Ubuntu: embracing solidarity, resisting neutrality

Twenty-Fifth Sunday After Pentecost ● November 19, 2023

Readings: Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18

Rev. Alexis Lillie © 2023

You can view the full worship video recording at:
https://youtu.be/YXYzwvEitkc?si=uZ3ViKS-EuVbTMW0

I looked around my life about ten years ago, and realized – in spite of living in a city like New York, in spite of coming in contact with a whole host of people with a whole host of experiences – my closest friends and community were pretty homogenous. They weren't providing me too many entry points to beliefs, experiences, and perspectives that were different from my own.

Slowly, over time, as this realization deepened and began affecting how I lived, this has changed. It’s not that I systematically cut out people who were too much “like me.” But I did start intentionally trying to – imperfectly – prioritize being in spaces where my experiences, my way of being was not in the majority.

I am really grateful to say that now, most of the communities I participate in are full of folks who are different from me in many ways, who lovingly challenge me, who invite me into deeper growth. These are systems-inverting communities – places we develop solidarity with one another not because we make easy connections by having so many things in common, as might be the case in a relatively homogenous community. But rather they are places where we can see deeply one another's humanity maybe because on the surface we have many differences.

Church of the Village is a place like this. My daughter’s school community is a place like this. My closest friendships are places like this. And they are not easy places. Even when there is a reciprocity, an ease within such a community these systems-inverting places are constantly bumping up against the very systems that they are trying to invert.

No matter how we will and work for it to be otherwise, for now we exist – for example – in a capitalistic system.

No matter how we dream of it being different, for now we exist in a white supremacist system.

No matter how we might work to adjust or reconstruct it, for now we exist in a denominational structure.

I don't need to tell you all that seeking to do things differently, to invert the systems around us, is difficult work. We have spent the past handful of weeks talking about Ubuntu: "I am because we are." Or another definition I found: "The belief in a universal bond of sharing ... that connects all humanity."

The need that we have, when doing this work of upsetting the status quo, to see the humanity in one another.

I think many of us in this community understand that we are connected to one another, that we need to share with one another, and bestow humanity on and with one another. Of course we can need reminders, and I venture to guess that a shared sense of humanity is both what guides us into systems-inverting work, and sustains us throughout when it does become challenging.

I titled my sermon "Resisting Neutrality," because just as we learn from our passage that God is not neutral – which we'll get more into in a minute – the idea of solidarity is also not neutral.

I came across a term this week in my ongoing antiracism work that I hadn't heard before - or at least had not internalized it. White Solidarity. This, partially, is what I was experiencing ten years ago when I looked around and realized my relationships didn't really reflect how I wanted to live my life. I was in a community of people that looked, lived, acted, believed, and largely existed exactly like me. No shade on these folks, or on this time in my life! It's where I was and there were valuable pieces to it. And our experiences were recursive.

We had solidarity with one another because of key things we had in common that actually helped us uphold the status quo, rather than look to challenge it. This was a kind of self-reinforcing solidarity, rather than transformative solidarity

What I mentioned earlier: the capitalism we bump up against, the supremacy, the status quo that transformative solidarity can sometimes feel constricted by, I believe it is these self-reinforcing types of "solidarity" that we are coming up against. The system wants to maintain, to reinforce itself.

The way we engage solidarity is not neutral ... and fortunately, neither is God. Maybe because of this, the lectionary reading really speaks to me. And it discomforts me. It fits with my God-of-the-oppressed, Liberation theology (which informs my transformative solidarity). But it makes my "nice, white liberal" way of being uncomfortable.

So maybe you can see how even within ourselves, transformative solidarity bumps up against self-reinforcing solidarity. Because I want to live in a space of transformation, let's lean into this passage a bit.

Zephaniah is a book of prophecy, whose warnings are likely delivered after the division of the people of Israel into two kingdoms: Israel in the North and Judah in the South. Zephaniah was delivered to Judah. (I'm saying "delivered" because most people didn't read, and when this book was written down, it likely happened even later. And there may have been further edits and redactions to make it more applicable to its time.)

But for our purposes today, Zephaniah is concerned with all the bad stuff that caused the division of Israel. Our passage today is very expressly saying: you all have been up to some not-so-good stuff! And if you think God doesn't care, you're wrong! God is not neutral. There is a divine position to be taken, and a day of reckoning is coming. 

This is scary to some, and it’s vindication to some: The wealthy will be plundered! Houses laid to waste! Money won't be able to save folks! Everyone practicing self-reinforcing solidarity, your complacency will get you judged!!

Now, aside from some folks on the subway, or people holding signs in Times Square, at least in New York we don't so much get this level of clear-cut call to action. What does it mean to interrupt self-reinforcing solidarity? The kind that the prophet warns about in the reading, the kind that leads to complacency and eventual destruction?

I started this sermon with what I would point to as one example. Who are we surrounding ourselves with? What voices are we listening to? Whose experiences are shaping us? And are they shaping us in the way of systems maintenance, or systems inversion?

Even as I use a story from my past as one way this might play out in our lives, I am not holding myself up as an example.
Because another obvious connection occurs to me here – particularly relevant when we talk about divisions in Israel. And it’s one I am struggling with. How do we – how do *I* -- interrupt the kind of solidarity that leads to the war between Israel and Hamas? That results in violence and invasion, children dying and people being taken captive. Where do the systems of oppression that lead to that kind of pain get interrupted?

I almost left this out because ... I just don't know. Part of me wants to point back to the passage, to an ancient prophecy that alludes to destruction for those who believe God is neutral.

And yet. If we are truly seeking transformation through solidarity, through a shared sense of humanity, we aren't seeking plunder or destruction because my survival and sustenance is bound up in yours! We are seeking God's heart and seeking ways to help others align with divine desire through their own transformative journey.

Zephaniah is pretty clear about God's position on complacency, on relying on wealth, on becoming comfortable with excess.

We don't need to rejoice that the prophet is predicting all kinds of disaster for those who don't transform their behavior. We need to raise our prophetic voice – and actions – to call for this transformation.

Which is actually how ancient Biblical prophecy seems to work – it's not like telling the future. The job of the prophet was to reflect the peoples' behavior back to them, and to explain what would happen if folks didn't re-align themselves with God. And in the Hebrew scriptures, often the people did! Now, sometimes they didn't and then we get stories of kingdom division, and invasion, and captivity, and a whole host of things. But the intention of the prophecy was that the community readjust its behavior. Prophets were part of the community!! They had a vested interest – an ubuntu interest – in seeing transformation. They truly did not exist without the others they were in relationship with.

So my thought as we wrap up is this is, maybe we start there. As Becca so beautifully reminded us the other week - your humanity, is my humanity. Transformative solidarity is multi-faceted. It reminds us that God is not neutral, that a divine rebalancing is possible in the absence of transformation. And it calls upon us to recalibrate ourselves and our communities, to come closer into alignment with God's heart.

To move from a self-reinforcing solidarity that aligns around sameness to maintain the status quo ... and into a transformative solidarity that honors the ways we challenge one another to grow more deeply into a vision of the kin-dom on earth.

Copyright (c) 2023 - Rev. Alexis Lillie
All rights reserved.