Some of you know that I was once the pastor of a small country church. It was the only Protestant church for at least 15 miles in any direction. The church building was built in 1883, and it was there that many generations of farming families were brought up in the Christian faith.
One mile south of the church was the high school. It was the only high school for at least 15 miles in any direction. It had 350 students in grades 9-12. I know, that number seems high to you, but it’s only because there were a number of families from the next county over where the cities and schools were much bigger who sent their kids to our rural school because they wanted a smaller, more personalized education for their children.
A community like this is one where – for better and for worse – everyone pretty much knows everyone else. Except for me, because what I’m going to tell you next happened less than two weeks after I arrived.
The phone rang. I answered it, and then listened as the person on the other end informed me that a 14 year-old in the community had just committed suicide. If my memory is correct, it was the boy’s grandfather on the phone. He asked if I would officiate at the funeral, and I said yes, of course.
The next phone call I received was from the high school. I was asked if I would be willing to come to school the next day. As students arrived and heard the news about their classmate, some of them might like someone to talk to. A school counselor would be present, but some of them might want to talk to a pastor.
I said yes, of course.
I arrived at the high school the next morning. In their first period classes the students were told what had happened, although most had heard it already. The students were also told that a counselor and a pastor were available if anyone wanted to talk.
Needless to say, the mood on campus that day was somber. Passing periods and lunchtime were eerily silent. Friends huddled and embraced. Tears could be seen on the faces of a number of girls, and even some of the boys.
The few students who didn’t know the one who had died – mostly those who had transferred in from outside the county – tried to carry on like normal, but their laughter in the school quad sounded awkwardly out of place, as if they were cracking jokes from the back pew of the funeral itself.
Watching as the students comforted and consoled one another, I realized that this 14 year-old boy had no idea how much he meant to those who knew him. I’m sure he took for granted the relationships he had with others; I’m sure of it, because just about everyone takes these things for granted. And yet, they are the most important things we have: our relationships with our families, our friendships, and even the connections we have with people who we might think aren’t even aware of our existence.
Certainly, if we understood how important our relationships are – how meaningful they are – we’d work harder to take care of them. And if we understood how much we mean to others, we’d take better care of ourselves.
From the very beginning, God created us to live in relationship. God created light, and it was good. God created the sky, the land, and the sea, and it was good. God created stars, planets, the sun and moon; God created plants and animals: mighty redwoods and golden poppies and sabertooth cats and grizzly bears and penguins, and it was all good.
And then God created humankind. In God’s own image, he created them. Male and female, he created them.
And then God said to the humans: “all that I have created – the apple trees and the sycamores and the polar bears and coyotes and the eagles – all of it, I give to you. The earth is yours. From it, you will get food. From it, you will receive life. And you are to care for it.”
Now, look at this story closely, and you will see relationships with one another, emphasized by the fact that humanity was made male and female.
Look closely, and you will see relationships with all of creation, emphasized by our mutual dependence and the command to be God’s stewards.
Look closely, and you will see relationships with God, emphasized by the fact that humankind was created in God’s own image.
And this, God says, is very good.
It so happened that as I was thinking about these things the other day, pondering them over in my mind, it came to my attention that that particular day was 155 years to the day that Chief Seattle died.
Chief Seattle was the leader of the Suquamish tribe in what is today the state of Washington. In a famous letter attributed to Chief Seattle, the relationships between people and the earth are described like this:
“All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”
The world as God intends it to be is a world of wholeness, and wholeness is found in our relationships. When we cut ourselves off from one another, when we cut ourselves off from the earth, then we become broken, less-than-whole. When we recognize and nurture our relationships – when we recognize that we are part of a much larger whole – then we find life. We find joy. We find heaven.
In the second creation story, the male and female are created separately. The male is created first, before the woman, and even before the animals. He is alone; and, being alone, he is incomplete. Not until there are animals to care for and another human to love is he made whole. Without others to love and care for, he is incomplete.
Brian McLaren is one of the preachers scheduled for next month’s General Assembly in Nashville. In his newest book, Naked Spirituality, he shares an email he received from songwriter and musician Steve Bell.
Steve wanted to share with Brian a special moment that took place during one of his concert. Here is how Steve described it:
“At one point, Mike, my piano player, was taking a solo; he seemed particularly inspired…. I was intrigued by some of the rhythmical ideas he was playing with in his solo, and we locked eyes as I dialed into what he was doing by doing everything I could with my guitar to support and accent his ideas. Not always, but often enough, you can get so absorbed by what another player is doing onstage that you almost lose consciousness of yourself as you become absorbed toward the other.
“Suddenly, and surprisingly, it dawned on me that as much as I was absorbed in supporting Mike’s playing, he was doing the exact same thing toward me. I was playing off him, and he was playing off me – neither was leading … and almost as suddenly as I realized this, the whole scene stopped like a freeze frame, like someone hit pause on the DVD player. And there was a brief suspension in which the voice of God spoke to me and said, “Pay attention to this, Steve. This is who I am.” And just as quickly, the whole scene was back in full motion, Mike was burning up the piano, and I was so overcome with a sense of psychic vertigo that I thought I might faint.”
For a long time now, I’ve had this idea of heaven as a state of existence in which a person’s individual sense of self merges into something much greater, and becomes aware that it is part of the one all-encompassing lifeforce that binds all things together in harmony and love; and maybe that’s my definition of God: this all-encompassing lifeforce in which we all live and more and have our being, and which binds all things together in harmony and love.
Just thinking about such things almost makes me faint, because I know I’m dealing with something that is, in fact, much bigger than I am capable of understanding. But what Steve Bell said makes sense to me. When we allow the connections between us to become so strong that we lose ourselves in those connections, that we lose ourselves in God, well, it is good. It is very good.
By the end of that day I spent on campus, no one had come to talk to me. Not one person. I just sat there all day, and when the final bell rang, I went home.
What a waste of a day, I thought. I was there all day, and no one came to talk with me.
I had great plans for my new ministry location. I had goals I wanted to reach, things I wanted to accomplish; and sitting around all day doing nothing was not going to help me get there. The day was a complete failure as far as I was concerned; a total waste of time.
However, I had forgotten that there was more to me than just me. I had forgotten that I was and am a part of something much bigger. I thought it was just me on that school campus. I thought that, because no one came to talk to me, that no connections were made, that nothing good was accomplished.
But the connections and relationships exist whether we acknowledge them or not. They exist whether we are aware of them or not. The God in whom we live and move and have our being is present whether we acknowledge that or not.
I didn’t realize until later the tremendous amount of comfort it brought to the students and even the faculty just to know that I was there. I was for them a reminder of God’s presence, a reminder that God cares, a reminder that they were not alone and that God had not forgotten them, that God was with them, and that they were connected.
It wasn’t I who did that. It was God working through me in a way that I wasn’t even aware of at the time. It was God working through them, too, as they comforted and consoled each other, reassuring one another that they were not alone, that their grief was in fact much bigger than any one of them, that it was something that was shared.
It was a terrible tragedy, what happened. But in the demonstration of communal sharing and grieving – and in the presence of a pastor who symbolized the presence of God – perhaps a greater understanding arose regarding just how connected we all are, to one another, to all life, to God; a greater understanding of how interdependent we all are, how each one of us is a strand on that web of life, a tiny strand, perhaps, but one that is intricately connected to the whole; and even though it is a small strand, seemingly insignificant, what happens to that one small strand affects the entire web.
For we are all connected. We are created to live in relationship with each other, and with all that is.
That’s how God created us.
And it is very good.
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