Come Back to the Porch

My grandmother had a front porch.

Every other weekend growing up, that porch was the center of the universe. Friday nights meant chili and the Grand Ole Opry. Saturdays meant professional wrestling. But the constant, the thing I remember most, was the porch. Mr. and Mrs. Reeves on one side. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson on the other. Nobody scheduled community. You just stepped outside and found yourself in it.

Somewhere in the last few decades, most of us quietly moved to the backyard.
And I get it. A privacy fence is not a moral failure. A screened porch, a quiet patio, a space to breathe away from an exhausting world, these are not bad things. Sometimes solitude is mercy.

But somewhere between the front porch and the backyard, something slipped away. We built attached garages so we could come and go without being seen. We installed privacy fences so we could sit outside without being known. We curated lives that were manageable, controllable, and just a little bit sealed.

We can know the color of our neighbor's car without knowing the weight they are carrying. We can recognize a house without knowing the story inside it.

We have more privacy than any generation before us and we are lonelier than most.
That loneliness is not new. It is the exact ache trembling underneath the disciples' hearts in the fourteenth chapter of John's Gospel.

Jesus is in the upper room on the night before he dies. He is telling them he is leaving. And these men are not merely sad in the way you are sad when a good season ends. They are terrified. Their whole world has been gathered around this person. He called them from their fishing boats and tax tables. He taught them, fed them, corrected them, and forgave them. He gave them a new way to understand everything.

And now he is going.

To be orphaned in the ancient world was not simply the loss of parents. It was the loss of protection, standing, belonging, and a seat at the table. An orphan was exposed, vulnerable, invisible. When Jesus says, "I will not leave you orphaned," he is naming the fear underneath the fear: that the life gathered around him is about to come apart, and they will be left to face the world alone.

His answer is not a strategy. It is not advice. It is not a challenge to be stronger.
It is a promise of presence.

He promises the Paraclete, the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth. Not a religious feeling or a distant memory, but the living presence of Christ, closer than before. "Because I live," he says, "you also will live." And then, almost as if he wants to make sure they understand: "On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you."
That is not isolation. That is communion.

The Spirit does not simply comfort us in private. The Spirit joins us to Christ, and because we are joined to Christ, we are joined to one another. He moves us from the fenced backyard of the self into the front porch of grace.

This is why the Church matters, even when it is inconvenient and occasionally maddening. Not because the community is always easy. Real community is not always easy. We bring our histories, our habits, and yes, our carefully guarded pew preferences. But this is also one of the places where Jesus keeps his word. At this altar, Christ comes. In prayer and confession and forgiveness, he gathers us back together. Among people we may not have chosen for ourselves, the Spirit teaches us that we are not little islands working to stay afloat.

We are members of one body. We are brothers and sisters. We are not orphans.

So what do we do with this on a regular Tuesday?

It probably starts smaller than we expect. Not with a grand plan or a new program. It starts with admitting, quietly and honestly, that we need each other.

That sounds simple. It is not. Everything in our culture insists that needing people is a weakness, that a well-managed life is a self-sufficient one. But Christian faith tells the truth about us. We are not made to be self-contained. We are baptized into a people. We confess together. We pray together. We eat from the same table.

So look for one front porch moment this week.

Choose a conversation instead of a text. Learn one name. Invite one person a little further into your life. Show up somewhere not because you have to, but because your presence might help someone remember they are not alone.

Small things are often where the Kingdom begins. A meal. A phone call. A moment of listening when it would be easier to hurry on.

The fences around our lives offer a little peace, and sometimes we need that. But they cannot give us the life we were made for. At some point the soul needs more than privacy. It needs communion. It needs people who know when to laugh with you and when to simply sit beside you without any good words.

You are not an orphan. You belong to Christ, and because you belong to Christ, you belong to one another. You are held by a presence that does not leave. You are being drawn, even now, out of isolation and into the strange, beautiful, occasionally inconvenient family of God.

Come back to the porch.

The Rev. Christopher Johnson is Priest-in-Charge at Saint Mary's Episcopal Church in the Irmo/Harbison/Lake Murray area of Columbia, South Carolina.