But the Hyenas didn't touch him.

The alarm broke the morning silence. I woke with a start and came to the slow realisation that my phone was singing “You are my sunshine” to me. As much as I appreciated the sentiment it seemed hugely inappropriate, given that it had woken me from a lovely deep sleep at 2:30 in the morning. I made a mental note to never wake up so early again (I wish!), grabbed the bag packed hastily after youth club the night before and headed to the airport.

I am on my way back to Kisumu. It’s been a long time since I last went and a lot has changed, not least my tolerance for early mornings (I suspect I am getting old!).

I have followed the, now familiar, path to Kenya many times over the past 16 years, each time with a mix of anticipation and excitement at seeing old friends and hearing new stories, coupled with a nervousness about how things will be. I have felt hugely unprepared for this trip, busy as I have been with work, preaching and Queens and my bags are a mixture of donated clothes and blankets mixed with study books for my next assignment on Church History.

In the last week or two I have been reading a wonderful book by Vincent Donovan, called Christianity Rediscovered. It is the story of a Catholic missionary amongst the Maasai, in which he talks about the key lessons he learned in his time in Africa. I loved how he recounts the Maasai stories, how he listened to their tales, their history and their culture and how he learnt to weave the bible stories into their own understandings. It is a story of patience, of practical mission work in cultural context, living the gospel stories every day and allowing his life to speak as loudly as his words.

I arrived at Nairobi airport late last night and caught a taxi to a city hotel before the flight to Kisumu this morning. The airport has been newly renovated following a major fire and they have done a beautiful job. The arrivals hall is much more efficient, getting a visa took twenty minutes rather than the previous hour long wait and the buildings are clean and smart.  

Outside the Nairobi rains had started that afternoon and the pavements, wet from the evening storm, steamed gently in the warmth of the day. 

The road from the airport has been beautifully designed. In amongst the jacaranda and acacia trees sculptures of wildebeest face off with hyena packs in the grassy centre of the carriageway. Giraffes meander gracefully between the cars and you can be in no doubt where you are.

As we near town the central reservations are manned, not with elegant sculptures of kenya’s prolific wildlife, but with the homeless and the rough sleeper. Fires are going to offer warmth in the drizzly darkness and ragged men sit around talking and drinking.

 

I am reminded that there is one creator of both of these pictures, the wonder of the natural world, the diversity of creation and the human beings struggling to live in an unequal world. 

At the end of Vincent Donovan’s book he shares a Maasai creed – a statement of belief worked out with the African people that reflects their own stories. “He lay buried in the grave”, it says of Jesus, “but the hyenas did not touch him”.

My prayer for this trip, for those men and women, boys and girls whose home is the streets, is that they will know this same hope and protection, this same prospect of being raised from the streets and know a new birth, a new start.

“We are waiting for him. He is alive. He lives. This we believe.”

An African Creed

We believe in the one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created man and wanted man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on the earth. We have known this High God in darkness, and now we know him in the light. God promised in the book of his word, the bible, that he would save the world and all the nations and tribes.
We believe that God made good his promise by sending his son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He lay buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day, he rose from the grave. He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.
We believe that all our sins are forgiven through him. All who have faith in him must be sorry for their sins, be baptized in the Holy Spirit of God, live the rules of love and share the bread together in love, to announce the good news to others until Jesus comes again. We are waiting for him. He is alive. He lives. This we believe. Amen.