Pete the African?

My ancestors have been in America for a long time.  The earliest ones, the Owings, came from England in the 1600’s and settled in Maryland.   In the late 1800’s the Reusses came over from Germany to New York and Virginia.  The Englehardts and the Dodds came to this new world from the same countries.  My mother was German and English.  My father is German and English.  I am German and English.  This past week, I was reminded that my family is a bit bigger than that.  I have brothers from South Sudan.  I have sisters from Ethiopia.  I have relatives in Liberia.  I am part of an amazing family.

At the end of last week I travelled to Chicago for the ELCA’s African National Summit.  Most people probably notice that I’m a bit ‘pale’ to be called African, but in my role as Mission Director of the Southeastern Minnesota Synod, I travelled to the event with ten men and women from South Sudan. 

I had an amazing experience.  Worship with people born and raised in Africa is powerful.  The room filled with the thumping beat of drums, the clapping of hands, and the dancing of feet.  I got caught up in the experience as together we praised God.  Even I ‘danced’ in worship.

The stories of the African people broke my heart.   These aren’t people who decided to come to American because it sounded like a great place to live!  They fled civil war and persecution in places like Sudan, Liberia, and Ethiopia.  They told of family members killed before their eyes…tanks and planes wiping out entire villages…machine guns going off in the middle of worship services…hunger…thirst…refugee camps…despair.  The people I met left the African refugee camps for a nation that they did not know and a language they struggled with.  They came to America with only the clothes on their backs and have worked hard to make lives for themselves.  They took the jobs they can find, often very physically demanding ones that pay very low wages (would you like to work in a slaughterhouse for $11 an hour?).  People look down on them for their accents, for the color of their skin, and for their poverty.  I can’t imagine living the life that they have endured. 

As the African National Summit unfolded, I was constantly reminded of the unity that I have with ‘these people.’  On the surface we seem so different.  I grew up on different continent.  I had an easy childhood.  I have not known the suffering that they have experienced.  I’ve never feared for my life or wondered if I would have food to eat.  I speak English with only a ‘Minnesooota’ accent.  My skin is lily white. 

Differences abound, but in Jesus Christ we are one.  The same Lord who died for me also died for ‘them.’  In Jesus there is no ‘us’ and ‘them.’  We’re just ‘us.’  The South Sudanese have welcomed me as one of their own family and work to teach me their languages.  When I hear news reports of fighting in South Sudan, I no longer breeze over it, thinking, “It’s just another war in Africa.”  No, the people being killed are friends and relatives of people I know.  Their suffering now impacts my life.   These are my brothers and sisters in faith.

Our culture tends to separate people based on things that divide us. Christians have a different approach!  We come together around the thing that unites us: Jesus Christ!  It doesn’t matter whether a person is born in Africa, Asia, Europe, or America.  In Christ, we are family.

I am German and English, but I have brothers and sisters in Africa.  What a great family!