Sermon January 19 2025 Ubuntu ICor12:12-26                Rev. Betsy Hogan

Here's a project for a miserable rainy day. Pausing to consider everyone who contributed to your day in various ways.

Which may not seem like such a big deal. My day, for example, if we’re setting aside whoever it was that set off fireworks in the west end at 2:45 this morning, began with David bringing me a cup of coffee. 

An A+ contribution for sure, so he goes on the top of the list – but wait. 

There's no cup of coffee if clean water didn't come out of the tap, if someone at Halifax Water hadn't done whatever it is they do. There's no cup of coffee without the clerk at the store who sold us the bag, or the employee who took it off the truck, or the trucker who drove it here, or the worker who roasted and packaged the beans, or whoever it was who picked those coffee beans in the first place. Or tended the plants. Or put them in the ground in the first place. 

And even then, there's no cup of coffee if the power's not on -- thanks to someone at NS Power, or a linesman, or maybe whoever it was trimmed our street trees last summer –

Which brings me to the coffee machine. And another store clerk, another employee, another trucker, probably a whole ship's worth of crew, more trucking, and eventually at the end of that very long chain -- a factory worker. Who put pieces together that someone else made. Out of plastics someone else entirely produced. And metals yet another someone else entirely mined.

And I haven't even gotten to the cup. Much less the milk. In fact, if I wanted to be mindful of everyone who contributed to my day – and just before 8am -- I've already written a page and I'm still on that first cup of coffee, and I've barely skimmed the surface.

The degree to which we're all intertwined, the degree to which we depend on each other and NEED each other – we know intellectually how enormous it is. We've LONG known intellectually how enormous it is. And if that intertwinedness has become far more intensely global than it was, say, a century ago for most of us – it's still always been real.

Even cultures that held themselves to some degree separate from outside incursions in past centuries, feeding and clothing and housing themselves by their own labour, they still each reflected within community a diversity of responsibilities and gifts that were necessarily shared as contributions to the whole.

That interdependence, that intertwinedness, it's an essence of our humanness. And it always has been. It’s reflected in the ancient culture of this land, in the indigenous concept of “All My Relations” that’s now embedded in the United Church Crest. It’s reflected perhaps most famously, thanks to the ministry of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in the Zulu culture of southern Africa, in the concept of ubuntu – I am because we are, we are all connected. 

Archbishop Tutu, in trying to describe this concept of ubuntu, he notes that even things like speaking and walking, we learn these by imitating other people. Relationship and connectedness, they're essential to – they're the essence of, the heart of – how we learn to be human. How we learn humanness.

And we're made that way. Dependent on our shared humanness to become fully human. Created as a relationship embodied – not one but two, in the language of Genesis. 

Created AS connectedness and FOR connectedness with one another. And so deeply that we recognize that others' brokenness HAS to be something we care about because our real well-being depends on their well-being. 

Because we might imagine that we're perfectly fine, regardless of their brokenness, but at a fundamental human spiritual level, in fact we're not.

Our well-being isn't actually full, isn't actually real, when others are broken. There's an injury to it, a bruised place – and we can feel it hurt when we hear of someone's sadness. That's how deeply we're entwined – and the African concept of ubuntu that Archbishop Tutu raised up in so much of his teaching and activism is about shaping our living to be an expression of that connectedness.

Which is really, metaphorically, exactly the same thing the Apostle Paul tries to do for the people in his church in Corinth, and for us, in the piece of his First Letter to the Corinthians that we heard earlier.

It's a tiny bit ironic, I have to say, to look to the Apostle Paul for a concrete or at least metaphorical example of someone else's conceptual philosophizing – but in this case, at least, the Apostle Paul has managed to leave off his OWN conceptual philosophizing long enough to give us a metaphor that's actually remarkably useful.

Each of us, and all of us, our own unique selves with our own unique gifts, responsibilities, capacities – but we’re bound together in the utter interdependence of all the bits and pieces that make up one body. 

Each of us separately necessary to the functioning fullness of life of the body, but also – by virtue of being all one body -- each of us affected by how each of us might be doing at any given time.

It's such a straightforward and accessible metaphor. Like, my foot can't hear, because it's not an ear – but if I'm walking along listening to someone tell me a story and I stub my toe, I can tell you for free there's going to be at least a second or two when my foot may not be an ear but it sure is affecting my hearing.

Yes, it sure is, Paul would say. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it. 

Yes, they sure do, Archbishop Tutu would say. Ubuntu – we are all connected. All my relations. 

And if that means ways of being with others, which obviously it does – embodying our connectedness with hospitality and warmth and sharing and also fierce solidarity and compassion and support –

It can also just mean, at a very basic level, practicing a kind of constant mindfulness. That project that if we let it, it'd wind up taking us all day. Calling to mind, in the experiencing of something as ordinary as a morning cup of coffee, each of those ‘my relations’ who’ve made a contribution to its appearance. 

It can feel a bit daunting. The Apostle Paul also famously told the early church to "pray without ceasing" and it’s tempting to wonder if he did so because he knew that if they paused to give thanks for everyone who contributed to their day, it'd pretty much TAKE all day. 

It can feel a bit daunting, to really lean into that orientation we’re made for – all my relations, the ubuntu of ‘I am because you are’, and one body, many members, and we are all connected. 

It’s an orientation that begins in such a lovely way with relationship, but can then move so swiftly into the sense of inescapable responsibility. And worry. And complicity. And powerlessness. And that’s still only considering whose labour contributed to the appearance of my morning cup of coffee.

But relationship is hard. The Apostle Paul literally wrote these words for the Corinthians and for us because he knew that relationship is hard. We literally get this beautiful ‘all my relations, ubuntu’ metaphor from Paul in this letter, of the one body with many members – because the Corinthians were proving to be incredibly bad at it. 

It was NOT, to put it mildly, coming naturally to them. Because even if it’s what we’re made for – and it is – it’s still hard. When other people matter, then we have to worry about them. We feel responsibility for their well-being. If we’re both trapped inside a system in which we get a cup of coffee, and they get child labour, we feel complicit and powerless and miserable. To say it can feel a bit daunting to lean into the orientation of ubuntu that we’re called to as Christians, as people of faith, is putting it seriously mildly.

But here's the thing. No one, from ancient times to the present, not Archbishop Tutu, and certainly not the Apostle Paul, ever imagined otherwise. 

And Paul in particular writes for the Corithians and for us, steeped in the wisdom of first century Talmudic Judaism. The orientation is about awareness. It’s about mindfulness. It’s about praying without ceasing. It’s about operating in a very real way within a live sense of how we’re all connected and who has to matter to us and being sure they do.

But it’s also about checking our own instinct and inclination to get daunted and just shut down. Because that’s so easy to do. It’s just such a relief: I can’t deal, it’s too much, shut down.

We’re one body, many members, says Paul. But I have absolutely no doubt, in his toodling around the Mediterranean basin, that he reached back also into the wisdom of the Talmudic Judaism in which he was steeped, and preached to them THIS, when they felt the heaviness and just wanted to shut down.

From the Talmud: Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

Awareness, mindfulness, praying without ceasing, we do what we can, one piece at a time, God being our helper, and it all matters. Amen.