Loneliness and Belonging, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski.

Loneliness and Belonging, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski. Series: Holy Friendships A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. Scripture: Genesis 2:18.

Join us on Sunday as Rev. Dr. Steven Koski celebrates the First Presbyterian Church community and emphasizes that community and belonging are essential to human well-being, as God intended humans not to be alone.

Join us each Sunday, 10AM at bendfp.org, or 11AM KTVZ-CW Channel 612/12 in Bend.  Subscribe/Follow, and click the bell for alerts.

At First Presbyterian, you will meet people at many different places theologically and spiritually. And we love it that way. We want to be a place where our diversity brings us together and where conversation takes us all deeper in our understanding of God.

We call this kind of faith “Spacious Christianity.” We don’t ask anyone to sign creeds or statements of belief. The life of faith is about a way of being in the world and a faith that shows itself in love.

Thank you for your support of the mission of the First Presbyterian Church of Bend. Visit https://bendfp.org/giving/ for more information.

Keywords:

celebrate , god , community , spacious , love , life , penguin , feel , people , invites , share , human being , presence , story , helping , gifts , jesus , loneliness , americans ,, presbyterian, church, online worship, bend, oregon

Featuring:

Rev. Dr. Steven Koski, Rev. Kally Elliott, Tyler McQuilkin, Becca Ellis, Brave of Heart, Guests

Transcript

Steven: 0:39

Welcome to worship with First Presbyterian Church of bend. We practice what we call a spacious Christianity, where there's room for everyone and we mean to everyone, no matter where you find yourself on the faith journey, even if you find yourself without faith, you are so very welcome here. We welcome your questions and doubts. And I see them as gifts that invite us into deeper conversations. We celebrate diversity and believe it's a strength. And we remind you every single week that you are made in the image of God's goodness, and that you are so very loved. And we do our best to live the spacious and radical love of Jesus so that all might have a chance to flourish in this world. As we try our best to practice a spacious Christianity. We hope here that you can find space to breathe a faith you can believe in and a God who believes in you. Were so very glad to worship with you in this way but if you find yourself in the area on Sunday mornings at 8:30am or 10am We'd love to have a chance to greet you in person. Take a deep breath and know that whether you're sitting on the couch at your desk in bed, maybe even washing dishes the presence of God's love is as close to you as your own breath. And it's my prayer today that you might have become aware and experienced the presence of that love in a new way through our worship. Because when that happens, it changes the way we are present in the world. Welcome.

Narrator: 7:28

God of friendship, I come to know your love and care through the embodied presence of others we've made together with kindred spirits knit me more closely with friends of the soul. Cultivate in me a kinship with humanity so that I recognize my struggles and joys and others. In my loneliness revealed to me this communion, and may I be a solace to others who ache for connection, transform me, through conversation and loving presence helped me to see how I am part of a great circle of pilgrims, witnesses, ancestors and mystics who guide me to true connection with you. Gather me into your great wide heart. So I might discover by another separate but always held in love.

Steven: 8:59

We're growing as a church, but our denomination, the Presbyterian Church USA has experienced a 50% decline in membership in the last 30 years. Seven out of 10 Americans today say say that they can have a relationship with God and grow spiritually without ever being part of a community of faith. I mean, more and more people are saying they are spiritual but not religious. The fastest growing religious group in the country. Is the group called the nuns not not n u n, but no and yes, that claim no religious affiliation. I mean, people often tell me that they feel closer to God in nature than anywhere else. I get that. I too frequently have a deep, deep sense of the sacred. When I'm in nature. You know, it's easy. It's easy to experience the sacred in nature. It's a lot. It's a lot harder to encounter God to encounter the holy in the person sitting next to you You in the pew, whose theology and politics are different than yours, who perhaps comes from a different economic background, or someone who's raised sexual orientation, gender identity is, is different than yours. It's easy, it's easy to see and encounter God. In nature. It's a whole lot harder to see the image of God. And the loud, belligerent person with terrible body odor, who's standing beside you singing the same hymn, but a totally different key. Learning to be in community with others, others that you have not necessarily chosen. To be part of your community is really, really hard work. But may be that hard work, of learning to see, encounter the holy love one another is the very thing that has a chance to heal this broken, despairing divided world of ours. civil rights leader Ruby sales, said transformation doesn't happen in headspace where we, where we share on a superficial level our opinions and offer our judgments from a safe distance. transformation happens in heartspace, where we risk getting close enough to connect and see our shared humanity and the other person. And we say, Tell me your story. Where does it hurt for you? The idea that a community of faith is not important. And that you can do spirituality on your own is actually a radical departure from the spiritual path that God has in mind for us. If we look at the biblical account of creation, God calls calls everything good, except one thing. God identifies one problem in creation that God has determined to repair. What is it? In Genesis 218, God says, It is not right. For a human being, to be alone. It's not right for anyone to have dreams tears are fears that no one else cares, cares about or is willing to share. It's not right for people to eat every meal by themselves or languish in an assisted living facility with without visitors. It's not right for anyone to feel judged, excluded, isolated, unwelcome, it's not right for someone to be without helping hands in times of trouble. It's not right, to feel invisible, to not feel seen, heard valued. It's not right for a person to have no one with whom they can truly be themselves. It's not right to have no one to share a deep, wonderful belly laugh with. It's not right to have no one who's willing to sit with you. In the darkness. God says it's not right. For the human being, to be alone. were created to be in relationship were created to be in community, the very defining nature of the human soul is how we are connected to the life of other souls. Now Jesus realize the faith journey is not a solo adventure. If you read the gospels, when Jesus invites people to follow him, he never once invited individuals on their own. Jesus always called people in twos and threes. Jesus called people not just into a life of faith, but into a life of faith, lived in community. You know, it's funny how because of our smartphones, we've never been more connected at least electronically. And at the same time, we've never been more disconnected, divided as a larger community. America is fractured and living in a quiet crisis of disconnection. 54% of Americans 54% of Americans say that no one knows them really well. Has Ruby Well said 50 porpoise, for 4% of Americans would say that they may share headspace with many people sharing opinions about politics, sports, the weather. But few if any risk getting close enough to share Are heartspace or someone risk getting close enough to them to hear their stories? The number of people who say they have no close personal friends has quadrupled in the past two decades. Over 60% of adults in the United States report feeling lonely. I was actually surprised to read that young adults, aged 18 to 22 are the loneliest age group. The Surgeon General said loneliness is as harmful to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. One in five Americans say they have nobody to talk about important matters, no one who's there to really talk about the things that really are worth talking about. Dan McGann McAdams is teaches at Northwestern University. And he studies how people narrate their life stories. And he invites research subjects into his office and over a four hour period. He asked them to tell about their tell him about their low points, their their high points, their their turning points in their lives. And he says every single person at some point in telling the story begins to cry. And when the time is over, he hands them a check to compensate for for the time that they have given him. And he said, almost everyone tries to hand the check, check back saying this has been one of the best afternoons of my life. No one, no one's ever asked me about my life story before. We all have a deep, a deep need to connect the deep need to connect it in the heart space. God says it's not right for a human being. To be alone to not feel seen to feel disconnected. So God calls us into community into relationship. As hard as it can be. As hard as it can be a commitment to do the hard work of being in community, learning how to see hear and love one another. Just may be the best gift we can give to the world right now. What would it be? What would it be like if you took the time and the risk? To get to know someone else? Someone you don't know and someone perhaps you perceive? Maybe as lonely? What would it look like if you took the risk? To let yourself be known. This week marks the 18th anniversary of me serving as the lead pastor here at First Presbyterian. I thought about getting T shirts that would say I survived 18 years of Steven koskie it's no small feat. I don't want to celebrate me. I want to celebrate and speak to the extraordinary messy, beautiful, imperfect, spacious, gritty, gracefield community called First press a community that has changed my life. I want to celebrate the unique gifts and challenges that that each person brings to this community and to my life. I want to celebrate the ways that this community has tolerated me when when I've said hey, I have an idea. I want to celebrate that you have forgiven me when I have failed you or or let you down, which has been often I want to celebrate that you have given me the space to be me. warts and all. I want to celebrate that, that you have disagreed with me. And he'd been willing to stay in the dialogue. I want to celebrate that you've been willing to live in the spaciousness of the questions and not demanded answers. I want to celebrate that you've given me space. Just to be human to be vulnerable, that you've given me the space to to express my grief. And you have allowed me to cry with you. I want to celebrate that you were there for me and my family. With an abundance of grace in our scariest moments. I want to celebrate that you have more Mostly left with me and not at me. I want to celebrate that you have made me feel valued and valuable. You know, those are two needs that every human being has to feel valued and valuable. I truly believe that one of the reasons there was always a crowd of people around Jesus, always people wanted to get near Jesus, because people felt seen and valued in His presence. I want to celebrate most of all, the way I have witnessed you love others. I was speaking to one of our homeless guests who stayed with us when we opened as a warming shelter a couple of weeks ago, and it was freezing. And he said, he said I felt I felt seen here. I didn't feel invisible. And they helped me to to daughter of Desmond Tutu said, To love is to see, to be loved, is to be seen. I haven't been thinking this past week, what may or may not have been accomplished. At first prayers over the past 18 years. I've been thinking this week, what a gift of his bed, to be in community. With those who consider first pres, their base camp. It hasn't always been easy. Sometimes. It's been really painful. But even in the hard places. I have encountered the holy sacred and healing presence of God's love in and through this community. I feel the deepest, most spacious and life giving connection with God right now than I have ever felt in my life. And much of that is because of belonging, belonging to this community and the gifts and the quirkiness and the unique stories and beautiful souls that are part of this community. Yeah, we're a church. We're, we're, we're far from perfect. I know you might think you don't need others to have a relationship with God or, Oh, you might prefer to encounter God and nature. But let me tell you this, there's something holy, there's something beautiful and life changing about this strange community called First press. And today I just want to say how deeply grateful I am. That God has called me into this community. It's not right, for a human being to be alone. In a so much trauma, pain and isolation and loneliness disconnection in our world right now. You know, neuroscientists have found that the part of the brain that is most most impacted by life's trauma actually begins to heal. When we find a community that is a safe place to land, in a safe place to weep and tell our story. It turns out that connection and community heals our hearts and our brains. And I want to finish by sharing a picture. Tobias Baumgartner took this picture of two penguins company to each other. In Melbourne, Australia, watching the dancing lights of the city together. The white penguin is an elderly female who who was widowed and alone. The darker penguin is a much younger male who had also lost his partner and was was alone and apparently these two penguins would meet regularly to watch the dancing lights of the city together comforting each other in their grief. This is the world I want to live in. This is the world we can create together. It's not right for anyone to be alone. May it be so. Friends it is not right for human beings to be alone. Robert Fulghum in his book, all I really need to know I learned in kindergarten, said this. It's still true no matter how old you are. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic. Hold hands, stick together. Friends, look for someone needing a hand hold on to. And maybe if you find yourself alone, take the risk to reach out your hand. Go in the peace and the love of Christ. And may the love you bring into this world create connections and bring peace to others. Amen. Friends, we sincerely hope you found this broadcast and worship meaningful. Please help us make it possible to reach others with the important message of a spacious Christianity. First Presbyterian seeks to serve Jesus by serving the needs of others showing up in our community and the world when and where love and compassion are needed the most. Your generosity helps us to be generous and love and offer hope at a time when hope is in short supply for so many. financial gifts large and small. make a huge difference in helping us continue these broadcasts and helping us continue to serve the needs of others in our community in the world. You can give online at band F p.org. You can use the QR code on your screen or mail a check to the church. We hope to see you again and please reach out if we can support you in any way. Until the next time. May God bless you and may you be a blessing to others.