Why are We So Lonely? The Answer is at the Well

If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.

In his great book called “Sapiens,” Yuval Noah Harari
puts forward a reason why human beings have survived.
We are the only human species that has
survived hundreds of thousands of years.
There were many human species, but only we remain.
The reason, according to him, is
not muscle strength,
not our tools, and
not even our brains,
but because of our ability to tell a story.
Storytelling.

It is literally wired inside of us.
It is what enables us as human beings to gather,
not as a small group, but as large groups,
and to be able to conquer anything.
No animal, large or small, could outwit the humans
because they would gather in large groups
and always outsmart any enemy.

He maintains, about 70,000 years ago,
human beings went through a cognitive evolution.
And the cognitive evolution was when we began to tell stories.
We made things up, and those stories
allowed more people to believe in a single thing.
Money is just a story that we all agree to the same story.
Values and culture are things we have made up
and we hold on to them
in order to gather us together.
But the power of this is to understand
that we human beings are made for relationship.
We are literally wired that way.

After tens of thousands of years of evolution,
we are wired to relate.
We are wired for community.
Of course, we all know this from our COVID days
when we were cut off from each other.
And it was intolerable.
Now we are in the middle of an epidemic of loneliness
because we do not know how to get connected again.
Unfortunately, the devices that we have are isolating us further.
Smartphones claim to solve the problem,
but in fact, they are making it worse
because they disconnect us from human connection.

In Silicon Valley, where I am from,
we pride ourselves in innovation, data and efficiency.
We get more done, and we have more to do.
But unfortunately, what it is lacking
is the heart of the human condition,
and that is the human connection.

This is what we hear in today's readings,
the desire for connection.
This woman at the well goes there alone in the heat of day.
John the Evangelist is the master storyteller,
and of course, Jesus is the master storyteller himself.
There is always, with John's gospel, one layer we hear
and there is another layer below.
She goes out at noon, and she is often called
in the Eastern Church, Photina, the enlightened one,
because noon is the highest light of the day.
Remember, noon is when Jesus is hung on the cross.

He meets this woman, and what is really important
is this conversation, this dialogue.
This connection happens at the most intimate level.
She is wondering: “Why are you talking to me?”
He does not judge her.
He simply gives her something to drink.
The most human level, they connect.
And then they start to go deeper,
and deeper, and deeper is the connection.
There is a conversion moment,
a metanoia that happens, a change of heart,
where she realizes she is standing before the Messiah.

This is the first time in John's gospel
that Jesus says I am, I am he who is speaking with you,
I am the one who you are looking for.
And she goes through conversion.
What does she do?
The first thing she does
is to go to connect with her family and her friends, the community.
She cannot help but do the very thing she is wired to do.

We must be willing to have those difficult conversations
and be willing to stay at the well.
You see, the symbol of the well is
that sometimes we must have difficult conversations.
We must be willing to dialogue, genuinely dialogue.
Notice she did not run away.
She stayed at the well until she was fulfilled,
until she had this metanoia experience.
She left with an empty jar, because she was full.

Our brothers and sisters in the OCIA
are doing exactly this.
They have been coming to the well,
week after week,
asking real questions,
not hardening their hearts.
Today, the whole Church prays over them,
as God searches their hearts with tenderness
and fills them with living water.
They are Photini at the well.
And so are we.

The same thing happens in the book of Exodus today.
Moses is frustrated dealing with people,
and he raises this question up to the Lord in honest dialogue:
“What do you want me to do with these people?
They are relentless. They are nonstop complaining.”
They ask, where is God?
Are we left alone here?

God answers with a rock.
He says, touch the rock and the water will flow forth.
In other words, I am always with you.
There is nowhere that I am not already flowing.
And that is the message to all of us,
God is always with us.
If we are willing to stay in dialogue,
if we are willing to just engage, God will be there.

If we hear His voice, do not walk away,
and not, as the psalmist says, harden our heart,
but to engage and listen.
What is God calling me to do at this very moment today?
So how does that all come to us?
What does that mean for us today?
Well, here is my suggestion: this week, engage with somebody.
Have a real conversation. Put down your cell phone.
Have a real conversation, a dialogue with somebody. 

That might be your father or your mother.
That might be your son or daughter,
who live in the same house,
or your spouse, with whom you have not had
a real deep conversation in ages.
We yearn for it, my friends. We yearn for it.
Maybe it needs to be with that neighbor
who is from a different political party.
Maybe we need to stay at the well and have that dialogue,
and recognize that we are wired for this.
Let not the modern culture convince us otherwise.
We are wired to be united. We are wired to be connected. 

Anything that disconnects us, anything that divides us,
whether that be a product, a technology, or a person,
whether in political office or otherwise,
is not from Christ. That is the fact.
Anything that divides us is not from God.
We are designed in our DNA to be connected. 

So today, will you take the risk?
Will you stay at the well
and have a conversation with somebody?
Listen, lean in, and have a dialogue, a genuine conversation
that both you are yearning for. 

If today you hear His voice,
harden not your hearts.