Isolation
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Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. -John 14:27
I was talking to my older son this weekend about his friends. He was saying how he notices his peers, as a whole, are becoming more and more anxious. This observation of his is confirmed by recent studies on the rising anxiety levels of teens and young adults. When you consider all the overwhelming problems the world is facing, I guess it’s not too hard to imagine where this anxiety is coming from.
These verses from the gospel of John offer some very well known words of Jesus. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Do not let them be afraid. Jesus is offering us, his disciples, a peace that is somehow not like the peace the world expects peace to be like. It’s a peace that passes all understanding, as Paul once described it.
Is it possible to not let our hearts be troubled these days, when children are shot in their schools, the climate is warming faster than originally predicted, war is taking hold in Europe, the pandemic just doesn’t seem to want to quit and our politics are more fractious than ever? We may understand with our heads that worrying gets us nowhere, but somewhere between our minds and our jittery hearts, the message can sometimes get lost.
We need to remember that Jesus speaks with God’s perspective - and through his deep and nourishing relationship with God. This is the perspective and the support that allows him, and those of us who practice following him, to detach from our own lives and struggles just enough to begin noticing the lives and struggles of others around us in community. As we practice the way of Jesus, therefore, our daily concerns turn from always focusing on ourselves and our own perceptions to turning outward and to the presence of God and others. Any obsessive fears of keeping ourselves safe begin to turn into seeking to be with and serve others. The pain of our world today, rather than becoming all consuming, begins to resonate in our understanding with the pain that humanity has always suffered, which plants us more firmly in the context of history and community. Our ‘why me’s?’ eventually change to ‘why not me?’ Practicing the way of Jesus makes us understand that we are never all alone. Others have walked this path before and others are all around us know, walking right along with us.
As long as manipulative powers and principalities can keep us focused solely on our own fears and our own personal discomforts, our focus will remain on ourselves and our isolation, anxiety will only increase and our trust in fruitless idols will continue. But we don’t have to get caught up in that ever-repeating downward cycle. We can instead practice taking the wider view, seeking a closer and more nourishing relationship with God, as known to us in Jesus and the Holy Spirit (who we celebrate this Sunday!) We can practice community by sharing what is in our hearts with others and listening to what is in theirs. And by practicing both detachment and community, we will come to discover more often a peace that passes all understanding despite the ups and downs of this world. Our anxieties will diminish and we will know more and more where our true treasure is to be found.
