It’s been a tough week. One of the toughest weeks that I can remember in a long time. Everything this week took so much extra effort to do. It was hard to get out of bed, to get ready for the day, to go through the daily actions of work, to talk on the phone, to return emails. Everything seemed just a little bit harder to accomplish. It has been a week where though I haven’t been angry at God, I haven’t felt much like praising Him.

I found it real hard to care about much this week outside of my own pain. It was the only thing that seemed real this past week. It was the only thing that mattered. It has been a rather selfish week. Not even that has mattered to me too much either.Of course, I’m not the only one that has had a tough week. The world is plenty full of pain and hurt and suffering. I did not lose a spouse this week. I did not lose a child this week. I was not evicted this week. I did not go hungry this week. I did not thirst for clean water this week. I did not get sick this week, and even if I had, I would have been able to afford a visit to the doctor or hospital. I do not live in a war torn country. I do not live where just making through the day is a struggle, each and every day.

When I look at the pain that so much of the rest of the world has gone through this past week, then it makes me a feel a little guilty about my pain. But only a little, because it is still MY pain.

I had a lot of people reach out to me this week. A lot of people wanted to share in my grief, share their stories of their own grief, or simply want to be there for me. There was an amazing amount of people that shared in my pain or suffering.

I learned something about the unique nature of pain this week. As I had so many people reach out to me, expressing their sympathy for me, I was truly grateful and appreciative of each and every one of them. However, there as a small part that wanted to say “Thanks, but you don’t know how I feel”.  The unique nature of pain is just that, our pain is unique to each and every one of us.

Despite how empathetic any of us can be, none us truly can experience someone else’s pain. We may be able to come close. We may say stuff like “I feel your pain” or “I know how much it hurts” but we don’t know. We can’t.

We do not know their exact love, their exact lose, their exact pain. And it that regards, our pain is our own. It is not anyone else’s pain, it is ours. No one can ever fully understand your pain…except God.

God experiences life with us each and every day, and every hour and every second of that day. God is within our hearts and knows our mind. God knows our prayers before we ask them. God experiences all the joys and pains that we experience. Day in and day out.

Of course, that did not do help ease my pain this week. Despite knowing that God is there for me, it often does not feel that way when we are suffering.

It has been said that Time Heals All Wounds. While I’m not sure that Time heals all wounds, it does help as it creates distance between ourselves and the rawness of our pain. The further away from the source of our pain that we can get with the passage of time, then the easier it seems to get. Or at least, our pain isn’t as crippling as it was before.

What has helped more than anything else this week has been my family, my friends, and my community. Knowing that they are there if I needed them was more help than most of them realized, or maybe they did.

It is far too easy when we are hurting to simple retreat into solitude. That is one of most natural instincts of any animal on this planet. When you are hurt, you seek sanctuary so that you can lick your wounds. You go to ground and hide away until the pain is gone. That is nature taking over.

I think that the therapists among us would tell me that is not healthy. I know this. We all know this. Otherwise we wouldn’t be sitting here today. We would not be a part of a community.

If humanity had never banded together for safety, then we would have never developed families, extended families, small communities, large communities, small towns, large towns, small cities, large cities, city-states, nations. No of that would have been possible without banding together to defeat a dangerous world that we did not understand. Community is what brought humankind out of the stone age and into our current state of the world, for good or for ill.

Community, and the relationship that they provide, are essential to our well-being, in our productivity, and in our survival. I recently watched a TEDtalk about a 75-year-old Harvard Study that looked at the happiness over the course of a lifetime. They started with over 700 men, with a group of Harvard students and group of young boys from South Boston. Year after year, the researchers sent these men (and evidentially their wives and children) a survey each year.

The clearest message that they discerned from mounds and mounds of data… good relationships are keep us healthy and happy. People who are more connected to their family, friends, and community are physically and mentally healthier than those that don’t. They live longer, more productive lives.

Loneliness is toxic and kills. Those people, who are more isolated from other people than they want to be, tend to be less happy, their health declines faster and their brain functions decline sooner. And at any given time, 1 out 5 Americans report to be lonely.

That is a sad thing in a society that is as individualistic as ours. We focus too much on ourselves and not enough on our community. Too often, do we think of ourselves as an island onto itself. That is not the case.

We are not islands. We are not kingdoms onto ourselves. We are not communities made of one. We are a whole. We are a community of others. We are a world created and loved by God. And that is Good News. Even, no, especially on the days that we do not feel like hearing it.

Of course, we have to be careful of what kind of community that we wish to create. History is full of ‘communities’ that have done harm and ill-will to each other and to those outside of it. With no regards to the humanity of each other, these communities do little to move us forward and so much to move us backwards.

These communities come in all shapes and sizes, in all degrees of inflicting further pain and suffering onto the world. They can be as big as an entire nation such as Germany during the Nazi regime. They can be as small as church in Kansas with only 40 members that spouts a message of hate. These are not the communities that we have been called to create. We have been called to create Spirit-filled and Spirit-led communities.

This was one of the most central themes of the ministry of Jesus. He didn’t gather a group of individuals together to teach them. He gathered a community of believers around him. It was community of people from all walks of life, from all religious backgrounds, from all social classes. His community was for anyone and everyone who believed in God, or more precisely, anyone who loved God.

Are we not asked to do the same thing? Are we not tasked to do the same thing? Should we not create communities of compassion, justice, and peace? Should we not create communities of faith, patience, and love?

Of course, I am preaching to choir here. That is why I love this community of believers. That is why this is my community of faith. That is why this is my Church.

It is important, however, that we do not become the silent majority or even worse, the silent minority. It is of the upmost importance that we continue to let the Spirit guide us as we work as a community and church towards a radical shift where love, grace, and hope outweigh fear, anger, and hate.

Marcus Borg summed it up as:

“Another central function of the church is that it exists for the sake of the world. It does not exist for its own sake. It is grounded in God who “so loved the world,” not God who so loved the church and Christians in particular. The church is to be a mediator, and instrument, of God’s passion for the world’s well-being

And the church is the community that remembers and celebrates Jesus. Without such communities, the memory of Jesus would disappear. The saying that the church is always one generation away from vanishing is true.

So it is important to be part of a Christian community – not because it’s a requirement for salvation, but because of the churches’ role as a community of transformation into an identity of Christ. God does need the church. But Christians do. God can get along without the church. But we cannot.”[1]

As Borg simply put, we cannot get along without the church. We need the church. It is our community. It is our friendship. It is our family. It is the place where our pain, our suffering, our loneliness can be transformed by the Grace and Love of Jesus.

Let us be that radical community of believers, who believes in the overwhelming power of friendship, of family, and of the importance of a community that is both Spirit-filled and Spirit led. Let us be that very vocal majority that preaches compassion, justice, and peace to a world that is desperate need for some comfort, a world who knows loneliness all too well, and a world that delivers tough weeks one after another.

Let us be that community that offers a silent shoulder to cry on, a hand to hold, an ear to listen, or simply arms to embrace each other. That is the community that Jesus has called us to create. That is the community that the world needs us to be. And that is the community that we need it to be.

You are my friends. You are my family. You are my community. You are my church. Thank you.

[1] Borg, Marcus J, Jesus: The Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary (New York, HarperOne, 2006)