Belonging
Based on Deuteronomy 26:5-10, Romans 10:9-13, Luke 4:1-13
I’d like you to take a moment this morning and remember a time when you felt like you didn’t belong. I want you to try to remember what it felt like to be shut out of a group, organization, set of possible friends or possibly a person with whom you hoped to be in a relationship. Words to describe your feelings might be sadness, depression, disorientation, anxiety, grief, loss, bitterness, anger, frustration, rejection, self-recrimination and a loss of self-esteem. Humans seek to belong to one another – it is one of the reasons that we have survived as a species for this long. Belonging gives us a sense of safety and security and helps support us when we are going through challenging times. That’s why it hurts so much when we discover we don’t belong.
Thirty years ago, a seminal paper was published in the social psychology literature entitled, “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation”. Authors Baumeister and Leary helped social scientists take a large step forward in understanding our human need to connect with one another in meaningful ways. They expanded on Sigmund Freud’s suggestion that the two main motivators in humans are sex and aggression, positing that the need to belong was every bit as potent a motivator of human interpersonal behavior as the other two.
The authors created a “belongingness hypothesis” as a way of explaining why we as a species seek to be in relationship one to another. Dr. Baumeister said in an interview, “…The core point of the belongingness hypothesis is that people have an innate motivational drive to form and maintain interpersonal bonds with other people. We called belonging a ‘need ‘rather than merely a ‘desire’ because people who fail to satisfy it suffer various mental health and physical health deficits. We framed it in terms of forming one-to-one close relationships, but it can probably be satisfied by belonging to larger groups and organizations. These desired social bonds have two aspects: frequent positive or neutral (just not negative) interactions, and an ongoing framework of mutual caring. I have no reason to think this is any more or less relevant than it was 30 years ago, or even a thousand years ago. The social environment may have changed, opportunities for connection have expanded, relationships take new forms - but the basic motivational drive is probably the same and likely equally important now as in the past….”
Social researchers in our day are reaching conclusions about interpersonal relationships that have been clearly described in the Bible, specifically, that we humans have been created by God to belong to one another and to God. Moses is teaching the people about how it is that they are to live in right relationship with God and with each other. This section of Deuteronomy contains the final teachings to the Israelites before they will enter into the Promised Land. Moses’ words remind the Israelites how they have belonged to God since the covenant with Abraham and how God has consistently heard their cries and delivered them. In response to the blessing of belonging to God, the people are to thank God by giving their best to God.
Paul, in his final letter that we have, written to the believers in Rome, teaches them about the power of their belief in Jesus the Christ and how that belief in belonging to the Body of Christ saves them. The same Lord who was Lord of the Jews is the one in whom the Gentile believers can claim belonging. When they proclaim that “Jesus is Lord” they are proclaiming that lordship over all of creation and over any human-created lord – such as the Roman Emperor. Only belonging to the Lord Jesus can bring salvation.
In the Gospel according to Luke we have the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Jesus leans into his relationship with God – into his lived experience that he belongs to God and that his trust is given to God before any other entity. Ha Satan (i.e., the devil) the “Tempter” visits Jesus after 40 days of wandering. The Tempter tries to get Jesus to break the rules which govern our world by turning stone into bread. Jesus turns to his trust in God and says that turning stones to bread is a poor substitute to trusting in God for our daily bread. Next, the Tempter suggests that he is in control of the world and can thus grant Jesus worldly power if Jesus worships him instead of God. Jesus answers that all the power in the world comes first from God whom he worships. Finally, the Tempter quotes Psalm 91 to Jesus, trying to get him to use his relationship with God to save himself. Jesus tells the devil that even though he belongs to God and trusts God, that it is not appropriate to put his relationship with God to some arbitrary test.
Jesus, Paul and Moses teach us the power of belonging, first and foremost to God, and then to other children of God. When we find belonging, then we can build strong relationships which can see us through challenging and troubling times. When we find belonging in and through God, then we understand our interconnectedness – that we are all part of an interdependent and larger whole. This is what the poet John Donne wrote in 1624 in his essay “Meditations XVII” that we know by its first line, “No man is an island.” It states, “No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thine own Or of thine friend's were. Each man’s death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.” Donne is reflecting on the truth that the Apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Corinth some 1600 years earlier that when one part of the Body of Christ suffers, then we all suffer; when one part rejoices, then we all rejoice with it.
Yet, like our spiritual ancestors the Israelites, we seem to have forgotten – or we discount - how important it is to live into our belonging to God and to each other. We know, through social research by Dr. Robert Putnam and others, that the amount of social capital, the resilience and trust that is gained through building and maintaining interpersonal relationships, is at a 60-year low. Participation in social activities like bowling leagues, Scouting, PTA membership, faith community membership and attendance, neighborhood gatherings and dinner parties, bridge groups, political and social activism, and volunteerism of any sort peaked in 1965, was static in the 1970s and has been dropping steadily since 1980.
However, the human need to belong is still as strong as ever. We see that as people begin to come back to our faith communities and seek to belong with us. We celebrate each time a new person or family explores their need to belong to God and other humans in community with us. We grieve when people leave us, and yet we know that they remain in the larger and eternal Body of Christ and thus we are not diminished. It would be wrong to conclude, however, that there has not been a societal cost associated with a significant decrease over the last 60 years in the number of people who belong to faith communities and understand that they also belong to God. As Burmeister and Leary noted in their paper, people have an innate motivational drive to form and maintain interpersonal bonds with other people. When that motivation for belonging is thwarted, then people suffer mentally and physically – they suffer like we did in those times where we just didn’t fit in or weren’t allowed to belong.
We have an opportunity to show the world around us what it means to be unconditionally accepted, to belong to God and to each other in a way that lifts everyone up and builds strong, loving and resilient people and communities. When we choose to belong to God, then we begin to trust that God is the one place of belonging where we can grow into the fullness of who we are created to be. The human need for belonging exists, just like it has for millennia. Let us employ our need to belong to motivate us to move ever closer to God and each other, to bring God our best every day, to say thank you for all that God continually does for us and our world, and to realize (like Jesus modeled) that worldly power and possessions are a poor substitute for God. Humans need belonging, let us be the believers who help them find their way back to a right relationship with God. Amen!