My Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
Ethiopia is not a country one would normally associate with a Christian pilgrimage. The Coptic Church is a church rooted in the Semitic tradition and whose understanding of the Christian faith is very different from that of the Western churches which were strongly influenced by Greek thought. But as a church which claims to have been established by St Mark, its history as a church, and its buildings, are the oldest in Africa.

One of our priests, Godfrey Henwood, recently led a parish pilgrimage to Ethiopia and found that the pilgrimage had a profound impact on him. Ethiopia, he says, is one of the poorest countries he has ever visited, with levels of poverty far greater than anything he has ever encountered in South Africa. But in spite of their poverty, he found the Ethiopians to be a people of faith, dignity and integrity and with a deep sense of pride in who they are.

Godfrey tells the story of one of their party who, on the day of their arrival bought a bottle of water from a street vendor and paid for it with a note worth ten times more than he had realised. That note would have represented a sizeable percentage of the street vendor's monthly earnings and, because the buyer had not even realised his mistake, but had left without waiting for change, it would have been very easy for the vendor to have pocketed the money or to have waited to see whether the buyer would realise his mistake and return. Instead he sent his child all the way to the hotel to find the person and return the change. That incident, he said, typified all their dealings with the Ethiopians. For the vendor to have kept the money for himself, says Godfrey, would have been unthinkable, because as a Copt (a member of the Coptic Church) he is a child of the covenant, chosen by God, and living in a covenant relationship with God.

That sense of pride in being a people of the covenant, which Godfrey found everywhere in Ethiopia, set me thinking. Although we do not place quite the same emphasis on being a covenant people as do the Copts, that is exactly what we are; a people of the covenant. And because Advent is a time of preparation for the coming of the King who inaugurates the new covenant, so it is appropriate to spend a few moments reflecting on what it means to be in covenant relationship.

I do not want to focus on the key elements of covenant agreement (as covered in Old Testament 101), but want rather to reflect on a concept raised by Walter Brueggemann in his book, "The Covenanted Self." There Brueggemann takes the word "other" and turns it into a verb - "othering" - to describe the nature of covenant relationship. He does so because, he says, in the invitation to enter into covenant we are confronted by God in a way that demands that we deal with the reality of God and God's demands on us. No matter how hard we, or the world around us, might seek to ignore, deny, seduce, capture or possess that reality, God remains the ultimate mysterious reality that stands free from us and over us, and who impinges on every aspect of our life. Life, he says, is ultimately about coming to terms with God and, for us in the Judeo-Christian tradition, learning to live with the demands and intimacy of covenant relationship.

Covenant is a relationship of mutuality that brings blessing, but also makes demands; a relationship of both privilege and responsibility. Throughout history the tendency has always been to seek the privilege, but not the responsibility; to want God's blessing without the demand. But the covenant God has with us promises blessing, but commands obedience. The covenant is based on command in respect of our relationship with God and with others, and God expects to be obeyed. There are clear sanctions and consequences for disobedience even as there is the promise of blessing for obedience. In a world that seeks unfettered freedom and absolute rights without corresponding responsibility, it is important to remember that God's will must be taken seriously and cannot just be ignored and disregarded.

The danger is that obedience can so easily become a legalism that destroys intimacy. That is why Brueggeman uses the word "Othering" to describe an ongoing process of transformation that awareness of, and response to the "Other" has on our thought, words and deeds. It is a journey into intimacy through constant recollection of the "Other", and one that changes duty and discipline into delight and desire. It is not about keeping laws, but about living in love. "Othering" is a journey outwards, from the self to the other - both God and neighbour - to the place of true intimacy and love.

There is, I think, another aspect of "othering" that Brueggemann does not touch on, and that is the process of our transformation "from one degree of glory to the next." As we seek to live in constant awareness of God and in the delight of doing only that which God asks of us, so we ourselves are altered so that we become in a real sense ‘icons of Christ' and more and more reflect the image of God. It is a process of becoming "other." I suspect that it was this aspect of personal transformation that made such an impact on Godfrey and led him to comment again and again on the dignity, integrity, prayerfulness, and humble pride of the people he met. Perhaps all the words that Godfrey used could be summed up in one word - "holiness" - and that leads me away from Ethiopia and back to Brueggemann.

For Brueggemann "othering" is not an exercise in piety, but a growing in holiness that comes from intentionally living in covenant relationship with God and others. He speaks of the impact this covenantal "othering" had on the life, law, and customs of ancient Israel which was so "other" from the world around them that, he says, "…it bursts into our midst as a socio-economic-theological novum." In other words, he is saying that covenantal life is visibly different because it is rooted in the holiness and purposes of God. In a chapter entitled, "Justice: The Earthly Form of God's Holiness" he speaks of the encounter at Mt Sinai as setting forth a vision of love and justice that is never achieved in Israel's history, but which can never be discarded nor ignored.

That vision takes on a whole new meaning and sense of urgency in the incarnation. As we prepare to celebrate again the coming of the Holy Child, so let us this Advent reflect again on what it means for us to be a people of the covenant and to commit ourselves to that process of "othering" that will transform our lives and be visible in our obedience, our love, and our quest for justice.

As we are blessed, so may we be a blessing

+ Brian