27th Sunday Ordinary Time - October 2, 2021

27^th Sunday Ordinary Time October 2, 2021

A number of years ago, I was an active member of a Catholic Worker House..  As I was leaving the community, a friend gave me a prayer card with Dorothy Day’s image and a note saying that she always felt that I was a kindred spirit of Dorothy’s. That I knew the long loneliness that she wrote about in her autobiography.

I cried as I read that note, partially because of the humbling idea that I could even be a tiny bit like Dorothy Day but also because I felt so deeply seen.  The words “long loneliness” hit my heart - I always feel just a bit separate from the rest of the world, one beat off, one step behind.

I know the long loneliness and as I have gotten older, I know not only the pain from it but also the gift.  I have intentionally spent my life, from as early as I can remember, reaching out to others who looked lonely because I knew what it felt like.

As I reflected on our readings this week, I saw the long loneliness of humanity on display.  Within the creation myth of Adam and Eve and the arguments around divorce, I hear the loneliness of Adam, the healing that Eve brings and the pain of our hardened hearts.

The stories we are presented with today have caused a great deal of trouble in the Judeo-Christian context.  The interpretation of them over the centuries has allowed for and normalized the idea that women are subservient to men and that maintaining a marriage is more important than a couple's wellbeing and safety. 

The lens that we bring to Scripture is incredibly important. We can essentially make Scripture say whatever we want it to say.  That’s what proof texting is - starting with the human thought or law and then searching Scripture to prove and condone it.

So if we want to prove that divorce is immoral or that women are less than men, we can very easily do that through these readings. But Scripture is not here to prove our arguments, it is here to foster our relationship with God and others. 

And so we must approach Scripture with the most broad strokes of what we have understood God to be and always be humble in knowing that as humans our sight is limited.

One way we might look at these readings is through the lens of our creed - how we profess to know God and be in relationships with him. As a community we profess that
 

• We believe in a God who places joy in our hearts, who created a bountiful earth for plenty to share.

 

• We believe in Jesus - who celebrated with outcasts and sinners, who touched the broken, who set an extra place so we could feast.

 

• We believe in the Holy Spirit who sends us invitations to come and dine, who nudges us to openness and tenderness.

 

• We believe in a Spirit that is present in the breaking of bread, urging us to live joyfully and walk hopefully.

Using our creed as a lens, in our first reading - we see our loving Creator interact with all of creation, including us.  We see the yearning for relationship and connection being expressed in Adam. We see God’s desire to answer his yearning. We see in Adam the first expression of the long loneliness. And we see how relationships with other humans bring healing to Adam’s loneliness. We celebrate that as humans we are all made of the same stuff - created lovingly by God.  Our bones, our blood, our cells, our very DNA are connected in a beautiful biological mystery, from loneliness comes connection. 

This creation story amplifies that as humans we carry an innate longing for relationship.  Just as God is relational, so are we.  As God is somehow both One and Three, we too are mysteriously our own person but must fully come to be when we are in relationship.  And we see that mystery coming to life in many ways...we see it in marriage, we see it in deep friendships, we see it in communities.

Our second reading continues to remind us of the relational nature in which we are created and how deeply God desires to be in relationship to us. Not only is God our Creator but God is our brother. 

Lastly, the Gospel highlights the complexity of our relational nature, particularly the shadow of our desires and longings.  Both the Pharisees and disciples want to make sense of broken relationships and for us, that typically means putting rules and laws around them - figure out who's to blame, what’s the consequence and move on.  But Jesus focuses the discussion back on us, on the hardness of human hearts and how broken relationships call us back to remember our Creator and our connection to all other humans - we are made of the same stuff and we all carry the same vulnerability - desire to be known, desire for connection, relationship and unity.

And I think if we look at this Gospel from the perspective of our Creed as opposed to our societal understanding of divorce then it is about the hurt that we all feel in broken relationships.

Jesus condemns those around him for their hardness of hearts but how do we keep our hearts soft when we have to walk with this loneliness day in and day out and face the reality that even our best relationships always have a tinge of separation.

I believe part of the answer comes from the odd transition at the end of the Gospel.  After an intense argument around divorce, Jesus turns his attention to children.  They run up to him, the disciples try to send them away. Instead Jesus welcomes them, again rebukes the adults around them saying that if they desire to enter the kingdom of God, they must become like these children.

Through prayer, vulnerability and grace we must allow our hardened hearts to melt and become open like a child. As the mom of a young toddler, I’m grateful to have an example of this child-like openness day in and day out.

My daughter is small for her age and physically looks more like a two year old. Most of the kids on the playground either her age or older are zipping past her as she is still catching up on some developmental delays. She is a social butterfly though and as the kids zip by her she stands in the midst of them saying, “Hi! Hi! Hi!”

It broke my heart a bit the first time I watched this dynamic. It didn’t seem to phase her in the slightest but it felt like I was watching that loneliness, that separation we all feel, that thing Adam felt, that Dorothy Day wrote about, the long loneliness…it starts early.

Last Sunday, two four year old boys, a good foot taller than her dressed as Spider Man and Iron Man were zipping around the playground.  One yelled at my daughter, “Hey what’s your name.” And then he went back to running around with his brother.  Moments later though he came up to me and said, “I want to be her friend. Can I be her friend?”

“Of course.” I replied while explaining that she was younger and smaller and may not keep up.  Moments later the boys are running and Lucy, yards behind is gleefully chasing them. Next thing I know they are trying to teach her how to use their nerf guns.  When it was time to leave, the little boy who instigated it all said, “Now I have a new friend!  I met another friend.  Come back and play again, okay?”

In children we are reminded of our open hearts and how open hearts act in this world. Open hearts do not see what divides but instead they see what unites - the common experience of loneliness and the healing that comes from relationship. With open hearts, we can reach out to the stranger and say, “Will you be my friend?”

Each and everyone of us has an incredible power to show the love of God by recognizing our shared humanity - one where loneliness can connect us and bear more love into the world. 

In her autobiography, Dorothy Day wrote “The final word is love… To love we must know each other … and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone any more. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, there is companionship. We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”

The last word is not loneliness, it is love because that is how we were created and who we are.  May we all find a way this week where we can reach out to another, soothe their loneliness and heal ourselves in that action.