Ubuntu

One of the most storied franchises in all of the NBA is the Boston Celtics.  In the early to mid 2000’s they were a terrible team filled with inconsistency.  They had a couple of good players and in one year they made the play-offs with only two really exceptional players and a bunch of scrubs.  In the summer of 2007 they added two players.  The first was Ray Allen who is the all-time leader in 3 point field goals.  They also added, my favorite athlete at that time, Kevin Garnett.  They were nicknamed the big three, which was the first time that it had happened.  It’s common now for NBA teams to try and have 3 exceptional players.  The 2007-2008 Boston Celtics were the first to try it.

After the trades were made the sports media went crazy.  It was all they could talk about.  How great will this team be?  Will these three all-stars be able to play together?  Will they end up crumbling over there egos?

When the team first got together, their coach, Doc Rivers gave these men a beaded bracelet with a South African word emblazaned on it, “ubuntu.”  Ubuntu is a word that is in many African languages in different forms.  It’s a word that represents ideas.  Kind of like love, grace, peace, etc.  In a book in 1999, Desmond Tutu defined it this way, “I am who I am because of who we all are.”

Coach Doc Rivers knew that this idea needed to be the “rule” for his team if they were to be able to have success and ultimately to reach their goal of an NBA championship.  So Rivers instituded the rule to be said when they break every single huddle that entire season.  For about 9 months these men broke every huddle saying together, “ubuntu.”

The celtics went on to complete the largest single season turnaround in NBA history and, in their first season together, they won the NBA championship, thanks in no small part to “ubuntu.”

The rule is what we focus on in order to reach the goal.

The Celtics goal was to win the NBA championship.  In order to reach their goal or intended outcome, they needed to live the rule.  Let me try and apply this principle in some other areas.

What is the intended outcome of my family or your family?  What is the desired future?  What are the goals of your family?  For my family, one of our goals or desired outcomes, is that our children will be spiritually and emotionally healthy people who have the tools, skills, and abilities to live life to it’s fullest, by the time they leave our home and enter into their won independance.  Now that doesn’t just happen.  I can’t just hope for it to happen.  I can’t sit idly by and wish my children well.  I play a vital part in accomplishing this goal.  So I will have to focus on the rule in order to accomplish the goal.  The goal is emotionally healthy young adults who embrace life, so the rule for me to focus on is sacrificial love.  I will sacrificially love my children so that they will have the best chance possible to find meaning, purpose, happiness, and peace in this life.

What is the intended outcome of your marriage?  If you are young and dating, you might want to have an understanding of this.  Everyone else, have you thought about this recently?  What is the goal of your marriage?  What are the outcomes that you wish to happen as a result of you being married?  One of the goals of my marriage is that the two of us will experience the fullness of life together.  That doesn’t just happen.  We didn’t just happen to adopt Silas.  These things don’t just happen.  The goal is to share a full life together, and the rule is that I will love and protect my wife.  She wants to accomplish something?  Well that means that I want it for her.  Her dreams become mine and my dreams have become hers.  The rule is to love and protect my wife.

The rule is what we focus on in order to reach the goal.  That’s my contention.  It’s that daily grind of practicing with your team in order win the games.  It’s focusing on the task at hand so as to accomplish the larger goal and see then outcomes that you want.  

Let’s apply this to the church.  The church as in “us now” and also “the whole group of Christian people worldwide.”  Let’s lump ourselves into it and also think about those around the globe, those that have gone ahead of us.  Those who claim the name “Jesus” and see Him as their Lord and Savior.  How does this work?  The church is far more than a sports team.  It’s not a family, at least not a nuclear family.  The church is a covenantal relationship, but it’s certainly not only a marriage.  This is precisely what Paul is writing to his young mentee Timothy in the letter of 1st Timothy.  Paul has an end, or a desired outcome, in mind and now he discusses with his young friend how it is that we, as a community of Christians, are supposed to get to that end succesfully.

There perhaps no more famous illustration of a mentor and a mentee than Paul and Timothy.  In fact my parents named my sister and I after these guys.  My older sister is Paula and I’m Timothy.  It’s hard for me to not relate to this guy.  Paul may have baptised Timothy.  Paul may have been the man that taught Timothy what he knew about faith, God, and following Jesus.  So when we read this letter, let’s not read it coldly.  The words in this letter are from an older man who is writing with great love and care for this younger man who is leading a church.  We can learn a lot about the function and form of a church from this letter.  Why are we here?  Why are we together?  What goal are we working towards?  Why do we have Pastors, elders, deacons?

This also has a lot to do with us as Christians reaching our goal.  What is the goal of a Christian?  What are you and I, we, supposed to be becoming?  Paul’s letter to Timothy has much to tell us in our world today.  Paul writes Timothy to define the “rule” for the church and the rule for the christian.

Let’s open up the scripture and read starting in verse 3.  As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God’s work—which is by faith.

There is a controversy brewing among the believers in Ephesus.  Some people in the church are having a power-play.  There are people who are teaching new ideas that are incorrect.  Paul tells Timothy to make sure that the believers are working together, and also to keep the doctrine safe.  They are trying to take everyone in the churches focus from evangelism, the work they should be doing, to worry about insignificant and petty things.  For them it was myths and genealogies.  For us it may be anything that stands in the way of sharing the message of the gospel.

Do we spend more time sharing Christ with people outside of the church, are do we spend more time arguing with people within the church?

Paul has given him a command - stay, keep the truth clear, and teach faith.  Paul continues,   The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.  Some have wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk.  They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.

Just like Doc Rivers made sure that the Celtics focused on “ubuntu” in order to win the championship, Paul tells Timothy that the goal in church, and among believers, was and always will be - love.  In order to reach that goal, they must focus on the “rule” or the “command.”

When I read command I automatically think of the ten commandments.  I think that is the same thing that was happening to the believers in Ephesus.  The people that Timothy was working where looking at the ten commandments in order to reach their intended goal.  The ten commandments, and all that comes with them, are commonly referred to as...the law.  Paul continues...

We know that the law is good if one uses it properly.  We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.

Did you catch that?  Paul says that the Old Testament law is made for lawbreakers, not for the righteous.  That seems to make sense.  I can’t name too many civil laws, because I don’t intend on breaking them.  Most of us barely know the laws involved in driving because we try and do our best to drive safely and make sure that the other drivers around us are doing well too.  Simply put - we drive as to arrive safely and we wish that others will arrive at their destinations safely.  We don’t really worry about breaking laws, we worry about our safety and others safety.  That is contained in the idea of “ubuntu.”

That is also contained in the idea of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  I want to arrive to my destination safely, and I want you to arrive to our destination safely as well.  Paul says to Timothy, teach the people not to concentrate on the law, instead concentrate on the gospel.  If you read it slowly, you will pick up that Paul is referring to many of the 10 commandments here.  killing parents is the extreme of not honoring parents, perverts is the extreme of adultery, slave traders is the extreme stealing, liars and perjurers are the extreme of bearing false witness.

Paul states that we need to focus on the sound doctrine that comes from the glorious gospel of the blessed God.

Tim Keller sums up the law and the gospel in this way, “You’re more sinful than you ever dared believe; you’re more loved that you ever dared hope.”

The gospel is far more Ubuntu than it is the 10 Commandments or the religious law.  How?

Ubuntu - we all need eachother, “I am who I am because of who we are.”  Timothy needed Paul in his life.  He needed encouragement from an older, wiser guy who had been through what he is going through.  He needed to be lead.

Paul needed Ananias.  Ananias was the man whom first believed that Paul was a changed man.

Ananias probably didn’t become a Believer in Jesus all by himself.  The law will not get someone to follow Jesus.  The gospel will.  You are a believer in Jesus because someone shared it with you.  I hope it doesn’t stop with you, I hope you continue to share it.

My children need me.  Your children need you.

My wife needs me.  Your wife needs you.

In John 13:34, Jesus states, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”  Here is the new rule.

The rule is what we focus on in order to reach the goal.  Jesus has given us the new rule that we are to live by.  It’s to love on another as He has loved us.  If we do that, we will be known as His disciples.

What rule do you live life by?

In 2008, the Boston Celtics exemplified teamwork and personal sacrifice.  The three men were used to be #1 on the respective teams.  They came together, put the needs of the others in front of their own, and then went on to complete the greatest turn around in NBA history.  They could have focused on their own stats, their own careers, and themselves.  But they didn’t and they were rewarded with the NBA Championship!

Truly great players understand that your team will not win if you focus on yourself.

Truly great parents understand that your family will fall apart if you focus on yourself.

Truly great spouses understand that your marriage will fail if you focus on yourself.

Truly great churches, the kind that are growing, people are coming to faith in Christ Jesus, they are serving and loving, those churches are made up of believers who don’t focus on themselves.

I quoted Desmond Tutu when I was defining the word Ubundu.  Let me tell you just a little bit about his life.  Tutu was born in 1931 in South Africa under the rule of aparthied.  He is black man that received his education to be a teacher.  After teaching for a few years he realized that the government cared far more about the education of whites than it did for blacks.  He then got his degree in theology.  He lived under apartheid which only allowed whites the right to vote, and saw some of the worst injustices in humanity.  He continued to work, nonviolently, to disband aparthied.  In 1990 Nelson Mandela was released from prison and apartheid law had been overturned.  Now South Africa had to figure out how to move on from that point forward.  They could not forget the past.  They had to figure out how to live together and enter the future.  So in 1994, Nelson Mandela appointed Desmond Tutu to chair the newly formed Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  How does a country move on after a huge mess like this?  Why would you want to be the person responsible for finding healing?  What on earth would possess a human being to see all this ugliness and work for a better future?  Desmond Tutu was a believer in Jesus Christ.  Therefore, his commission saught to bring all of the evil that was done in South Africa out to light, not so the evil doers would be brought to justice, but so that those who had been wronged were able to forgive the evil doers.  That is strength.  From that man, we read his words on Ubuntu.

“A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, based from a proper selfassurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.”

His background helps me understand the words more.

So Jesus’ background helps me to understand His words more too.  Paul says that the new rule for Christians and for the Church is to be the gospel.  The gospel is the good news that Jesus has died for our sins.

John 15:13 states, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

Romans 5:8 states, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

That is our rule.

If we are to reach our intended outcome.  If we are to become all we wish to become.  If we are to see our families flourish.  If we are to see our kids live healthy, well-adjusted lives.  If we are to see our marriages become mutually edifying relationships filled with warm hugs, encouraging words, and confidence.  If we are to become a people that cares for eachother.  If we are to find life and find it to the full.  We must live this rule.

Have you not accepted Jesus forgiveness?  Have you not accept the God’s gift of Jesus dying on the cross to cover over your sins so that you may life free and clean and inherit eternal life.  Please, please accept it.

This is the love that we are to live - God demonstrates his own love for is in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Now that’s the gospel message AND it’s our rule.  If we, as Believers in Jesus, are to reach our goal of loving others, we must live by the rule of the gospel message - Christ died for us while we were still sinners.