“Embraced by Love”
Ephesians 3:27-29, Matthew 8:1-4
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
September 27, 2015
Professor O’Connell was in rare form. On any day of the week, he was known for his charisma and passion, but on this particular Thursday he waxed especially eloquent on the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the leaders of the Transcendentalist movement from the mid-1800‘s. Our class of college sophomores and juniors was rapt. In the 1980’s version of texting in class, my friend Andrew leaned over to my desk and wrote in the margins of my notebook. “When I grow up, I want to be a Transcendentalist.” “Me too.” I leaned over and wrote on his paper. We thought we were being ironic–not the part about wanting to be Transcendentalists, but the part about growing up. At 19 and 21, we were pretty sure we were already all grown up.
Andrew and I, and most of our classmates, were inspired and energized by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s vision of human possibility. By entering deeply into nature, he wrote, by coming to rely on ourselves rather than someone else’s ideas or rules, we come to know the Oversoul, the Divine Spirit that connects us all. Emerson summed up his core beliefs with these words, using the language of his time: “I believe in the infinitude of the private man.” Andrew and I were ready to soar to infinitude with Emerson.
Until the next week. The final assignment in our unit on Transcendentalism was Emerson’s essay “Experience.” We were shocked by the drastically different tone of this piece. Instead of reveling in infinite possibility, Emerson despaired at the limits of our human capacity truly to understand and connect with each other. He began the essay, which he wrote a few years after the death of his son Waldo, with his deep distress that he couldn’t even feel his own grief. He went on to reflect on the narrowness of our human perception. No matter how much I may think I know someone, he wrote, I can never truly know them because I can only see them through my own eyes, never through theirs.
And then he painted a stark image of human beings as discreet spheres moving through space, touching each other only on our outermost surfaces before veering off into other directions. Barely connecting, and not for long.
I remember the image so clearly because I was devastated by it. So was my friend Andrew. As much as we loved Emerson’s vision of infinite human possibility, this image hit closer to home. It spoke to our adolescent struggles to figure out where we fit. It touched what, as young adults, we were beginning to understand about the human condition: our painful struggles with isolation and our sometimes desperate quest for connection and belonging.
Andrew convinced me to go with him to talk with Professor O’Connell. Andrew began the conversation: “If that’s all there is, just barely touching the surface of each other, then what’s the point? We’re trapped inside ourselves.”
I don’t remember exactly what words Professor O’Connell used, but somehow he invited us to turn the image around. Instead of despairing that all we can do is touch each other, perhaps we could rejoice in our capacity to touch. Andrew wasn’t convinced. I wasn’t convinced either, but I was intrigued.
More than three decades later, that conversation came back to me as I began to think about this second in the series of verbs that describe our church’s mission: renewing, embracing, engaging. We seek, we say, to embrace one another with God’s love. We seek to be community.
Emerson’s vivid image of human isolation stops me short just as I’m tempted to wax poetic about the warmth and caring of this community of love. What if we really are separate spheres bouncing around, barely touching the surface of each other’s lives? Are we deluding ourselves that we can be community, that we can embrace and be embraced by one another?
Last week I re-read Emerson’s essay “Experience,” marveling that I thought I understood it as a teenager, because I certainly don’t now. As I read, I accepted Professor O’Connell’s invitation to turn the image around–to claim our capacity to touch as a gift. I began to view the picture Emerson paints through the lens of this healing story from Matthew’s gospel. All we can do, Emerson writes, is touch one another. That’s all Jesus did in this story. He reached out his hand and touched the leper. It was just a touch.
The leper knew what it was like to be utterly alone. Because of his disease and the societal fears and judgments around leprosy, he was forced to live far from his family and community, physically isolated, not allowed to touch or be touched. Jesus reached out past the fear, past the judgment, past the isolation, and touched him.
Through that touch, the leper knew he was no longer alone. Through that touch, a sacred healing spirit moved from one person to the other, connecting them together, connecting them with something beyond themselves. In that moment, the leper was loved. It was just a touch, and it was enough–enough to draw the leper out of his isolation, enough to assure him of his worth, enough to allow him to claim his wholeness.
Most of us have times in our lives when Emerson’s stark picture of human isolation rings true. There are times we may harbor a secret pain we fear no one can understand. Other times we have been so hurt by how we have been misunderstood that we cannot imagine ever being known. We feel alone in a crowd, sure we are the only one thinking or feeling what we do. We despair that all we can do is barely touch the surface of each other’s lives.
In the face of those times, our gospel story points us to the hope of our faith: our moments of connection are sacred, healing, transformative. When we touch–a physical touch, a greeting, a smile, a phone call–God is at work, a sacred spirit connecting us with one another. Through our smallest efforts to connect, we experience God’s love.
Emerson is right. No matter how hard we try, we can never fully know one another, for we are always seeing or hearing the other person from our own perspective. With God’s help, though, we can still listen deeply, honoring one another’s stories even though our understanding is incomplete. It is true that we don’t always know what to do, how to help–but we can always let each other know we care. Sometimes, in our efforts to connect, we collide instead, bumping up against conflicting expectations. Even then, by the grace of God, we can step back, apologize, and work toward reconciliation.
Emerson is right. All our efforts to understand, to help, and to care are constrained by our human limitations. Professor O’Connell is also right: perhaps because our efforts are constrained, they matter even more. Our gospel story invites us to take these truths a step further: through our imperfect efforts to touch one another, we are part of God’s love at work. Our attempts to know one another even a little bit point us toward the One who knows us fully and completely. Our awkward expressions of caring open us to the gift of God’s unconditional love.
It seems like a huge leap from Emerson’s image of isolated human globes barely connecting with each other to the apostle Paul’s vision of a community where all are one–or maybe it’s not such a leap. Paul is writing to a deeply divided community, plagued by misunderstanding and judgment. He knows first-hand how constrained our human connections can be. He also knows first-hand the power of God’s love to overcome our limitations. When Paul writes that in Christ, the divisions are broken down and we are made one, he is not talking about some mystical feeling of merging into one another. He is talking about a shared commitment, a shared conviction that makes us one. We dare to believe that God’s spirit is at work in our every effort to touch, to help, and to care. We are one because we make a choice to reach out to one another, because our intention is to be part of something greater than ourselves. We are one because, with our every touch, God connects us with one another.
The more I think about it, the more I realize how bold we are being, proclaiming that we seek to embrace one another with God’s love. Emerson suggests we can barely touch each other–what makes us think we can actually embrace and be embraced–with God’s love, at that?
Are we being too bold? If we were trying to do this on our own, yes. Since we have God’s help, though, we can be bold. God is in our individual efforts to reach out to one another. When we offer a ride, we can trust that God is leaping into the car with us, guiding us on our journey. When we dare to start an awkward conversation, we can rely on God’s grace to hold us up when our words fall short. When we crochet a prayer shawl, with a prayer in every stitch, we know God’s healing spirit is transforming both the giver and the recipient. God is at work in each time we reach out to touch, and God is at work weaving those individual moments into a rich, glorious fabric of love that can embrace us all.
So let us be bold. Honoring our limitations, honoring our human struggles with isolation, let us dare to reach out–to offer a physical touch, a word, a smile, a meal, a phone call, an extravagant welcome. Let us dare to trust that, by the grace of God, each effort matters, and our efforts build on each other, expanding from a touch to an embrace. Let us dare to sing out the bold prayer and the bold proclamation of our anthem: “May the light of lovingkindness shine from each and every face.” “Our hearts and doors stand open, surely God is in this place.” May we be bold to embrace one another with God’s love. Thanks be to God. Amen.