REFLECTION ON PARTNERSHIP
Dr. Mercy Amba Oduyoye
I have had as my central image for this period of
sharing here in Bangalore that of my household of God. I have a
picture in the core of my being of what life would be if humanity was
truly one family of God. I have as my source of spiritual
strength a picture of women where God is allowed to take charge.
What I have tried to share these few days is a community in which
people live together under new circumstances and with new
commitments, commitments to full human and to radical
alternatives to our present acquisitiveness, selfishness and structures
of domination. I have shared my hope for a domination free
community, the kingdom of God as is the expression of Jesus. This
evening as we prepare to come together around the Lord's Table, l whish
for us to think of partnership, It is as partner that we shall begin
to enjoy the kinship of God an our kinship as a human community,
an integral part of the whole of God's creation.
We have called attention this week to he need of
partnership between women and men. We need to have Barak and
Deborah working together to eliminate the enemies of full humanity and
true community. In the Old Testament reading Barak, even when
told ahead of time that the most flamboyant action of the campaign
would be carried out by a woman, did not withdraw from the
assignment. he valued the team work, he valued the partnership of
the women. Barak was asking for partners, persons with skills
that he did not have . He was not looking for helpers and
subordinates to Lord it over only co-workers that God could use to
bring peace to the people. Partnership is cooperation, not
competition, it is collaboration, not a pretext for self-glorification.
In partnership the image we have is people
exercising power with others, not power over others. Power over
refuses to recognize the abilities of the other or else belittles
them as unimportant. Remember the feeding of the
multitudes. The disciples said to Jesus, well there is a youth
here with a bit of food, but what is that among so many. Jesus'
alternative to sending people away to fend for themselves was, bring in
the resources of this young persons. The disciple 'willingness to
comply the youth's willingness to give, may be foresight of a mother
who said "take some food with you, it may be a long day" and the power
of the God to save which is in Jesus Christ, worked together to feed
the crowd. Partnership is more exiting than a one-man show.
It brings Joy to all participants.
Faced with the challenged of a crowd of hungry
people. Jesus could have succumbed to the temptation to turn
stones to bread to feed them. The disciples could have given the
people the rational advise to go to find something to eat. The
young one could have looked after No I. The result would be the same,
the people will eat but they would have remained individuals, a crowd
and not a symbol of the household of God sitting around God's round
table, being filled with good things from the hands of God. We
would not have been reminded of how creation enjoys the hostility of
God. In this events we see a foretaste of the new economic order
that Jesus Presents and the Christian community should represent.
We see partnership being lived in the company of Jesus.
In the Gospels Jesus is portrayed as calling for
economic equality. John the baptizer preceded him, advising those
who have two coats to give one to the persons who has none. Jesus
spoke and acted many times against class and caste and the ranking
which results in wealth being concentrated in the hands of few.
We have speak against the religious myths that uphold the inequalities
of our society. We have to take seriously Jesus' observation that
we cannot serve God and mammon. We do not need a new economic
order but certainly not the one that poor countries today have to
adjust to. The global partnership presented by Jesus may seem an
utopia, that is beyond our reach, but we need to remember that without
such a vision we shall all perish, rich and poor alike. The
Christian vision of economic partnership is encapsulated in the picture
of Acts 4:32-35 "And there was not a needy person among them". We
are far from this, but it is in our power to create the sign of
hope, if we take seriously the spirit that moved the early church and
which is still available to us.
A partnership community is one in which those who
are the designated leaders works as servants of the community.
That is declared spirituality of this institution and the community
here. "To serve and not to be served". It is the dynamic
that informs or should inform all that happens here. The vision
given us by Jesus is a community in which what the hierarchical model
labels as the task of slaves is performed by the leaders as an act of
love and compassion. Remember how he lit a fire and began
to grill fish so that the tired fisher folk who had been his disciple
would have something to eat immediately they land from their
labors. Jesus calls us to a style of leadership that is free of
ranking of people an task and skills. He inaugurated a new style
of leadership.
Be not deceived, a partnership community by the very
fact that it aims at being domination free cannot br free of
conflict. We are seeking to do away with stratification; we are
seeking to transform triangles into circles. We are seeking to do
away with 'high tables' so that we can all sit around all table.
But we know that the hierarchy of tables seem fixed firmly to the
ground and have to be uprooted with much pain and sweat. We would
like to live in the community that does not operates class
differentiation, a community in which communalism is absent and a
community that knows no gender-based oppression. But we know how
much we all benefit in some degree from these differentiations.
We must therefore acknowledge that none of this can be achieved and
maintained without conflict. What we work and pray for is that
when conflict arrives it is resolved without violence and without
resorting to the domination which violates the humanity of the other.
It is natural for those at the apex of our
contemporary systems to resist transformation out of fear. It is
natural for men to think getting rid of patriarchy will mean installing
matriarchy. It is natural to fear that women want the tables
turned so they can revenge themselves on men. Well that would not
be partnership such as we find in Jesus. A simple reversal of the
current domination system will produce domination. We are
witnesses to that in political arena.
The call for partnership is a call to decency and
fair-mindedness. It is a call to compassion. This is the
revolution in human relations that Jesus brings. It is
eschatology, it will happen, indeed it has already begun and may we see
more evidence of this even in our own life time, in the church and in
our communities, especially here in UTC. Amen.
March 1994