Friends?

When I was little, I thought that everyone on the bus was my friend and we would be friends forever. Ah, the simplicity and optimism of childhood. Although I am still in touch with some of the people who lived in my neighborhood when I was growing up, acquaintances might be a more accurate description of our relationships (though I would also be happy to see most of them again). School also provides this automatic community for children. You see the same people every day, you make friends, and you have fun while you learn. Well, that’s the hope. With the VVISD school year starting tomorrow, I thought I would take a moment to reflect on the importance of community for all, including us adults.

In college I developed a three-question friend test:
1. FML or MLIA?
2. Pirates or ninjas?
3. High five?

This test never stopped me from making the friend, but the pop psychology was real. FML? A pessimist. MLIA? An optimist. Pirates? Probably extroverted. Ninjas? Likely introverted. High five? Are you fun. Making friends is important, no matter how you go about doing it.

It is not a hard theological argument that humans were designed to be around other people. To journey through life in the presence of others is the ideal. Christ took his disciples with him almost everywhere and sent them forth two by two- nobody was meant to journey alone. They say in the best relationships that sorrows are halved and joys doubled- I think that this is true. When I have someone who can listen to me vent or lament, when there is even one other person out there who can willingly say “that stinks!” or “that’s not fair!” or “you did the right thing!” my own woe does not weigh on me in the same way. Same for a joy- I rarely do half the celebrating for myself that I might do if a friend is near. Did you ever accomplish something and have no one to witness? As opposed to telling a friend and having them celebrate with you? One is decidedly more fun than the other. We are meant to do things with other people.

This same thought process factors in to why we worship corporately and communally. As the body of Christ, there is something powerful about gathering together, even if we know that that we are all unique and individual beings with different gifts and talents. When we lift our voices together in one accord, it reassures us. God’s presence can be felt alone, definitely, but there is something about hearing a whole group of believers declare their belief or share in a hymn that fills up our spirits. There is a statement made about who we are every single time we gather together. And the hope is that worship helps you meet God through this ordinary means of grace.

Now, as an extrovert I am well aware that spending time around other people tends to fill up my social battery as opposed to any of my introvert friends who may be drastically drained by the exact same activity. This is not a reflection of how much time is spent so much as acknowledging that everyone needs to spend some time with other people at some point. COVID made many people realize that their lives did not have community that could withstand that sort of separation. It left many lonely and withdrawn. It also left many asking the question: How do I make friends now that I am an adult?

Church. Church is the obvious and maybe biased answer that I have for those who are seeking a connection with others. The gathering of the people in the pews makes space for all people. At the start of the summer, I landed on a little phrase- that we will not be the church for everybody, but we can be the church for anybody. That still holds true. There will be some people who don’t like our music or how I preach or even our theology. None of this prevents us from offering them a glimpse of what life at the church is like. We can be the group that invites them into the free, just, loving world that God imagines for all people.

But how do we know if someone new is our sort of people and will want to join our community? When we were little, if you liked soccer and so did a classmate, you could be friends. If you liked Pinky Pie and so did they- best friends. As adults we know people are much more complicated and complex than that. There is nuance to opinion and theology. BUT Scripture tells us that we are all God’s children and perhaps it is not up to us to decide who gets to be in our community and not. God loves us all with the same steadfast and unerring love.

To bring us all the way back around to the bus, the only thing in theory that we had in common was that we lived in the same neighborhood. We went to two different schools, but we lived in one neighborhood. As we learned about each other over the school year, sometimes we fought and sometimes we didn’t. Sometimes we would learn the ways of the older kids (y’all know about the S, right?) or hear rumors. Perhaps the greatest gift of riding bus as a child is that as an adult I know that there are some human experiences that connect us in the moment and that’s enough. We weren’t supposed to be lifelong friends or fall in love or do anything incredible. Just being together was enough. Isolation and being cut off is destructive to the soul. Again, to all you introverts, this isn’t chastisement for needing time alone- time alone is important. Loneliness is not the same as alone. With God we are never alone. With church, we get the tangible part of that connection. I hope you’ll remember that the next time we pass the peace during worship.