Distant Grief

Yesterday I picked up a book I had not read in a long time, and read it cover to cover. A Distant Grief by Kefa Sempangi tells the story of the early 70’s in Uganda as Iddi Amin’s reign of terror was unfolding, and the impact on the church. I have not yet seen “The Last King of Scotland”, but this book is a true-story eye-witness account and it’s hard to imagine the movie being any more chilling. Sempangi moves back to Uganda as a university professor and rides the wave of a movement of the Spirit as people throng to the Lord in the midst of the country’s descent into chaos, until he escapes with his life by about a half-hour margin in the Fall of ‘73.

Two of the most moving parts: on Easter of 1973 as he prepares to preach, he is drawn to the passage of the five loaves and two fish from Matthew 14. He feels overwhelmed by the needs around him, but writes “It was Jesus who provided the bread for the crowds. The disciples’ task was only to distribute what their Master had already given them. It was God who sustained his people. He was not asking me to feed His children from the words of my own heart. He was only asking me to distribute the living bread He had put into my hand.” I thought about that today as nearly 50 desperate families showed up for nutrition, draining the huge supply of milk Karen has bought. Somehow we made it through them all. I need to be reminded over and over that we are not sufficient for anyone’s needs, we’re merely handing out the Bread of Life. The symbolism of Passover permeates this concept—it is Jesus who breaks and blesses and gives.

That evening five armed thugs of Amin’s come to kill Sempangi, but end up accepting his prayers, and one even becomes a Christian. He writes about the atrocities he witnesses, and the second part I want to quote comes in response to watching a man beat to death, which also moves me to think of Jesus being whipped and beaten:
“In that moment I learned a new truth. I learned that just as there is a boundary beyond which human beings cannot comprehend the glory of God, so there is a boundary beyond which they cannot comprehend the evil in the world. There is a boundary beyond which everything is a senseless chasm. It is here in the nightmare of utter chaos that human feeling dies. It is here, where death and terror seem to have full dominion, that even the deepest of human sorrows becomes but a distant grief.” Like the rest of the world watching Uganda in the 70’s, Rwanda in the 90’s, Darfur now, we cannot comprehend the depth of evil and suffering, and it is at best a distant grief. But Jesus went to the bottom of that chasm on Good Friday. The book answers the question of “where was God” with the affirmation: here, with us, in our suffering, defeating evil once for all by dying.

Kefa Sempangi was instrumental in the founding of World Harvest Mission, because during his exile he studied in America and he drew Jack Miller into ministry to Ugandans displaced by Amin .. . . I met him a few months after graduating from high school, not knowing how my life would later become so connected to all of this. In the cover of the book is written “Jennifer, please when you come through college could you come and join me in Africa for service in his Kingdom. K Sempangi, 15 October 1980.”