15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

In today’s gospel we see Jesus sending out his disciples with the instruction to them to take nothing for the journey. Through this instruction Jesus was highlighting the importance of enabling those who receive the Word to feel that they have something to give as well. For if the preacher goes with hands that are full already, there will be no space for a two-way relationship. Jesus employed this same strategy with the Samaritan woman at the well. He initiated the relationship by asking her for a drink of water, even though he knew that it will finally be him who gives her living water. Messiah and Son of God though he is, he knows that in order to penetrate the hardened shell of her defences, he must come to her from a position of weakness and vulnerability. It is the vulnerability of the preacher that enables the Word preached to be received.

This was perhaps the mistake that was made by the first missionaries who came to Africa. They forgot about this instruction to go on mission empty-handed. So they came with arms full, and for the most part were not dependant on the hospitality of the people that they preached to. For real transformation to happen, there must be an encounter between equals. The evangelization of Africa, unfortunately, was marred by the conquest of colonialism, and the gospel was not transmitted in the context of an encounter between equals. The missionary effort was invariably connected to the colonial effort. Thus the missionaries came, not with empty hands, but rather with arms full of the implements necessary to “civilize” Africa. Without wanting to take away from all the good that they did and the great sacrifice many of them endured to bring the gospel to Africa, we must acknowledge the lasting damage that this has done to an African Christianity. Because the missionary effort here in Africa felt that it had nothing to receive from the people that it was preaching to, it discarded wholesale all the elements of African religious belief, branding them as superstition at best, and in some cases going as far as calling them devil worship.

This dismissal of the African traditional religious belief has resulted in a situation in Africa where the expression of the Christian faith remains couched in largely Western cultural concepts. Yet there is a deep hunger for a gospel message that speaks to the heart of African traditional belief. This deep hunger can be seen in the popularity of African Christian syncretic movements such as the one founded by John Masowe, popularly known as vapostori. Having no buildings, they congregate outside in the open air, like Jesus would have with his disciples, and they move only with a staff and a tunic, meeting those they encounter with empty hands. Their simplicity is compellingly attractive, it is the same attractiveness that the 12 apostles would have had as they journeyed through the villages of 1st century Palestine.

One aspect of African traditional religious belief that has been largely ignored by Catholicism is the absolutely central role given to spiritual powers, both benign and malign, in the happenings of everyday life. The fact that the Church is not responding adequately to this belief can be seen from the frequency with which Catholics will seek out vaporofita from local African churches for a solution to their problems. It can also be seen from the way in which, after the priest has performed all the last rites and leaves the gravesite and the funeral home, family members will remain behind to conclude with their own traditional divination and cleansing rites to ascertain who was responsible for the death and to bring peace back into the homestead. With its emphasis on reductive rationalism, Western Christianity has a tendency to dismiss potential manifestations of evil spirits as idle superstition.

The 1st century Jewish worldview was not much different from that of our contemporary Sub-Saharan African worldview when it comes to belief in spiritual phenomena. Jews living in 1st century Palestine would have been very aware of evil powers surrounding them. This is why they placed such a big emphasis on ritual purity. So long as they remained faithful to the covenant and ritually pure, evil spirits could not attack them. But when they were pagan territory, and far away from the Temple, they were liable to attack by evil spirits. Increasingly, at the time of Jesus, there was a feeling, that because of the corruption of the priests that manned the Temple, and because of Israel’s unfaithfulness to the covenant, and the infiltration of pagans into places like Galilee, evil spirits were now free to attack Israelite homes and synagogues and even the holy city of Jerusalem. People’s fear of the power of evil spirits was running high as Jesus begun his mission in Galilee.

Jesus is highly aware of this and wants to meet people at their point of greatest need. It is for this reason that he gives his disciples power of unclean spirits. More than any other gospel, the gospel of Mark depicts Jesus as being concerned about the problem caused by unclean spirits and people’s fear of them. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus is depicted as having power over these unclean spirits and giving his disciples this same power to vanquish them.

A truly inculturated African Christianity would leverage this evangelical emphasis on Jesus’ power over evil and would see an expansion of the rites of exorcism and the rituals associated Christ’s victory over demons. This would be the truly appropriate response to the great fear present in many African cultures of the power of evil to snatch away from us the fullness of life that Christ came to bring us. Jesus’ desire is always to remove the obstacles that stand in the way of our receiving God’s grace. Jesus would surely have the same solicitude to fight evil here in our contemporary situation as he did 2000 years ago, and his power to do so remains the same. It is up to us as a Church to create spaces, rituals and prayers that manifest this power.

Questions for reflection

1. How can I go about emptying my hands when I go out to proclaim the gospel?
2. What are the ways in which I can witness to Jesus’ power over evil and join the fight against a paralysing fear of evil?
3. What are some of the other areas that the Church in Africa should be thinking about inculturating the gospel?