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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Rev Berkley at Mandela memorial: Continue fight for equitable society

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The world con­tin­ues to pay trib­ute to for­mer South African leader Nel­son Man­dela, who was buried in his na­tive vil­lage on Sun­day. Here in Trinidad, the An­gli­can church held a memo­r­i­al in his ho­n­our at the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral in Port-of-Spain, on Mon­day. Fol­low­ing is the ser­mon de­liv­ered at the ser­vice by the Rt Revd Claude Berkley:

We con­tin­ue with the rest of the world to give thanks to God for the life and work of for­mer Pres­i­dent of South Africa, free­dom fight­er, cham­pi­on of the peo­ples, peace­mak­er and world leader–Nel­son Rolih­lahla Man­dela. He has been de­scribed as "A hero of his age, one of the great fig­ures in the his­to­ry of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry". His sto­ry has be­come the birth leg­end, or cre­ation myth, of "the new South Africa".

Pres­i­dent Man­dela's name made him ap­pear to be larg­er than life it­self–and he was sym­bol­ic of "the strug­gle for jus­tice, equal­i­ty and dig­ni­ty" in South Africa and around the globe. His sac­ri­fice was so great that it called up­on peo­ple every­where to do what they could on be­half of hu­man progress.That call to work dili­gent­ly on be­half of hu­man progress re­mains as im­por­tant to­day as it was dur­ing his strug­gle.

We en­counter Mr Man­dela as a hu­man be­ing formed by the tra­di­tions of his com­mu­ni­ty as in–"lis­ten­ing care­ful­ly" to his el­ders and to all who spoke at trib­al gath­er­ings, and watch­ing a con­sen­sus grad­u­al­ly emerge un­der the guid­ance of the king, the chief or the 'head man.' Habits of dis­ci­pline, or­der, self-con­trol and re­spect for oth­ers were de­mand­ed by both tra­di­tion­al au­thor­i­ty and the ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions at which Man­dela stud­ied."

A young man of strong con­vic­tions, he slipped away from what would be an arranged mar­riage ac­cord­ing to his in­dige­nous cul­ture, he would part ways with his nephew over the ques­tion of co-op­er­a­tion with the apartheid state. He was trau­ma­tised at his ac­ci­den­tal killing of a snake.

He claimed with con­vic­tion, his em­brace of the Chris­t­ian faith. He felt that he was com­pe­tent in two strands of cul­tur­al in­flu­ence, his in­dige­nous cul­ture and west­ern cul­ture. He cel­e­brat­ed the in­flu­ence of pos­i­tive per­sons on his life–Tam­bo, Sisu­lu, Matanz­i­ma and oth­ers of the African Na­tion­al Con­gress (ANC).

In re­spect of his Chris­t­ian faith and in­deed his re­li­gios­i­ty one can iden­ti­fy cer­tain dis­tinct bib­li­cal ad­mo­ni­tions, in the way the dra­ma of his life un­fold­ed. For ex­am­ple: "So let us not grow weary in do­ing what is right, for we will reap at har­vest time, if we do not give up" (Gal 6:9). Or con­sid­er this: "Do not be over­come by evil, but over­come evil with good" (Ro­mans 12:21).

Sim­i­lar­ly, Paul con­tin­ues: "Do not re­pay any­one evil for evil, but take thought for what is no­ble in the sight of all. If it is pos­si­ble, so far as it de­pends on you, live peace­ably with all" (Ro­mans 12: 17). And in the words of Je­sus, the Christ we read: "But love your en­e­mies, do good, and lend, ex­pect­ing noth­ing in re­turn" (Luke 6: 35a). More­over, Je­sus of­fered the Gold­en Rule: "Do to oth­ers as you would have then do to you" (Luke 6: 31).

In some way, we be­lieve that Mr Man­dela lived out his Chris­t­ian faith in all hu­mil­i­ty, when he de­fined a saint, (to Sten­gel)–as a sin­ner who keeps try­ing.

What then can we de­duce from his pre­cious mem­o­ry that can help us as a na­tion and as peo­ple of the world? We can un­der­score the im­por­tance of pos­i­tive com­mu­ni­ty in­flu­ence and the need to fa­cil­i­tate this. We must con­tin­ue to work on an ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem that will pro­duce habits of dis­ci­pline, or­der, self-con­trol and re­spect for oth­ers. We must re­spect and take se­ri­ous­ly, the agents of re­li­gious in­flu­ence or oth­er moral­is­ing agen­cies which shape a rea­soned faith and pur­sue a re­deemed hu­man­i­ty.

We must work our way to cre­at­ing, nur­tur­ing and sus­tain­ing a cadre of per­sons of pos­i­tive in­flu­ence and hope. We need to or­gan­ise our so­ci­ety dif­fer­ent­ly. Our so­ci­ety must find a way to de­mand of our pub­lic of­fi­cials and all cit­i­zens, a com­mit­ment to the pur­suit of cer­tain life-giv­ing prin­ci­ples–of jus­tice, free­dom, for­give­ness, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and the fo­cus on the big­ger pic­ture.

A word in re­spect of those who con­tend that Mr Man­dela did not do enough, he did not com­plete the re­ver­sal of for­tunes that was re­quired to fix the sit­u­a­tion. That may be so, but can we be­grudge his life-giv­ing sac­ri­fice and lead­er­ship in dis­man­tling the for­mal struc­tures of in­jus­tice? And is there not a call to oth­ers to con­tin­ue the strug­gle for a more eq­ui­table and just so­ci­ety every­where, pat­tern­ing the tem­plate of the great cham­pi­on?

To­day we re­mem­ber Mr Man­dela and we cel­e­brate his life and we will do well to com­mit to its process of ad­vanc­ing hu­man progress.We are re­mind­ed that per­se­ver­ance, en­durance, faith, hope and love are cru­cial to the re­deemed hu­man­i­ty which will trans­form our world. Habits of dis­ci­pline, or­der, self con­trol, re­spect for oth­ers and a deep com­mit­ment to ad­vanc­ing the so­cial or­der, work to­geth­er for the tri­umph of the hu­man spir­it, and each of us has the ca­pac­i­ty to par­tic­i­pate.

For our dear­ly beloved de­part­ed broth­er, Nel­son Man­dela, we give God thanks, we salute his lega­cy to the world and we com­mit to the in­spi­ra­tion that he will al­ways pro­vide, for the ad­vance­ment of a re­deemed hu­man­i­ty.Rest eter­nal grant un­to Nel­son, oh Lord, and let light per­pet­u­al shine up­on him. May he rest in peace.


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