I have neglected to send out devotions this week due to a bad back. Strange how such a thing as that can alter how things get done and when things get done and if things get done. Sorry about that. I would like to make a switch to a book by Michael Battle "Ubuntu." Several years ago I used one of his writings and find him to be a real lift.
Westerners may find Ubunto - an African concept of personhood - a strange word with perhaps an even stranger meaning. Emphasizing the communal and spiritual dimensions of human identity, the concept of Ubuntu (oo-BOON-too) of necessity poses a challenge to persons accustomed to thinking of themselves as individuals. Imagine a fish trying to understand what it means to be wet, when all it has ever known is life in the water. Or imagine the desperation of an earthling landing on Mars without an oxygen tank. Becoming conscious of what we take for granted can be a strange, difficult - even painful - experience. Yet the winds of change that greet us as we begin the twenty-first century guarantee that Westerners will encounter non-Western assumptions about what it means to be human. The interconnection of identity on the personal, communal, and global levels is inescapable.
Just last evening in bible study we touched briefly on this notion of the individual. We often read scripture as though it is about me...me and Jesus...me and God. And yet, it is about the whole of us - all of us together. It is about the Reign of God that is the radical new way of being humanity. The vision of that humanity is as old as the bible - and yet it is as new as the shaping of the church today. We are human. Yes, I am one of those human beings - but I am on the one and only one. When we are blessed to see that we are one of many...one of a whole that has been created in God's image, the borders we put up to separate and divide really have not power and no reason. The Reign of God is about the interconnection that does not abide by borders and wall and boundaries. Rather, we are a part of the beginning of becoming the one humanity in God's image. That will change everything about us. It will mean listening and speaking and arguing and tossing around possibilities and using our imaginations much more than we have ever let ourselves do that before now.
Connection: Imagine what being interconnected means as the day begins to unfold before us. Sometimes it really does take a great imagination.
When you invite us to love our enemies, O God, you are inviting us to be the humanity you created. Without that love and connection to others, we are not the people you intended us to become. You insist on peace - you insist on our whole humanity. Blessed are you. Amen.
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