ubuntu

Blessed Are the Ubuntu

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Luke 6:17-26

   A great crowd comes to Jesus to be healed of their diseases and “unclean spirits,” both of which would make these people outcasts to one degree or another.  Then Jesus turns to his disciples and describes people who are “blessed” in Luke’s version of Matthew’s Beatitudes.  Malina and Rohrbaugh explain that the underlying Greek words that are translated as “blessed” and “woe” are better understood as “How honorable …” and “How shameless ….”  To say someone was “blessed” or “honorable” in Jesus’ time was to say, “Pay attention to these people, because these are the people you should try to be like.  This is the group you want to belong to.”  This is the opposite of saying, “Woe to these people,” which means, “Pay attention: You definitely do not want to be like these people, or part of this group.” 

   Luke’s beatitudes are statements consoling and supporting the socially disadvantaged.  They’re also a reversal of who was considered honorable and shameless at the time of Jesus, and in most circles, in our time as well.  Jesus proclaims that our heroes should be the poor, the hungry, the sad and grieving, and those who stand up for what is right even if people threaten them, mock them, or exclude them.  Our heroes should not be the aggressive, the rich, those who toughen themselves against feelings of loss, those who strike back when others strike them or guard their images so they’re always popular.

   How can this make any sense to us in 2025?  In our culture right now, the poor, those working for justice and equity, those trying to exercise compassion, and those insisting that mercy is more important than wealth or power appear anything but “blessed.”

   Jesus knew a couple of things.  First, he knew that the people he described as blessed are the people who understand that we need each other.  They understand this because they have no choice but to rely on others.  God designed us to need each other; God made us to live and thrive in community.  We are blessed when we know that and live it.

   Jesus also knew that the times when we’re truly the happiest are when we help or heal people.  True happiness comes from things that don’t make people rich and famous.  For example:

Loving and raising your children.

Taking care of your aging parents.

Standing up for someone who is being bullied.

Including someone who is being left out.

Hugging someone who needs a hug.

Serving a meal to someone who is hungry.

Building homes with Habitat for Humanity.

Sitting next to someone who is lonely.

Telling the truth when other people think that lying is acceptable.

Sharing what you have with people who don’t have enough.

   An anthropologist had been studying the habits and customs of an African tribe.  When he’d concluded his research, he waited for transportation to take him to the airport for the return trip home.  To help pass the time as he waited, he proposed a game for the children who constantly followed him around during his stay with the tribe.  He filled a basket with candy and placed it under a tree, and then called the kids together.  He drew a starting line on the ground and told them that when he said “Go!” they should run to the basket.  The first to arrive there would win all the candy.

   But when he said “Go!” they all held each other’s hands and ran to the tree as a group.  When they reached the basket, they shared it.  Every child enjoyed the candy.  The anthropologist was surprised.  One of them could have won all the candy.  A little girl explained it to him: “How can one of us be happy if all the others are sad?”

   The child’s wisdom reflects the African notion of “ubuntu.”  In the Xhosa culture, ubuntu means, “I am because we are.”   Archbishop Desmond Tutu described it this way: “Africans have a thing called ubuntu.  It is about the essence of being human; it is part of the gift that Africa will give the world.  It embraces hospitality, caring about others, being willing to go the extra mile for the sake of another.  We believe that a person is a person through other persons, that my humanity is caught up, bound up, inextricably, with yours.  When I dehumanize you, I inexorably dehumanize myself.  The solitary human being is a contradiction in terms.  Therefore, you seek to work for the common good because your humanity comes into its own in community, in belonging.”

   Ubuntu is what Jesus is talking about in this passage.  What really makes us truly happy is helping other people be happy.  What really makes us successful is helping all people to live happy, safe, healthy lives, because “I am because we are.”

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:

Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003).

Brian D. McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking (New York: Jericho Books, 2014).

As Yourself

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Mark 12:28-34  

   The exchanges at the beginning of the twelfth chapter of Mark remind me of the ongoing presidential campaign.  The authorities question Jesus, debate him, even try to trap him.  Jesus is nimble at avoiding the “gotchas.”  Then a scribe steps forward and asks a short, sharp, simple question: What is the greatest commandment?  It’s a hard fastball.  It will show who Jesus really is.  And so it does.  Jesus answers, “Love God completely, and love your neighbor as yourself.”  Everyone would have expected the first part of his answer, loving God.  It is the watchword, the touchstone, the core of the Jewish faith in Deuteronomy Chapter 6.  They may not have expected the second part, loving neighbor, but it wasn’t new; it’s in Leviticus 19.  What’s new and surprising is the way Jesus connects the second part to the first part in a way that means that these two laws can’t really be separated, that they can’t really be understood apart from each other.  You can’t love God, in other words, apart from loving each other. 

   The scribe says, “You’re right!”  Jesus tells him, “You are not far from the kingdom.”  The scribe is “not far from the kingdom of God” NOT because he gave the right answer – this isn’t about being the smartest kid in the class – but because the scribe understands this link between the two laws – that the only way truly to love God is to love other people as we love ourselves.

   We tend to gloss over that last clause – the “as yourself” part.  We might hear this from a contemporary, psychological perspective, a mandate for the kind of self-love that, in 2024, we know is important: the kind of self-esteem or self-respect that protects us from allowing others to bully or abuse us, that allows us to navigate life in a way that reflects that we are worthy of love and belonging.  It’s an intriguing question: “Can we love others more than we love ourselves?”  Many would argue that we really can’t. 

   But as interesting as that question is, that isn’t what the biblical writers have in mind.  The Greek word Jesus uses is agape.  C. S. Lewis defines this kind of love: “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”  The biblical writers begin by assuming that people want their own ultimate good and will act accordingly.  I believe this is true; even when we think of tragic examples of self-destructive behavior, behind them is a sadly broken idea about what it takes to achieve the ultimate good.

   What that phrase, “as yourself” means is that we are to seek the well-being of our neighbor – of others – with the same zeal, the same energy, the same creativity, and the same commitment that we would pursue our own well-being.  It means that your neighbor’s well-being is to have the identical priority to your well-being.  Are you hungry?  So is your neighbor.  Feed him.  Are you thirsty?  Give your thirsty neighbor a drink.  Are you lonely?  Befriend someone who is lonely.  Are you frightened, or sad?  Find someone to comfort.

   I suspect that when most people hear, “The well-being of your neighbor is to have the identical priority to your own well-being,” it sounds a little scary.  Maybe a lot scary. What creeps into our hearts is fear – perhaps fear of scarcity, fear that there won’t be enough for me and mine, for my family, my tribe, my country – enough resources, enough well-being, enough whatever.  Perhaps fear for safety, fear of the one we think of as “the other.”  Again and again, we see that hatred isn’t the opposite of love; it is fear.   

   Here’s the thing: God doesn’t look at anyone and see “the other.”  God is One, Deuteronomy tells us, and God includes us all in God’s oneness.  The scribe in today’s passage gets it that we can’t love God without loving our neighbors, because the life of loving others is the life that creates justice, and freedom, and peace for us all.  It is the life that is truly life, the best life, the life that the God wants for every one of us, God’s beloved children.

   The best story I’ve heard that explains this is about an anthropologist who proposed a game to children of an African tribe.  He put a basket near a tree and told the kids that the first one to reach the basket would win all the fruit.  When he said, “Go!” they all took each other’s hands and ran together, and then sat down under the tree together, enjoying the fruit.  The anthropologist asked them why they ran like that; one of them could have been the big winner.  The children said, “Ubuntu; how can one of us be happy if all the others are sad?”  “Ubuntu,” as an old friend explained to me , is a Zulu or perhaps Nguni Bantu word that is best summed up, “I am, because we are.”

   We can’t achieve the life that God wants for us is by going it alone.  We were never meant to go it alone.  That is what is at the core of “love your neighbors as yourself.”  That is the reason for the two Great Commandments.  We are because our neighbors are.  Our American myth of the self-made man is just that: a myth.   It is a myth that denies the reality, the truth, of the two Great Commandments, and it is a myth that drives us farther away from the Kingdom of God.  Dependence starts when we’re born and lasts until we die. Given enough resources, we can pay for help and create the mirage that we are completely self-sufficient. But the truth is that no amount of money, influence, resources, or determination will change our physical, emotional, and spiritual dependence on others. Not at the beginning of our lives, not in the messy middle, and not at the end. As Bob Dylan sang, “May you always do for others and let others do for you.”

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.