The Cure for the Loneliness Bug -- FPC sermon excerpt

Loneliness is like a disease, in that it can make you feel really awful. It’s also contagious.

Researchers are discovering that one person’s emotions have the power to affect friends, family members, and neighbors. According to The Washington Post (December 1, 2009), a ten-year study has revealed that lonely people increase the chance that someone they know will start to feel alone.

“Loneliness can be transmitted,” says the University of Chicago psychologist who led the study. “Loneliness is not just the property of an individual. It can be transmitted across people — even people you don’t have direct contact with.”

“No man is an island,” adds a professor of medicine and medical sociology. “Something so personal as a person’s emotions can have a collective existence and affect the vast fabric of humanity.”

Now you might think that this research study is interesting, but no big deal. Emotions are just emotions, right? Actually, no. Loneliness has been linked to a number of medical problems, including depression, sleep problems, and overall poor physical health.

Loneliness is more than a bad feeling — it really does have serious consequences. If we can cure the loneliness bug, we can help people to be healthier in body, mind, and spirit.

So, how do we do it?

We can begin by going back in time and gathering some ancient wisdom from the community of Christians known as the Colossians. If loneliness is truly a contagious disease — a bug — then the Colossians have to be given some credit for discovering the cure. In today’s Scripture lesson, the apostle Paul commends them for their hope of heaven, their faith in Jesus Christ, their love for all the saints, their good works, and their knowledge of God.

For the Colossians, the Christian faith is not an individualistic possession, but is something, says Paul, that “has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it” (Colossians 1:6). He looks at the Colossians, and sees a network of deep-spirited friendships in their community, connections which have truly positive consequences.

Right from the start, Paul makes a link between faith in Christ and love for one another. Even though some people seem to think that faith is a very personal and private experience, Paul seems to be saying that you cannot have faith in Christ without love for the people around you. “In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” says Paul, “for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven” (vv. 3-5).

I find it fascinating that Paul says that the Colossians have faith and love “because of the hope laid up for [them] in heaven.” Their hope of everlasting life with God is what inspires their faith and their love. When I think of heaven, I think of an eternal connection with God and Jesus, and with loved ones whose lives on earth have ended. In my belief, heaven is all about reunions and relationships and closeness and community — the exact opposite of loneliness.

So hope is the starting point, followed by faith in Jesus and love for one another. Hope, faith, and love are the first ingredients in the cure for the loneliness bug.

Fifty Years of 50 Stars -- FPC sermon excerpt

Exactly 50 years ago, on July 4, 1960, the 50-star flag of the United States was flown for the first time in Philadelphia. The 50th star was added because Hawaii had been admitted as the 50th state the year before.

We’ve now had 50 years of 50 stars.

That feels kind of neat and complete, doesn’t it? For years, there has been talk of adding Puerto Rico as a 51st state, and debate tends to swirl around political, economic, and cultural issues. But it may be that Congress is simply unwilling to add a 51st star to the flag.

By the way, do you know what the 49-star American flag said to the 50-star American flag?

Nothing. It just waved.

As human beings, we like certain numbers. And this goes way back. Since ancient times, people have attached symbolic significance to numbers. For the Israelites, the number one signified uniqueness or undivided wholeness. The book of Deuteronomy says, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD” (6:4, KJV).

Three is largely regarded as a divine number. When Abraham is visited by three mysterious men by the oaks of Mamre, he comes to realize that the LORD is visiting him (Genesis 18:1-15). Christians later affirm that God is a Trinity, one God in three persons.

According to The Oxford Companion to the Bible, the number seven signifies completeness and perfection. In ancient Israel, the great festivals lasted seven days, and every seventh year was a Sabbath year. Twelve is also seen as a number of completeness and perfection: There were 12 tribes of Israel and 12 disciples of Jesus. After Judas committed suicide, he was replaced by Matthias. Eleven apostles just didn’t seem complete.

So here we are with 50 states and 50 stars — in the minds of some, completeness and perfection. But life in America is never perfect and complete. When the Declaration of Independence was signed, 234 years ago today, its words described the beginning of a process, not the end.

It was a Declaration of Incompleteness.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The pursuit of happiness. That phrase alone shows us that our work is never finished.

On this Independence Day, 50 years after the addition of the 50th star, it is appropriate for us, as Christians in America, to look at where we’ve been and where we’re going. Fifty years ago, it was not at all clear that “all men are created equal,” because segregation existed in many parts of our country, and black men and women were treated as second-class citizens.

Here in Virginia, Senator Harry Byrd led a program of “massive resistance” to the 1954 Supreme Court ruling which ordered the desegregation of the public schools. It took an even more powerful civil rights movement to outlaw racial discrimination and move us closer to a society in which all people are accepted as equals.

But are we there yet? Not quite.

We need to add a few more stars to the flag on this Independence Day — stars that have nothing to do with the addition of new states. The first star to add is equality.

Notice how theological the Declaration of Independence is on this point: “all men are created equal.” It doesn’t say born equal — it says created equal. Creation requires a divine Creator, and as Christians we believe that “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

This anniversary is the perfect day to look at ourselves as people created in the image of God, with tremendous intellectual, spiritual, and relational gifts. Psalm 8 tells us that the LORD has made human beings “a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor” (v. 5).

That’s who we are, according to Scripture. A little lower than God, crowned with glory and honor. And that’s who our neighbors are as well: The working-class family from El Salvador next door, the gay couple in the grocery store, the ex-offender struggling to get a job, the wealthy attorney with a drinking problem. It’s time to break out of our categories and caricatures and begin to see each other as equals — as brothers and sisters, created in the image of God.

Only then can we reach out to each other with love and compassion and understanding, accepting each other as the LORD accepts each one of us.