Speaking to an overflow crowd at a Dallas Episcopal church Sept. 13, Desmond Tutu, the Nobel laureate and former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, said his nation's victory over the “ghastliness of apartheid” would not have happened without support from the international community.
That need and ability to draw together, he said, makes human beings truly human.
“A person is a person through other persons,” he said. “We are in fact made for togetherness. You see, I have gifts that you do not have. You have gifts that I do not have. That is why [God] created you differently—so that you would need one another. A solitary human being is a contradiction in terms.”
Tutu, who received the Nobel Prize in 1984 for his work against South Africa's racist apartheid regime, spoke at the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration. The rector there, Jerry Godwin, said the church first became involved with Tutu and his wife, Leah, through the Africa Foundation in work at a primary school in a poor South African community. The foundation builds classrooms, provides clean water and supports educational institutions in such communities.
According to Godwin, the church became so involved in the school that Tutu felt compelled to learn about the congregation. Eventually, church leaders invited Tutu to visit Dallas and see the church for himself.
Speaking without notes, the archbishop began his speech by characterizing the Garden of Eden as a place of harmony with “no bloodshed, not even for religious sacrifice, because everything, everyone in the garden is vegetarian.”
“It is a charming story, but it speaks of very profound truths about us,” Tutu, 74, said. “In the beginning times, God intended for there to be harmony, for there to be friendship. We were made for a delicate network of interdependence. And then this was shattered when sin intervened. And you know what sin does? It splits apart. It splits apart. It introduces alienation.”
That alienation caused Adam and Eve to hide from God, Tutu continued. It also ended the previously happy relationship between them and taught them “how to pass the buck.” Ever since Adam and Eve's fall, he said, “you notice sin alienating, breaking apart, centrifugal, running away from the center.”
Thousands of years later, Tutu said, the chief characteristic of Christ's work is reversing the “ghastly tragedy” that happened in the garden.
“At the time of his crucifixion, one of the things that happened is that they say the curtain of the Temple was torn from top to bottom,” he said. “What they say is that Jesus has now achieved a reversal of what happened in the garden—where there was a split between God and human beings. And now the curtain is drawn apart, and now God and human beings are coming together.”
Jesus came into a world thoroughly stratified among Jews, Samaritans, Gentiles, Pharisees, Sadducees, slaves and free people, Tutu noted. The fact that after his crucifixion, Jesus referred to his disciples—who betrayed, denied and deserted him—as “brothers” shows how extremely radical his message was, Tutu said.
“Jesus, describing his coming crucifixion, says ‘I, if I'm lifted up, will draw all, all, all, all,' ” Tutu said. “You understand that? There is no outsider. Everyone is an insider.”
There are no outsiders in this family, he continued.
And that includes “[President] Bush, [Osama] bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Palestinian, Israeli, Jew, Lebanese, Roman Catholic, Protestant, gay, lesbian, so-called straight. You see how radical that is? No outsiders.”
Tutu ended his remarks by asking the congregation to become a “sender of serenity” and “a pool of peace,” to let “its ripples flow out into God's world.”
“When others put up boundaries, Jesus is the one who knocks them down,” he said. “When others disperse, Jesus embraces. We are family. Family. And in a family, you don't choose who is going to be your brother or your sister. You see, we are each God's gift to one another.”