Tuesday 2 February

We move onward with Jesus' Ubuntu.

Jesus becomes a paradigm for how we deal with race and culture in that through him Tutu makes sense of how the many become one. Jesus ultimately becomes Ubuntu and invites all racial and cultural identities to live out the call given first to Israel to be the people of God. Therefore, this reality of Ubuntu is bound up in Jesus who creates new relationships in the world.

I find this to be very similar to how we pass on the idea of who God is. We look to Jesus. We listen to all with words and all the visions and all of the notions of who God is...and then...we look to Jesus to see a living and breathing image of God among us. So...this is the God who liberates and sets free and changes the face of our humanity!! I love to hear all the arguments that are used to say why we are not able to be one people who find in the "other" a bit more of ourselves. In fact, too often in the church we point at folk in order to remind ourselves that those "others" are not what we want as a part of us. Ha. Since when do we have the ability to tell the Spirit what is not going to be among us! The Spirit of Scripture is still a wind that does not allow God's people to lead the way. Rather, the Spirit pulls us and will not hesitate to move us way beyond our comfort zone and way beyond any of our fine theological thoughts that we have come to believe will save us. Like other days, the divisions at hand stand in the way of becoming the blessed humanity we are told we are - since the creation of all things....a creation that will not stop reconciling itself.

Connection: What did Jesus do? How do we translate those actions into actions within this day that involve us carrying on that purposeful way of life.

Breath of Life, when you move us, we are no longer merely who we have been. You move us into relationship. In relationships we find out more and more of how your glory is spread out among all your people and making every day an adventure in joy and liberation. We give you thanks and call on your breath of life to keep us moving toward one another. Amen.