"Ubuntu"

My son has the incredible knack of giving me interesting and challenging books for me. I have just finished reading his latest gift to me, “God is not a Christian”, subtitled “Speaking the truth in times of crisis”, excerpts from a series of articles, speeches, sermons and letters written over thirty years by Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu.

The archbishop presents for us the Xhosa word, “ubuntu” which he translates for us as “a person is a person through other persons”. Tutu writes, “We need other human beings for us to learn how to be human, for none of us comes fully formed into the world. We would not know how to talk, to walk, to think, to eat as human beings unless we learned how to do these things from other human beings. For us the solitary human being is a contradiction in terms.”

He wrote these words at a time when his native South Africa was forcibly divided simply by skin colour into people who ruled and people who were ruled. He articulated in simple yet profound terms the traumatic results of such division of peoples and called upon both the leaders and the led to turn themselves around into a rainbow nation of many hues and tongues.

This is straight from Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of Heaven and echoed right throughout our New Testament. For example Paul writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 2:28) This radical statement sent a shudder even through the infant Church and eventually through the Roman Empire. Those in power still loudly exclaim, “This will be the end of civilisation as we know it.”  And it is.

Civilisation as we know it needs to give way to civilisation as God intended it embracing all creation. Desmond Tutu remains for us an inspiration to keep up the non-violent struggle for this to be so. We cannot force the world into it. Bombs only destroy the landscape and the people. They do not make the world better. Whenever anyone reads this it is read always in the world context of violence and oppression somewhere going on.

Jesus becomes deliberately ignored so that human beings can vainly look for more forceful ways of running this world. I think we all have difficulties with his way of doing so, steadfastly walking into the face of danger where self-sacrifice becomes his option. Finding a way of overcoming what we believe to be evil by coming out on top is an all too elusive goal.

This is why we need “ubuntu”. Many self-sacrifices become possible only in company as many stories from the wars have attested. Jesus made his self-sacrifice very much alone. Not only was his crucifixion was excruciatingly painful to say the least, Jesus knew that no one else really had a clue as to what it was all about. Only the Church through the New Testament later describes the effect and the influence this self-sacrifice had and continues to have.

Life does have its solitude and its loneliness. No one really finds oneself merely on one’s own. We belong because we find that others are also peculiar. Well might we be described as God’s peculiar people simply because knowing Jesus sets us towards a more productive direction as far as the Kingdom of God is concerned. Jesus gave us “ubuntu” and that is what we are called to pass on.