Face to faith

Sitting recently beside Lake Chivero in Zimbabwe, I was stunned once again by the incomparable beauty of an African landscape and the penetrating quality of the light that the continent always offers. But for all this I felt as if I was on the Mary Celeste.

My hosts, Hugh and Muriel, had taken me to a bird sanctuary which seemed to have few birds. We selected food from a menu most of which was unavailable. We visited a tourist attraction without tourists. As the owner beckoned his one visible staff member to fetch us a waiter, the decaying atmosphere of Graham Greene slid seamlessly towards Fawlty Towers. After 10 minutes the same man appeared to take our order. No doubt he then cooked the delicious fish we ate.

My complaint may seem ridiculous given that, despite the promises of a new power-sharing government, most Zimbabweans still lack food and water. The vignette nonetheless hints at some complex realities for the bread-basket of Africa, now become its twilight zone.

An intimidating attempt by passport control to claim that my three-month visitor’s visa had expired after 10 days — to elicit another $55 payment — and the hassle I suffered taking photographs near so-called protected sites are all of a piece. Negative learnt behaviour is not being unlearnt very quickly.

But it’s easy to succumb to a Western tendency to accidie, especially when one explores the saga of Anglican life in Zimbabwe. A Mugabe-supporting and supported Anglican bishop, Nolbert Kunonga — now excommunicated — became so corrupt and crazed that he led a rump of parishioners, tried to seize church buildings, styled himself archbishop and then — while admitting the illegalities — continued to contest the legality of his successor.

The plot is obscenely laughable, pure Tom Sharpe or Alan Bennett. But it’s certainly not fiction. It points straight to the rottenness in the state of Zimbabwe.

If the truly bizarre and evil can’t be laughed off, can it be fought off? Heroic individuals, such as the chancellor of the Harare diocese, Bob Stumbles, believe so. Despite the politicised and often corrupt nature of Zimbabwe’s courts, Bob’s faith that even imperfect temporal justice can be transfigured by the divine will is simply unshakeable, and he has given his all to defeat evil in a context that’s often Gilbert and Sullivan minus the jokes. But equally his beloved church has relied on countless ordinary Zimbabweans having the courage to go to church when to do so could mean a beating from Kunonga’s thugs.

Above all, the crisis in church and state has invited everyone to deepen their faith and to rediscover the prophetic symbolism of the broken bread and wine at the heart of the Christian shared meal, in the presence of the one whose sacrifice enacts and enables real justice to be both seen and done.

That may sound like pious old hat in a West so over-secularised it can’t see the cross for the trees. But in Zimbabwe, the shared reality of Jesus Christ is helping a whole nation to transcend tyranny.

I found myself using as a prayer this short hymn, which a distinguished friend of mine, David Isitt, a former chaplain of King’s College, Cambridge, and canon of Bristol, wrote to help people grasp this hope of transformation.

Lord, we receive
Your body and your blood
And claim communion
in one bond of love. In faith and hope
For all your world we plead,
Where hungry children
Cry for want of bread. Take in your hands
Once more, O Lord of Life,
This broken bread,
this cup of sacrifice. So shall the world
In mercy find relief;
Your children make their
Eucharist in peace.

I returned from Zimbabwe to the sad news that David had died. But the truth of his song and the strength with which countless Zimbabweans live its reality endure and overcome.