as strong a voice as he uses today: ‘I do.’

Welcome home 2013

‘Welcome home.’

            Ben Motlhalamme, the diocesan secretary, greets me with these words as we pass the peace in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Gaborone.

            They are kind, even generous words for him to say. Botswana, of course, is not my ‘home,’ but a message that I am home given by someone whose true home it is is a message to be gratefully received.

            It is perhaps easy to overlook, from the outside, just how international a city Gaborone is, despite its relatively small population for a nation’s capital. The Church reflects it. Naturally most are Batswana in the cathedral congregation, but there are people from Asia, Europe and North America, and from elsewhere in Africa and from many other countries in the region: South Africa, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe especially.

            Are we all ‘at home’ here? Maybe. Maybe not. But Ben Motlhalamme’s greeting reflects a vision, that we all may find a home within the community of faith, within the one Body of Christ, wherever we may be.

            Meanwhile, back at my home in North Carolina, my Bishop, Michael Curry, has been speaking of our Diocese’s going to Galilee, to a diverse, sometimes chaotic world, which is where Jesus told the disciples to go after the resurrection. That complex world, he says, should be seen as we look about us in our congregations.

I also think that when Jesus told his disciples to ‘go to Galilee,’ he was saying to the disciples, ‘let’s go home.’ Home to family, security, and perhaps, safety, after a tumultuous week in Jerusalem. Somehow the dynamic between our churches’ entering and engaging with the diverse community that is our Galilee, on the one hand, and providing ourselves with a continuing sense of being home, on the other, will lead to our realizing the call to have a church where all will find a home.

‘Welcome home.’ Wherever we may be. Whoever we are.