I needed to meet Beyers Naude. The sabbatical year I've taken has not been easy. Instead of a time of rest, refreshment, and new visions, it has been too busy, confusing, and actually quite draining -- a time more of emptying than of filling. I've mostly felt overwhelmed with a deepening sense of powerlessness, realizing how little I can actually change the things that tear at my heart.
Nevertheless, I felt a sense of expectation about the lunch and interview with Beyers Naude, a man I had long admired. But I wasn't prepared for what I found.
Naude was in Washington, D.C., for the premiere of The Cry of Reason, a film documentary on his life. The film company reserved a room for him at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, and that's where we had lunch. Beyers was embarrassed about the hotel and especially by the enormous size of the chicken sandwich lunch he was served. His concern and questions about hungry people in the nation's capital were very sincere. But the jokes and laughter we shared about fancy hotels and meals quickly revealed his sense of humor as well.
The thing that first struck me about Beyers was his warmth. In the film, Mamphela Ramphele, a doctor who lived and worked with Steve Biko, says of Naude, "For a person like Beyers, who relates to people at a very fundamental human level, he finds overwhelming warmth because he is himself warm." He offered solidarity and a feeling of kinship right from the start of our conversation. There was no ice to break.
Quite frankly, most of the "famous" people I know are really not very humble. But this one is -- disarmingly so. Beyers was quite personal when sharing about his own life, but always with the intent of making a larger point. The film is the same way. It's about his life, but it is really about South Africa, its people, its agony, and its hope.
Beyers was asked to speak when the premiere of the film ended, which was the first time he had seen it. He grinned and said, "Such a wonderful film with such a bad actor. Isn't it amazing how the screen can transform people! I can now understand how those who are such bad actors become so successful." That brought down the house at the National Press Club. Then he added, "Of course, I wasn't referring to anyone in particular."
But Naude's characteristic humility does not make him any less forthright and courageous in what he says and does. On the contrary, his humble spirit just gives his witness more power.
IN 1986, BEYERS NAUDE was honored, along with Allan Boesak and Winnie Mandela, as a recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. His words that day were simple, blunt, and strong: "If the United States of America, economically the richest, and militarily the most powerful nation on earth, claims not to have the power to terminate the policy of apartheid, then there is something dramatically wrong, either with the nature of that power, or the ability or the willingness of your country and its people to utilize such power in the service of justice ... And I'm saying this not in a spirit of condemnation, God forbid that be the case, but in a spirit of deep concern and love for the people who suffer and who die."
In 1977, Beyers Naude was banned, which meant he couldn't preach or write, be quoted in the press or speak with more than one person at a time, leave his home area, or even enter an educational institution. Such restrictions would have discouraged, frustrated, and even embittered many whose life was as public as Beyers' had been. But not him. He simply took up the ministry of pastoral counseling.
Said Naude, "That immediately drew me out of myself. Day after day, I was challenged by those who came and said, 'This is my need, this is my agony, this is my pain -- have you got anything to say to it?' If I look back on the period of my banning, on those seven years, and people were to ask me, 'Do you feel that that period was lost?' I would immediately answer by saying, 'On the contrary. In a very specific sense, it was the most meaningful and the most fruitful and the most fulfilling period of my whole life.'"
Beyers Naude can cry with Amos, "Let justice roll down!" Then, in almost the same breath, he can testify with Paul, "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation ... I can do everything through him who gives me strength."
What seems to hold them together for Beyers is his deep embrace of the love of God, the love that rescued him from the fear and hatred of apartheid and then rescued him again from bitterness and violence in his response to an evil system. It is that love of God, in all its breadth and depth, that seems to motivate Beyers Naude, to keep him moving and growing, to keep him open, always reaching out, always finding new ways to offer his life for the sake of others.
Near the end of the film, Beyers speaks about the meaning of his own life: "Every day that I live becomes more meaningful, more fulfilled, and, for me, much more enriching. Time is too short, so I've discovered, for all the tremendous revelations of the love of God which he has given to me -- new insights, new visions, new possibilities, new dimensions of human living, new relationships with people around me, new depths of concern, and of agony, and of joy which make my life -- yes, I can truly say it -- so deeply meaningful that I'm eager when I go to bed at night to awake the next morning and to say, 'It's a new day, a new life, it's a new experience of God and of humankind."
What most comes through to me from Beyers Naude is a profound sense of hope. An interview with a Christian leader in, arguably, the most oppressive society in the world today became a testimony to the reality of conversion and the power of hope, and left a deep impression on me for which I am very grateful.
At the end of the film, Beyers eloquently describes a vision of a more free, equal, and just South Africa. "An impossible dream?" he asks. "Why is it impossible? I don't see why it is impossible. The people don't see why it is impossible. It can be done."
Then, preaching again at the pulpit which he so dearly loves, he exhorts, "Let us take heart, brothers and sisters. Christ says to us this morning, 'I am come that you may have life and have life in all its fullness.' A promise for this life. A promise for all life. A promise for life hereafter. Amen."
Amen indeed.
Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.
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