| How do you pronounce
"ubuntu" ?
Most Americans will
pronounce ubuntu with each "u" resembling the vowel sound in the words
"who" or "boo." The accent is on the second syllable, oo-boon-too. If you
lived in sub-Saharan Africa you would add a humming sound after the first
"u": oom-boon-too. |
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Commentary
by Sandy Gilbertson of Trinity Lutheran Church, Duluth, MN.
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I am
because we are. We are because Christ is.
The
theme for the 2003 Gathering is Do Life! Ubuntu. "Ubuntu" comes from the
Bantu group of languages spoken in sub-Saharan Africa. It literally means
“humanity.” It is a gift from the African culture to our North American
Christian culture, for through the lens of ubuntu we can see a way to do
life in such a way that God is glorified in and through our very humanness.
Archbishop
Desmond Tutu embraced "ubuntu" and shaped a theology around it in rebuttal
to the Christian faith taught in his South African context of apartheid
that said one’s skin color was an indicator of one’s value as a human being.
Tutu pointed to the person of Jesus through whose ministry, death and resurrection
God claimed all people as valuable in God’s sight. It is in and through
this community of the claimed, that we find our identity and worth as humans.
In
Tutu’s worldview, in order to understand yourself, you do it through someone
else. This is difficult for Western Christians to grasp. We may even resist
it. We have been socialized into and through a worldview where personhood
centers on the lone individual whose essential characteristic is that of
self-determination. Our very faith is often tied to this reverence of individuality.
Youth
are especially aware of the pressures to achieve, stand out in the crowd,
be unique, succeed, prosper and to make something of themselves. In contrast
to this, the African view of a person comes through interdependence with
others. For Tutu, the practice of ubuntu grows out of God’s relationship
with us in Christ Jesus, who sets us free from sin, thereby making it possible
to know each other. Our true human identity, he says, comes only through
absolute dependence on God and neighbor, even when that neighbor is named
enemy or stranger or uncool or old, or… (you fill in the blanks).
In
baptism we are brought into a community that shapes who we are. It is in
that community that we learn how to think, walk, speak, behave and how
to be human together on this earth. The way we understand and view life
and community is through the life of Jesus Christ whose sacrifice on the
cross reconciled all people to God. We invite you to join the community
of faith at the Gathering and learn through the lens of ubuntu how to “do
life”… to imagine another way of living abundantly together.
Here
are some of the major points we’ll focus on during the Gathering:
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