Collective Effervescence

Scripture
Luke 24: 13-17 (NRSV)

The Walk to Emmaus
Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, ‘What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?’ They stood still, looking sad.

Sermon:
Our scripture features this most unusual moment, strangers talking on a road and not just talking about weather but being honest, vulnerable and sad. Brené Brown invites us to hold hands with strangers. “Hold Hands with Strangers” is the opposite of everything I have told my four year old about strangers! We grow up learning to feel strangers out and think about if we can trust them or if they are safe. Plus consent is important… we should ask before holding hands, especially with strangers. But these logistics are probably not the point; and we can take it as a metaphor for a bigger word, Collective Effervescence.
 
French Sociologist, Emile Dukhiem penned the phrase, “Collective Effervescence” as an “experience of connection, communal emotion and a sensation of sacredness that happens when we are a part of something bigger than ourselve.” (Brown, 130). These experiences shift us from a focus on self to a focus on community or group. Later researchers Brown sites weave this thread of collective Effervescence with a sensibility they name as Collective Assembly. These collective experiences link us to one another, they make us less lonely, more happy and more healthy; they help us experience meaning, peace, joy and connection.

Brown gives flesh to these theories by reminding us about how major events and gatherings of both pain and joy connect us. These moments of the collective experience are not so much when we need to cry with people we don’t know, but people with whom we are inextricably linked by a collective experience of pain, like the Challenger Shuttle explosion, the Sandy Hook School shooting, or the destruction of 911. These moments when we need to hold hands or give hugs or just gather in person, face to face. These moments remind us of our connection to one another. This connection is forged in pain and joy. These are not only tragic, but also thrilling and even surprising events of communal joy. Epic movies where we know the words or concerts where everyone sings in unison and the band drops out and there we are all together, heart pouring out, waving our hands with strangers.

We know this because we are in Nebraska where almost every fall Saturday can be a moment of collective effervescence as the football stadium fills and the marching band makes a tunnel for the team to run on… maybe it’s just me, but when you cry at pre-game you feel pretty connected to 90,000 people. And the striking thing is that most of the time I would probably disagree, a lot, with half to two-thirds of these folks in red. We probably come out on opposite sides about almost everything - but in that moment we sing and clap and cheer and hug and hold hands. That’s the power of collective effervescence that binds us up beyond the differences that divide us all the time.

I love this notion of Collective Effervescence. Not just because I think it would be a great band name, but because I think it describes what we do and why we gather here each week, or at least what we try to do each week. We gather, we sing together and pray together, we connect with ancient stories, modern poetry and we give, literally give together. That’s pretty collective, and every week we make time here to listen to one another’s moments that give life and to hear each other’s voice around the scripture. Every week Kyle and I plan Sunday services and we think about the different ways to highlight a theme or experience, the difference in learning styles and social locations and also the hope that, in our differences, we at the Abbey will connect with one another and God. And sometimes it matters and offers meaning, and sometimes it works and sometimes, well, I or you or we learn something about what we could have done differently.

Because this is a church, sometimes we do it well and other times (because we are just people) we can be awkward… at best. We say the wrong thing without meaning it, we say the harsh thing meaning it, we have agendas and ego, and we avoid pain.

Showing up is hard work for us. It’s not like a Hallmark Movie where a good cry will be contained in two hours and we know it will end happy. We don’t know what to do when other people’s pain, hope, grief or joy spills out all around us. We don’t often know what to say or what to do, which might be the start of the problem. We are not often too great at just being present for it. Letting it be what it is and allowing it to be a part of us, too. That’s why we have all kinds of stupid, theologically bankrupt phrases. They are easy… like “God has a plan” or “God wouldn't give you anything you can’t handle.” I have heard good, loving church people say these things to people in their grief and their loss, and I don’t know anyone who has said, “Thanks that was so helpful. It’s nice to know that God is so confident in my abilities.” We not only apply the quick clash to pain and grief but to joy as well. We prepare people to experience heartbreak before it happens, like “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” In fact, if you look this little proverb up, you can find one website that shows you all the sayings like it about keeping it cool and not getting your hopes up in almost every language.

Jesus was nothing like this. He sat with people. He asked questions. He had hard conversations and honest responses. He taught in parable and in practice. He reached so deeply into his tradition that he could live it out. He touched people, when no one else would. He talked about abundance and then he practiced it, he talked about filling the poor with good things, and he actually fed people. Here we find him in the text today in those hazy accounts that come after his crucifixion and resurrection. Here in the Gospel of Luke, two men are walking on the road to Emmaus and they encounter a stranger. They could have kept going, processing their grief together, ignoring the stranger… you know, like normal people. I would have said, “It was nice to meet you but we are really having an important conversation right now… so thanks… bye.” But they don’t. They include the stranger, just like Jesus would have done. And they do something else unusual… they are real with him. They talk about their real grief rather than, “Oh, the weather in Jerusalem has been so nice," or "Have you seen the price of olives?” they do what Jesus did, and they are honest. The stranger listens to them in their distress and their grief. They recount the life and death of Jesus and their bewilderment and hurt, they say, “We had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel.” They process this all together. Then there is the moment in the narrative where the stranger starts to quicken his pace and seems to be walking on and they do what Jesus taught them to do; they invite the stranger to stay with them, saying the evening is drawing near. There they are in their grief and pain and they are doing the practice that Jesus taught them, and then suddenly this stranger breaks the bread and they look again. Now this stranger is sacred, his face bears the resemblance of Christ. That collective ritual broke through, drew them together, and helped them see a stranger.

Everyone in this story is showing up, being vulnerable, engaging the collective, and then this ritual elevates the moment. If that’s not collective effervescence then I don’t know what is. That is why we gather, because the collective is hard and it takes practice. Jesus practiced his faith. When times were hard, the poetry of the Psalms and the wisdom of the prophets rolls off his tongue, and the thing that makes him powerful is not that he knows so much. It’s that he practices so much. He actually does what he reads, learns, and shares. That’s why we practice each week. So we are ready to show up and hold hands with strangers.

Brown tells the story of Sheryl Sandberg and I commend her book Option B to you. She shares the story of practice that begins on a vacation. She and her partner are on vacation, a special vacation without the kids, enjoying the day together, then they part for a moment. She thinks nothing at first of him not being in the room, but eventually the time to prepare for dinner is approaching and she seeks him out. After looking she thinks… the gym. Then she finds what I imagine is every partner’s worst nightmare. She finds him on the ground, breathless, bloody. She starts CPR, she calls for help, she takes the longest ambulance ride, she hears people say, “I am so sorry for your loss,” and she doesn’t want to let him go. She writes, “When we arrived at the cemetery, my children got out of the car and fell to the ground, unable to take another step. I lay on the grass, holding them as they wailed. Their cousins came and lay down with us all piled up in a big sobbing heap with adult arms trying in vain to protect them from their sorrow” (Brown, p134). There, piled in a heap of grief and tears and wailing, surrounded by family, she says to them “This is the second worst moment in our lives. We lived through the first and we will live through this.” She didn’t give them a cliché, she didn’t hush them, she reminded them, I think, of how resilient they are and then she began to sing a prayer from her faith; something she sang as a child, something that is a part of the service, a Jewish prayer of mourning. She began to sing and soon the adults joined her and then the children. The collective carried them in these moments.

The collective experience doesn’t minimize pain; it connects it and connects us to one another. The collective depends on showing up all the time so the songs are there when you need to hum them. It depends on the courage to know your own emotions, to be there for the emotions of others. It is hard work to be open and present but it is the call of our faith. May we have the courage to hold hands with strangers.

Prayer:

Gracious and Generous God 

We are tender and awkward, loving and true.

We are worried and unsure, weepy and wrong.

We are focused independence and worried about if we belong.

We see difference and distance, we place ourselves in order and rank.

But you call us to community, to see your face in the stranger to take heart and take hands.

You call us to our best selves, you inspire our better angels, 

You grant us renewal and resolve, 

To show up in the hard spaces and sing out songs of great love

To take heart and take hands.

© Rev. Debra McKnight, Urban Abbey