i shared an Overview of the Justice Conference that recently took place in Cape Town, South Africa. Followed by Part I and Part II where i shared some of the direct quotes from the plenaries and electives that i sat in. This is the third and final part to give both glimpses and reminders of an incredible two days spent together.

First up was Jesus and Sanitation: Re-imagining a Theology of Shit.

Now there is your problem right there. The ‘S’ word. And people walked out.

Personally though, i see this as problematic. If you are more outraged that someone says “Shit” on a stage at the Justice Conference than you are at the fact that hundreds of thousands of people in South Africa are living without decent access to sanitation, then your priorities are messed up. i heard that a person or persons walked out… but i can’t count the number of people who told me that this little segment of The Justice Conference was one of their absolute highlights.

My friend Nkosi was one of the two guys who spoke about this and here are some of the things they said:

Let’s theologise shit.

This guy looks into shit and he sees Jesus. Could it be that Jesus exists in shit?

If Jesus is the least of these and the least of these are living in shit in the townships, then Jesus in South Africa is in deep shit.

That seriously was one of my two favourite quotes from the whole event. Yes, it’s a little controversial and yet i don’t think it is too far from what either Jesus or Paul might have said [seriously, go and look at some of the language they used in the original pre-translated text] but it really makes us sit up and take notice. And if we listen carefully we will hear Jesus saying, “Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for Me.” But also, “Whatever you failed to do for the least of these, you failed to do for Me.” This is an issue worth taking notice of and i love how legends like Nkosi and Wayne and others are dealing with them via The Warehouse.

= = = = =

Jeanet Sibanda was part of the workshop on Creative Resistance Strategies and in her intro she asked this:

Can we do something together and as we do we discover each other. We realise who we are. 

Stephan de Beer was part of the same workshop:

What does it look like if the kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven? It assists us to not be squeezed into the mold. It helps us to engage in places we are paralysed or feeling numb.

Jesus: I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Don’t be fooled… if you work in social justice…

Stephan spoke about the March of the Clowns that takes place in Joburg and while there were more, these are the two that really stood out for me:

The Clown as Jester: the only one who is able to tell the emperor that he/she is naked.

The Clown as Fool: Foolish enough to believe that something else is possible.

Oh, how we all could use more of the fool in our lives…

The Clown as Fool: Foolish enough to stumble into “decent ” places and turn tables over. 

He quoted Harvey Cox as saying:

Laughter is the last weapon of hope.

Back to Nkosi for more hard-hitting stuff:

What is the prayer of a person who lives in a shack during drought? When it rains his shack is flooding, so what should his prayer be?

A pricetag on food is an exclusionary gesture. We choose who can eat and live and who can die.

To help put that comment into a bit of context, Nkosi is part of an initiative called Food is Free where they plant gardens in townships and offer the food free to people who live there. This is a video of the wider movement to give you an idea of how it works. So he is part of a team that are practically working towards what he is speaking about, as opposed to it being some abstract idea.

The kingdom way of doing things is to complement each other, to love each other, in extreme it is to die for each other.

Are we comfortable to have a church of the oppressed with no bread and a church of the oppressor with bread?

[For Part I of the quotes, click here]

[For the Justice Conference overview, click here]

[To watch the Sanitation Health Information Theology video introducing Turd Thursdays, click here]