Tuesday 15 December 2009

These remarks follow directly from the piece used yesterday - again from Michael Battle's "Ubuntu."

God has created us for interdependence as God has created us in his image - the image of a divine fellowship of the holy and blessed Trinity. The self-sufficient human being is a contradiction in terms, is subhuman. God has created us to be different in order that we can realize our need for one another. There is an African idiom: "A person is a person through other persons." I learn how to be human through association with other human beings.

Strong words. We have a long history of talking about the 'self-made person." It is part of the rugged, individualism that we say is part of the foundation of our country. And yet, Tutu is quite strong about how he sees these notion of self-sufficiency. He uses the word subhuman. Wow. That's a biting critique. I think this is where Ubuntu gets it right. This notion of interdependence is not a mere emotional or cognitive reality. It is to be a living reality. The image of God is not some notion that floats in the air - something we can come to know like another fact or feeling. God's Image is found when we gather together - when our strengths and weaknesses are observed and become a part of bring the life out of us. Remember, Luther's image of sin is "turned-in-on-self." Ubuntu calls us out of ourselves so that our eyes see others and through others, we begin to ourselves. It is at that communal moment that we have the opportunity to enter into the wholeness that is the Reign of God.

Connection: We are gift to one another. We thus are handed a gift of life each day as we move out to engage others...the different from us...those beyond us.

Lord God of All Life, you continue to call us together. Though we choose to be with people just like us, all of our neighbors offer us a piece of life that makes us into your image. Sometimes that image is not what we want. Liberate our thinking and our living. Amen.