So what were you doing on April 6, 1994? I realize that this is a rather difficult question because that date probably does not stand out from any one of a thousand other days in our lives. Now if we were asked what we were doing on the morning of September 11, 2001 most of us could answer. In the same way my parents' generation could answer what they were doing on December 7th 1941 when the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was announced. So what then is significant about April 6, 1994?
The answer is that on April 6, 1994 the Hutu president of Rwanda, Juvénal Habyarimana, was assassinated. And the instant he was assassinated a well-planned extermination of Tutsis by Hutus was initiated resulting in the deaths of somewhere close to one million persons. Tens of thousands of Tutsi women were raped. Hundreds of thousands of Tutsi children were brutally killed as were the children of Hutus who were sympathetic to their Tutsi neighbors. The tensions behind these attacks had been brewing since the 15th century when a Tutsi kingdom had been established, only to the overthrown by the Hutus in the 1960s with the help of the Dutch.
What makes this story so tragic is that the Hutus and Tutsis speak the same language, Bantu. They are almost all Christian. They live in the same neighborhoods. They are so close ethnically that it is virtually impossible to tell them apart. In other words they are essentially identical, with the only difference being the ethnic identity that they claim at birth. These two groups while holding almost everything in common were divided between "us" and "them" solely on the basis of family birth. And it was that "us" and "them" of birth that led to the deaths of almost a million people.
"Us" and "them" are categories which humanity has used across the centuries to inflict domination and death on billions. In the United States we most often used those classifications based on the color of someone's skin (racism)) or the language they speak (ethnocentrism) rather than tribalism as is often the case elsewhere in the world. Whether it was slavery, the destruction of Native Americans by disease or violence, or immigration acts which excluded almost all persons from the Far East from coming to this country "us" versus "them" has been part of our national identity. In other words we have not escaped the sin of relationship brokenness.
Scripture reminds us that God's intention for the world was not one of a fragmented society but one based on our all being children of God. This is evident in the opening words of Genesis in which God created human beings as a single community. It continues through the story of Noah in which all of humanity is related through a single family. While divisions came about because of human sin (the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11) God's intent was always that humanity would ultimately come together as a world-wide community worshipping a single God and living in harmony one with another. This image is lifted up not only by the prophets (Isaiah 66:18 as one example) but also by Paul (Galatians 3:28) and by the words of Revelation where persons from all nations, tribes, tongues and people will be included in God's kingdom (mentioned in several locations).
We are reminded then that divisions based on "us" and "them" regardless of cause (race, language, ethnicity, tribalism, or even college affiliation…you know who I'm talking to) misses the mark of God's good desires for creation. Those divisions take the one humanity which God has created and divides it based on human created criterion. This form of sin diminishes our ability to work together to create the kind of world God desires us to inhabit. This form of sin diminishes our full humanity because it pretends that some people are better than others simply because of genetics or family origin. As a Christ centered community one of our great callings is work to minimize these divisions in order that all persons know that they are loved by and beloved of God.
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