“When All The Saints Go Marching In…!”

“When All The Saints Go Marching In…!”(Heb.11:23-38).
There is no doubt that in a way, the missionaries to Africa were surrogates of colonisation. This view of the missionary enterprise is upheld in Southern Africa with the painful, often quoted vexatious statement that “When the missionaries came to our ancestors, they gave them the Bible. Then they told our ancestors, ‘Close your eyes and let us pray.’ Our ancestors closed their eyes. When they opened their eyes after the ‘Amen,’ their land had been demarcated. The land was no longer theirs…!”
The reason why the brand of African Christianity is uniquely far removed from missionary Christianity is in the missing words of the ellipsis above: “They had the land, but we now had the Bible.” The Africans now had the Bible without commensurate training in interpretation, hence the reason for our brand of “dangerous interpretation” that often misleads rather than leads. Africans started interpreting the Bible while it was still unopened. The colonialist who first brought the Bible to Africa often read the Bible in the privacy of their homes. After reading they often prayed – maybe by kneeling and lifting up of hands to heaven. The Africans who may have been peeping throgh openings in the tatched walls saw this and concluded that the Bible was “an object of power.” As such, the unread Bible became for them an unmatched source of power. This is the reason for believing so much in the threats of “touch not my anointed and do my prophet no harm” used as a shield by charlatans to frighten gullible Christians into blind submission.
Today is “All Saints Day,” a day set aside to commemorate the saints. Saints in our understanding are not only the canonised who supposedly lived holy and blameless lives and whose examples the living should emulate. Saints, meaning holy are those who devote their lives to holiness, yet being conscious of their inadequacies.
A catchy song of the Christian Women Fellowship(CWF) Movement of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon(PCC) is, “Women of faith are shaking the whole world…” While answering the refrain you see the women shaking their “bomboms.” Shaking the whole world is more than shaking buttocks – an action that is more of seduction than a genuine gesture of praise, adoration and reverence to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Shaking the world for Christ should be an awareness that the God of good times is the same God of bad times. It is the realisation that sainthood is not about seeing God as the source of all good things, rather, it is that “in everything give thanks…”; “rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation and be constant in prayer…”– read the life stories of the saints mentioned in today’s text.
Today we remember all our departed loved ones. It is not our place to decide who among them are saints or not. These include all our ancestors who are also Saints together with all the others, and who are assisting the exalted Lord Jesus Christ when he is performing his High priestly duties in heaven.
The lives of the departed saints, their sufferings and sacrifices should serve as yardstick for us the living to emulate their examples so that we too would “be in the number when the saints go marching in.”
My friend, today after Church service go to the nearby graves of your loved ones or a cemetery. Keep it clean, lay a wreath or light a candle as you offer a prayer of thanksgiving for them.
Weekend prayer: Holy Spirit help us to live lives worthy of sainthood and may the souls of the departed saints rest in peace. Amen!
Have a blessed weekend! Peace be with you!
Rev Babila Fochang.