The Collective Journey: How Our Faith Shapes Individuality and Community

Imagine if we took a sweeping journey across time, tracing the complex dance between individualism and collectivism, dissecting its influence on society, religion, and pop culture. What would we discover about our own identities, our communities, and our shared humanity? That's exactly what we set out to do in this enlightening episode of Resilient Faith, drawing on the wisdom of Archbishop Desmond Tutu's interpretation of Ubuntu and the provocative lyrics of Taylor Swift. 

Join us as we dissect human history - from biblical tales of the Garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel to the rise of individuality in the Western world. We'll grapple with ideas of Marxism, capitalism, and socialism, and even ponder Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest. As we unravel these threads, we'll also bring in the perspectives of great thinkers like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and Pope Francis. We promise this intellectual journey will provoke thought, stir conversation, and just might reshape your understanding of our world. So let's dare to dive deep and journey together into this exploration of our individuality and our communal callings.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to Resilient Faith, the podcast. Opportunities to find deeper resilience within ourselves can come when life seems most challenging. This podcast is to help you develop that resilience and connection with God. Being resilient and having power starts with faith. Welcome, friends, to the Resilient Faith podcast sponsored by Brentwood Presbyterian Church in West Los Angeles. We are sharing our sermons from our recent series, the Gospel According to Taylor Swift. This was a six-week sermon series in the fall of 2023. It's important in this day and age to talk about current events and pop culture in our worship and be in dialogue with Christian perspectives and scripture. Using Taylor Swift's lyrics and some of her songs as a launching pad, we are discussing some of the important issues and looking through them with a Christian lens. Thanks for listening and we pray that the Holy Spirit reaches you through this series.

Speaker 2: 1:30

Well, we are so sad. This is the last one of our Taylor Swift series. Boo, you know I have had so many of you ask me. So when are you gonna talk about this thesis, this doctoral thesis that you're writing in worship, especially after this summer where I went to have these conversations, powerful conversations with some of the closest colleagues and best friends of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, unbelievable conversations.

Speaker 2: 2:02

But the problem is it's kinda complicated. I mean the thesis it's kinda complicated. I mean I barely understand it for myself. My thesis advisor, dr Willemann, is trying to get his mind wrapped around it. It is complicated, all of the things I wanna say and do and all of the different threads that I wanna pull into it. Even the title is complicated Archbishop Desmond Tutu's Amago De Infused Version of Ubuntu as the hermeneutical antidote to the rise of toxic individuality in our world today.

Speaker 2: 2:43

Basically, what I wanna do is to try to unpack and explore this age-old ontological dialectic tension between individuality and collectivism Since the beginning of time, this understanding that we were created to be in relationship, that we were created to be in community with one another, but also created to be individuals and unique, preciously created by God. I wanna take a look at some of these archetypal stories coming from the beginning of time, as early as the book of Genesis, the stories of the rebellion in the garden and the eating of the fruit, the stories of Cain and Abel and the Tower of Babel. I wanna pull in Darwin, charles Darwin and his understanding of the survival of the fittest and the competition of species, and this question that stumped him as to why, if we're all just trying to perpetuate our gene pool, why is it that sometimes we're willing to jump on a hand grenade for our comrades in arms or sacrifice our good for others? I wanna take a look at the meteoric rise of individuality in the Western world, from ancient Greek thought to the Roman Empire, to the Apostle Paul and Augustine and the Enlightenment and the founding of our country. I wanna take a look at these tensions between Marxism and capitalism, between socialism and free, laissez-faire, free economic society, between autocratic rule and democracy, western and Eastern philosophy and the rise of this nationalistic, xenophobic understanding of our world and this fascination that we have right now with fascism and populism and toxic individuality. And then I wanna take Archbishop Desmond Tutu's understanding of Ubuntu and look at all that's going on, very similar to what Martin Luther King was saying with the beloved community, what Gandhi was saying, what Pope Francis calls the Fratelli Tuti, what the South Koreans call the concept of Jiyong, what the South Americans call the concept of La Familia. I wanna take a look at this as a unifying lens to try to bridge this gap between our individuality and our call into community.

Speaker 2: 5:16

Do you see why I haven't talked about this in worship before? You have an embraced version of that. And how do we even begin to get at this fundamental existential tension that's built into our human existence? How do we understand this idea of a mago day, that each one of us is created unique but to be in community? It's hard for me to figure out until I saw the video me by Taylor Swift. You know it doesn't go quite as far as my thesis goes. It doesn't pull in all of the different threads, but she does a pretty remarkable job at unpacking, really, the central convictions of this idea of the Amago Day. Heck a lot more simplistically than I can, and so I would like to present to you a Swiftonian response to Amago Day, wrapped up in a very cute video. How fun Amago Day. Two simple sentences Baby, there's only one of me, and that's the fun of me. There's only one of you, baby. That's the fun of you.

Speaker 2: 6:54

But God put it this way, starting in Genesis, chapter one. So God created mankind, humankind in his own image, in the image of God. He created them, male and female, he created them. And then in Isaiah, chapter 64, yet you, lord, are our Father, we are the clay and you are the potter. We are all the work of your hand. Well, today is World Communion Sunday. It is that day that we come together with Christians all over the world to be reminded that not only are we tied intimately, interconnectedly, to one another, but really to all human beings across the face of this planet, all of those that God created, and not just all human beings, but really every animal and plant and mountain and stream and lake, all of God's creation that God created and loves and adores.

Speaker 2: 8:01

I often talk about the great Croatian theologian, miroslav Volf, in this place, and it's for a few reasons. One, because I got to know him quite well when we were working on a reconciliation conference together in Croatia after the Balkan War. The other is that our former youth director oh my gosh, I just drew a blank Our former youth director, angela. Yes, angela, sorry, thank you, left here to go and work with Miroslav Fulf at Yale University, but also because he really is probably one of the best thinkers who really is thinking through this whole tension in our world between individualism and community, between identity and belonging.

Speaker 2: 8:48

He agonized over the heartbreak of the Balkan War and as he kind of came through it he realized that really at the heart of everything is this issue that human beings have, between identity and belonging, that we are born into a scary, overwhelming world, and so from a very early age, we start trying to find a place where we can fit in, where we can be ourselves. What is my place in this world? Who am I in this world? What is my purpose? And so he says that from a very early age, we start looking for a group that we can fit in, with, that we can feel like we belong to, where we can be ourselves and find our identity. And he says that the problem with that, the only problem with that, is, in order to have a group where we are the insider, we need other groups to be the outsiders, the people who don't belong to us.

Speaker 2: 9:48

And so we spend our lives creating these inside and outside groups, and we'll create groups around anything around our skin color, our nations, our borders, our territories. Between our politics if we're Republicans or Democrats, we'll create them. Between the kind of work that we do, the places that we live. We'll create them between our social or economic classes. We'll even create them whether we are Bruins or Trojans. And then in the religious world, we'll create them whether you're Muslim or Christian or Jew, even within the Christian church, whether you're Presbyterian or Catholic or Baptist. This is the great dilemma of our human existence, especially when we were created by God to be in relationship, to be in community. What he says, the great gift of becoming a Christian is that we find a new identity, we find a new sense of belonging. Suddenly we don't have to create outside groups, because we know that we belong to the one who created us and loves us and adores us, and that not only that, but it attaches us to everyone else in this entire world and every other part of God's creation, because we find our place in this intricate design as one of the tiles of a grand mosaic.

Speaker 2: 11:23

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was right that we are intricately, inextricably connected in one inseparable bundle of life and in a very real sense, whatever happens to one person around the world happens to all of us. When one person is dehumanized or enslaved or brought down, our humanity, all of our humanity, is diminished and diluted and damaged. And when one person anywhere in the world is liberated or rescued or healed, we're all empowered and freed Because, whether we like it or not, we are intricately connected to one another. We see this with globalization. We see this with what's been going on in our world over the last few years the way that the pandemic tied us all together, the way that these financial crises and global insecurities ties us together, that we are all going to rise or fall together.

Speaker 2: 12:32

The apostle Paul talks about this in his first book to the Corinthians when he talks about all of us being members of one body and the way that the body works together and we can't deny any part of the body. Even the smallest parts that we don't think are very important are so important. I mean, I know we've been talking a lot recently and it's been in a lot of the literature about the importance of opposable thumbs, but do any of us really have any idea what the uvula does, that little punching bag in the back of our throat, or the frenulum, that little piece of skin up on our upper lip. Well, my brother was born without a uvula and we found out very quickly how important it is, with all of the sore throats and the throat infections and ear infections he was getting. They say that if you don't have one of these frenioms every time you smile, you'll get bugs in your teeth.

Speaker 2: 13:25

And yet here is the way the apostle Paul put it In 1 Corinthians, chapter 12, he says but in fact God has placed the parts of the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be as it is? There are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, I don't need you. And the head cannot say to the foot, I don't need you. On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be the weakest are the most indispensable. And the parts that we think are less formidable we treat with special honor, and the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it. If one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Speaker 2: 14:45

We are interconnected in ways that we are only beginning to understand, and it should have huge consequences for the way we understand ourselves and our lives and our world and the way that we act in it. When we give our lives to God, we certainly remain as citizens of whatever country we're born into, as patriotic citizens of whatever country we're born into, but we are called to a new kind of citizenship, an even greater citizenship, one to be part of the citizenship of the kingdom of God, which carries all new profound responsibilities and ways of understanding that our primary allegiance must now be to all of God's creatures, to all of humanity, to all of God's creation. We've seen this in the last number of years. Nature itself is screaming at us in a million different ways the fact that we are interconnected, and when one small thing gets hurt or damaged, it has ripple effects that affect all of us.

Speaker 2: 15:54

We're seeing it over and over again, and so, as we approach this table on World Communion Sunday, let us never forget what we talked about during Welcome Back Sunday that this world is not a beautiful place despite our differences.

Speaker 2: 16:16

It is such a beautiful place because of our differences.

Speaker 2: 16:21

It is our diversity that makes this tapestry whole and complete and honoring to the one who created it and loves us.

Speaker 2: 16:35

As we come to this table, we are reminded that our primary calling in life is to honor and respect, to serve and uplift and celebrate not just every human being on this planet, but all of God's creation every animal, every plant, every forest and stream and ocean.

Speaker 2: 16:59

That when we are out cleaning an ocean, when we save or protect one stream or one forest, when we discover a new galaxy, when we clean an ocean, when we save a species from going extinct, when we have more humane treatment towards other animals, as we start to bring down our guard and we open ourselves to a group of people that we haven't opened ourselves to before, as we go to the rescue of people around the world who need our help and we are there for those who suffer, not only are we honoring and glorifying God, not only are we finding our unique place in the beautiful tapestry which is the grand design of this creation that God has created and loves, but we are actually worshiping, because this is what worship really is it's to love and protect and serve and celebrate the things that God loves and created. Or, as Taylor Swift would put it I'm the only one of me, baby, that's the fun of me. You're the only one of you and, baby, that's the fun of you. Amen.

Speaker 1: 18:29

You've been listening to Resilient Faith. The podcast Resilient Faith is sponsored by Brentwood Presbyterian Church in West Los Angeles. You can follow our church and this podcast on Facebook at BPCTeam and Instagram at BPC underscore USA. Make sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and thanks for listening.