Holy Habits (Part 4): Community

Let us pray. Prepare our hearts, O God, to hear

your word and to obey your will. Through Jesus

Christ our Lord we pray. Amen. Our second reading

is from Mark chapter 2. It is the story of those

Mark 2 · chapter mention

crazy friends. Let us listen together for God's

word to us. When he returned to Capernaum after

some days, it was reported that Jesus was at

home. So many gathered around that there was

no longer room for them. not even in front of

the door, and he was speaking the word to them.

Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed

man, carried by four of them. And when they could

not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd,

they removed the roof above him. And after having

dug through it, they let down the mat on which

the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith,

he said to the paralytic, Child, your sins are

forgiven. Now some of the scribes were sitting

there questioning in their hearts, why does this

fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy. Who

can forgive sins but God alone? At once Jesus

perceived in his spirit that they were discussing

these questions among themselves, and he said

to them, why do you raise such questions in your

hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic,

your sins are forgiven, or to say, stand up and

take your mat and walk? But so that you may know

that the Son of Man has authority on earth to

forgive sins, he said to the paralytic, I say

to you, stand up, take your mat, and go to your

home. And he stood up and immediately took the

mat and went out before all of them, so that

they were all amazed and glorified God, saying,

We have never seen anything like this. This is

the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may

remember in 2023, The Surgeon General at the

time released a report to some fanfare in the

media. This 81 -page report was entitled, Our

Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation. In all

of those 81 pages, it detailed many of the ways

that the loneliness and isolation that we are

experiencing in our society has ripple effects

that even impact people's health. Around the

same time, both the UK and Japan appointed government

ministers for loneliness. This idea of a loneliness

epidemic is somewhat common, familiar. We've

heard it before. We continue to hear it today.

It may not entirely, however, capture what is

happening in our society. There's a current trend

on TikTok, which I don't know directly because

I've never used TikTok, but I've heard about

it secondhand, I promise. These things called

loneliness influencers, people who live alone

and have no relationship with anyone, no committed

relationship, they come home from work and they

turn on their video camera and they record what

a quiet life all by themselves is like. In a

sense, glorifying loneliness or maybe helping

others to be more comfortable with their loneliness

and certainly making a little bit of money from

it on the side. For many people, loneliness is

a real problem. But actually, when you look at

our society, many of the measures of loneliness

are holding steady or even declining. But what

we do see happening, rather, is an increasing

preference for solitude, for aloneness, which

is not quite the same thing as loneliness. The

typical American buys three movie tickets in

a year. And they were all to see the Odyssey

this summer. They buy three movie tickets a year,

but they watch 19 hours of television per week.

In 2023, so just a few years ago, 74 % of all

restaurant traffic came from off -site customers,

takeout and delivery. Only that smaller quarter

being those who are sitting around a table with

others in the restaurant. The share of U .S.

adults having dinner or drinks with friends on

any given night has declined in the past 20 years

by more than 30%. And also in the last 20 years,

in -person socializing has declined by more than

20%. We are increasingly choosing solitude. Every

now and then, my daughters prevail upon me to

take them to Starbucks. When I go to Starbucks,

which isn't often because I prefer the local

coffee shop nearby, but when I go to Starbucks,

I get black coffee because I'm not fussy and

I'm cheap and I don't want to wait in a long

line. But my daughters, well, my daughters don't

get black coffee. I'll just say that. And so

they go up to the counter and they order their

drinks and I find a comfortable place to sit.

And I sit and I watch, and as I sit, we wait

maybe 10 minutes for these couple of drinks to

be made, not because the baristas are slow. On

the contrary, they're working their tails off

behind the counter, but because car after car

is moving through that drive -thru. And as I

sit there, the baristas put drink after drink

on the counter right in front of my waiting daughters,

but they are not for them. Someone swings the

door open and walks in and grabs their drink

and walks right back out again. Another drink

on the counter, another person walks through

the door, grabs their drink, walks back out again.

Eventually, my daughters get their drink. I look

around at an almost empty cafe where no one else

seems to be sitting around, and we leave. The

baristas are working feverishly behind the counter.

to maintain all of these orders and hardly interacting

at all with those of us who are there. We're

in the midst of a sermon series called Holy Habits

right now where we are looking at spiritual disciplines

and the ways that spiritual discipline might

help strengthen us for the times that we live

in. And one of the sources I went to when I started

to plan this series was a book. written in 1978

by the Quaker theologian Richard Foster. It's

a famous text in the field of spiritual discipline,

and it's called A Celebration of Discipline.

And what I did was I looked at his table of contents

to see what are the sorts of discipline that

I should be thinking about. And on that list,

among prayer and worship and fasting and others,

on that list was solitude. Many of us are, in

fact, in need of solitude, of finding a way to

train ourselves to be still and to be quiet.

Blaise Pascal once said that the sole cause of

man's unhappiness is that he does not know how

to stay quietly in his room. And there is certainly

truth to that. But I also think that our world

has changed a lot since Richard Foster wrote

that book in 1978. And what we see unfolding

today is people gravitating en masse toward solitude

in unprecedented ways, often with the assistance

of technology. And the ripple effects of this

throughout our society are profound. While for

some of us solitude may in fact be a worthy and

much -needed pursuit, today I think the emphasis

needs to go the other way. And that we need to

see community not just as a good thing, not just

as a nice idea, but as a spiritual discipline.

Something that we pursue, that we strive for,

that we work at for the good of our souls. Because

community does not just happen. Community is

not automatic. And there are a lot of forces

out there that are working against community

today. For one thing, we have seen over the last

40 or 50 years the decline in community associations,

public organizations that people participate

in with membership and so forth, go all the way

back to the Lions and the Elks and all the way

forward. So many groups that just don't exist

anymore or are at least a shell of what they

once were. And in his famous book in 2000, Robert

Putnam wrote about this phenomenon. of our deteriorating

social connections. And I've mentioned this before,

but the book is called Bowling Alone, and it

has become somewhat famous in the world of sociology.

And he pulls that title from an anecdote that

he discovered in the data, namely that more and

more people than ever in the late 90s were bowling.

Meanwhile, bowling leagues were in steep decline.

People were choosing... Aloneness. And that was

an example of the ways that those community connections

were deteriorating. And for Putnam, the great

villain at the time, late 90s, was the television.

That strong force that pulled people into their

homes and away from those outward -facing connections.

Now today, we have much more sophisticated home

entertainment. Today, we have much more portable,

individual. entertainment, and we have much more

engrossing distractions. These trends have only

accelerated. Another thing that pulls us away

from community is that we live in a divided,

polarized society. Now, it may not seem on the

face that polarization actually undermines community.

All that means is that we are all sort of grouping

together, right? A community of the like -minded

is still community in a sense. But polarization

and division, kind of like what we experience

in our society, has a tendency to breed a level

of hostility, or at the very least, a lack of

empathy, a lack of understanding toward that

very large portion of the population out there

that is not on our team, so to speak. Also, we

have so many technological conveniences that

are isolating us. Instead of spending time walking

through an actual store, we shop online and we

have it delivered to our home. Or if we do go

into the store, we choose the automatic self

-checkout on our way out. Instead of asking a

friend to give up an hour or so of their time

to give us a ride, we call an Uber and then we

don't even have to talk to the driver. Instead

of standing in line in Starbucks with other actual

human beings, we sit in our car while it idles

and we scroll on our phone until it bings that

our coffee is ready and we walk in and grab it

and then we walk out again and have to say a

word to no one. We have gained a lot of new conveniences

in the smartphone era, but we don't often realize

the things that we are losing at the same time.

The media theorist Marshall McLuhan from the

mid -1900s is famous for the adage that the medium

is the message. But in writing about technology,

he also said this, every augmentation is an amputation.

And one thing that we seem to be losing today,

or at least in danger of losing, is community.

The story that Mark tells of the paralyzed man

may be a familiar one to you. It certainly is

memorable as far as the healing stories of Jesus

go. There aren't too many other stories where

people get lowered through roofs. Jesus is in

a crowded place. There's no way to get at him,

but these friends are determined, and so they

climb up the house. They carry this man. They

lower him down through a hole that they've dug

in the roof, and Jesus heals him. But first,

he forgives his sins, always looking for an opportunity

to make a point. And to get the Pharisees' hackles

up, Jesus offers forgiveness first. And then

to show them that if forgiveness is hard, imagine

how hard it would be to heal this man. And Jesus

does both. So Jesus, of course, uses this as

an opportunity to teach them about forgiveness

and how God's forgiveness is present in him.

But we're going to save that for another sermon

another day. For us today, this is a story about

community. The paralytic. is dependent upon his

community. He cannot encounter Jesus without

his community. He cannot find healing without

his community. The most remarkable thing about

this story is that the paralyzed man in this

story might as well be a stunt double, a dummy.

He has no action in the story. He's just lying

there. We know nothing about him except his condition.

We don't know if he wanted to see Jesus or if

he was carried there against his will. We don't

know if he believed that Jesus could heal him

or if he was skeptical about it the whole time.

We don't know if he consented. In fact, we can

probably assume he did not consent to being hauled

up to the top of this house and then lowered

down through the roof. He was probably protesting

the whole time, but we don't know. And the reason

we don't know this is because the main actors

in this story are his friends, his community.

The community brings him to Jesus. The community

overcomes protest and skepticism. The community

demonstrates faith on his behalf. Did you hear

what Jesus said? When Jesus saw their faith,

he said to the paralytic, child, your sins are

forgiven. The faith of the community is what

is effective here. The faith of the paralytic

is completely irrelevant. Yes, it's the paralytic

whose sins are forgiven, and yes, it's the paralytic

who gets healed, whose suffering is relieved,

but it's all because of the faith of his community,

which gives new meaning in my mind to a term

we often use to describe the church, community

of faith. A community of faith is a community

whose faith surrounds and supports those whose

faith might waver. It's a community whose collective

effort and compassion cover over the many weaknesses

and frailties of individuals like you and me.

It's a community that carries its friends into

the healing presence of Jesus where sins are

forgiven, where broken things are mended, where

miracles In a small, relatively isolated community

on Martha's Vineyard, about every tenth person

used to be born without the ability to hear.

One in ten. Everyone in the community, hearing

and non -hearing alike, spoke a unique sign language

that they had brought over from England when

they immigrated to Massachusetts in the late

1600s. In the mid -20th century, because of increased

travel and mobility, that genetic anomaly began

to disappear. But before it did, a historian

named Nora Grochi decided to study this community

and this unique aspect of this community. She

compared the experience of non -hearing people

there to the hearing people. And what she found

was that in that community, 80 % of non -hearing

people graduated from high school. as did 80

% of the hearing. She found that 90 % of the

non -hearing got married compared to 92 % of

the hearing. They had about equal numbers of

children, their income levels were similar, and

the variety and distribution of their occupations

also was similar. And then Grochi did a parallel

study on the mainland of Massachusetts. And at

the time, the state of Massachusetts... prided

itself in the services that it offered to students

in need like those who do not have the ability

to hear. And here's what she found. 50 % of the

non -hearing graduated from high school compared

to 75 % of the hearing. Non -hearing people married

half the time while hearing people married 90

% of the time. 40 % of the non -hearing people

had children while 80 % of the hearing people

did. Non -hearing people received about one -third

of the income of hearing people, and their range

of occupations was much more limited. Grochi

wondered, how was it that on an island with no

services, non -hearing people were as much like

the hearing people as you could possibly imagine?

Yet 30 miles away, with the most advanced services

available, non -hearing people lived much poorer

lives. The one place in the United States where

deafness was not a disability, was a place with

no services for deaf people. In that community,

all the people adapted by signing instead of

handing the non -hearing people off to the professionals.

That community was not just doing what was necessary

to help or to serve one group. They were doing

what was necessary to include everyone. There

are some things. that we simply cannot do alone.

Things that require the strength and cohesion

and support of community. And there are things

that become possible in community that we wouldn't

even begin to imagine on our own. World Communion

Sunday is a reminder of this on a global scale,

that not only are we as individuals impoverished

when we neglect to cultivate community, but that

the church of Jesus Christ, is also impoverished

when we neglect to honor, to celebrate, and to

nurture the connections that we share with other

Christians around our community, our nation,

and the world. But the current is flowing powerfully

in the other direction. It is pulling us toward

isolation, toward solitude, toward the illusion

of self -sufficiency. toward the idolatry of

our own individuality. But the opportunities

to cultivate community are all around us. They

are here in weekly worship and fellowship. They

are here at this table. They are in our neighborhoods

and in the places that we frequent. They are

even in our phones, which, believe it or not,

can still be used to call people. Sometimes we

have to lie down on the mat and allow ourselves

to be carried to Jesus. And sometimes we have

to grab a corner and help lift. Either way, we

come to Jesus together. We are healed together.

We are forgiven together and we grow together.

Let us pray. God, strengthen us as a community

of faith. a community whose faith is effective

for those who are here who need healing, who

need strength, who need forgiveness. Empower

us to cultivate community in what ways we can

so that we might be stronger, healthier, happier,

and better servants of our servant Lord, we pray

in Jesus' name. Amen.