“Don’t be a stranger!” It’s a fond farewell, spoken by one friend to another. It means, “Don’t stay away too long! Y’all come back now, hear?”

            Yet, “Don’t be a stranger!” has another, more poignant meaning for this fragmented culture in which we live. We Americans are strangers to one another, for the most part, in a way that wasn’t true for earlier generations.

Strangers on the move

            We live in a mobile society. Some of us come and go with alarming frequency: chasing jobs, chasing dreams. Some folks today hardly bother to put down roots in any one place because they know the next move won’t be long in coming.

            Even for those of us who live close to extended family, we all know neighbors for whom “visiting with family” means a long-distance phone call, or an email fired off to some other time zone. And large numbers of people today are estranged from their families, cut off by feelings of woundedness or anger.

            In this mobile society, when we go somewhere, we want to move faster than ever. Our ancestors used to travel to most places by stagecoach or train. In those slow-moving modes of transport, passenger seats were often aligned facing each other. On a long journey, most travelers talked to their seat-mates. Modern trains have few seats that face each other. Often, they all face forward.

            Nowadays, we’re in too much of a rush for train travel anyway. On longer trips, we usually travel either by car — with people we know — or by airplane. On a plane, how are the seats aligned? Row upon row, all facing the same direction. On longer flights, the airlines issue us headphones. They know most passengers would rather withdraw into their own little world than engage in conversation with the person sitting inches away.

...approximately 1,526 words remaining. You are not logged in. Please see options at the top of this page to view complete sermon.