August 23, 2015

What does faith have to do with UBUNTU?

Psalm 133 Acts 2:43 – 47Matthew 20: 1 – 16

Marilyn B. Kendrix

So, as I take my turn in this summer’s sermon series examining what faith has to do with anything, I chose to build my message around the idea of UBUNTU. (SLIDE 1) What does faith have to do with UBUNTU? And I think that right about now, many of you may be asking yourself, so what in the world is UBUNTU? Well, UBUNTU means community, but not just a group of people taking up the same space, living on the same block, enjoying the same activities or similar political or social proclivities, as in the LGBT community. Or the bicycling community. No, the idea of UBUNTU goes well beyond that. UBUNTU is a word in the Xhosa in language of southern Africa that means “I am because we are.” It’s the understanding that we need other people in order for us to be. That it’s only in community, that we come to exist. Desmond Tutu has developed what he calls UBUNTU theology, which asserts that persons are ends in themselves only through the discovery of who they are in others.1

According to Michael Onyebuchi Eze, the core of UBUNTU can best be summarized this way: (And I paraphrase) He says: A person is only a person through other people’s affirmations of their humanity … through a recognition of the ‘other’ in their uniqueness and in their difference. This suggests that my humanity is not embedded solely in my person as an individual, but rather that my humanity is only bestowed upon me as I relate to other human beings. He goes on to assert that humanity then is a quality that we owe (we owe) to each other.2

1 Michael Battle, Reconciliation: The Ubuntu Theology os Desmond Tutu (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1997), 43. 2 Stephanie Dietrich, ed. Diakonia as Christian Social Practice: An Introduction (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2015) 17 – 18.

So there is a responsibility there – one where I am responsible to you and you are responsible to me.

… (SLIDE 2) Take a look at this picture: It was published online by the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference and this is the story they tell about this picture. “An anthropologist proposed a game to children in an African tribe. He put a basket full of fruit near a tree and told the children that whoever got there first wins the whole basket of sweet fruits. When he told them to run, they all took each others’ hands and ran together. They crossed the finish line together and then sat together enjoying their treats. When he asked them why they had run that way, when one of them could have had all the fruits for himself, they said, “UBUNTU, how can one of us be happy if all the others are sad?” … And I think that’s what faith has to do with UBUNTU. I think that’s what we mean when we say we are all God’s children. I think that’s what we mean when we say we are all members of the Body of Christ. That our Triune God, our Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier, Three-in-One God, in the Trinity itself, has provided us with the model of UBUNTU that we were created to be. God is a God in community, in the three persons of the Trinity. And we, created in God’s own image, are created to be in the same kind of radical community, radical relationality, radical love and caring for one another that we understand the Trinity to be. … What evidence do I have that this kind of radical community where I only AM when WE ARE, really exists? Well, I have a real life example of an absolutely mystical onenessthat we read about in a book that the noon book group read last spring. (SLIDE 3) It was called The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown. The Boys in the Boat is the story of the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew team that won the gold medal at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. There was no reason that this team should have won. They weren’t particularly stronger than the other teams on the water that day. In fact, their stroke oar, the fellow who sets the rhythm of the boat, the most critical man in the boat, Don Hume, had been sick in bed for days leading up to the race, and they had to literally get him out of bed, put him in the boat and ask him to row.

They should not have won, except that that day, like others when this particular group of men rowed together, their absolute harmony, their absolute giving of themselves over to the collective good, their belief in the power of the unity of their efforts, created an unbeatable phenomenon. Their rowing together had an almost mystical quality about it and I could not help but think of UBUNTU as I read their story. None of these young men could have accomplished alone what they all did together. They were responsible for and to one another and they needed to have absolute faith in what their working in absolute harmony could accomplish.

Boat builder, George Yeoman Pocock, the man who built that gold medal winning eight-man boat said,”Where is the spiritual value of rowing? In the losing of self entirely to the cooperative effort of the crew as a whole.”3 …As I imagine our world, I imagine it filled with people, all joined together in the Spirit, kind of like Siamese twins of the Spirit, all joined one to the other in a way that makes everything I do, impact others – sometimes in ways that I can perceive, like the winning crew team in the 1936 Olympics, but most often in ways that I will never consciously know. I imagine our world, all rowing together in perfect harmony, thereby creating the kingdom of God here on earth. In her sermon on “What faith has to do with Sabbath,” Shelly pointed out how our not taking Sabbath impacts everyone around us. And in his sermon on “What faith has to do with food,” Ian said that “Real food is God’s nurture that connects us one to another.” …I remember when my children were little, I taught them this grace to say before meals:

“God is great and God is goodand WE thank God for OUR food.By God’s hand WE must be fed.Give us, Lord, OUR daily bread.”

And one day, one of my children, I think it was Piper, asked me if the prayer should be altered if she were eating alone. Should she instead pray “and I thank God for my food?” My answer that day

3 Daniel James Brown, The Boys in the Boat (New York, Penquin Books, 2013), 415 (iBooks version), epigraph for chapter 19.

was the same as it would be today. “No,” I said. We are never eating alone. Millions of people around the world are also eating and we are connected to them by virtue of our common humanity. And millions more have no food to eat. We are connected to them as well. Piper’s question that day was the same question that we might raise about the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, you know, the line that goes “Give US this day OUR daily bread.” And I think that the answer is still no. We should not alter the prayer. No, when Jesus taught this all purpose prayer, he was not just referring to himself, or his close circle of friends. He wasn’t referring only to his followers either. As Martin Copenhaver said in a recent online Daily Devotional, “His is a very big us – the biggest us possible. It encompasses the largest community of all – the whole human family.”4 …I think that’s what the landowner in our parable understood – the landowner, understand that those who are the early risers, who get there first thing in the morning are connected to those who don’t arrive until almost the close of the day. And that both the early risers and the late comers, are entitled to an equal portion of the goodness of Godand God’s creation. …That’s what the early Christians understood, as they attempted to establish a church that would be faithful to the teachings of Jesus. As it comes down to us in the book of Acts,

44All who believed were together and had all things in common; 45they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds* to all, as any had need. 46Day by day, as they spent much time together in thetemple, they broke bread at home* and ate their food with glad and generous* hearts, 47praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.

…What does faith have to do with UBUNTU? Well, if it’s a faith in our crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ, it has to do with how we live into our responsibility to and for one another. Not just those in our families or those in our church. Not just those in our country. No, our

4 Martin Copenhaver, “From My to Our” in Still Speaking Devotionals

responsibility is a global one for in our global world, we can understand how the way we live impacts others around the globe. … In an op-ed in the New York Times, columnist David Brooks recently wrote about what he called dispositional gratitude. He said,

“We live in a … meritocracy. This meritocracy encourages people to be self-sufficient – masters of their own fate. …The basic logic of the meritocracyis that you get what you pay for, that you earn what you deserve. But people with dispositional gratitude are continually struck by the fact that they are given far more than they pay for and are much richer than they deserve. [Our society] encourages us to see human beings as self-interested, utility-maximizing creatures. But people with grateful dispositions are attuned to the gift economy where people are motivated by sympathy as well as self-interest. …In the gift economy imaginative empathy matters. “Gratitude is … a form of social glue,” he says. “In the capitalist economy, debt is to be repaid to the lender. But a debt of gratitude is repaid forward, to another person who also doesn’t deserve it. In this way each gift ripples outward and yokes circles of people into bonds of affection.” 5

… If, like the early Christians, we believe that everything is indeed an undeserved gift from God, then it is to God that we must be grateful. And we show our gratitude in our understanding of our ultimate connectedness, and the responsibility we rightfully owe to others, near and far. We live into our faith in our Triune God, but living an UBUNTU reality. (SLIDE 4) As those children in that African village said, “how can one of us be happy if all the others are sad?”…What we sang earlier is true. We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord. And as we leave this place, I hope that we will take with us the spirit of UBUNTU, so that We will work with each other, we will work side by side, And we'll guard each one's dignity and save each other’s pride. Because… We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord. And we pray that the unity of our whole human family will one 5 David Brooks, “The Structure of Gratitude” The New York Times, July 28, 2015.

day be

restored. Living in the spirit of Ubuntu, they will know we are Christians by our love. Amen