Adult Sunday School - September 10

Our Sunday School lesson for Sunday, September 10 begins with news that the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has identified loneliness as an epidemic. We explore how our faith speaks to us when we feel most isolated and alone. 

U.S. Surgeon General Urges America to Address 'Epidemic' of Loneliness

In the News

The U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is on a mission to address what he calls "an epidemic of loneliness" in America that can cause sufferers to lower their sense of self-esteem and to minimize their worth. Isolation can lead people to believe that others do not care about them. 

Studies have shown that loneliness impacts more than a person's emotions; it has been associated with negative health conditions, including high blood pressure, stroke, dementia, lung and heart disease, arthritis, depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, impaired mobility and suicide. Isolation increases the risk of premature death by 26-32%. 

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, about half of adults in the country reported measurable levels of loneliness, Murthy said.

Loneliness has negative impacts on communities as well as on individuals. "Social disconnection" is associated with reduced worker productivity, poor academic performance, diminished civic engagement and alienation from others that can result in greater polarization and group conflict. "When we're separated from one another, when we don't know each other well, then it's easier to hate someone else, it's easier to think of them as the enemy or the opposition." 

Loneliness happens, Murthy said, when "the connections that I need in my life are actually greater than the connections that I have." Our need for human connection is like our need for food and water: essential for our survival, he explained. We need relationships with people who allow us to be ourselves, with whom we can be open and vulnerable. "Our connections with others are the buffers to help reduce the stressors in our lives."

Meaningful, authentic relationships, strong social connections and a sense of belonging strengthen the immune system, which helps the body fight off infections. Such relationships, sociologist James Michigan wrote, can provide us with emotional support, practical help, a sounding board, wise counsel, information, companionship, and a sense of acceptance, connection and belonging. 

But according to a study published in the American Sociological Review, most Americans have only one close friend, and one in four people has no friend at all.

In one of Charles Schulz's Peanuts cartoons, Linus was afraid to be alone in the library. Charlie Brown tried to explain to him that everyone is lonely in some place or other.
        "Where is that place for you?" Linus asked.
        Charlie pondered the question for a moment, then answered: "Earth."

Having wealth does not necessarily protect a person from feelings of loneliness, either. Murthy gave as an example the case of a man who considered winning the lottery one of the worst things that ever happened to him, because he lost touch with people he cared about and moved to a gated community in which he didn't know his neighbors. Isolated, he soon developed serious health issues that had not bothered him before.

A person identified only as GMA from Austin, Texas, commented on a New York Times column entitled "Social Interaction Is Critical for Mental and Physical Health": "I work from home and never see anyone. Turns out my family is too busy with their own lives and I only see them on holidays. I can go for days and weeks without talking to another human being. And you know what? It's killing me. I never thought I could feel so lonely. I have tried to make friends but I'm not very good at it, and now I have health issues preventing me from volunteering. Sometimes I amuse myself by wondering how long it will take 'til someone finds my body when I die. I make sure to leave plenty of food and water for my cat, just in case."

Murthy told Katie Couric that we have the tools we need to address the loneliness epidemic. Strengthening social infrastructure that aids the development of healthy relationships by supporting public libraries, schools, parks, service organizations, groups with shared interests in sports, arts and culture, spirituality, etc., is the first step in decreasing loneliness in our society, Murthy asserted.

Second, he said we have to intentionally create sacred times and spaces (technology-free zones) in our lives when we put aside our devices so we can protect activities that are important for our physical and emotional health, such as sleep, exercise, and undistracted, in-person time with people.

Third, Murthy suggested that we each take 15 minutes every day to rebuild a connection to other people. That could mean making contact with a neighbor, coworker, student, relative, community member or new acquaintance, just to ask how they are doing, to get to know and understand them better.

Fourth, Murthy advised us that "looking for ways ... to help others, to serve others … is one of the most powerful antidotes to loneliness" (our own and that of others) … because it helps us "forge a connection with them and we remind ourselves of all the value that we bring to the world." 

Even a smile can change someone's day, and yours as well, Murthy said.

More on this story can be found at these links:

Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation 2023: The Surgeon General's Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community. HHS.gov
Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, by Vivek H. Murthy. Google Books
An 'Epidemic' of Loneliness Threatens Health of Americans, Surgeon General Says. Smithsonian Magazine
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on America's Epidemic of Loneliness (Video 16:50). Amanpour and Company
Surgeon General: We Have Become a Lonely Nation. It's Time to Fix That. The New York Times

The Big Questions

1. When, if ever, have you experienced loneliness most deeply? What factors contributed to your feeling lonely? 

2. What are some steps people might take to help alleviate feelings of loneliness? What have you found most effective in your own life?  

3. What role does your faith play in how you handle isolation or loneliness? What role, if any, has your faith community played in helping you cope with such concerns? 

4. What scriptures have you found helpful during lonely times of testing and temptation?

5. Where do you see the community of faith answering the human need for friendship, love, belonging and affirmation of worth and significance? Who in your community might be feeling isolated or lonely? How can churches help build communities where lonely people can have meaningful in-person interactions that might lessen the frequency and intensity of experiences of loneliness? 

Confronting the News With Scripture and Hope
Here are some Bible verses to guide your discussion:

Genesis 2:18
Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner." (For context, read Genesis 2:15-25.)

Technically, Adam wasn't alone in the garden. He had the companionship of God and the animals. Yet when God brought the animals to the man to see what he would call them, "for the man there was not found a helper as his partner" (v. 20). 

So what was that "aloneness" to which God objected? Author Tricia Gates Brown writes, "Loneliness has been defined as being 'destitute of sympathetic companionship.'" Perhaps God meant that the man should not be the only human being, the only one of his species. Adam needed someone to identify with his humanity. So God created a woman to fill the void in the man's life (vv. 21-25).

To become fully human, to become the people God designed us to be, people made in the image of God, we need to be in relationship with others who are like us, living for each other, just as the members of the Trinity exist in relationship with each other, for one another. 

Relationships with other humans benefit us by relieving loneliness, but they also help us move from self-centeredness to love for others. 

Questions: What Bible characters relieved other lonely people, bringing out the best in others? Who has filled that role in your life, to make you a less self-centered, more loving person? What would you like to say to that person or persons?

Genesis 32:24-26, 29-30
Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, "Let me go, for the day is breaking." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me." ... Then Jacob asked him, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "For I have seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved." (For context, read Genesis 32:22-31.)

Jacob had a lot of people in his clan. He had two wives, two concubines, 11 children, servants, shepherds and slaves. No doubt it was virtually impossible for him to find a quiet place anywhere in his tents. 

The night before he was to meet with his brother, Esau, from whom he had been estranged for years, Jacob spent the night wrestling alone with a man. The text implies that Jacob's opponent in the wrestling match was none other than God.

However many close friends or relatives we may have, when it comes right down to it, the really tough struggles of life often take place when we feel very alone: the slave girl Hagar, cast out into the wilderness with her son, Ishmael, without adequate provisions; Joseph, sold into slavery by his own brothers, falsely accused and condemned, forgotten in prison; Daniel in the lions' den; Jesus, fasting for 40 days alone in the desert, facing off against the devil. 

Whether our struggles be with temptation, physical pain, career decisions, grief, doubt or anything else, no one else can take our place in wrestling with them. Others can comfort us, counsel us, care for us, commiserate with us and even cry with us, but they cannot be us. And, as Jacob discovered, no one can take our place in coming to terms with God either. 

When Jacob's solitary, night-long struggle finally came to an end, he was marked with a permanent limp. Our lonely struggles leave their marks on us too. 

But Jacob was also left blessed. He encountered God in his loneliest struggle, and lived to tell the tale!

Questions: Share about a time when you encountered God in your loneliness. What did you learn about yourself in that experience? What did you learn about God? 

Did you come away from that experience with anything like Jacob's limp? If so, what is the nature of that injury, and what purpose does it serve in your life? What blessings might we experience in a lonely encounter with God?

Luke 6:12-13
Now during those days he went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles. (For context, read Luke 6:12-16.)

As Jesus launched his public ministry, he gathered disciples around him, teaching them through the spoken word and by example. One could argue that in some ways those disciples made his job more difficult, and that he might have been better off alone, without them. At times when he needed them most, they failed him. Nonetheless, he intentionally began to build a team that would implement his ministry of reconciliation.

Questions: Why didn't Jesus just "fly solo" when he began his public ministry? What did he hope to gain from building relationships with others? What did he want his disciples to take away from the experience of working together?

Luke 15:2
And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." (For context, read Luke 15:1-7.)
Luke 19:7
All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner." (For context, read Luke 19:1-10.)
Galatians 2:11-12
But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood self-condemned, for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. (For context, read Galatians 2:6-12.)

Jesus was criticized for befriending tax collectors and sinners, with whom he dared to sit at table. Luke 19:1-10 provides one such instance, in which Jesus extended a hand of friendship to Zacchaeus, a despised tax collector. Jesus didn't wait for Zacchaeus to clean up his act, but took the initiative, offering him a relationship that Zacchaeus sorely needed.

Previously despised as one who collaborated with the occupying Roman force to collect burdensome taxes, Zacchaeus no longer felt invisible. Jesus had recognized him as "a son of Abraham," giving the tax collector the sense that God accepted him, with all his faults, as Ephesians 1:6 (KJV) says: "To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved." He no longer needed to feel alone. His relationship with God healed, Zacchaeus could then begin to make amends for the ways he had injured others. 

In Galatians 2, Paul says that the leaders of the early church acknowledged that all people, whether Jew or Gentile, are saved by faith through Christ. That meant that Jews no longer were bound by certain restrictions barring them from sharing a meal with non-Jews. But Cephas (aka Peter) changed his behavior to accommodate hard-liners who objected to such inclusivity. Paul considered this shift hypocritical and against the gospel, and he wasn't afraid to say so. Paul might have raised Jesus' own practice of eating meals with outcasts as evidence of the kind of welcome Jesus' followers should extend to others. 

When Ann and Tom Bourke were looking for ways to connect with neighbors who might be interested in exploring the teaching of Jesus, they decided to put a table and chairs in their front yard to create an inviting space for conversation. In the morning, Tom will often sit outside reading his Bible and praying for neighbors. When people stop to inquire what he's doing, he answers their questions. The Bourkes say that some open up about their lives, which can lead to deeper discussions about spiritual matters. 

Questions: What do you think it meant to Zacchaeus to hear Jesus say, "He too is a son of Abraham"? When did you first become aware of the grace God offers us in Christ? How did experiencing God's welcome change you?

What do you suppose happened to Peter's relationship with the Gentile believers after he stopped eating with them? Have you ever shut certain people out of your life or church because you were afraid of what others would say or do if you openly welcomed them? When you see this kind of behavior in other believers, what should you do?

How important is sharing meals together for your church? What happens when you eat together? Brainstorm how you can increase opportunities for eating together, and how those times at the table might be emotionally and spiritually nourishing as well as physically sustaining.

For Further Discussion

1. Poet James Weldon Johnson begins the story of creation in God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse this way: 

And God stepped out on space,

                         And he looked around and said:

                         I'm lonely --

                         I'll make me a world.

Presbyterian minister and religion professor, Diana C. Gibson, commented, "This may not be exactly how the authors of Genesis put it, but I think Johnson's creation story has some basic biblical truth nonetheless. Why else would God start off the ten commandments with, 'Love me with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength'? Why, except, that God was lonely, and that's why God created a world. This commandment, also identified by Jesus as one of the two most important commandments, makes it clear that after creating the world, God wants something from the world in return. God wants to be in relation with us in return."
            The Wired Word team member Frank Ramirez remarked: "I like the way David, the lonely shepherd, battles the loneliness of his life through the 23rd Psalm, recognizing God's presence as a shepherd, just like him, and perhaps including God in a fellowship of lonely shepherds. Regardless of the lonely nature of David's youth, God is present to negate his loneliness."
        Does your theology allow for God to be lonely? Why or why not? Might it require you to redefine loneliness, and if so, how?

2. Reflect on this, from Mother Teresa: "An alcoholic in Australia told me that when he is walking along the street, he hears the footsteps of everyone coming toward him or passing him becoming faster. Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty."
        "We have drugs for people with diseases like leprosy. But these drugs do not treat the main problem, the disease of being unwanted."

3. Consider this, from history professor and best-selling author Kate Bowler: "Pain makes us feel alone, separated, and cut off from an imagined normalcy that everyone else seems to be able to enjoy. And between quarantines and bereavements, home-schooling and financial stress, it is not surprising that we are in a pandemic of loneliness.
        "When a group of young moms died around the same time, clinicians Dr. Justin Yopp and Dr. Don Rosenstein wanted to refer their widowed spouses to a grief support group … but none existed. So they started their own. They discovered what can happen in the shift from 'I' to 'WE.' It was a simple move, but had a profound effect because though they were still struggling, they were no longer alone."

4. Discuss this, from Dutch priest and author Henri J. M. Nouwen's meditation in Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith:
        "Consolation is a beautiful word. It means 'to be' (con-) 'with the lonely one' (solus). To offer consolation is one of the most important ways to care. Life is so full of pain, sadness, and loneliness that we often wonder what we can do to alleviate the immense suffering we see. We can and must offer consolation. We can and must console the mother who lost her child, the young person with AIDS, the family whose house burned down, the soldier who was wounded, the teenager who contemplates suicide, the old man who wonders why he should stay alive.
        "To console does not mean to take away the pain but rather to be there and say, 'You are not alone, I am with you. Together we can carry the burden. Don't be afraid. I am here.' That is consolation. We all need to give it as well as to receive it."

5. When Michael Armus Sr., went to the Bank of the West in Woodland, California, to make a deposit May 26, he noticed a man covering his face with his shirt at a teller's window. Although Armus didn't know the man, he recognized him as a friend of his daughter's who had lived in the same apartment complex where Armus resided about two decades earlier. Sensing something was wrong, Armus approached 43-year-old Eduardo Plasencia, who seemed agitated and depressed.
        Armus asked him, "What's wrong? You don't have a job?"
        "There's nothing in this town for me," Plasencia replied. "I just want to go to prison."
        Plasencia allegedly had passed a note to the teller, which said that he had a gun and was robbing the bank. "I don't want to hurt anyone," he said.
        "He seemed to be depressed, the way he was talking," Armus said. So he asked if they could step outside. After leaving the bank, Armus hugged the distressed man, who started crying. Woodland police apprehended Plasencia, who was not armed, on the scene.
        The day after the incident, Armus, wearing a T-shirt with the motto, "Love God, Love People, Impact Lives," said he is thinking about visiting Plasencia in jail.
        "Love overcomes all things. People don't realize that," Armus said. "Try to be kind to somebody. It makes a difference."
        How might loneliness have been a factor in Plasencia's decision to take an action he thought would lead to his incarceration? What seemed to motivate Armus to reach out to Plasencia? What was the role of making connections in de-escalating the situation and addressing Plasencia's feelings of desperation?

6. Comment on this from Paul Prather, pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling, Kentucky: "Christianity is a team sport. Permit me a humble analogy. You might see yourself as a terrific baseball pitcher. But if you only throw baseballs in your backyard at a plywood cutout, you won't progress. You're not even really playing baseball. To discover the full extent of your abilities, to understand the true game, you need a catcher, a coach, infielders and outfielders -- and even someone standing in the batter's box ready to swat your best fastball right back at you. Same with being a Christian. You can't do it well by yourself."

7. Denis Estimon, a senior at Boca Raton Community High School in Boca Raton, Florida, felt isolated as a first grader sitting alone at lunch after immigrating from Haiti.
        "It's not a good feeling, like you're by yourself," Estimon said. "That's something that I don't want anybody to go through." So he started a club called We Dine Together. Club members seek out students who are alone, whether ostracized or simply ignored, to invite them to join them at the lunch table.
        Transfer student, Allie Sealy, knew what it felt like to have to sit alone at lunchtime.
        "Excruciating," she said. "Meeting someone who actually cares and listens to what you have to say, really makes a difference," she added. Now Sealy reaches out to new students or others on the fringe of the school community.
        How can people transform their own experience of loneliness into a ministry to other lonely people?

8. Some scholars hold that the doctrine of the Trinity shows that it is in the divine DNA to live in relationship. If that is so, and if, as scripture teaches, we really are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), then interpersonal relationships with God, with other humans and with the rest of God's creation must be essential to our health, well-being and identity as well.
        Where in scripture do you see evidence that God made us for relationships with God, other humans and the rest of God's creation? What should we do with this information?

Responding to the News

Brainstorm ways your church can provide opportunities to strengthen friendships and minimize isolation and loneliness that could have a negative impact on church and community members. Begin to plan how you could implement just one of the ideas your discussion generated.

Or consider what you individually can do to alleviate feelings of loneliness and isolation of a member of your church or community. Then do it!

Prayer suggested by Psalm 25:16-17; Psalm 27:10; Psalm 142:4; Hebrews 13:5; Romans 8:38-39

When no one takes notice of us or cares for us, O God,
we thank you that nothing can separate us from your love in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Even if our own fathers and mothers forsake us,
we thank you that you have promised never to leave us or abandon us.
Turn to us and be gracious to us, O God, when we feel lonely.
Relieve the troubles of our hearts, and bring us out of our distress,
so that we may be a blessing to others. Amen.

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