Faith: This Pentecost, remember to love the stranger as a cure for loneliness
You might imagine a pastor eulogizing a stranger on occasion. As a seminary intern at a church where the mean age of its members hovered around 70, I presided over a bevy of funerals. Before and after classes, I’d visit the congregation’s shut-ins and those hospitalized.
As a result, I knew those I eulogized quite well. Most resided in a small Western Pennsylvanian town dependent on a once-thriving railroad industry — one that, like its constituents, had begun to fade away. It wasn’t until I received a call to a church at the other end of the country in Silicon Valley that I began eulogizing strangers regularly.
The repressed laughter coming from the huddle of sisters of one such stranger led me to deduce that I must’ve repeatedly referred to their deceased brother, during my first California graveside, with a name none of them recognized. I felt like the neophyte cleric in the movie, “Four Weddings and a Funeral” — the one blessing the first couple he marries “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spigot.” I got better because … well, we learn from our mistakes.
The next stranger I eulogized was in his early 20s, a one-time member of the church youth group I’d just begun to lead — a victim of suicide. I would not have the trappings of the church to undergird what words of comfort I might muster.
I don’t remember a word I said, only the challenge I faced. In the words of the Old Testament book of Leviticus, I had to not only get to “know the heart” of this stranger but the heart of this strange community with a novel technological cosmic vision.
A church member pronounced my effort “a winning success.” Unaccustomed to the rating of eulogies, I nonetheless appreciated that I’d passed some sort of test consistent with the values of my new home. Still, I doubted that I’d met the biblical mandate. Nothing I said reflected the heart of this successful young man who decided to call life quits.
What I’d done instead was leave the myth of rewarded ambition and the “good life” driving the pulse of his world intact. Hearing my congregant's supportive words, I knew I remained on the learning curve when it came to generating eulogies for strangers.
The 11th chapter of the New Testament Book of Hebrews, the so-called “faith chapter,” has always spoken to me. The Episcopal service I now participate in alludes to it at the end of weekly worship. It suggests that the lives of the original Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs show us that a yearning for “a country where no one is a stranger” drives the life of faith.
This week, Christians celebrate Pentecost, a word derived from the Greek for “fifty” — 50 days after Passover. It commemorates Jesus’ disciples coming out of hiding to speak to strangers about his teachings. Some, according to the author of “Acts” even spoke in strange tongues. This occurred during the Jewish feast of Sukkot or “The Feast of the Tabernacles.” During this holiday, celebrants build temporary shelters or tents (sukkots) to remind each generation: “our ancestors once wandered in the desert as strangers” (Leviticus 23:42-43).
Recently I heard a rabbi on NPR emphasize that “knowing the heart of the stranger” functions as a core principle of Judaism. It prompted me to read Rabbi David Jaffee’s essay, “Standing with the Stranger.” Jaffee suggests that this precept accounts for why we find the Jewish-American community featured so prominently in social justice efforts like the Civil Rights and Labor movements of the 20th century. Jews remembered that the Torah commands no less than 36 times that newly empowered communities treat absolute strangers with absolute dignity because they, too, were once strangers in a strange land.
The rabbi makes clear that this teaching is not just talking about empathy here. He quotes a section of the rabbinical teaching of the Talmud, the Gemara, which assumes that those who’ve known oppression will oppress —almost instinctually. The mitzvah or “good deed” of treating strangers ethically resists this tendency. Awareness of this impulse, the Gemara contends, accounts for the dogged repetition of the Torah’s command to “know the heart of the stranger.”
U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, recently released an advisory on what he calls “an epidemic of loneliness.” In it, he lists the health risks of those in this country experiencing “social disconnection.” He insists that premature death from heart disease, dementia and stroke for those socially disconnected proves comparable to daily smoking. He concludes from his study of this silent invisible menace: “When we are less invested in one another, we are more susceptible to polarization and less able to pull together to face the challenges that we cannot solve alone.”
Our inability to know the heart of the stranger is killing us.
Both Jaffee’s exposition of ancient texts and Murthy’s contemporary scientific analysis lead to the same conviction: Knowing the stranger is not only about the stranger. The Talmud insists our own moral integrity is at stake. Medical research suggests that isolating ourselves from others, including strangers, can tragically affect our personal health.
Allow me to now return to the young rising tech star for whom I offered a eulogy. By all accounts, Jesse seemed connected — economically, socially, culturally, and, through his work, technologically. A photo in his office pictured a tall, fit, handsome, confident young male in a white tuxedo shirt with cufflinks and bow tie atop worn blue jeans. He stood over the pool table in the middle of his office, armed with a cue and a smile that projected a bright future.
One of Jesse’s associates came upon me studying the photo. “Casual elegance,” he explained, “Jesse was a leader in sporting casual elegance.” This comment along with the overall (to me odd) upbeat demeanor of those sipping California varietals and happily chatting away at his memorial led me to believe that what these folks expected from me was a casual elegy.
That is, in the end, what they got though perhaps not what they needed. A reflection upon what weighed on Jessie’s heart might have served us all better — one considering the possibility that he came to realize that the global internet solution promising to bring us all closer together didn’t, in fact, work for him or anyone.
We remain in as much need as ever of Pentecost — in need of Spirit to open our hearts to each other. Sadly, such a connection will never come from a casual text, post, tweet or email. It can only emerge from a belief in and conscious effort for a country where no one is a stranger.
Terry Dawson is an ordained Presbyterian minister and former adjunct faculty member of San Francisco Theological Seminary.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Celebrate the Pentecost by loving the stranger
