I Am Because We Are

'If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God 

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave, 

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

he humbled himself 

and became obedient to the point of death-- 

even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name 

that is above every name,

so that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bend, 

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord, 

to the glory of God the Father.

Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.'

--Philippians 2: 1-13

In Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace—and yes, you read that right—there is an early conflict between the human population of the planet Naboo and the underwater creatures called the Gungans.  When the droid army of the nefarious Trade Federation invades the planet, Jedi Knights Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui Gon Jinn try to get the Gungans to help the humans above.  When Gungan leader Boss Nass comments that—and I’m quoting here—“We-sa no care-en about da Naboo!”  Obi-Wan reminds him that the two populations form a symbiotic circle:  “What happens to one of you effects the other.  You must understand this," the Jedi tells him. 

Boss Nass isn’t swayed, but later, once those droid armies come for them, the Gungans agree to aid the people of Naboo and drive away the invaders.  It only happens when the two very different populations realize that their existence depends on each other.  It may not be the most popular of the films, but Episode I will still preach.

Boss Nass, Gungan leader, from Star Wars, Episode I

What the Gungans and Naboo finally realize is a concept called in the Zulu language of southern Africa, ubuntu.  Loosely translated, ubuntu means ‘I am because we are.’  The 76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church, back in 2009, used ubuntu as its theme, and several smaller diocesan conventions—including my then home diocese of Southwestern Virginia—used ubuntu as their theme as well.   I am because we are.  

Archbishop Desmond Tutu of Cape Town, South Africa called ubuntu the “essence of being human.” What is at the heart of ubuntu is the truth that nothing on this planet exists in isolation.  We are all connected—humans of every kind of tribe, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, the trees, the rocks, even the bugs crawling in the corners of our kitchen.  

Humans, though, are the only creattures that can choose whether or not to accept this fact, and so we often push others away.  Sometimes we do this because we believe we have to be strong individuals and must go it alone. Sometimes we do this because our tribal instincts take over and we refuse to accept that someone of another class, another race, another religion, or another tribe could possibly share anything in common with us.  Regardless of the reason, whenever we push others away we go against the spirit of ubuntu, forgetting, as Obi Wan said, what happens to one of us effects all of us.

Nelson Mandala, another South African who, like Archbishop Tutu, fought tirelessly to end the evils of apartheid in his home country, described ubuntu this way:  a traveler through a country might stop in a village, and without even asking for them, receive food and shelter.  He needn’t ask because the villagers understand that this stranger is like them, on a journey.  Ubuntu doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to enrich ourselves on our own journey, merely that we must understand that we are all on this journey together.  I am because we are. 

Writing much earlier than Archbishop Tutu or Mr. Mandela, Saint Paul nevertheless understood the principle of ubuntu, which is at the heart of this section of his letter to the church in Phillipi that we read this week. He implores the people of this diverse and somewhat fractured community to be of the same mind and to have the same love, to do nothing from selfish ambition and to look to the interests of others.  To do so, Paul says, is to put on the same mind that was in Christ Jesus.  So what did his mind look like?

Jesus absolutely understood the concept of ubuntu.  His message was good news for the poor, the sick, and the outcast, and a call for the healthy, wealthy, and privileged to understand how connected they all were.  Like the prophets of old, Jesus called those in comfortable positions to remember what he called the poor in spirit—those who were on the margins of society, those who had been forgotten by the elites—and to see them as beloved siblings in the household of God.  That sounds a lot like ubuntu. What does it take, then, for people to live into this idea?  

Paul says that Jesus did not regard his equality with God as something to be exploited, but instead emptied himself.  The word translated as ‘emptied’ is kenosis.  It is a word Paul comes back to a total of five times—here, and then twice in his first Letter to the Corinthians, once in his second letter, and finally in his letter to the Romans.  This emptying employed by Jesus is what Paul invites his listeners to practice. It requires people to first be aware of their own power and privilege; Jesus, after all, was perfectly aware of his divine nature, but he still chose to humble himself so as to lift others us. Jesus didn’t have to live this way, but he chose to, so that we who proclaim him as our Lord may follow; so that we may humble ourselves, empty ourselves, because we know that we cannot succeed unless everyone succeeds.  

This is ubuntu, the recognition of our interconnectedness, and to be Christ-like, to be little Christs ourselves, is to see these connections between me, you, them, everyone and everything.  As Martin Luther King put it in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.”  

This invitation to kenosis, to ubuntu, is good news for us right now.  We are splintered and fragmented now more than anytime that most of us can remember.  At the core of this fragmentation, I have come to believe, is our inability to see just how connected we all are, and when we don’t see the connection it becomes a lot easier to not care about each other.  Forgetting our connection leads us to make choices that are based only on our own individual needs and wants, which, at best, leaves others fending for themselves, and at worst, puts them in actual danger.  

Perhaps nowhere do we see this play out better than the conversation around the wearing of masks in public spaces.  When a mandate comes down requiring us to do so I often hear the same response that it infringes on individual rights.  But what would Jesus say about this?  What does his example of kenosis and the African model of ubuntu have to teach us in this moment?  If we empty ourselves, perhaps we could see that to wear our mask is not so much about our own comfort but about the protection of others, since we can easily give off the coronavirus without even having symptoms.  If we remember ubuntu—I am because we are—we might be able to acknowledge that our own wants and desires can only really be met within the context of a greater community—church, city, state, country, and world—and that any freedom we claim to have that does not respect the needs of the whole community is a false freedom and a contradiction of the very life Jesus calls us into.

The first in-person gathering of our parish since March, where everyone was masked and socially distanced.

Paul encourages us to be imitators of Christ, which doesn’t mean being robots or sheeple, totally forgoing any sense of a personal identity.  I suspect to be an imitator of Christ looks like realizing that there is more at stake in this world than my own wants and desires, that our lives are all interconnected.  Accepting such a reality requires surrender, which is hard.  Our society doesn’t much care for surrender when it is so focused on one’s own personal life choices.  

But that’s what it takes: surrendering the self to ubuntu, to the truth that we are in this thing together—not just the pandemic but the activity of living itself.  We are all connected to each other and to our world .  Jesus knew this.  If one of us is in danger, we are all in danger.  If one of us dies, we all mourn.  If the earth cries out as the waters rise and the forests burn, all creation everywhere is affected. We can only really know freedom and life when everyone and everything in our community—church, city, state, country, and world—understands how dependent we are on one another.  What happens to one of us affects all of us.  We must understand this. 

That is what Jesus offers, and when we empty ourselves as he did, when we accept and live into the truth that I only am because we all are, then the same mind will be in us as was in Christ Jesus.