Earlier this year, United States Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, sounded the alarm about an American epidemic which predated COVID-19: the phenomenon of loneliness, now affecting half of all Americans. It is a serious public health problem. Lack of social connection has been found to be as dangerous as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.
Murthy has been speaking and writing on this topic for a number of years. This past May saw the release of 82-page advisory from the Office of the Surgeon General containing prescriptions for “the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community.” For those who might prefer a summary over reading the whole thing, Murthy says that “the keys to connection are simple,” suggesting four: answer a phone call from a friend, invite someone over to share a meal, listen and be present during conversation, and seek out opportunities to serve others. “These steps may seem small,” the surgeon general acknowledges, “but they are extraordinarily powerful.” In that spirit, let me offer a particular shout-out to our ushers and greeters, and to Keith Ayres who is shamelessly inviting everyone everywhere. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read our Friday newsletter.
Community matters. That’s a pretty countercultural message in these post shelter-in-place days when we’re still re-learning habits for being together, and in a season when COVID cases are again rising. But community always been a priority for Christians, whose secret gatherings in the early church put their very lives at risk. Our forebears knew that—through committing ourselves to meet together and stay together—we would learn to practice pastoral care and evangelism, remember those who were missing, practice the virtues of forgiveness and of love for the lost, and thereby become the communion of saints. The two funerals Trinity is hosting this week make the blessing of saintly community transparent. Our community right here matters. What we will do together this year matters.
Leave nobody without forgiveness, leave nobody behind. If there’s a single message I’d take from today’s Gospel lesson, it’s this. We are not a whole community if anyone is left out. If someone has departed from our fellowship—by things either we or they have done or left undone—then it’s our job to go and invite them back. As many times and in as many ways as we can. Matthew’s Gospel is very specific in the methods it recommends. First, Jesus says, have a respectfully private conversation with the one who sinned. Who might even be ourselves. How often have I had this private conversation with my soul: Julia, that was selfish or foolish. Lord please help me not to do it again!
But before I return to Matthew’s step-by-step plan for reconciliation with a sinner, I want to pause for a moment to give some nuance to that terribly abused word, whose roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition actually come from archery. The Hebrew word that we translate as sin also means “to miss the mark.” As in, to aim an arrow poorly. And don’t we all do that at times, purposefully or accidentally? As Christians, we know what the mark is: it is Jesus Christ, after whom we are to model our lives. But how very often do we—all of us—miss that beautiful mark?
The sinner—who might be ourself—may not be someone who intentionally caused harm. But if their poorly aimed arrow puts themselves or their family or community at risk, they need connection and compassion in order to heal the breach. For which curiosity may be our best medicine: we can reach out and ask them what’s going on, and why they made the choice that they did. I’ll offer a special thank you to our Interim Parish Administrator for his patience with a Dean whom he surely knows to be a bleeding heart liberal, but nevertheless kindly course corrects me when needed. So let’s don’t rush to judgment, or go to another person in the community and complain or gossip, tempting though that be if we’re feeling hurt. Jesus himself instructs his disciples to be direct. If the private conversation doesn’t work—and only if it doesn’t work—we can invite other people to help. If that fails, invite the church to bear witness to and collectively call the sinner to return.
Yes, Matthew does say that the one who refuses to listen to the church should be among us as a tax-collector, which raises the existential fear of finding ourselves isolated and alone. Of experiencing ourselves as the ones who might be treated like Gentiles or tax collectors, those most marginal of identities and occupations in Jesus’ day. And if the idea of isolating or excluding perceived sinners disturbs you, it should. But notice that this lesson is not about punishing sinners; it’s about what it takes to restore community. After all, Matthew himself had been tax collector, he knew personally that social exclusion was not God’s final word. In fact, Jesus went out of his way to call these excluded ones into relationship.
The point is even clearer if you’ve been reading along in Matthew. Today’s lesson is sandwiched between two other teachings about the integrity of the community. Matthew 18:10-14 is the Parable of the Lost Sheep—the one in one hundred who goes astray—and Jesus teaches that “it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.” Then in Matthew 18:21-21, Jesus counsels Peter to forgive seventy times seven. To whom do you need to offer forgiveness? Whose forgiveness do you need to accept?
This is not a question we can or should try to answer quickly. We may have to listen to some hard things along the way. Next week here at Trinity we’ll be blessed to welcome the Rev. Rachel Taber-Hamilton, Vice President of the Episcopal House of Deputies and a First Nations priest, to be our guest preacher. I know her to be a very loving person, but—in service to love—she has some hard things to say to about her experiences as a Native American and a person of color in our church.
The wounds in our community and indeed our country and world run deep. We can choose blame and further isolation as our response, or we can risk the step-by-step hard work of being real and reconciled community. Sometimes in the confusion of the times, it’s not actually clear who is right and who is wrong. But by choosing to be in relationship and stay in relationship—even with those who we don’t understand, don’t like, or are afraid of—we are discipling ourselves to Jesus, who chooses to be in relationship with us.
Matthew’s fourfold plan for restoring a breach in community is not wrong. It’s held up well for thousands of years. The surgeon general’s “keys to connection” are indeed simple but incredibly powerful, as he says. It helps to have a roadmap as we engage the holy work of being community, but let’s never take our eyes off the prize. “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” The commandments, Paul reminded us—all commandments—are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”
Community may be hard work—actually, I can say confidently that it will be hard work—but it’s is not a hair shirt. We might think of it as a preview of the kingdom we will all inhabit in the fullness of time, a kingdom which the poet Rumi was certainly envisioning when he wrote in the 13th century—
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.”
