Ubuntu

We spend a lot of time talking about community.

About how this congregation is a community.

About the importance of engaging the community around us.

I chose today’s gathering song with a purpose.

It was certainly beautiful all on it own and beautiful music has a way of uplifting us—of opening our hearts and minds to the presence of God and one another.

But the Zulu philosophy of Ubuntu is yet another way for us to look at community.

Ubuntu says, “I am because we are”.

We cannot live in isolation—that was not God’s intent for us.

God intends for us to live in community.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tours towns and villages, proclaiming the Good News and curing all kinds of diseases and sicknesses.

Jesus travels with the community of his followers to other communities throughout Galilee.

And Matthew says, “At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity because they were distressed and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd.”

Jesus wasn’t above the crowd.

He wasn’t emotionally detached from the suffering he saw.

He was moved by it.

The verse doesn’t say that he blamed them for their troubles.

It said he was “moved with pity”.

He felt compassion for them.

He suffered with them in their pain.

Another layer of Ubuntu is the greeting “Sawubona”, which means “I see you”.

But it is more than a simple greeting.

Sawubona is intimate.

It doesn’t just mean I observe your presence.

It means I see you in your entirety.

I acknowledge your circumstances—your lived experience.

I recognize your dignity.

I accept our interconnectedness.

How beautiful is that?

I also frequently talk about our cultural conditioning—attitudes we have without even realizing it.

Think about how we greet people—"Hey, how ya doin?”

Maybe a head nod thrown in for good measure.

It’s something automatic.

We’re taught it’s polite.

But, unless it is a family member or close friend, it’s unlikely that we’re making a serious effort to connect.

We don’t necessarily expect to hear an honest response to how they are doing.

We’re unlikely to notice if they look tired or have bloodshot eyes from crying or lack of sleep.

We’re certainly not thinking about our interconnectedness.

Now, to be fair, I don’t think we do this maliciously—or because we don’t care.

We do it because we’re always busy.

We’re always focused on the next thing we’re supposed to be doing.

We do it because we are culturally conditioned to think about ourselves and our families first—not the wider community.

But that is the lesson of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu teaches that we are interrelated.

Looking through our Christian lens, we are bound together as children of God.

Ubuntu says I become myself precisely through my relationship with the community.

And that is the Good News of the gospel: there is no justice for me unless there is justice for everyone.

Either we all thrive or no one does.

Our success is not individual because my flourishing cannot be separated from yours.

That is a tough lesson for us to hear.

Because our culture tells us to focus on individual success.

“Get the promotion!”

“Buyer beware!”

“Pick yourself up by your bootstraps!”

But that is not the way of Jesus.

Jesus looks at the crowd and sees suffering.

It’s not a superficial survey.

It’s intimate—because he is Emanuel, God With Us.

Because our God is the God who sees.

And how does Jesus respond?

He gathers his community of followers together.

He gathers his followers—a ragtag group of people who had little in common until they became students of Jesus.

There were fishermen—working class people on the lower economic rungs of society.

There was a tax collector—a group universally reviled as traitors to their people and Roman collaborators.

There was a Zealot—a political fanatic outside of mainstream Judaism.

And there were women—so overlooked in first-century Judea that they aren’t even counted.

But Jesus made them a community.

And Jesus doesn’t complain and say there aren’t enough of them to do the work that needs doing.

He doesn’t say they aren’t smart enough or strong enough or capable enough.

He empowers them.

And he sends them out.

To other communities—communities where there is need.

A need for healing—healing of bodies, minds, and spirits.

Because what we often fail to realize is that, particularly in first-century Judea, illness isolated people.

Healing not only restored bodies, minds, and spirits—it restored relationships and brought outcasts back into community.

When others ignore or reject community, Jesus restores it.

In today’s gospel, Jesus also says, “The harvest is bountiful but the laborers are few.

Beg the overseer of the harvest to send laborers out to bring in the crops.”

I am not a farmer.

But I don’t have to be a farmer to know that harvesting is communal work.

It takes a community to bring in a crop.

Whether you see Jesus’ talk of harvesting as a metaphor for evangelism or healing or service, it’s clear that he sees it as communal work.

The work of serving our neighbors is communal work.

It is our work to do.

It is our calling—whether we heed that call or not.

Ubuntu says, “My humanity is tied to yours.”

Jesus says: “You received freely—now freely give.”

The two are closely related.

Both reject the idea that we can live in isolation.

We receive unconditional love from God.

Jesus says, “Now freely give”.

See one another.

Don’t be blind to suffering.

Be compassionate.

Be a healing force in the world.

Restore people in body, mind, and spirit.

Restore relationships and gather in the outcasts and the marginalized.

Today, we also commemorate the Emanuel 9.

They were a community and also part of a larger community.

They were diverse—like Jesus’ disciples.

There were pastors, a politician, a librarian, and a recent college graduate.

They practiced Ubuntu.

When a stranger came in to join their Bible Study, they said, “We see you.

We acknowledge you as a fellow child of God.

We are because you are.”

Unfortunately, Dylann Roof did not practice Ubuntu.

He did not see the humanity of his hosts.

Despite being raised as a Lutheran, he did not acknowledge them as siblings in Christ.

He believed that white people could live in isolation.

He rejected the Kin-dom of God.

My friends, we live in a complicated world.

One that encourages independence, rather than interdependence.

One that relies on self-sufficiency, rather than the common good.

One that focuses on scarcity, rather than abundance.

Jesus and Ubuntu offer an alternative:

We are intended to be in community.

We are supposed to understand that we cannot thrive as a species unless we ALL thrive—including people experiencing poverty, hunger, and homelessness.

None of us have justice unless ALL of us have justice—including people of all races, cultures, genders, and sexualities.

We ARE the body of Christ.

In 1 Corinthians, we read, “The body is one, even though it has many parts; all the parts—many though they are—comprise a single body.

And so it is with Christ.

It was by one Spirit that all of us, whether we are Jews or Greeks, slaves or citizens, were baptized into one body.

All of us have been given to drink of the one Spirit.

And that Body is not one part; it is many.”

That is the crux of Ubuntu AND the gospel.

I am because we are.

We are because Christ is.

Give freely as we have received.

See one another—not superficially but in our entirety.

Stop being blind to the suffering of our siblings.

For the sake of all that is good and holy, stop killing one another.

Love one another as God first loved us.

Because when we love one another, that is how we build the community that God intended for us.

That is how we co-create the Kin-dom.

My friends—my siblings in Christ—let it be so.

May this meditation on God’s word keep our hearts and minds on Christ Jesus, Amen.