One of my favourite Christmas songs is John Lennon’s classic Happy Christmas (War is Over). This year though, as I have listened to the song every time I have gone to the supermarket in recent weeks, it has struck a discordant note with me. It took Vladimir Putin and his immoral war on Ukraine to make a liar of John Lennon.
Increasingly, I found myself thinking of an old friend. It was ironic given his aversion to violence that he died last year on 26th December – the feast of St Stephen, a Christian deacon in Jerusalem who was known for his service to the poor and his status as the first Christian martyr. He was stoned to death in AD 36.
The late Pope John Paul I was known as “the smiling pope”. Desmond Tutu was “the laughing archbishop” – a man who wore his humanity on his sleeve.
When I was a boy, one of my favourite songs was What a Beautiful Noise by Neil Diamond. To anyone lucky enough to have met him, a beautiful noise will always be the sound of Desmond Tutu’s great heartfelt laugh – a sound resonant with warmth, sincerity and hope.
He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his stance against apartheid in South Africa. It came as a great shock to me to find how relaxed he was – even though, as one of the best-known faces in the world, he was constantly in demand.
Hope and trust
One of the great privileges of my life was to visit Archbishop Tutu’s church in Cape Town. There he filled his congregation with an image of the new life that God was bringing in a way that could fill their hearts with hope for the future of the world, a belief that there was the possibility of a very different way of living.
They began to hope and trust that it could happen, not just in the promised eternity, but that a beginning could be made in their specific context. With hope in their hearts, and a vision to inspire them, his companions on the journey believed that they might begin to play their part in bringing his peaceful vision about.
One of his legacies to me is a deep interest in Ubuntu. He explained it to me as “a way of life from which we can all learn. Originating from a Southern African philosophy, it encompasses all our aspirations about how to live life well, together. We feel it when we connect with other people and share a sense of humanity; when we listen deeply and experience an emotional bond; when we treat ourselves and other people with the dignity they deserve. The essence of ubuntu is, ‘My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.’”
It was telling that, on his journey to the award ceremony to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, he made a stopover in London and asked some of the Irish Dunnes strikers to meet him.
The Dunnes Stores strike began on July 19th, 1984, when 21-year-old checkout operator Mary Manning was suspended for refusing to handle South African grapefruit. Nine of her colleagues at the store in Dublin’s Henry Street walked out in support of her that day, beginning a strike that would last for two years and nine months.
Peace and justice
Karen Gearon and Mary Manning went to meet Tutu in London with union official Brendan Archbold. The meeting gave the strike the oxygen of a lot of publicity. In April 1987, as a result of public pressure over the strike and the apartheid regime, the Irish government banned the import of South African goods. It was a forceful reminder that peace is grounded in justice.
There was always a strong ethical fragrance in everything Archbishop Tutu said to me. “To treat one such as less than this is not just wrong. It is veritably blasphemous and sacrilegious. It is as if we were to spit in the face of God. Consequently injustice, racism, exploitation, oppression are to be opposed not as a political task but as a response to a religious, a spiritual imperative. Not to oppose these manifestations of evil would be tantamount to disobeying God.”
A heavy sadness washed over me when I heard that Tutu had died after a lengthy battle with cancer, aged 90, last Christmas. I like to imagine him leaning over the banisters in heaven smiling down on us today whispering a simple message: “Love one another.”
I once asked him how he would like to be remembered. “I’m not perfect so I would like people to forgive my imperfections and know that in my best moments I tried to walk the path of peace and love.”
Is it not time that our troubled world took on the same journey?
John Scally lectures on theology in Trinity College Dublin