‘I am with you’
God ultimately fulfills the promise to show up
Editor’s note: Look for a sermon or lesson from Houston’s diverse faiths every week in Belief.
Incarcerated in a maximum-security prison, locked up on the other side of razor wire, steel and glass, isolated from a society that has made clear “we have no place for you,” a child finds himself beginning to do the adult time he’s been sentenced to serve.
Certified as an adult at sixteen, Luis is a Latino kid with no family and no place to call home. Because he got into a fight with a foster sibling sharing space with him at a group home, the justice system determined the Clemens Unit will be his home. The message for this particular day at the Clemens Unit centers on belonging — you belong to us, you belong to God.
Volunteers and teenage inmates gather around tables, eat pizza and tell stories. I invite them to share experiences around the question, “When in your life have you felt most included?” Kids say things like, “At my birthday party when I was eight,” “When I was on a basketball team,” or “When my mom said she loved me.” Before catchin’ the chain, Luis bounced around the child welfare system, silo’d and isolated in the system category of “unadoptable.” Abandoned by everyone, a someone who has no one, he looks to Seth, one of our loyal volunteers at Luis’s table, and says with all sincerity and as if it’s obvious, “Well, right now. Here. With you.”
Words soaked in hope, pouring out of a lonely heart, expressing the assurance of finally knowing you belong to someone. The U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, recently said that the greatest public health crisis we face today is not cancer or heart disease, it’s isolation, and the ramifications of living socially discon
nected. We are experiencing an epidemic of weakening social connections, marked by the lack or perceived lack of positive, supportive social interaction or activities, often accompanied by intense loneliness and isolation.
We don’t need research to tell us that social disconnection contributes to emotional and physical disease — many of us have experienced this for ourselves, or know someone who has. But recent studies indicate the ramifications of isolation include all sorts of mind and body issues, such as disrupted sleep cycles, lowered immune systems, increased inflammation, elevated stress hormones, anxiety, fear, depression, lower brain function and risk of heart disease.
One study found a 50 percent increase in the risk of early death. And the emotional and physical toll of social disconnection starts early. “Socially isolated children have significantly poorer health 20 years later, even after controlling for other factors,” an article in the New York Times reported. “All told, loneliness is as important a risk factor for early death as obesity and smoking.”
Of course, there’s a difference between taking some “me” time and feeling like you’re out here all alone. Taking regular time to be by yourself is good. What’s not good is being cut off from others with no one to call, no one to help, no one to turn to. A stranger to others and perhaps to yourself. A someone who has no one.
The human connection equation of right now, here, with you matters. A lot. When people find themselves severed from social connection, they don’t need so much a church outreach program; they need a live person. Someone willing to locate herself or himself in places of dislocation, being present among those doing solitary on some distant emotional outpost. It’s the only thing that closes the gap of isolation for those stranded in a relational hinterland.
Maybe this is why God’s promise of “I am with you” (or some version of that) is woven throughout the entire biblical narrative. To be human is to be no stranger to loneliness.
The pop star Pink sings, “Have you ever hated yourself for staring at the phone? Your whole life waiting on the ring to prove you’re not alone?” in her song “Glitter in the Air.” How many of us, silently within our own souls or out loud hoping someone might hear, have cried out from the depths of our disconnection, “My God, my God, why have you left me all alone?”
Eventually the promise of presence moves from the realm of words to the reality of word become flesh. Theologically, this is the incarnation. Emmanuel, God with us — right now, in flesh, the divine and human coming together here in this neighborhood, with us.
This is Jesus, right now, here, with the leper, closing the gap of social, religious and psychological disconnection by showing up in compassion to touch and bless a ravaged body and ruptured soul cursed as untouchable.
This is Jesus traveling several hours across choppy seas to arrive on the opposite shore for one purpose — to show up right now, here, with one severely traumatized man living among the tombs, ostracized and left alone with the dead to deal with his own demons.
It’s Jesus, right now, here, with prostitutes and crooks, breaking laws and social constructs by sitting around the dinner table, talking about how much life hurts and how much God desires to heal.
It’s Jesus, right now, here, with a convicted felon on his right and another on his left, suffering through the violent, dehumanizing ordeal of capital punishment, all the while expanding their vision of hope.
Right now, here, with you is how God ultimately fulfills the promise to show up. It’s also our best expression of the compassionate presence of God for the isolated. I suspect that’s because of who Love is, how Love moves and what Love does.
Love extends itself to the exiled, welcomes the withdrawn and befriends the friendless. It sets a place at the table for those who never imagined there being an open seat. Having a no reject, no eject policy, Love facilitates belonging where there is none and creates connection for anyone. And Love invites you and me to be a someone for those who have no one.