Scripture: Acts 8:14–39
College was hard, but Lena had no idea that the classes would be the easy part. Making friends. Roommate drama. Sorority rush. Classes with 700 people. Never before had Lena been so surrounded by so many people, and felt so…alone. One day at lunch, she found herself at the epitome of social status: the cafeteria. She could usually find someone to sit with that she knew, but today she was coming up empty. She nervously went into the longest cafeteria line, hoping that the extra time would give her a chance to find someone. But no luck. She was forced to find an open spot at an open table, but with every person who passed by, giving her a sideways glance, wondering what was wrong with her, she felt lonelier and lonelier. It became a symbol for her, of her isolation and social anxiety and loneliness. She hurriedly finished her meal and ran out the door in near tears.
It was five am, and Kenneth was wide awake. Just like every morning since his wife died thirteen months earlier. The first days were hard, but he expected them to be; he anticipated that grief for the last year of her cancer. Plenty of tears. Plenty of family members reaching out to check on him. But then the raw grief turned into something…different. A feeling of dryness, like he was walking through a desert where every day was the same. It didn’t hurt like it did at first, but it didn’t feel like anything. Even church felt different; everyone there seemed to have someone. But not him. That dry loneliness left him wondering if it wouldn’t have been better off if he had been the one who died. He felt totally unprepared and unable to make sense of this vast Desert of Alone.
So many people. That was the first thing that Daphne felt when she looked around the city. She had never been out of her own small town, at least as far as she could remember, for her whole 9 years of living on this earth. Now it felt like there were more people standing within a stone’s throw then there were in her whole town! She tried to stay close by her parents, but everything was new to her. Rich, well-dressed people, next to poor families who looked like they were wearing every bit of clothing they owned…all mashed and smashed together all in the same place, standing on top of each other. And before she knew it, they were gone. Her parents. Her little brother. Her aunts and uncles who had traveled with them. Daphne was completely and painfully alone. She didn’t even speak the same language as any of the people who were running around her, almost stepping on her as they hurried from one place to another. She became absolutely terrified that she would never again see a familiar face.
In every time and place, the feeling of loneliness is universal. And horrible. The surgeon general earlier this month made a statement about the effects of loneliness on our bodies. He referred to an analysis of several different studies about the physical effect of living life socially disconnected. This meta-analysis compared the measurable impact of loneliness to other unhealthy behaviors. The authors of the analysis suggested that a person who was chronically lonely:
- was 50% more likely to die prematurely than a person who had strong social relationships.
- has an increased risk for dementia, heart disease, stroke, type-2 diabetes, and cancer.
- comparatively, the negative effect of loneliness is the same as a person who drinks six drinks of alcohol a day, or smokes 15 cigarettes.
- loneliness is more dangerous to our bodies than physical inactivity or obesity.
Loneliness not only hurts us emotionally. It is literally killing us.
This is not unlike the argument that Paul has been making through the first eight chapters of Romans. His whole argument thus far has been based on this baseline of existential alienation from God and universal separation from the ways of God. In Chapter One, he exposes the values of Empire, the “boasting” of this adversarial and arrogant way of living. In Chapter Three, he reminds us that ALL fall short of God’s glory and reprimands those who think they have God in their own pocket. Chapter 6 says that not only is sin something that we dabble in, from time to time, but we are enslaved to sin and so often live blinded to grace.
And here in Chapter 8, he reveals that this enslavement impacts our physical nature, and even the physicality of all of Creation. He uses this language of “futility,” and “enslavement to decay,” and introduces this concept of the “groaning of all creation.” Scholars think he is explicitly riffing on the language of Genesis 2 and 3. In Genesis 2, humanity was charged with caring for the earth, and in Genesis 3, we rejected that call and instead chose disobedience. And Paul means we: ALL of us are complicit in the brokenness of ALL of Creation. The most obvious connection here is climate change, but it began way before the Industrial Revolution. That’s just when we got really good at it. It has always been in the heart of humanity to choose the ways of greed and destruction that has caused the whole of creation to groan out in decay and need.
We are alienated from the ways of God, which in turn causes the destruction of our physical bodies and the whole of Creation, which in turn causes further alienation and isolation from God. It’s a vicious cycle in which Creation and humanity are groaning together, in this discordant, desperate chorus of decay.
Thanks, Paul! You really know how to cheer up a room, don’t you?!?
But it is precisely the depth of the despair that allows Paul to make his next move. It starts in verse 24: “But in hope we are saved.” Verse 24 demonstrates a significant shift in the chapter, and in the book. We have followed a dark tunnel from sin and death and alienation and loneliness, all the way into the groaning of all of creation. But here Paul shows us the light at the end of the tunnel. Look again at Paul’s conceptual language, to help us see the light:
Hope. “In hope we are saved.” Paul uses the metaphor of a woman who is groaning in childbirth, but who knows that at the end of this pain is the joy of new life. Linked to this idea of hope is his word patience, but here he doesn’t mean longsuffering or the ability to sit on our hands when we want to do something else. Scholar Sarah Heaner Lancaster writes about active patience. It is not about quiet inaction, but about active endurance. We know that in the midst of our own despair and loneliness, there is another story to be told.
Which brings us to our second word: predestination. Can I just say I kind of hate this word? Enough that when I read this section of Romans at a funeral, I skip the predestination part? Because we translate that word through the theological debates of the Reformation and we think Paul is talking about this idea that God pre-determines whether or not someone will be saved before they are even born. But that is not what Paul is talking about, at all. Again, it is Lancaster who says that what Paul is up to is reminding us that it is God’s prevenient action—not ours—that makes the difference. It isn’t about the things that we do to impress God, but about the work of the Spirit. He continues this metaphor of groaning, but now it is the Spirit who groans on our behalf. Who takes that discordant chorus of groaning and tunes it into a perfect pitch. Like that strong voice in the soprano section, that everyone is able to tune to. The Spirit groans in a way that tunes our hearts to God’s action…God’s grace…God’s love.
And there it is. The most important word in the whole section: love. The never-ending, never-separate love of God in Christ Jesus. I never shy away from reading this section at funerals, because it is the promise that so many folks need to hear at that time in their lives. Alone. Afraid. Grieving. Hurting. Lonely. What do they need to hear?
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Hope…in God’s prevenient…love.
In her autobiography, Dorothy Day describes a broken line of her life’s pursuit of connection. Attempts at friendship in adolescence. Deep homesickness in college. Isolation and despair throughout the flu pandemic of 1918. Various romantic entanglements. Her own complicated relationship with her daughter. She calls this journey, and the book, The Long Loneliness. And my guess is that that hits home for a lot of us: who here might identify with Day and her experience of deep and desperate long loneliness?
But perhaps we almost might today identity with her answer to that loneliness. Just like Paul, she found that the love of God and the Church were her antidote. She read ancient Christian authors who proclaimed that God’s love was greater than isolation or loneliness. She joined in Christian community with those who worked for social action and justice and radical peace. She was transformed by a solidarity with others who desperately felt alone, namely abused workers and victims of unfair labor practices. At the heart of it all, she found that the key to it all was love: “We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other….We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”
It’s all about love. Nothing can separate us from Christ’s love. Nothing on this earth or beyond. If and when we figure this out, when we identify ourselves—and everyone we meet—as the beloved community of God, that’s the antidote. It doesn’t mean that we won’t have feelings of loneliness or despair. But those feelings are never the end of the story. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel. All of us, from time to time, will feel lonely. Some of us will need to seek professional help to deal with depression. But none of us will never be alone. Yes, our loneliness is long. But it is nothing compared to the length and breadth and height and depth of God’s long love.
Daphne knew that look from a million miles away. It was the same look of terror that 9-year old Daphne had on her own face, all those years ago. She flashed back to the terror of that moment, and what happened next. Little 9-year old Daphne had heard a sound like back home. The sound of the wind blowing through the trees back on the island where she had lived her whole life. Like one of the storms that blew in out of the sea. But there was no sea here. And no wind. Only the sound of it, centered on a house near the middle of town. And as soon as it got so loud, she had to hold her ears, it stopped. Everyone looked around at each other. And after a moment of strange silence, the doors to that house crashed open, and crowds of women and men ran out into the streets. Every one of them looked like the happiest people that Daphne had ever seen. And every one of them spoke a completely different language. Before she knew what was happening, a woman bent down to one knee right in front of Daphne. She started to run the other way, until she heard the woman speak. In her language! It was the first time that she heard anyone but her family speak her language since she left her island. How did she know! But now, this kind-faced woman kneeling in front of her told her it was all going to be OK. She told her that a man named Jesus had sent her to tell her that everything was going to be OK.
All those years ago in Jerusalem seemed like yesterday. Now Daphne was a young woman, and one of a handful of followers of that same Jesus, gathered from across the city of Rome. She and her fellow Jesus-followers had just finished a worship service in which the words of the letter from a man named Paul had been read. The whole thing was amazing, but she couldn’t get those words out of her head: “nothing can separate you from the love of God” So many times before, she stood on that courtyard on the second floor where they met for worship, and saw that look of loneliness in the crowds below her. Slaves brought in in chains. Poor and desperate immigrants carrying all of their possessions with them. Even those who had lived there their whole lives in the city, but still felt utterly and hopelessly alone. Regularly she and her fellow Jesus-followers spent their days talking to those who they had met, meeting their immediate needs, inviting them into community, and sharing the love of Jesus. This day, Daphne couldn’t get down the stairs quickly enough as remembered that day so long ago. She reached the family in a flash, and she knelt down in front of a young girl who looked terrified by everything she saw. Daphne blinked away tears when she held her by the hand and whispered in her ear: “It’s going to be OK. A man named Jesus sent me to tell you that everything is going to be OK.”
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