Sunday, January 21 - Loneliness

This sermon was preached for Annual Meeting Sunday, January 21, 2024 at St. Mark's Church. The texts for this sermon were: Jonah 3:1-5, 10, Mark 1:14-20, and Psalm 62:6-14.

This sermon has two parts; well, three: what I'll say right now, what you will do with the sermon next, and what we will both share at Annual Meeting after church - if you're able to stay. 

So that's why I'll pray this way this morning: May the words of our mouths and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen 

Jesus beckons to Simon, Andrew, James, and John with these words: the kingdom has come near. Their response to his words is to come near. They are drawn to him. And he tells them that their new life will be defined by drawing others in: “I will make you fishers of people.” The kingdom of God is all about coming near. Coming near to God and coming near to God’s people.

Jonah’s story, on the other hand, is all about going away: running away, throwing himself away, holding others away. First, Jonah sets out to flee, “away,” the text says, “from the presence of the Lord.” Then when his gateway boat encounters a storm, Jonah encourages the others to throw him away - overboard. Jonah believes he is the source of their terrible predicament.

Once overboard and swallowed up by the great fish, Jonah faces three days of ultimate isolation in its belly. Alone, he reaches for God. But Jonah’s isolation follows him back on land and into Nineveh. In the city, Jonah once again holds himself apart from the people he encounters there - but this time rather than feeling worse than the people around him, Jonah feels superior to them. He separates himself so thoroughly from the Ninevites that he is enraged when God decides to spare them. He’s so indignant that God is, as he puts it, “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,” Jonah goes out away from the city to stew by himself and wait for God to destroy everyone else. 

All this is why I consider Jonah to be the loneliest person in all of Biblical literature. Yes, he spends three days by himself in a fish. But it’s his inability to connect with other people - either because he sees himself as undeserving of their compassion or because he sees them as undeserving of God’s - that’s really the root of his loneliness. The Good News of Jonah’s story is God doesn’t give up on Nineveh and that God doesn’t give up on Jonah either, even when he’s throwing his little tantrums. God keeps calling Jonah back to connection with others, teaching him to have concern and mercy for the ones he despises. Come near, Jonah, come near.

In May 2023 last year, the Surgeon General of the United States released an alarming report on the epidemic of loneliness and social isolation in our country. Americans are lonelier than ever before. One in two adults reports experiencing loneliness, with the highest rates among young adults, age 15-24. Notably, in 2018, only 16% of Americans reported they felt attached to their local community. Membership and participation in the whole range of community organizations is declining significantly - not just faith communities like churches. 

Why was this the concern of the nation’s top doctor? Over and over, the report whips out statistic after statistic about the profoundly negative effect loneliness and social isolation has on health and even survival. Loneliness and social isolation increase the risk for premature death by 26% and 29% respectively. Poor or insufficient social connection is associated with increased risk of all sorts of diseases, including heart disease and stroke. And psychologically, the risks of anxiety, depression, and self-harm that are magnified by loneliness. Chronic isolation also increases the risk of older adults developing dementia by a whopping 50%. 

But enough statistics. The point is that science keeps discovering that we are social animals. That, as the report puts it, “social connection is as essential to our long-term survival as food and water.” The wisdom of our faith tradition adds that we are spiritual animals, too, and that spiritual loneliness and social loneliness are interconnected. Isolation does not just threaten our lives, it threatens the well-being of our souls. We reach for so many self-destructive things to distract from the ache of loneliness before we reach for others or for God. Ask any of the folks that fill our Great Hall for A.A. meetings every day of the week how hard those habits are to unlearn - and how vital genuine community is to breaking them. Loneliness kills. Connection heals.

I do find it somewhat embarrassing to admit that I get lonely sometimes. Maybe it's because I think if I was a stronger person or had stronger faith I could just be alone no problem, or maybe I worry that makes me seem ungrateful for my marriage or family or friends. But you can be lonely in a good marriage, a good family, with good friends, you can even be lonely in a crowd. So maybe it’s simply because I’ve been taught that it’s shameful to need others. But why, when it is such an essential part of being human? We get hungry. We get thirsty. We get lonely, too. 

Living as Christians means learning to reach for the ancient tools, skills, and practices of our faith to heal loneliness whenever it arises. Tools like solitary centering prayer or the sharing of a Eucharistic meal. Skills like self examination and seeking pastoral care. Practices like showing up week after week to the same people and same place even when you're busy or don't feel like it. These are the forgotten or never-learned gifts of our faith that we have to offer a hurting and isolated society. In the end, of course, our faith is all about love, and learning how to love well. Practicing love is all about coming near, and staying near, through it all.  

So when the Surgeon General declares that this epidemic of loneliness is not an individual challenge but a communal problem that will take all of us to solve, I believe we should hear the rallying cry of our faith behind those words. Feed my people, God tells us. Clothe my people. Heal my people. But also, draw my people in. Jesus says to the fishermen, I will make you fishers of men. 

When I reflected on this past year at St. Mark’s for my annual report, the moments that leapt out at me all that had one thing in common: they were the moments when I got to be a part of reminding people that they were not alone - that God was with them and that we all were with them, too. The times I heard people tell each other, it is just so good to know I’m not alone. When the choir sang “We are not alone” at Marge Shaw’s funeral last July and it became the anthem that played in my mind under every one of my pastoral conversations and prayers: may they know your presence, God, may they feel our prayers lifting them up. So is it any wonder that when I prayed about a theme to inspire St. Mark’s in 2024, I kept coming back to this vision: I dream of a church where no one feels lonely, where no one is isolated. I dream of a church that reaches out to heal loneliness in the world around us. Could we be that church? Are we called to be that church?

In order to answer that gigantic question, let’s start with a smaller one: When in the past year has church made you feel less alone? Take a moment now to write it down, somewhere on your bulletin. When we come back together for annual meeting in a few moments, I’m going to share my answer, and invite you to share yours with each other. So take some time now: When was a moment when your faith or your church made you feel less alone?

(Pause).

If it hasn’t come to you yet, that’s okay, you can keep thinking about it, all the way through the rest of our service. I hope it’s something we will keep thinking about all this next year. How we can recognize and heal loneliness in each other, in our social circles, and those on the outside of any community. How we can be part of an urgent and robust response to the great epidemic of social isolation in our country. How we can participate in the kingdom of God coming near. 

Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The kingdom of God has come near.” The kingdom of God is coming near. The kingdom of God is all about coming near. 

Amen. 

For my report this morning, I want to highlight a few of the ways we are already addressing loneliness and bringing greater connection. In 2023, we launched two new affinity groups for folks in their 20s and 30s and for grandparents to connect over shared experience and big questions about faith and life. We accompanied people through huge life transitions: widowhood, retirement, new parenthood, seeking asylum in a new country, the ordination process, and learning to be Episcopalian. We finally got our Lay Eucharist Visitation team off the ground, added two more assisted living facilities to our Eucharistic outreach, and started a prayer team that holds all of us in prayer each week.

But there were smaller moments, too, that stuck in my heart and told me I was not alone. Whenever our wardens held me in prayer and reminded me I’m not supposed to shoulder the weight of any of this alone. The time our vestry opened up to each other about our griefs about how St. Mark’s has changed, and listened deeply to my answers, too. When you all sang to my daughter at her baptism.

Turn to the person next to you and tell them about the moment when church or your faith reminded you that you were not alone.

(Pause).

Everything we are about to do today is about connection and reconnection.

In a moment, we’re going to bless folks who’ve stepped up to become members of St. Mark’s, making formal the connections that have been blossoming all this past year. Celebrating them is celebrating ways we grown and changed because of their presence with us.

I’ve also brought out this: anyone recognize it? It’s our parish register. According to the canons of the church, every member of the parish is supposed to be recorded in it. In some Episcopal parishes, folks step up to sign it at annual meeting as part of being counted toward the quorum and getting ready to vote. After they’re blessed, I’ll invite our new members to add their names, but you should take a moment after the meeting look through to find your name, too. Chances are if you weren’t baptized here or if joined here after 2003, you’re not actually in it. Why add yourself? It’s a way of claiming our place in the history of the parish, but I also think updating it, and our electronic parish rolls, is a way of embracing who we are as a church in this moment.

Similarly our new parish directory now actually reflects the active and engaged people of St. Mark’s of 2024. It’s also one of our best tools for connection. I hope we reach for it in times of stress and hardship, whether to ask for or give support. I encourage you to take your copy home.

My hope is that everything we do in this next year will be about connection and reconnection, too.

This year, I’d love for each of our established ministries to ask, how does this ministry address loneliness and bring about connection? For all of us to consider, how can we be honest and vulnerable with each other when we feel lonely or when we need connection? What new ministries can empower us to do more about the loneliness around us? The loneliness of grief, of being brand-new to the US, the loneliness of living in an identity that’s discriminated against and dehumanized, the loneliness of struggling to survive.

Thank you for the ways you’ve come near to each other and to God this past year, and for the ways you will in 2024, too.

If you remember one thing from today, I hope it’s that you are not alone. In so many ways, our faith means trusting you are never alone. May that truth come to you when you need it most. Amen.