Living into God's dream for all humanity to live in supreme unity often seems mighty far fetched when the folks in the choir huff out in a storm over whether or not to stay up or come down from the choir loft on Easter morning (yes, I'm speaking from experience). Things look even bleaker when reconciliation is thwarted by hate, scorn, vilification, and demonization.
But coming across something from my great teacher Desmond Tutu hit the spot. I am reading Reconciliation, Michael Battle's theological biography on Tutu. Battle says Tutu's first step in dismantling apartheid in South Africa was not getting the oppressor to view the oppressed as humans, but rather the inverse. Here's the money quote from Tutu:
We will grow in the knowledge that they [white people] too are God's children, even though they may be our oppressors, thought they may be our enemies. Paradoxically, and more truly, they are really our sisters and out brothers, because we have dared, and have the privilege to call God, "Abba," Our Father. Therefore, they belong together with us in the family of God, and their humanity is caught up in our humanity, as ours is caught up in theirs."
The South African word for this idea of "their humanity" being bound up together with "ours" is "Ubuntu". Loosely translated, it means, "I am in you, and you are in me."
I like Tutu's idea that the first step in ending Apartheid was Ubuntu. The recognition of our common humanity - that we are all children of the same heavenly Father - is not contingent on you recognizing me as such. You do not have to apologize, or repent, or have a change of heart, before I recognize you as my brother. You are already my brother. This is most certainly God's dream; and it is the end of history - whether you know it or not.
Are you hurt? Have you been wronged? Maligned or scorned? Take the first step. Pray for your enemies like Jesus said. Because it just so happens that your enemy is your very own brother.
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