Dearly Beloved,
As we approach World Communion Sunday, I find my heart and mind being drawn back to Zimbabwe and South Africa and the time that my family spent there this summer. I can't help but think of preaching at Plumtree UCCSA (United Congregational church of Southern Africa), the church I attended from age 10-16. Worship was set to begin at 10:00 am, so we rolled up around 9:30. Already, people were gathering in the yard of the parsonage that had been my home for almost six years. The trees were all bigger -- the mango trees, a couple of peach trees, a lemon tree and a couple of indigenous trees -- but little else seemed to have changed. The parsonage, rondavel (round thatched hut), church building and composting toilet all much the same.
Soon the yard was filled with people, many faces familiar though I could rarely pull a name from the recesses of my memory. Women served tea, juice and cookies, and before we knew it, it was almost eleven. We had better get started soon. People had come from all over the geographic area, many of the churches in the circuit that my parents had served were represented, and the small church building was packed. Children and youth sat in the front of the sanctuary with parents and elders towards the back.
The rhythm of the worship service was familiar, the tunes of hymns rising from memory to my lips, the feel of clapping hands and swaying bodies. What a gift it was to gather in that space -- a place and community I had not gotten to say goodbye to when we left. I was at boarding school when my parents made the decision to leave Zimbabwe for good in late May,2000, and there was no time for me to go home to Plumtree before we fled the country. But here I was again in early July, 2025, the spirit of the community filling me -- joy, gratitude and faithfulness. I have long been moved by the faithfulness of the communities that brought me up in Southern Africa. Faithfulness in a God who is present through political turmoil, through the violence and dehumanization of apartheid, through economic collapse, through the passage of time and the deaths of faithful leaders, and through seasons of hope and plenty. That Sunday in early July in Plumtree, I was blessed by the community's joy at my family's presence: "Ah! You remembered us!" spoken again and again and again. As if we could have forgotten our home. As if we might have forsaken our siblings in Christ. As if we had not left a part of our hearts behind when we left.
And in many ways, this is the gift of World Communion Sunday: remembering. Remembering that we are, in fact, part of a global church, a world-wide movement for love and justice. Remembering our siblings in Christ in the global south, in bombed out Gaza, and war-torn Ukraine. Remembering our siblings in Christ in aging congregations in Great Britain and vibrant growing congregations in Zambia. Remembering our siblings in Christ whose ways of worship look and feel different from ours and yet honor the One God revealed in Christ.
And we re-member ourselves as Christ's body, putting ourselves back together piece by piece, making a whole that resembles a brilliant tapestry of color, a perfect harmony of language and song.
As we approach World Communion Sunday, I wonder: who and what have influenced your faith? What people, places and experiences? When and where have you felt part of that much much larger body of Christ -- a body that spans time and distance, language and difference, united in Christ? You're invited to wear clothing or jewelry that symbolizes your connections to a wider world and any culture(s) to which you belong or with which you have deep connection and relationships. You may also bring items to place on the communion table that help us to see the wider world of which we are a part.
Part of our World Communion Sunday celebration will be a collection of the UCC Neighbors in Need offering, which supports ministries of justice and compassion, with one-third of the offering given to the Council for American Indian Ministries and the remaining two-thirds supporting UCC justice ministries.
It is good to be church together, God's beloved. And to be part of a much wider world, united in Christ.
In love and gratitude,
Thandiwe
