Advent, The beginning and the End
Every year the Church retells with its annual sequence of festivals, the story of our Salvation in Christ Jesus, more especially through its season of Advent that carries the overarching theme of ‘the Christian hope of the coming of Christ’. Sunday the 30th of November, the year of our Lord 2025 marked the beginning of this season, which is also the beginning of the church’s liturgical year. The dictionary meaning of the word Advent, from the Latin adventus (arrival/coming) means “the arrival of a notable person or thing” (Cambridge), reason why as believers ‘we put emphasis on casting our eyes on both Jesus' first arrival and anticipating his future return’. However, we also carry with us ‘the hope of the beginning of new and the end of old things in our lives’. In this abstract ‘an end of a life of evangelism and the beginning of a miraculous birth, will be contrasted against that of the miracle of Christ’s birth and future return”.
On this
very day of the first Sunday of Advent, in attendance of Mass at the parish of
St Bartholomew in Kagiso, was among others a member of the Anglican Mens Fellowship
and Evangelism guild in the diocese of Johannesburg, Ms. Letta Kearabetswe
Vilakazi, a native of a small town called Bakerville, situated about twenty (20)
kilometers outside Lichtenburg in the North West province. It would follow that
Letta participated fully in the Anglican tradition where her priest would have lit
the first candle on an Advent wreath, the candle of hope to mark this day. I’m
told that ‘just as it was the case the previous weekend when her beloved AMF
& E guild held its elective conference, Letta was not her usual bubbly self,
ill-health had taken its toll on her, resulting in her ultimate call to the
Father. Significantly, Letta is called home on Monday the first of December
2025 when the church is commemorating Saint Andrew the Apostle, often observed
as a special time of intercession for mission. Indeed, Letta was a woman of faith
and mission through the AMF & E ministry of evangelism. At her memorial service
held on Wednesday the third (3rd) of December, the many men and
women who came to celebrate her life had a common theme in their remembrance of
her, and that was her love for singing and preaching the Gospel of Christ, just
like St Andrew, letta died with her boots of mission on.
The prophetic ancestral call to a census
As the processes
of the Anglican Mens Fellowship and Evangelism guild of arranging transportation
to fairy its members to any part of the country where its members are to be
laid to rest was unfolding, a request to accommodate people who wished to
travel to the North West came from the family. Five of these individuals were
indeed aboard the AMF & E bus that left Johannesburg for Bakerville a
little after Midnight on Saturday the sixth of December. Among the five guests
of the AMF & E aboard the bus was a young woman in her twenties whom we
learned along the journey that she was mme Letta’s grandchild, little did we
know that it was this young woman that will bring about a prophetic dimension
to the Advent of an end of a life and a beginning of another life. Mariah we
shall call her to protect her identity and preserve her dignity, but the name
as revealed by the prophetic God which is always at work, including at the time
of writing this reflection, among other definitions means “wished-for child in
Hebrew". It was a little after two hours into the trip when Mariah started
complaining about stomach cramps to another family member that shared with her
the first row seat of the eighty seater luxury bus, but it would appear that
these calls were not treated with the necessary level of seriousness that they
actually deserved, and that is because Mariah was the only one that had
concrete knowledge of her pregnancy, we make this assumption because
accompanying Mariah on this bus trip was her six year old daughter. As we
approach the little town of Lichtenburg a call for a comfort break was made by
one of the AMF & E female members, an agreement to stop at the next filling
station was reached and indeed the bus pulled into the Rousseau petrol station
a little after four (04:00), little did we know that in a matter of minutes, a
child would have been born in the rest rooms of that same filling station. Because
female members of the AMF & E guild had already taken keen interest in
Mariah’s calls of unbearable stomach pains, they had already posed questions
based on their wisdom and knowledge on these matters, and it for this reason
that at the point of arrival at the filling station they insisted that Mariah
had to also alight the bus in order to receive further attention and
examination, and so they carefully assisted Mariah to the rest rooms and
discovered that indeed she was a woman in labour.
Among the members attending to Mariah, two of them were qualified midwives
that had to make the call to deliver the baby without delay, to God be the
glory for his prophetic placement of these heroines in that bus on this fateful
morning. Even though the synoptic accounts of Matthew and Luke do not make mention
of the presence of any midwives at the nativity of our Lord Jesus, we must then
rely on the narrative in the Apocryphal Protevangelion of James as he tells us
of the presence of Salome and the unnamed midwife that assisted Mary the mother
of our Lord (Protevangelion of James Chapter XIX), to ascertain the prophetic
nature of this event in the contemporary. The calls and actions of our midwives
were primarily informed by the fact that there was great difficulty making contact
with the emergency services in the area. Even though everything was unfolding
at great speed, as the individual responsible for making all efforts to get
medical help I am convinced that there still remains a big challenge in our
rural provinces in terms of access to basic services as enshrined in our
constitution, I specifically recall my efforts to make contact with the
national emergency numbers 10177, 112 to no avail, next was 10111 which could
only assist by providing me with a direct number to the local hospital which
went unanswered. Our last attempt was a mobile number of a private ambulance
service which the petrol attendants had provided, also to no avail. In the
meantime, the heroines of our movement had already made the call to purchase
all available tools that would ensure the delivery of a healthy new born baby,
among others condoms which were used as medical gloves, scissors, paper towels
and sanitary towels, and it was inside this frantic thirty minutes to an hour of
our trip, a little after 04:00 when this healthy baby girl was born, Like our
Lord Jesus as Matthew narrates “she wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a
manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Matt 2:7 NIV), it is
for this reason that we shall call her “baby manger” for now, because indeed ‘there
was no room in the ambulance, nor was there time for an emergency journey to
the hospital. After the necessary care for baby Manger’s umbilical cord, like baby
Jesus she was also wrapped with a purple AMF & E blanked belonging to the outgoing
diocesan secretary, welcomed aboard the bus as the fifty third passenger that
had always been there but just couldn’t be seen with a human eye, the trip to deliver
her and the mother to the General De La Rey Memorial Hospital (Lichtenburg) for
medical care became way too special a journey for anyone not to treasure. Lest we ignore or omit the significance of the purple cloth she was wrapped in. In the Bible, purple symbolizes royalty, wealth, priesthood, and divine authority, stemming from its extreme cost and rarity in ancient times, used for Tabernacle coverings, High Priest garments, and royal attire; in the New Testament, it also signifies Jesus's kingship and suffering (the purple robe used in mocking) and God's majesty, representing a blend of heavenly (blue) and earthly (red) power, here we cannot but recognize the prophetic nature of the end of a life in Advent and the beginning of another in the purple season of Advent. It is for these reasons that it would be amiss for anyone not to open their
spiritual eye to see the miracle that baby Manger is, or to ignore the obvious
need to juxtapose her nativity to that of the Son of man.
The contrast
The nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ as narrated by various writers, interpreted
by scholars and ordinary folk alike, in juxtaposition, tells a story of the baby
Manger experience in the contemporary. The reality of the matter is that baby Jesus
was a miracle child, born under very strange circumstances that no human being
can possibly prove scientifically. We can also conclude that science would
dictate that ‘had the young mother’s water broken any earlier than the perfectly
ordained timing of God when the bus pulled into the petrol station, we would
have had to deal with a baby born inside a moving bus full of men and women in
panic and awe, with nothing but the bare hands of midwives with enough
knowledge but no resources to compliment that knowledge’, I am convinced that ‘if
baby Manger was not a miracle, she would not be alive today’. John Simpson when
dealing with the question of the miracle child that Jesus Christ was, argues
that “the biblical evidence of Christ’s nativity points to the miracle as the
means which God employed in order to bring his Son into the world” (P.
Alexander 1973:515), and the same can be argued about the miracle birth of baby
Manger, God’s hand was at play from the beginning to the end, God’s mission to
bring this baby into the world was fulfilled in every way possible, perhaps to
a naked eye it may not make perfect sense, to the mother of the child it may
not make sense, perhaps to her at the point when she is told this story it may
not make sense, but at times God only makes sense when God’s revelation of Godself
and his intentions unfolds. Dobson says “God’s timing is perfect, even when he
appears catastrophically late” (J. Dobson 1993:50), catastrophic as the situation
may have been, scary for many, those who were present and those hearing the
story after the fact, it remains a beautiful story of God’s greatness and presence.
The prophetic unfolding of events before, during and after the birth of
this child cannot be ignored, reason why we must deem it a prophetic event. Motyer
makes a point that “biblical prophets were deliberately placed by God at
crisis-points” (P. Alexander 1973:372), a prophetic look into these events
speaks to exactly that, God’s perfect placement of people and their thoughts,
actions and events that unfolded from the day when the fallen soldier of God
Mme Letta Kearabetswe Vilakazi fell sick, attending her final AMF & E conference
in Soweto, her final Eucharist on Advent Sunday, being called back to the
Father, her moving memorial service and the subsequent fateful morning of her
burial which was preceded by the miraculous event of the birth of her
great-grand daughter baby manger. Jesus Christ could have been born in Nazareth
but Joseph had to travel back to his ancestral origin Bethlehem, and so could
baby Manger have been born in the city of Johannesburg where the process could
have been much easier and probably dignified, but because her mother had to
travel back to her ancestral land to lay to rest her grandmother, a worrier of
Christ Jesus mme Letta, baby Manger was born in Lichtenburg, her maternal
ancestral home. The events surrounding the birth of Christ includes among other
things the presence of the Shepherds, the Angels and the Magi, all
prophetically placed by God in an effort to ensure the safety of the child in
more than one aspect, including his protection from the hands of the evil one ‘king
Herod’, equally ‘men and women with the highest levels of professionalism,
leadership and love for God’s people were prophetically placed by God in that
situation, to ensure the safe birth of baby Manger, care for her young mother
and their delivery into the safe hands and environment of the local hospital’,
safe to say that ‘upon a post bereavement pastoral call to the family at the
time of writing, I received confirmation that the mother and her baby are
healthy and ready to be transported back to Johannesburg’.
It is for this reason that as the Vice President of the Anglican Mens
Fellowship and Evangelism Guild in the Diocese of Johannesburg, on behalf of
the sitting President Reverend Vusi Ndaba and the entire guild, we extend
gratitude to God our Father for his mercy, presence, love and revelation of
Godself through this miracle nativity. Our experience has not only revealed God’s
prophetic nature in this kind alone, but many, including the lesson that God
wanted the church to take away, specifically when it comes to church travel and
the necessary checks and balances that needs to be done. We need to concede
that our travel arrangements to funerals, picnics, conferences, meetings etc lack
formal standards and procedures, including health check to ensure that everyone
aboard is fit to travel the distance. Perhaps some may argue that ‘in God we
should always trust’, but I’m a firm believer in practical theology and belief
or rather an action-oriented faith, a faith that makes God make sense.
Therefore, I would rather turn the sloganized God into “a God of a lived
experience through the birth of baby Manger whom I trust had a lesson to teach
me as a believer, that going forward the church ought to manage its mission
efforts much safer, to ensure a much more practically consistent growth of God’s
Kingdom”.
Kgosiemang Phejane
Writes in his capacity as the Vice President of the Anglican Mens
Fellowship and Evangelism Guild
A branch of the body of Christ in the broader Anglican Communion, directly
under the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA), in the diocese of
Johannesburg.
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