A FEW WORDS ABOUT TODAY’S SCRIPTURE READING

God’s promise to Abraham was … Abraham, you are going to have a big, big family. Not because you live like a saint, God said, but because you trust me to make good on my promises to you.

Abraham must have been the laughing stock of his neighbors, or else they thought he’d received a miracle when the promise came true and he and Sarah had a baby long after it seemed even remotely possible. That’s round one of the bible’s story.

Round two comes from Paul’s teachings to fledgling Christians of Rome a long time later. Paul assured the Roman Christians that when you believe God brought life to Christ, you can be set right with God, because God is not the God of the dead but the God of the living. And just like the big, big, family given to Abraham because God is the God of living, God offer’s something to you that only God can – eternal life.

SCRIPTURE READING     Romans 4:18-22                       

^17-18 We call Abraham “father” not because he got God’s attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn’t that what we’ve always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, “I set you up as father of many peoples”? Abraham was first named “father” and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, “You’re going to have a big family, Abraham!” ^19-23 Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say, “It’s hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child.” Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up. He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That’s why it is said, “Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right.”

LEADER: A Word of God that is still speaking.

ALL: Thanks be to God.

 More about the Scripture Reading: The renown Eugene Peterson, writer of the Bible paraphrase, The Message, which you just read, thinks the day’s lectionary text stopped too soon. Peterson included verses 23 through 25 as one section. They are important in connection the scripture to our lives. So here they are.

 Romans 4:23-25: But it’s not just Abraham; it’s also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.

Just adding this to today’s reading is still not enough. The next question is,….. what are we going to do once we are set right? Are we going to stop on our laurels, lean back, and say, aren’t we blessed?

Or, are we going to roll up our sleeves and use this blessing to bless others?

MESSAGE                        Lonely and Forlorn                    Pastor Donna Goltry

Where we can make a difference? Sack lunches are great. But they only satisfy for a short while. How about a way that satisfies for longer?

Friendship. One of the key antidotes to loneliness. The human kindness of friendship goes the extra mile to combat loneliness.

Each week stories in the news point to how devastating loneliness and the lack of friends can be. Take yesterday’s obituaries for Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber who terrorized our country from 1978 to 1995.

At 9 months, he was in hospital isolation because of severe allergies. His mother said “the once-alert baby returned home moody and withdrawn.”[1] What a testimony to the power of touch and love in even the young infant.

As a schoolboy, the family moved to a Chicago suburb where he was raised Roman Catholic, but his parents were atheists, spent their time on extremist causes. And rather than having Ted play with neighbor kids outside, he was often kept inside. More seeds of a lonely, isolated life.

Because of his brilliance (he was a math prodigy), he went to Harvard at 16, but was immature and lived in a single room. His classmates remembered him as a boy of poor hygiene whose room smelled like sour milk and stale cheese.[2] Shunned by classmates, he was a loner. After getting a PhD at Michigan,  he worked a few years, then fled to isolation, living in a 10×14 foot tarpaper shack outside Lincoln, Montana. Alone, troubled, friendless.

Loneliness. Forlorn. Angry. He was trying to punish the world for his perceived insults. That was Ted Kaczynski.

Some of you have known others who just can’t seem to make a friend. Who are lonely and don’t seem to know how to break its grip.

Yet, I must digress to emphasize that being alone, or what is sometimes called solitude, is not the same as being lonely. Solitude can be the needed respite from busyness. It can bring a person welcome space to think, pray, look around at the beauty that surrounds.

Being lonely and forlorn is what is troubling.

Lonely was defined in a Campaign to End Loneliness as “a subjective, unwelcoming feeling of lack or loss of companionship. It happens when there is a mismatch between … the social relationships that we have, and those that we want.” [3]

This campaign notes that while loneliness is not a mental illness, “loneliness and mental illness are interlinked.” Loneliness can increase the risk of early death by 25%.[4] So much more can be said about it clinically. But I think what is more important is to look at how we can help others overcome loneliness. We can’t wish it away, but there are ways we can help.

First, by being a good listener when someone is talking. Small talk can be the place to start. Small talk gets a bad rap as superficial, but it opens the door to deeper conversation.

By being aware of those you know to be lonely. Simply let them know they matter to you. This is powerful.

What other ways do you have in mind?

Everybody needs a friend. Everybody wants to be loved. And, as Christians, we have a special calling to see its importance. One of my favorite passages from John 15 is about Christians as friends. I’m reading from The Message by Eugene Peterson.

This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you. I’m no longer calling you servants because servants don’t understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I’ve named you friends because I’ve let you in on everything I’ve heard from the Father.

¹⁶ “You didn’t choose me, remember; I chose you, and put you in the world to bear fruit, fruit that won’t spoil. As fruit bearers, whatever you ask the Father in relation to me, he gives you.

¹⁷ “But remember the root command: Love one another.

I couldn’t have said it better. Think of us as fruitful Christians when we help someone overcome loneliness. From the secret garden of God’s love, we are called to share it with others. It is no duty, it is a pure joy!

[1] Paul W Valentine, “Ted Kaczynski, who planted fear and death as the Unabomber, dies at 81,” The Washington Post, June 10, 2023.

[2] Michael Balsamo and Lindsay Whitehurst, “Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber for years of attacks that killed 3, dies in prison at 81”, the Associated Press, June 10, 2023.

[3] Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, A connected society: a strategy for tackling loneliness (2018), in Campaign to EndLoneliness, https://www.campaigntoendloneliness.org/facts-and-statistics/#:~:text=There%20are%20different%20types%20of,and%20social%20and%20existential%20loneliness.

[4] Ibid.