This sermon was proclaimed in the community of St. Matthew Lutheran Church in Taylorsville, UT on May 5, 2024. It can be viewed on our YouTube and FaceBook channels. The texts for the 6th Sunday of Easter were: Acts 10: 44-48, 1 John 5: 1-6, and John 15: 9-17.
Young friends message: Do you ever feel lonely? I got a card from a friend I wanted to share! She’s two and she made me this cool picture! I love it because when I see it, I’m reminded that we’re connected even if I don’t see her every day. A long time ago, before we could text or email, the only way to tell a friend about your life or find out how your friends were doing, was to either call, see them in person or write a letter. It’s so cool that now we have so many more ways to connect! Being a friend is really important. It’s so important that Jesus talks about being a friend in this story we just read. What makes a good friend? Yes! All those things matter! Jesus adds that to be a friend to Jesus is to be a friend to everyone Jesus is a friend with…which is everyone. That’s hard! For me anyway. I have to be a friend to someone I don’t know? To someone who I don’t understand or don’t agree with? Jesus says yes, that’s what love is. Love is remembering we’re all connected even if we’re far away from each other. Love can’t ever be disconnected, not from each other, not from Jesus and not from God. It’s not allowing people to hurt you or be mean to you, that’s not love, ever. But we want to work hard to not be a person who hurts anyone else. Whew. So we practice here each week in church. We’re going to practice being friends today. I have cards in the back for you and everyone to write a note to someone they don’t know very well here at St. Matthew, and give it to them. You can also write a few to take to someone at school or work you don’t know or always agree with. OR text, email or message one person you’ve lost contact with this week. Just to let them know they are connected to love.
You may have heard that we have an epidemic in our country. It was declared an emergency about a year ago by the US surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy. It’s not COVID, or another virus, it’s something much more insidious and devastating: an epidemic of loneliness. The statistics are staggering: in 2020 the average adult spent nearly one week out of the month alone up from 5 days in 2003, for young people aged 15-24 time spent with close friends decreased 70% over the same time period, the highest rate of social isolation is found among people over the ag of 65, and yet young people under 24 are twice as likely to report feeling lonely than their older counterparts. In 2018 only one in five people felt connected to a community of any sort. We can all extrapolate how loneliness and disconnection takes a toll on mental and cognitive wellbeing (isolation is linked to dementia), what’s eye opening is how a lack of community, friends, or social interactions impact our physical health as well. Loneliness is linked to worsening cardiovascular health, diabetes, stroke, and even is a key indicator in premature death. Dr. Murthy rightly points out that our loneliness epidemic in the US “leads to societal dysfunctions in our schools, workplaces, and civic organizations, where performance, productivity, and engagement are diminished.”[1] In other words, loneliness is tearing at the fabric of our communities and our humanity.
The COVID pandemic didn’t cause this loneliness epidemic, but it surely exacerbated it. Not to mention the scorched earth winner take all politics that have dominated our social landscape of the past decade now. Factors such as our national ethos of rugged individualism, independence, autonomy and transient culture all diminish our capacity for deep connectedness. I know for myself that as I age, and move around for my vocation as clergy, it’s hard to make and maintain friendships. I have to work at it, consciously making decisions to be a friend, to stay connected. And I’m not always good at it. I don’t love the phone, and it can feel easier to slip on pjs and watch tv than call or be with a friend after work each day.
Friendships can also get messy, such as when friends have differing needs and or want me to pick a side that might be in opposition to another friend. I don’t want to pick a side when doing so means hurting a friend, or anyone. But often we equate friendship with this notion, “you’re either for us or agin’ us” and I offer that is not helpful and is a contributing factor to our increased disconnection and loneliness. Jesus addresses and dispels those myths in John’s gospel with some hard truths about our lives, our humanity, and our relationships: We’re all on the same vine and we’re only as healthy as the least healthy. No grape grows in isolation, or without the support of the vine, the earth, the sun and the rain. And the vine connects all the fruit nourishing all equally and without conditions.
Jesus calls the disciples and us to deepen our understanding of friendship, digging deeper than a transactional relationship. Jesus knows that this friendship business is serious-it’s life and death. A miracle really. I love the meme, “no one talks about the miracle of Jesus having 12 friends in his 30’s.” We chuckle because we appreciate that friends are hard won, require all of who we are, and require that we know all of who they are: the good, the bad and the ugly. We know the joy of picking up right where we left off with a friend we haven’t seen in a long time. Jesus’ entire ministry was based on the premise of bringing people into connection, out of isolation, out of loneliness. Jesus declares that he has chosen the disciples as friends, and calls them friends, not because they have a good time together or they’ll lend Jesus $20 bucks, but because they are connected to Jesus, his mission, his Jesus life, and soon his death and resurrection. Jesus loved his friends, even when they denied him, betrayed him, and didn’t know how to be Jesus’ friend in return. Jesus’ friendship has transformed them, tethered them to an umbilical cord of nourishment, health, love, wholeness, joy, and abundant life. A cord that can’t be severed by death, distance or time but a cord that allows them to keep growing, connecting and nourishing more people with God’s lifeline of love and life.
Friends, this is ministry and mission to which Jesus is appointing the disciples and us. We are part of this connective tissue, a lifeline in a world that seeks to isolate and sever us from each other and God to convince us that death, scarcity, individualism and fear is the only reality. Jesus says as his friends, we know better: we are friends who are connected by love who love: Friends who intentionally connect in solidarity with the hurting, who refuse to walk away over disagreements but stay to ensure that human dignity and life is protected and flourishes. We may not always know how to be Jesus’ friend, or anyone’s friend, but Jesus calls us to follow his example: be connected. Be connected to love justice, mercy and grace for all. Connective love those who we struggle to call friends and those who we are afraid to call friends. Connective love that mends the tears in our humanity, connective love that demands an end of killing in all regions of our world, connective love that doesn’t tolerate hateful words or actions, connective love that brings wholeness to people whose lives are ripped apart by discriminatory laws against their bodies, connective love that shifts our daily habits to live in harmony with creation, connective love to be the community, to bring the community of Jesus Christ to fruition in a lonely, afraid and isolated world.
We love, my friends, with a fierce, active and bold love that may make us unpopular, that may take our social reputations, even our livelihoods, but we love like Jesus, because Jesus first connected to us, loved us and calls us friends, forever. Thanks be to God.
[1] Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, September 2023, Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf