"Wake Up and Smell the Coffee", July 20, 2025

 

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee
By Rev. Jamie Green Klopotoski
Based on 1 Corinthians 12:12-27
First Baptist Church, Gloucester
July 20, 2025

 

Have you ever stopped to think about the number of people it requires to get a cup of coffee like this into your hands? The answer is: a lot! Here’s a short list.

 

Farmers who plant, harvest, pick, and sort the coffee beans. Workers who process, dry, mill, and roast the beans. Artists who design the packaging. Captains and the crew of planes, trains, ships, and trucks for distribution, and logistics companies to plan all the routes. Business owners, CEOs, HR staff, Marketing professionals, and store managers to run coffee shops. Baristas and cashiers to serve and sell the final product. Health inspectors and food safety specialists to make sure the coffee is safe to drink. Mechanics, engineers, and factory workers who make the trucks for the truck drivers, the farming equipment for the farmers, the roasting and brewing equipment to turn coffee beans into coffee, and the packaging supplies like cups, lids, and labels for serving the coffee. Software engineers who design the point of sale systems.

 

Zooming out, we need schools and teachers to educate all these people. School committees, city councils, mayors, other politicians who help run and fund the schools and the cities. Daycare centers to take care of everyone’s children. More factories and retailers and tons of other workers to make everyone’s clothing, furniture, food, refrigerators, and cars. Architects and construction workers to build factories and everyone’s houses. Building inspectors to make sure all the buildings are safe. Road crews to pave the roads. Mechanics to fix the cars. Electricians and plumbers to enable electricity and running water. Miners, refineries, utility companies, and solar panel factories to create fuel to run everything, whether solar or electric or gas or oil. Material scientists to help manufacture steel, wood, iron, rubber, and plastic. Banks, credit card companies, economists, payroll companies, the U.S. Mint, and the Federal Reserve to make sure people have a way to purchase coffee and that workers get paid. Doctors and nurses and medical staff to take care of everyone. Sanitation workers to clean up after everyone.

 

All those people (and more!) just for this one cup of coffee. And if you like cream and sugar in your coffee, that requires even more ingredients, farms, equipment, and workers. Without all of these people, this cup of coffee would not exist.

 

And it’s not just coffee. It’s absolutely everything in our entire lives. I’ve tried thinking of things that I have made all by myself, that needed absolutely no one else, and there are none! I got close with gardening – but even if you harvested your own seeds and collected your own rainwater - you certainly didn’t make the plastic bucket used to collect the water or your metal gardening tools to till the land.

 

There is no such thing as a completely independent self-made person. No matter how successful we are as individuals, we need to realize that we did not become successful by ourselves. Anyone who claims they worked their way to the top all by themselves is mistaken; our entire interconnected and interdependent society was required to get them where they are today. The richest among us didn’t get rich by themselves; they didn’t make the cars they used to drive to work, or pave the roads they took, they didn’t manufacture the computers or phones they used, they didn’t drive the garbage trucks that disposed of their company’s waste, or pump their building’s septic tanks. They didn’t even make the cup of the coffee they picked up on their way to work.

 

Our very lives depend on each other. We are interconnected and interdependent. We cannot and do not do this thing called life by ourselves. If we could begin to understand this interconnectedness and how much we rely on other people to do anything, then maybe we could start to break down the huge divides that exist in our society. If we truly started to think of each other as interconnected with everyone else whom we live with on this planet, then maybe we would love one another and look out for one another. We need all of the individual parts of God’s interconnected creation to work together in order to do anything, in order to function as a society, in order to survive and thrive.  

 

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, no longer seeing other as equally valuable. They were separating themselves into categories; groups seen as superior were treated like kings and queens, and 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 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 in all of us and we need all of us, 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 fight against apartheid, which was a law that divided people into groups by race: white, black, colored, and Indian, with whites being the superior group who reigned over the other groups, very similar to what was happening in Corinth. Paul used the metaphor of the body to teach interconnectedness; Desmond Tutu used the concept of ubuntu. 

 

Both Paul and Desmond Tutu wrote that if we realized we were interconnected with everyone else on the planet, then our actions would change. We would bless others if we realized we have also been blessed. We would be more giving to others if we realized how much we have been given by others. We would care more about each other and treat everyone with dignity and respect if 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. When he was a very young child, he saw a white man tip his hat to a black woman. Such a gesture was completely unheard of. The white man was an Episcopal bishop; the black woman was his mother. He said that with the tipping of that hat, a simple gesture of respect and love, his reality was changed. Just one small seemingly insignificant action had a huge impact on him. He learned equality and justice and morality in that one action, and he dedicated his life to bringing equality and justice and morality to South Africa. Imagine what might have happened if that action had been negative, if the white man had spit at or insulted his mother, Tutu might have been full of anger or resentment or hate instead of love. That one action could have affected the entire trajectory of his 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.

 

Without our interconnected society, without farmers and factory workers and trash collectors, we wouldn’t have anything, including our morning coffee. I hope that fact changes our attitudes.

 

For example, maybe we can empathize with the Union of Trash Collectors from Republic Waste Services who are on strike, fighting for improved healthcare, retirement benefits, job security, better working conditions, fair promotion opportunities, and pay increases that reflect the essential nature of their work and the company's profitability.

 

Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said, “Our members are everyday Americans performing essential services across our communities, but Republic is unwilling to offer workers good wages, decent benefits, or a fair contract. The American public needs to understand that Republic Services and its overpaid, corrupt executives own this strike. Their greed is forcing trash collectors and waste haulers across the country out into the streets. We don’t want this garbage piling up. We want to return to work. But we refuse to be exploited.”

 

Victor Mineros, Director of the Teamsters Solid Waste and Recycling Division, said “Republic Services must come to its senses and end this strike with a strong offer for our members, a [fair] contract for every single Teamster who does the real, gross, unforgiving, and brutally hard work that these executives would never pretend to do.”

 

All people in our interconnected society deserve to live safe, happy, heathy, productive lives. All people in our interdependent world deserve our respect, kindness, and love, whether CEO, truck driver, coffee shop barista, or trash collector.

                       

Maybe the next time you are waiting in line at Dunkin’ Donuts, you will practice patience and kindness, and smile at the barista. Maybe that smile will be like that tip of a hat in South Africa, and create a spiral of goodness. Maybe the barista will end her shift not feeling so stressed out, and go home to her kid and spend valuable time with them, and then that child will go to school the next day ready to learn and succeed and one day grow up to develop a cure for cancer. Our whole world is interconnected, every action we take matters. We need each other. Ubuntu. I am what I am, you are what you are, we have what we have, because of who we all are.

 

May it be so. Amen.