Tinsel: Disconnection
Connect to God
Philippians 4:4-7
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. Dec. 15th, 2024
I’m an avid reader. I usually read about seventy books a year. That’s well over a book a week. So when I tell you I’m an avid reader, I do mean that. But, truthfully, in all that I read there are only a handful that stick with me like a tough piece of meat. I have to keep chewing on them until they are done. If they will be done. One of those books is a work of anthropology called How Forests Think by Eduardo Kohn. The gist of the book is he tries to explain the animism of an Amerindian tribe called the Runa using a theory of signs and symbols. Animism is the belief that spirits inhabit most things and that these spirits are personal. So, in short, he uses a theory of signs to show that to the extent that even a tree gives signs to a monkey, they are communicating, and if they are communicating they are “living” and “thinking.”
This much is way too complicated for a Sunday morning sermon and I will not be getting into it. But it’s all to say there was one part of the book that particularly struck me. He was describing a trip he had taken deep into Colombia for field work. His bus got caught in mud and they had to stop. He knew the area was prone to mudslides and imagined another one might be imminent. But to his shock neither the other passengers or the driver showed any concern for the danger. He immediately felt a great deal of anxiety and dis-ease. Looking back on the episode he realized it was because the environment had sent him a series of signs, the mud, the hill, and so on, that added up to an immanent threat. At least, by his interpretation of the signs. But no one around him showed the slightest interest in the threat. He had the experience of being thrown outside of the constellation of signs that make up the world. He felt threatened, alienated, isolated, and this feeling of threat and alienation from both the world and the others created in him a deep sense of anxiety.
The reason this section of the book struck me is it put into words, more than anything else, my own experience with anxiety. Now, everyone has their own experiences and I do not mean to delegitimize any other by sharing my own. But I began experiencing panic attacks in the fourth grade, and for all of grade school anxiety was a constant feature of my life. It did not begin to subside until my freshman year of undergrad. So that’s a substantial portion of my life where I would, daily, experience intense anxiety. And, to my knowledge, I was the only person in class who suffered in the manner that I suffered. So whenever an attack hit I felt very disconnected from the rest of the world. It was, as if, the signs I were receiving did not make sense. My inner life, did not gel with my surroundings. And one way I coped with what I was experiencing was, effectively, to shut my self off from what was going on outside of me.
I have to think my experience is more common than I grew up believing. While other people may not feel what I felt with the same intensity, I have to think many of us experience a great dis-ease when the world around us does not mesh with what we feel inside. Take this holiday season, for instance. We are being bombarded with constant messages of peace, love, joy, family, consumerism, and the like. But for some of us this is the first holiday without a loved one. Others may be experiencing family separation. Or for whatever reason just cannot get into what is called the “holiday spirit.” And that experience, that feeling that the signs the world sends us do not mesh with our inward selves, our deep feelings, can create a distinct sense of anxiety.
Alienation, loneliness, are breeding grounds for anxiety. Nothing makes us feel more anxious than being alone in a crowd.
If this is how you feel, there is not something wrong with you. This loneliness, this disconnection, is a consequence of sin in the world. But not necessarily a consequence of your sin. We are not meant to be this way. We are meant to know joy and peace in God. And that is what God wants for us.
If you feel disconnected, alienated, anxious, this holiday season Paul gives us some advice on this third Sunday in Advent. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” If the world seems alienating, connect yourself to God. After all, this whole season is really about God making himself known to us in a physical, tangible way. As we wait on Christ’s return God is willing to make himself known to you today.
In the depth of my anxiety I did not need to despair. The peace that surpasses all understanding does not necessarily make the anxiety go away. It is, after all, beyond our understanding. But it carries us onward. This world is deeply unsatisfying. Full of pain, suffering, heartache. Not much makes sense to us. And yet we may still rejoice in all things. Because at the heart of it all is love. And that love joined us in our suffering, that we may join in his victory.