Rev. Dr. M. Taylor Bach

Acts 2:42-47 John 17:6-12

Did you know that you are bombarded by 35,000 messages every day? That is what research tells us. So it is almost as if we have in front of us a door with a handle on the inside only and we get to open it up to what message comes in. And we can close it to exclude messages and keep them out. We also open it up to give others messages from our self. We are in charge of the door handle! We have some power over what comes in and what goes out. There is a sickness in society today, researchers tell us; the sickness is that people are disconnecting from each other. It is no wonder when you register the fact that when we are bombarded by 35,000 pieces of information. How do you tell which ones you want to let in and which ones you want to give out? What is your criteria? So we shut down and disconnect.

When I think about this, I think of what an impossible task it is for the church. How do we reach people? How do we get people to open their door to us and hear our messages? How do we get them to listen when we are not as entertaining as some of the messages that come their way? We are not fancy but we are good news! We have the Good News. So there is in this world a great disconnect. The great disconnect is our inability to connect with each other because we shut down and our inability to connect with God because we exclude Him. At times, we close the door to Him and don't even hear Him in the din and clamor of so many messages.

In the scripture readings that Michael Sprague read this morning, we discover in the first reading what we like to call the “Acts 2 Church”  a description of the early Christian church found in Acts chapter 2. In that description, we get the idea that Christians really connected with one another. They really valued what each other had to say and they shared that Good News together. I wonder now how close we are to being an Acts 2 Church. Do we really connect with one another? Do we hear each other? Do we listen to each other? What about the second reading where it described Jesus' prayer for His disciples? As Jesus prayed for His disciples, He was praying that the Holy Spirit come and enable them to connect with one another and enable them to connect with God the Father through Himself. So do we open the door to the Holy Spirit? Do we open the door to Jesus Christ? Do we let them come through? Do we let their message in? How do we handle all of that?

The Great Disconnect. Our society is disconnected. Do you know there are more lonely people now than there have ever been? That is an amazing awareness. When Jan and I go visiting nursing homes, we find that people in the nursing homes have been warehoused by their families. Their families can go great periods of time without connecting with them, without seeing them. Put them in a nursing home and they feel good about the fact that they've taken care of them and then don't have to see them again. Isn't that awful? But that happens a lot. This is one sinful way of disconnecting with parents and the elderly. There are a lot of ways that we are disconnected with each other.

I am reminded of the fact that we now have created social networks over the internet. Some authors talk about the “virtual church”. Do you know what the virtual church is? It is people who no longer come to churches like ours, local churches, but they watch religious services on the internet instead. Do they connect with Jesus Christ through the internet? Are they experiencing the love of community through the internet? Well, let's examine that a little bit. Recently my wife discovered Face Book. Within a very shore time, she had 285 “friends” registered on her Face Book page. But she discovered that some people had 2,000 friends on Face Book. There even seems to be a competition regarding how many “friends” you can sign up. Do you remember that I told you some time ago about the research that says that we really can only have about 60 friends that we really connect with? And of those 60, there will be a close group like Jesus had of twelve and in that group, maybe three that we really bond with. Is there a value to something like Face Book? Yes. What Jan has discovered with her Multiple Sclerosis is that there are days when she can't get out or do much because she feels so badly. So she can get on the social network and through the internet, connect with old classmates and friends and talk to them and she makes a wonderful connection. Yet at the same time, I am sitting on the couch wondering where my wife is! Oh, but she's got one on me, too, because during March Madness, when there are sixty four basketball games (pause - laughter) being broadcasted, she wonders where her husband is! So there is a gift in technology and there is a danger in technology. Technology can connect us with each other and technology can remove us from each other. It is no wonder there is so much loneliness in the world. If you are in the situation where you're alone at home and the only contact with the outside world is television or the internet, it can be a great gift in that circumstance. Or because of the lack of human connectedness, face-to-face connectedness, a person can feel very lonely with that kind of situation.

How do we connect with one another? What is the way to connect with one another? If we want to become an Acts 2 Church where we really experience community, not just virtual community but real community, then we have things that we need to work on. In my counseling profession, people used to come to me who were single and tell me, “I don't know how to get dates. I don't know how to connect with other people.” And I would give them a piece of advice that I will share with you because it isn't just about getting dates, it is about building community and connecting with one another. It is something we can do right here at Pilgrim Church, and that is that creating connection with people requires two things: The first thing it requires is sharing history, personal history  what's gone on in your life. It could be as recent as “How was your day today?” or it could be “What happened fifteen, twenty, thirty years ago?” but sharing personal history. Then the second thing is sharing how you feel about that history. When you share personal history and your feelings about history, as you ask for the other person you are with to share their history and their feelings about history, you make a connection. Isn't that what God wants us to do? Think about it. How does God share His history with us? The answer is&through His Bible and through prayer  two major ways. Our denomination's motto says, “God is still speaking.” Is God still speaking to you? Do you have the door closed or is the door open? Do you read the Bible and understand that personal history of God and how He interacts with we humans? The Bible is God's love story with us. The only way that love is ever created is through history. We acknowledge what we did with one another. “We experienced this with each other.” “Wasn't this a wonderful moment?” “Didn't we enjoy this time?” “Wasn't this exciting?” As we shared that and shared how we felt about it... “when we did this it was joyous.” “When we did this, it was sad.” “When we did this, it was exciting.” “When we did this, we thoroughly loved one another.” That is how it works. So we are to get into the Bible and find God's personal history with we humans. As we get into the Bible, we discover Jesus, God the Father and the Holy Spirit sharing how they feel about us. How they are happy when we are good. How they are sad when we misbehave. How they are angry when we really misbehave. All of this is God's way of connecting, connecting greatly with us.

When we approach God in prayer&what is prayer? It is simply conversation with God. We talk to God about our history, what is going on in our life. We tell Him what has just been happening in our life. We tell Him our feelings about it. “God, I've just gotten through this major illness.” “I am in this major illness right now.” “I feel terrible.” “Will you help me?” or “God, I just experienced a wonderful thing. Thank you, God! Thank you. I feel such gratitude for you for what I just experienced with you.”

Last night, Jan and I were at a graduation party of one of our parishioners. As we sat in the crowd, we were mostly with people of their extended family we don't know. I was very aware that I was going to preach this sermon this morning and so as we sat there, I was thinking to myself, “How do we connect? Are we connecting at all? Are these just talking heads in front of me? Do I really care about what they are saying? Is there a connection here?” I noticed that finally the conversation got going with a few of them where they shared their personal history&”Where did you go to college or school?” “What kind of work do you do?” “How do you feel about it?” Before long, they were sharing their personal history and one episode that they would share would trigger an episode in my life and I would say, “That reminds me of the time when I did such and such or I experiences such and such and this is the way I felt about it,” and before long, we were connected. We were talking and listening. We had a really enjoyable time with the extended family of one of our parishioners. That is how it works. That is how community gets built. So I really want to urge you to become an Acts 2 Church here at Pilgrim. Become highly interested in one another. Find out each person's history; share some of your own. Find out how they are feeling about theirs. Share how you are feeling about yours. Instead of disconnecting, instead of only being a virtual church, we will be celebrating real church. I mean really real church because this is what it is all about&connection with God and one another. I don't believe we can do that effectively without regular church attendance in our local church.

I told you before that if I found one word to describe our congregation, that one word would be FRIENDSHIP. So I know as I've observed the last eight years that Jan and I have been here that I've observed a whole lot of what I am talking about already going on. But what I want to urge with you is to put some intentionality behind it. Think about it. It is really nothing more than really caring about each other. We build community by caring, caring about each other's personal history, whether that history is yesterday or twenty or thirty years ago. Caring about each other's feelings, how each other feels about what is going on their life right now or what went on in their life earlier that determines how they are right now. Because how they were twenty or thirty years ago and what happened in their life twenty, thirty years ago may very well determine who they are at this particular moment because of the decisions made about one's self at that time.

So what is my message this morning? Everyone can open the door. Everyone can close the door. We can all be open to one another and connect or we can close the door and be disconnected. But let's here at Pilgrim Church connect with one another and most importantly, make sure we are connecting with God.