Invictus -- FPC sermon excerpt

Invictus.

It’s a Latin word which means “unconquered.” It’s also the title of a new film about Nelson Mandela, the first black president of South Africa.

Mandela came to the presidency after spending 27 years in prison, locked up by a white government. While in prison, he had a scrap of paper with a poem called Invictus on it. The poem contained the lines,

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Through almost three decades in prison, Nelson Mandela remained unconquered. Invictus.

In the new movie about Mandela, the story is told of how he worked to unite his racially and economically divided country in the mid-1990s. Mandela had been elected the country’s first black president in 1994, after spending decades as a leading opponent of apartheid, the white government’s official policy of racial segregation. His opposition to apartheid had resulted in 27 years in prison, but in 1990 he was released — and then elected president.

In 1995, South Africa hosted the Rugby World Cup Tournament. Now rugby was a white man’s game, and the South African team was entirely white — a white team, representing a country that was 80 percent black. It also had a team symbol — a leaping gazelle called a “springbok” — that reminded most black South Africans of the country’s racist history.

Black president. White team. After 27 years in prison, you might think that Nelson Mandela would not look favorably on these players.

But you’d be wrong.

Mandela showed up at a press conference wearing a rugby jersey and cap with a springbok on it. Filled with enthusiasm, he said, “These are our boys now. They may all be white, but they’re our boys, and we must get behind them and support them in this tournament.”

The next day, the Springbok coach took his team to the prison where Nelson Mandela had spent nearly three decades of his life behind bars. Showing some spirit of his own, the coach said, “This is the cell where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. He was kept here for 27 years by the racist policies of our government. We tolerated his imprisonment for all those years, and yet he has backed us publicly. We can’t let him down.”

The tournament opened, and the Springboks played beyond everyone’s expectations. In fact, they made it into the final game. President Mandela was in the stands, wearing a Springbok jersey. During timeout, he brought a South African children’s choir out of the stands, and they led 65,000 people in the singing of a black African miner’s song.

When the Springboks took the field, they were unstoppable, and they won the World Championship. And for the next 24 hours, whites danced with blacks in the streets of South Africa — for the first time, they saw each other as fellow citizens of a multiracial country.

“By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:78-79). This line from Zechariah’s prophecy came true in the 1995 Rugby World Cup Tournament. The way of peace appeared, in an inspiring and instructive way.

This story shows that God and God’s ways cannot be conquered. Invictus. But it also reveals that human beings have an important role to play in working God’s purposes out. God rarely works in the world alone, but usually through flesh-and-blood human beings.

It is this entry of God into human life that we celebrate at Christmas, and that we are anticipating during Advent. God guides “our feet into the way of peace” through the example of Jesus, who was not afraid to enter into the pain and conflict of human life, and bring some light to a dark and sinful world.