Hot Dogs and UbuntuBy Rev. Jamie Green KlopotoskiBased on 1 Corinthians 12:12-27November 21, 2021First Baptist Church, Gloucester, MAWatch here:
Back when I was the Youth Minister at a church in Needham, Massachusetts, I led a week-long Vacation Bible School every summer for kids. During our prayer circle one year, I had every kid hold hands and each take a turn to say what they were thankful for. I got the usual “friends and family” responses: “Mom”, “Dad”, “My Sister”, “My Best Friend”, “My Cat”, but then it came time for a young girl of no more than 4 years old to speak. She quite excitedly said, “hot dogs.” Most of the adults in the room laughed. But I was impressed. Earlier in the day, we had eaten hot dogs for lunch, and this wise young girl was able to be thankful for even the most obvious, most mundane, most simple thing. Hot Dogs. I later organized a scavenger hunt for the kids to complete, and one of the items was to make a list of 100 things they were thankful for. A few of the kids thought I was kidding… or that I had made a typo… did I mean 10 things? No, I meant 100. They thought that there was no way they could come up with 100 things they were thankful for. But I asked them to think about those hot dogs we had for lunch. How did those hot dogs get on their plates? Could we be thankful for the volunteers who cooked the hot dogs that day? The refrigerator that kept the hot dogs cold? The stove that warmed them up? The grocery store workers who sold them to us? The truck drivers who transported them to the store? The factory workers who originally made and packaged the hot dogs? The farmers who raised the animals? The artists who designed the label? After considering the long journey it took for a hot dog to get on our plates for lunch, the kids easily came up with over 100 things to be thankful for with absolutely no problem.
Every Thanksgiving, I think of this little girl from Vacation Bible School and the journey of her hot dog lunch. One of my favorite Thanksgiving traditions is going around the dinner table to have each person say what they are thankful for. My friends have learned that if they are sitting at my table, I am not going to allow them to give the “friends and family” answer. Of course we are all thankful for our friends and families, but there are SO many other things to be thankful for. I like to challenge people to dig deeper in their reflections of gratitude, to consider the journey of literally anything we have, just like the Vacation Bible School kids reflected on the journey of their hot dog lunches. If hot dogs aren’t your thing, maybe think about the journey of a cup of coffee. It requires farmers to plant, harvest, pick, and the sort coffee beans. Workers to process, dry, mill, and roast the beans. Artists to design the packaging. Planes and ships and truck drivers for distribution. Business owners to run coffee shops. Baristas to serve the final product. Mechanics and engineers and factory workers to design the trucks for truck drivers, the farming equipment for farmers, the roasting and brewing equipment for baristas, the packaging supplies like tape, cardboard boxes, cups, and labels for retailers. Schools and teachers to educate all these people, daycare centers to take care of all their children, more factories and retailers and tons of other workers to make everyone’s clothing, furniture, food, refrigerators, and cars, electricians and plumbers to enable electricity and running water, and sanitation workers to clean up after everyone. All of that (and more!) just for a cup of coffee. Without all of these people, that cup of coffee could not exist. So shouldn’t we be thankful for all those people, without whom we wouldn’t have coffee or hot dogs or any of the other things are lives are blessed with?
Ultimately, my hope in getting people to follow the journey of a hot dog or a cup of coffee is that it will remind us of how much we need each and every single human being on this planet. We need all of the individual parts of God’s interconnected creation to work together in order to have a functioning society. That was the Apostle Paul’s message in his letter to the Corinthians that we read this morning. Paul had gotten word that the community in Corinth was basically falling apart. People were no longer working together, were no longer seeing other as equally valuable. They were separating themselves into categories; groups that were seen as superior treated like kings and queens, but groups seen as “weak” were neglected, despised, shamed, and mistreated. The Corinthians were failing to acknowledge that they were dependent upon each other, that they needed each other to prevent their community from falling apart. So Paul wrote them a letter to remind them that each individual in their society was just as important as every other individual, that all members of the community were needed and were all equally valued by God.
In order to teach them this lesson, Paul used a metaphor, comparing the human body to the body of Christ. Even before the advent of modern science, the Corinthians would have understood that the human body is made up of different parts that all rely on each other and need each other to function. Without an ear, the body couldn’t hear; without an eye, the body couldn’t see. All of the individual parts of the body have a special and important role in making the body work, and all parts should be equally valued, respected, and cared for. It’s the same with the body of Christ, made up of different individual humans with unique gifts, abilities, personalities, languages, and cultures. All of the individual parts of the body of the Christ have a special and important role in making the body work, and all parts should be equally valued, respected, and cared for. Despite our obvious and many differences, we are called to work together in unity, as one body. We are not just individuals living alone in the world, just like the body isn’t one giant ear or eye; we are a part of a complex interconnected system. At the heart of Paul’s message is our interconnectedness: Christ is all and is in all, and we need all, in order to be who we are.
South Africans have a word for this: UBUNTU. Ubuntu is a Bantu word used to describe the universal bond that connects all humanity. It is sometimes translated as “I am what I am because of who we all are.” South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu used the idea of ubuntu in his theology to fight against apartheid. He once described ubuntu as meaning, “A person is a person through other persons. We need other human beings in order to be human. We are made for togetherness, we are made for family, for fellowship, to exist in a tender network of interdependence.” His youngest daughter, Reverend Mpho Tutu, said this about Ubuntu: “Everything that I do has an effect on you and your well being. Everything you do has an effect on me and my well being. Even though we are different people, we are essentially interconnected.” Interestingly enough, Ubuntu is also the name of a free, open-source computer operating system, where people are encouraged to share their talents to make improvements on the system, so that it continually gets better and better. It was named after this philosophy of Ubuntu, the belief that we can create something better when we work together.
The imagery of the body of Christ and the concept of Ubuntu urge us to consider our interconnectedness. Both Paul and Desmond Tutu wrote that if we realized that we were interconnected with everyone else on the planet, then our actions would change. We would bless others as we realized we have also been blessed. We would be more giving to others as we realized how much we have been given by others. We would care more about each other and treat everyone with dignity and respect as we realized how much we needed each other. We would always look out for one another, because, as Paul wrote, “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it” but “If one part is honored, every part shares in its joy.” Desmond Tutu wrote, “What you do affects the whole world. We are diminished when others are humiliated, diminished when others are oppressed, diminished when others are treated as if they were less than who they are. But when you do good, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.”
Desmond Tutu tells a story about what he considers to be one of the most formative experiences of his life. He said, “When I was a very young child, I saw a white man tip his hat to a black woman. Please understand that in my country such a gesture is completely unheard of. The white man was an Episcopal bishop; the black woman was my mother.” He says that with the tipping of a hat, a simple gesture of respect and love, his reality was changed. Just one small seemingly insignificant action had a huge impact on him. Imagine how easily that action could have been negative, and could have made Tutu angry or resentful or full of hate instead of love. It could have affected the trajectory of his entire life, it could have affected the future of South Africa! Every small and seemingly insignificant action we take and every word we speak matters, because we are all interconnected.
It is unfortunate that so many of us forget the fact of our interconnectedness as we go about living our seemingly independent self-made lives. I think that if Paul saw our society today, he would desperately want us to understand how interconnected we are. I imagine that if Paul were to write us a letter, it would sound a lot like his letter to the Corinthians:
“Dear Earthlings, I see there are many divisions on the planet today. Have you forgotten that you are all members of the body of Christ? Remember, it’s like the human body. From your hands and feet that help you move and manipulate the world around you, to your nose hairs and fingernails that protect your bodies from viruses and bacteria, all of the individual parts of the body have a special and important role in making the body work. If the trillions of cells in your body can cooperate to make your body work (including 25 trillion red blood cells, 147 million platelets, 45 million lymphocytes, 38 trillion bacteria cells, 86 billion neurons, 85 billion glial cells, 240 billion liver cells, 1.6 trillion skin cells, 50 billion fat cells, 2 billion heart muscle cells), then the 7.9 billion people on this planet should be able to get along. It doesn’t matter whether you are black or white, rich or poor, young or old, cooks, doctors, teachers, scientists, janitors, artists, office workers, trash collectors, farmers, factory workers, CEOs, truck drivers, musicians, maids; you were born of one spirit. Christ is all and is in all, and we need all to survive.”
I pray that one day, the whole world will be able to heed Paul’s words, to understand our interconnectedness, and work together for the common good. This understanding can start with us. The first step we can take is to reflect on what we have to be thankful for. Perhaps we can all take a moment this Thanksgiving as we gather around the table with our friends and family to reflect deeply on things in our lives that we have to be thankful for. You can start with something like your morning routine. You can be thankful for your bed, for a roof over your head, for your toothbrush and your toothpaste, for a hot shower, for your bowl of cereal or cup of coffee, and then dig deeper into any one of those things and be thankful for the many people it took for those items to complete the journey to your home. I hope that as gratitude fills our hearts by reflecting on all the ways in which our lives have been blessed, we will be inspired to be a blessing to others. Because we need each other. Because ubuntu. I am what I am, you are what you are, we have what we have, because of who we all are.
Let us pray, Blessed and Holy One, we praise your name for the many good gifts you have given us. We love you for blessing our lives with so much greatness, so much love, so much grace. Help us to take time each day to consider all the things in our lives that you have given to us. We thank you so much for the energy that feeds our souls, the sun that warms our bodies, the air that fills our lungs, for farms and gardens, manufacturing plants and factories, farmers and factory workers and truck drivers, grocery store cashiers and coffee shop baristas, refrigeration and freight trains, indoor plumbing and electricity, clothing and furniture and cars, hospitals, doctors, and nurses, schools and teachers, our intricately complex human bodies, cups of coffee, and even hot dogs. May we experience the holy in everything, in everyone, in every moment of our interconnected lives. Amen.
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