Sermon of the Week
Elements of Worship: Sent Bearing Blessing
A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on July 28, 2019.
Part six of a six part sermon series on essential components of Christian Worship
#pcusa
Keywords: cell phone, waiting room, eye contact, connection with neighbor, neighbors are people, bear God’s blessing, social rational animal.
Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Luke 9:1-10
and 2 Corinthians 4:1-2, 5-15
Paul Nicolaus framed everything by painting this picture for our consideration.
“The doors open wide, you enter, and they close behind you.
As the elevator begins its ascent, you realize
it’s just you and one other person taking this ride.
The silence soon grows uncomfortable.”
So, Nicolaus wants to know:
“Pop quiz,” he asks,
“What’s your go-to move?
- Stare at your shoes.
- Pull out your cell phone?
- Make brief eye contact?
- Initiate chitchat?”
This was all in an article he wrote for National Public Radio this week.[1]
Many of us, Nicolaus suggests, tend to do just about anything to avoid conversation
or even eye contact with strangers.
This isn’t an extravert vs introvert matter.
We’re not talking about wanting to strike up a friendship
or spend an hour hanging out with someone.
Eye-contact. A hello. That sort of thing.
For many of us, the answer might be B:
pull out your cell phone, check out what’s up on snapchat.
It’s not that they’re the only factor,
but apparently smartphones make it easier to avoid other people.
A professor from Georgetown University and another from UC Irvine
conducted a research project
that showed a significant correlation between
having a smartphone in your possession
and neglecting to even exchange a brief smile with people we meet in public places.
Quote:
“Strangers smiled less to one another when they had their phones in a waiting room.”
Nicolaus wondered: Might we just be short-changing our happiness
by ignoring opportunities to connect with people around us.
What does it matter, anyway?
Well, several years ago, another study was conducted at a busy coffee shop.
Researchers asked participants to go in, grab a drink,
and half of them were asked to strike up a brief conversation with the cashier.
Those participants randomly assigned to turn the economic transaction
into a brief social interaction
left Starbucks in a better mood, said the lead researcher,
a psychologist from the University of British Columbia.
“And they even felt a greater sense of belonging in their community.”
It mirrored the research they had previously done about
random interactions with people in a dog park, or waiting for mass transit.
The researchers found that seemingly trivial encounters
with minor, tangential characters in our lives
the Starbucks barista or the guy in the dog park or the person in the elevator
just looking them in the eye, or sharing a smile, or saying hello
can affect feelings of happiness and connectedness.
Here’s how one researcher put it,
“Just that brief acknowledgement, that brief glance—
with or without a smile—
made them at least temporarily feel more socially connected.”
And it goes both ways.
By making that acknowledgement,
the one receiving the smile, the look
also feel more connected, more alive, more human.
“It takes very little to acknowledge somebody’s existence.”
///
The whole article made me pause for a bit this week.
I was reading it, on my phone, at Starbucks.
I noted the irony.
I immediately asked myself if I had been kind to the cashier.
I couldn’t remember, honestly, if I had.
I was checking my email.
(I was, by the way.
I thanked him for the order,
and complimented his somewhat ornate, flowery shirt.)
But there is something very elemental, it seems to me,
that Nicolaus was trying to say in his article.
It takes very simple gestures to connect with other people.
Looking at them.
Acknowledging them.
Maybe smiling at them.
And these things have impact and import far beyond the energy we spend to do them.
They help people feel recognized, and affirmed, and in some way human.
They help US feel connected to other people,
attentive to others
ready to observe not just what is around us
but WHO is around us.
There is power in a simple look, a gentle smile, a quick hello.
Nicolaus, and others, apparently,
are concerned about the basic elements of our social fabric
the things that bind us together into community
and they’ve gone looking at the basics.
Philosophers and theologians and heavy thinkers
have put their time into this as well.
For example, Aristotle described human beings as Social Rational Animals
meaning, of course, that it’s not just our capability to think and to ponder
that makes us unique,
but it is also our need to be in relation with one another.
We are inherently social creatures. [Read more…]
