Proper 12

Preparation

Please begin by reading Romans 8:31-39 in your Bible. If you do not have one at hand, we have provided the text for you at the end of this reflection.

Reflection--Loneliness and True Friendship

I saw a Star Trek episode years ago that still haunts me because of its insight into the human condition. I don’t recall all the particulars anymore, but the story called for Mr. Spock, the “Vulcan,” to perform his first “mind meld” with a human being. When Spock’s mind had become one with his human subject and he had his first direct experience of what it meant to be human, he was overwhelmed by how utterly separate and alone human beings are. He perceived that no matter how hard we try to escape it, we are ultimately separate beings with a deep hunger to make connections that we can never fully achieve.

At some level of our being, no matter how we may attempt to bury it, there is that void in our existence. Sometimes it is no more than a dull ache out at the far edge of our consciousness. Sometimes it is at the forefront, even in a room full of people. I can recall a time when I  found myself feeling completely alone in a room with 1,500 people whom I cared about; my brothers and sisters in the family of God. I felt that loneliness even though I knew that some of those people were people who knew me personally and cared deeply about me, as I do about them.

This ache becomes most acute when something happens in our lives that lets us know that ultimately we each walk our journey alone. Just about all of us have experienced this awareness at times of disintegrating relationships, or when a loved one dies, or when we move to a new and unfamiliar place. It is a constant companion of many older people as their physical abilities fade and their loved ones and peers drop away one by one.

Sometimes this feeling of loneliness can be destructive of the thing we want the most. We fear being alone and cling too tightly to the relationships that we have; turning love into a smothering need that just drives our loved one away.

But there is an answer to this human dilemma that Mr. Spock missed. Charles Stanley writes, in The Source of My Strength, that “when loneliness engulfs us, the first thing we must do is to turn our focus away from what we don’t have to what we do have. And what do we have? God.”

This is not to say that we need to abandon our quest for deep and meaningful human relationships. Far from it. But to find wholeness the focus of our need must shift from those who cannot supply it to the One who can. It is the One who promises to become a part of us as we become a part of him — Jesus, the Christ, who longs to become as joined with us as a vine is to its branches (John 15:1-9). This is the One from whom 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 can separate us. All we need to is to tear down our walls and let Jesus in. The void of loneliness can never be permanently filled with other people or with television or busyness or chemicals or any of the other things we use to dull our awareness of it. It can only be permanently filled up with the comforter and guide that Jesus sends; the Holy Spirit.

That connection enables us to replace clinging too tightly and placing unrealistic expectations on others with healthy human relationships built on our recognition of each other’s human weakness and mutual dependency on God. These positive relationships are ones where each party knows the true source of strength is not the other person, but the relationship that each has with God. They are relationships in which real respect, empathy and, when needed, forgiveness are possible because we are not looking to the other person for the perfection and fulfillment that only God can provide. We can see the other person as a gift of God to be loved and cherished in the midst of our mutual struggles with life, with all of our gifts and all our flaws. We can have true friends when we know that they are not the source of our salvation, but are another human being for whom Christ died and with whom we can share life’s journey for a season.

revclay

_______________________________

Romans 8:31-39

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,

"For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered."

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 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. [NRSV]