Rev. Jon Smoot
“Separation Anxiety”
A Sermon by Rev Jon Smoot
February 11, 2007
I recently read about a psychotherapist who led a seminar for pastors on pastoral care. She started one of her presentations by saying that there are four “S” words in pastoral ministry – four subjects that we all find very, very difficult communicating about - Difficult at the emotional level but also extremely difficult to converse about with a church member. The first “S” word is sex. You wouldn’t know it from tabloids and talk shows that this is so hard to talk about. But what she was likely getting at is the profound difficulty we have in talking about such a profoundly private matter in a public or churchly setting – witness the mainline congregations tearing themselves apart over ordinations standards. The second “S” word is suicide. We all felt the tragic loss and shock for the apparent double suicide of the “Two Rachels” – two beautiful young women who apparently felt their burdens too large to go on living. Imagine the multiple layers of grief and anger and loss for the family survivors of those who have taken their lives. Imagine how hard to communicate to the survivors God’s love and care and God’s broken heart as well. Imagine General Motors trivializing suicide with its Super Bowl ads for a failed and despondent assembly-line robot fantasizing a leap from a bridge to its watery death. The third “S” word is stigma. These are people in a family system, past or present, who have been tagged as the ones who bring constant pain to a family – they have been branded, set outside the system, because of what they do or don’t do, and what they represent.
But the worst “S” word, she said, is separation. Separation. How hard it is to talk about at the feeling level, or at any level, the painful losses and leavings of our living. How does one articulate what is best expressed in sighs and groans and the feelings of yawning emptiness? Our lives are marked and pock-marked by leavings and losses: children off to college; a marriage that has blown up; a lover who has found someone new; being alone and not wanting to be alone; an angry cut-off of a family member that gnaws at our souls. Then there is the separation from a parent or loved one who slips away into the tragic twilight of Alzheimer’s, or complications from AIDS, or any other disease that robs dignity, memory, and health. We lose beloved staff members and church members, or colleagues from work. There are the losses of health; the loss of meaning and purpose; the loss of hopes and dreams; loss of trust in a parent, and by extension, others, through abuse. We also experience community and national separation and loss. I, like many of you grieve over the loss of trust and confidence in nationally elected figures, and for the loss of national integrity. We grieve the loss of soldiers’ and civilians’ lives.
Now, let me say at this point that many separations are not only healthy, but vital for our growth and development. We never really grow and change until we realize how essentially differentiated we are from others. I learned that the hard way as my own marriage of 21 years came to an end. But I did learn a lot and God was faithful, as always, with other gifts. “Separation Anxiety” in a toddler is the precursor to explosive growth the child undergoes when they begin to see themselves as distinct persons, different from the world and the people around them. And this ushers in the wonderful, terrible twos, as the child asserts a burgeoning self-will.
Rather, what I’m talking about is the kind of separation that wounds us and sometimes stalks us, the kind that travels with what it means to be a human being in a tragic and wonderful world of uncertainty, change, death, and loss. This is the existential human condition of the fear of separation, the experience of separation, and the aftermath of separation that can take its toll in terrible ways. It begins early in our development.
My youngest son, Tom, when he was three years old, made a funny, but oh-so-true comment. I was talking to him about a relative’s death, and I said that it will be okay because death is part of life – everyone eventually dies. His eyes got big and round and said, “They do?” I said yes, and he began to cry buckets of tears. I asked him what was wrong, and he said, “But I will miss myself.”
There is something uncannily true about Tom’s statement. In any kind of separation or loss, part of our identity has been stripped away: And there is no one or nothing that can ever fill that particular void, and we can feel abandoned. C.S. Lewis wrote a book entitled, “A Grief Observed.” He wrote this after his wife, Joy, died. He said that during the early stages of grief, the heaviness that he felt was almost unbearable. He felt as if he were drunk or concussed. It was as though he were wrapped in wet blankets that separated him from the rest of the world. And the worst part, he said that he could not even pray. He felt cut off from God. And every time he tried, it was as if a door were slammed shut in his face and he could hear it being bolted from the other side.
It is this sense of isolation, loneliness and pain that Jesus speaks to in John 14. Jesus says, “I will not leave you orphaned.” I will not leave you deprived of ultimate, parental love. I will never neglect you, or abandon you. I will come to you. Jesus comes to us through the indwelling gift of the Holy Spirit that startles our hearts into experiencing God’s enduring presence. There are times that we do not feel that intimacy. So God comes to us through other people. God comes to Bradley Hills in our changes, and through our friendships and community together and says, “it’s okay.” Yes, it is okay, because this is God’s church, not yours or mine. And God has never abandoned this church through tough times or transitions before, and will not.
Now, the fact that Jesus will not abandon us is all well and good. But you are likely nodding off at this point, because this sounds like well-worn territory and typical clergy or church-speak, or Dr. Phil in clerical garb. But get ready for the bite in this passage: The word of Jesus in John 14 to the church, and to Bradley Hills, is both promise and command. “I will not abandon you – now keep my commandments.” John 14:21 says, They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.” When the disciples, when you and I, live in love with one another and with God’s world, we keep Jesus’ word. It is then that we experience the in dwelling love of God, and the peace that the world cannot give.
The disciples were asking Jesus in their grief and fear of separation, “Can we still love you and be loved by you, when you are gone?” This passage answers “yes” to this question, but carries a clear command with it: This love is dynamic and it is inclusive. We cannot know the love of God in Christ by clinging to some enshrined, sentimentalized view of God that we have re-visited in decades, or by waxing eloquent about the good old days of Bradley Hills – that church, as it was, does not exist anymore, nor by retreating into our heads to learn more and more about God, without doing something through our hearts and hands. Rather, they and we can continue to love God and know God’s love by doing Christ’s works of love and service and so keep Christ’s commandments.
It’s a circular gig – love and serve others, because God has commanded us to do so, and when we love and serve others, we know the indwelling love of God. Love and serve others, even when you don’t feel like it, or feel that they don’t deserve it, or you will not know the peace that overcomes separation and loss through the indwelling love of God. Period. Because that is God’s kind of loving; to those who don’t deserve it, but need it – and that is everyone. God’s kind of loving is the love we offer others when we make a gift of ourselves without pre-conditions.
And know this: These promises and commands of Jesus in this passage are directed to a community, not to individuals – they’re all in the 2nd person plural. If we fail in love as a community, we fail God, and we will fail to know the love of God. God’s kind of loving is dangerous, because loving in God’s way never plays it safe, never hedges its bet, never just goes with what is popular, never adopts a “wait and see” attitude about whether or not we’ll get our way with others.
But God’s kind of loving is also the most powerful tool on the planet for the reshaping of our church and the community and world outside of these walls. When we live to give to one another and to Bethesda and beyond, we discover that God is the eternally creative source of our relational power and our common strength. And so let us lay aside every weight that clings to us, every bitter, estranged or orphaned thought, and run with perseverance and joy the race that is set before us. We, who were once not a people, are now God’s people, adopted by grace and called together by God to come into our own, as instruments of God’s good purposes.
We are chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to proclaim the mighty acts of the One who called us out of darkness and into God’s marvelous light. God’s instruments – no more and no less. After all, there is a world of opportunity for loving service. Find your place, find your love, and so find your life – all to the Glory of God. Amen.
