Once again, Battle turns to Bishop Tutu's words about spirituality and Ubuntu.
Tutu thinks:
We are each a God-carrier, a tabernacle of the Holy Spirit, indwelt by God the holy and most blessed Trinity. To treat one such as less than this is not just wrong....It is veritably blasphemous and sacrilegious. It is to spit in the face of God. Consequently injustice, racism, exploitation, oppression are to be opposed not as a political task but as a response to a religious, a spiritual imperative. Not to oppose these manifestations of evil would be tantamount to disobeying God.
This sounds quite like some of the Finnish Luther theologians who talk about he indwelling of Christ as being a part of Luther's thinking. The theological term from the Eastern Church is "Theosis." In so many ways it really put in front of all of us a wonderful reality that is no so easy to appreciate. To see the "other" as one who is also a part of the divine can be disturbing. It is disturbing because if we see the divine in them (or if we simply say this is so), when we pull away from that other, we are pulling away from the God we want to be near. I don't know about you, but when it comes to American politics, I find it easy to run to one side and not what anything to do with the other. And yet, that cannot be. Not only am I incomplete without them, they too are incomplete without me. Therefore, it is necessary to become vulnerable in order to open ourselves up to the gift in the "other." Not easy...not easy at all!
Connection: All this reminds me to keep God "close at hand." In that way, the reminder to be open to the other is like an alarm that warns us to look out at the world around us with new eyes.
When we find so many way to say separated from other or to call them evil or wrong, we call on your Spirit of new life, O God. Your Spirit is ceaselessly working to bridge the gap between us and make way for the coming of the Lord among us. Let you Spirit rest among us. Amen.
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