Rector's Monthly Letter

Dear People of Wick and Thurso,

Again I've found something that says what I would want to say, only probably better. It's a Ghanaian parable in an article from the September 2009 issue of The Expository Times (page 600), which I read at some time during the vanished days of July.

Once Kwaku Anansie lived in a town filled with wicked people. They were always fighting, backbiting and stealing from one another. Finally Kwaku decided to teach the people a lesson. He told his wife to prepare a large banquet. Then he invited everyone in the town on one condition, that they would have to eat with the spoons that would be provided.

As the guests arrived, Kwaku handed each guest a spoon with a very long handle. The guests then began to eat the delicious food set before them. But since they were sitting so close together they began to disturb one another with the ends of their long spoons. In a short time all the guests were pushing, shouting and fighting with one another.

Kwaku stood on a chair and called for order. "I have invited you to a banquet and you have turned it into a battle ground. Why are you doing this?" One of the guests then raised his spoon and shouted, "Kwaku Anansie, you have deceived us and made us look foolish! Nobody can eat with these long spoons you have given us!"

Then Kwaku responded, "No, it is not I that have made you look foolish but rather your own selfishness has betrayed you." Then he called to one of the guests to sit across the table from him. "This is the way to use these spoons", he said as he dipped his long spoon into the soup and fed the person across from him.

As the article goes on to note, "In the story, Kwaku Anansie tried to teach the townspeople how to live in peace. The people all thought that the spoons were to be used to feed themselves but discovered that they had a different purpose, to serve others. To abuse this purpose would only bring about fighting. The spoon, well, that's actually an extension of ourselves. And our purpose, like that of the spoons, is to serve others."

As with all parables and analogies, to push the tale too far runs the danger of causing it to lose its aptness. But, taking that risk, I began to reflect, not only on how hard it is it to be truly committed to serving others rather than our own wishes, but also that the gifts that others give us, their choice for us, may not be what we would want. In the parable, the guest must accept the morsel of food that the other guest has chosen. Grace (perhaps, in fact, just another aspect of service) leads us to accept the gift as an expression of the other's wishes for us.

This applies, of course, much more to the gifts that our God gives us. If we seem, as a church (or even, dare I say, as a Diocese) to be lacking what we think we need to sustain us, could it be that we're trying to feed ourselves with our own long spoons, and not looking for and accepting the gifts that our God is giving us? Of his many names, one is The Giver: he knows only how to give; he has promised that he will provide what we need (but not what we think we need).

This may sound quite unrealistic, but please consider these figures, from the same article: in 1909, 9 per cent of Africans considered themselves to be Christians. By the mid-1980s, 44 per cent of Africans considered themselves to be Christians, and by 2010 it is estimated that the figure will be nearing 70 per cent. There are now more Anglicans in Nigeria than in England.

A brief glance at the work of the Mothers' Union for example, in Africa, will show how much the women who belong to the MU live out the Gospel in their daily lives and activities, giving of themselves to improve the lives of those around them, with such integrity and effectiveness that they are often trusted, when other agencies are not, to ensure that aid in all its forms reaches its intended recipients.

If we assume that bringing others to the knowledge of Christ is, or should be, the longing and the prayer of everyone who is already Christian, we would have to admit that clearly, the African Christians are doing something right, which we in the West seem to be failing to do. What can we learn from them?

With my love and prayers,

Revd Wendy.