A giant of spiritual life

The Very Rev Dr John Chalmers reflects on a powerful address to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

IN May 2009 Archbishop Desmond Tutu was invited to address the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

To say the atmosphere was electric is an understatement. He opened his speech by setting out the paradox that our all-knowing, all-powerful, omnipotent God was, in fact, impotent in the face of injustice and oppression. That God, he said, instead of raining down thunderbolts on the heads of the perpetrators of oppression, waits until there are those who are willing to turn this world’s wilderness of injustice into a garden of flowers.

The Assembly Hall was packed to the gunnels, listening, spellbound, to one of the finest orators of our time, but we knew that Desmond Tutu (whose death was announced on Boxing Day 2021) was much more than a great orator. Fully immersed in the dangerous world of protest, advocacy and activism we knew that we were listening to one of those people for whom God had waited, who went to work in the wilderness of apartheid and who helped plant flowers of hope in the new Rainbow Nation of South Africa. At great personal risk, he had walked the walk while most of us had only ever talked the talk. Integrity of word and action is one of the best references that anyone can carry.

The 2009 General Assembly was also the Assembly at which serious discussion began over the place of gay people in the life and ministry of the Church of Scotland. The Assembly had been deeply divided on this matter and the subject still troubles many folk across the Church, but as you read this article I want you to imagine Archbishop Desmond Tutu with his eyes closed as if caught up in the passion of prayer, he takes the words of Jesus from John 12: 32 and he says, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw [not some, but] all people to myself” and he describes this as Jesus’ radical assertion that all in the human family are embraced by the love of God and that in this family there are no outsiders – only insiders.

In your imagination you should now be able to hear a pin drop as Tutu declares: “ALL, ALL are insiders, all are children of our heavenly Father, the rich, the poor, the lame, the blind the clever, the not so clever, the red, the black, the yellow, ALL, ALL, ALL. The Palestinian, the Israeli, Al-Qaeda, Bin Laden, George Bush, ALL, ALL. I will draw ALL, ALL into this embrace of love that will not let you go, ALL, ALL, ALL, ALL, ALL, ALL. Lesbian, gay, so called straight, ALL, ALL, ALL, ALL, ALL I will draw ALL – we are family.”

This man of extraordinary integrity – who knew what it was like to be excluded – was speaking about a God whose love knew no bounds. This man who had first-hand experience of how cruel his enemies could be was expressing God’s love for those, who from one side or another, were only ever described as enemies. This Archbishop who knew only too well how theology could be used to underpin structural and societal evil was facing down the issue of the day.

At the end of his speech the Assembly rose to its feet and offered him a standing ovation that lasted longer than any I have ever heard. If Assembly moments like this could be bottled, preserved and distributed I think we would be a better Church and a better people.

Desmond Tutu was one of the giants of spiritual life whose thinking and presence and influence will be truly missed. He did not believe in a small God or a smallminded God and he reminded us, if we needed any reminding, that you cannot exaggerate the breadth and length and depth and height of the love of God.

The speech can be heard at https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=WoP8Qkh4k5E

In the February piece, the word ‘not’ was omitted from a sentence in the third column. The sentence should have read: ‘In Genesis 2 the garden represents the whole earth, and we should not be lured into thinking that somehow or another the story of the fall annuls the responsibility that those who are made in the image of God still have for this planet which we call home”.