Islands

Below is a sermon which my wife, the Rev. Kristin Sullivan, gave at St. Mark's last Sunday while I was away at a songwriting workshop.

I love the movie About a Boy--it is about a self professed bachelor whose life is turned upside-down by a needy kid.  In the beginning of the movie there is a great scene where he talks about how he lives his life:

All men are islands. And what's more, this is the time to be one. This is an island age. A hundred years ago, for example, you had to depend on other people. No one had TV or CDs or DVDs or home espresso makers. As a matter of fact they didn't have anything cool. Whereas now you can make yourself a little island paradise. With the right supplies, and more importantly the right attitude, you can become sun-drenched, tropical, a magnet for young Swedish tourists.

He is reacting to a famous meditation by the poet John Donne who wisely observed that No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

This idea that we can be island unto ourselves is certainly not new but it has become prevalent in our culture.  We think that we can be self sufficient.  That we can take care of ourselves and that we don’t need anyone else.  We isolate ourselves within our communities and we close ourselves off to one another.  How often we neglect our community life.  It is so easy to do.  We sleep in one Sunday, skip a bible Study, don’t check in with our Christian brothers and sisters and pretty soon we have gotten out of the habit.  It is that easy.  There are a lot of reasons why people stop coming to church. But for many people I think that the prevailing reason is simply getting out of the habit.  We think that we can go it alone.  

As humans we are made to be in connection and relationship to one another.  Our brains are built to connect to other people.  Amy Banks, who is a expert in neuroscience says this: “neuroscience is confirming our entire autonomic nervous system wants us to connect with other human beings....There have been studies that look at emotions in human beings such as disgust, shame, happiness, where the exact same areas of the brain light up in the listener who is reading the feelings of the person talking.  We are, literally, hardwired to connect.”

Our life together is too important to get out of the habit of gathering together.  We cannot do this life in isolation--we cannot do this life of faith without one another.  We need to be prodded to be better people, we need to be encouraged and led and challenged by one another.  

This is what the Letter to the Hebrews is saying to us today. “Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds.  Here is the Christian life.  Y'all these are our marching orders.  Provoking one another to love and good deeds.  As followers of Jesus Christ we are called to be a supportive, loving and provoking community.  We have a great and generous God who calls us to go into the world in LOVE.  Not in hatred, not in anger, not timidly or half-heartedly but with gusto.  We need to look into ourselves and into our communities and think about how we are treating one another.  Because it starts with us.  It starts with the community of the faithful.  We have to have our house in order, we need to treat each other with respect and kindness.  And first and foremost we need to gather together.  We need to show up for one another because none of us can go it alone.

Within the Christian community we find a group of people who are just like us.  We are all sinners in need of redemption.  We are all travelers on the journey.  When we gather together we support one another.  We learn to be vulnerable, to trust that our prayers will be prayed, that our pain will be shared.  In this community we ought to know that we are loved no matter what and that we can do nothing to be cast away.  

This is the great difference between the church and any number of other organizations that we may belong to.  In the church we are loved and accepted no matter what.  No matter what.  Through our struggling and our pain, through our good days and our bad, in our joy and in our sorrow. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God.  This is the glue that holds us together.   

  

This is the good news that brought us here and keeps us here.  This is the good news that we need to go out and share with the world. 

I spent Friday night and most of the day yesterday at an evangelism workshop with a group of about 20 church leaders.  Mary Parmer, who was the leader for the weekend began the day yesterday by going around the room and asking everyone to share briefly where they grew up, what their church background was and how they had come to be a part of their current church.  The stories of religious upbringing varied--everything from no church background to cradle Episcopalians and everything in between.  The stories also varied on how they had ended up at the church--but several themes emerged out of all the stories--People were personally invited to come to church, and when they got there they were welcomed.  

Each of us has a story about how we got here.  For some it has twists and turns, for some it is pretty straight forward.  But our stories are important.  They make us who we are.  And they are something that we need to share with one another and with those outside our community.  What makes your faith important to you?  Why do you keep coming back?  These are the stories that we need to be telling.  

The people of God are always a people who are gathered Together.  We cannot do this by ourselves.  We need one another.  We need to be able to be vulnerable, to trust in the community, and to love one another as Christ loved us.  Provoke one another to love and good deeds.  

Amen.