Scripture: Psalm 25; John 16:29-34
The sermon last week got a little longer than I had intended it to be, so I went back and cut out a part at the beginning. What I cut out wasn’t directly relevant to what I was talking about last week, so it was expendable so far as that sermon went, but although I could take it out of the sermon, I found that I couldn’t so easily take it out of my head. I decided I better not ignore it, so I’m coming back to it today.
The part of last week’s sermon that I cut out was about how we never read the gospels or the Bible in general with an empty mind (hopefully), that is, we always, whether we’re fully aware of it or not, bring certain questions or concerns to it that affect how we read the material and what we get out of it, which is one reason why we can read the same material over and over and get different things from it at different times, depending on what we are bringing to it, the things that are in our minds and hearts and spirits at the time. I was trying to say, in connection with last week’s sermon, that although the gospel writers weren’t writing with women’s concern first and foremost on their minds (to say the least), that nevertheless it is legitimate for us to bring our concerns about gender and the life of the church and the life of the world to our reading of the gospels, which is what I was proposing to do.
What also popped into my head as an example is that I remember reading the gospels on several occasions when what I was bringing to my reading was a sensitivity to feelings of solitude and loneliness, partly no doubt growing out of how I may have been feeling personally at the time, partly maybe out of a sense of the loneliness of human life in general, which is present in the inner life of all of us, though of course how it affects us and how we respond varies from person to person and from time to time. But without putting myself too much in the position of speaking as though I am spread out on a therapist’s couch in front of you with a hundred and some therapists listening, I don’t mind saying that loneliness and related matters is a consistent theme and a recurring thought and feeling for me. I experience it. I am aware of it in myself, and I am sensitive to it when I hear it in the words or the silences of other people, which over the years has been often, often enough that I am convinced that feelings of loneliness are widespread among us human beings.
And so there have been specific times when I have read the Bible, the gospels particularly, with that in mind, and I think it would be fair to say that I always read the gospels with some sense of loneliness or sensitivity to loneliness at least in the back of my mind. It’s not surprising then that I have always seen Jesus as a kind of a lonely person. I identify with him at that level and believe he identifies with me, with us, at that level, knows it to be part of the human condition that he shares with us. Again, this is not something that the gospel writers seem to have at the front of their minds. It’s not something they are at pains to tell us about. But there are clues. At least as I read the gospels, there are clues. I realize that I could easily be projecting my own concerns onto the gospel stories, but I do pay attention to what I consider to be the clues, and I find myself wondering about things like: Who did Jesus confide in? Who did he turn to when he needed someone to confide in? Was there anyone for whom he was not Lord, or rabbi, or teacher, but just Jesus, just friend? When the texts suggest some special relationship, say between Jesus and Mary and Martha and Lazarus, which they do, what does that mean? Was there anyone in his life who knew what he was going to say before he said it? The disciples half the time seemed that they didn’t know what he said after he said it.
There aren’t any real answers to such questions, just speculations, and I don’t expect any definitive answers, but as I say I often bring such questions to my reading of the gospels. And as I say I often see in Jesus an essentially lonely figure, not because he is so different from us, so God-like and remote and beyond us and so unable to be understood and so self-contained and so much on a different level—not any of that—but more because he is not so different from us, more because of his humanness and because he shares in the loneliness that is part of being human. And so I wonder about his loneliness—and my own. And when after cutting it out from last week’s sermon, I couldn’t quite get rid of those thoughts altogether, I decided to come back to it this morning and reflect on it with you for just a few moments. I’m not sure I’m prepared to go very far with this today, but a little ways anyway.
To be honest, my thoughts on this whole area of our lives at the moment are not very clear, and I can’t and don’t want to pretend to you that they are. A long time ago, within the first five years of my ministry (which means it was quite a long time ago), my association minister recommended me to do a sermonette for one of the network television stations in Chicago. I don’t know whether this is still done in Chicago or anywhere but in those days even the network stations would go off the air for a few hours each day—sign off maybe at 2 am and go back on the air at 5 am, something like that. They would sign off with a five minute message from a minister and then the National Anthem would be played and the screen would go dark. I was asked to tape one of these five minute segments. I agreed and then had to figure out what I was going to say. I would have been much more nervous about it if I had known what turned out to be the case, that it would be replayed every few months for several years and that it would be sent to other cities where two different times a friend happened to be up in the early hours and suddenly saw my face staring at them from the TV, totally unexpectedly.
Anyway, my theory was that some fair portion of people who are awake at 2 in the morning might very well be in a mood that would lead them to be receptive to a message on solitude or loneliness, so I decided shape my thoughts around that. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I do remember trying my best to be positive and reassuring, especially considering people would be listening to my words at 2 in the morning—didn’t want to be challenging or gloomy at that hour. So I think the approach I took was to try to say as best I knew how that the feelings of loneliness we all are subject to are a natural part of life, that they aren’t unusual or a sign that there is something wrong with us, and that it would be good if we could learn to expect them and accept them and make our peace with them, not to fight them.
I think I tried to say that the reason it is even possible for anyone to feel lonely is because there is some part of us that is separate from everyone else and different from everyone else and that is not able to be penetrated by anyone else or shared with anyone else. I think I tried to say that loneliness really grows out of the fact that we are not just a collection of things about us that can be known or not known, but that each of us is a unique, mysterious, sacred soul, known only, able to be known only by God. I think I said those things, or something like those things, trying to put some kind of a positive spin on the loneliness that many people feel at one time or another.
And I don’t mean to imply that I was insincere in saying those things, or that I now consider them way wrong and that I want to take back anything and everything I ever said that was anything like what I just described. I could say most of that today and not be insincere about it. But I am pretty sure that the tone of those remarks was much different than it would have been some years later, different than it would have been had I been speaking enough years later that life experiences and ministry experiences would have taught me how painful loneliness can be.
Later on, I would have been less likely to be glib or casual about how painful loneliness can sometimes be. Later on, I would have been more reluctant to try to put a positive spin on it, at least reluctant to do that without acknowledging in a more real way the pain that goes along with it. Later on I would have at least begun to be aware of the experiences of loneliness people have when, for instance, they lose a life partner, and of the fears people may have of leading a life that is not accompanied in some way. Life experiences and ministry experiences continue to teach me in these ways and so as time goes on I don’t find it any easier to be clear, to have uncomplicated thoughts about loneliness, my own, or anyone else’s, including Jesus’.
On the one hand I find it hard to be too terribly critical of myself or anyone else when we engage in any of the various ways we have of trying to avoid any direct confrontation with loneliness, which may include everything from turning on the radio to producing works of art. It’s not all unhealthy escapism, and even the parts that are may not be all that unhealthy. They’re at least understandable. I may still in some senses believe, but it’s not so easy for me to say serenely that loneliness is a natural part of life and that it’s good to make our peace with it. I understand why I avoid it when I can. And I understand how important it is to offer accompaniment to one another when we can in whatever ways that we can, and how among the many things I may fail at that this is one of the ones that matter. I may still think some of the same things that I thought many years ago, but I am not so willing to put a positive spin on loneliness. It is potentially too painful.
At the same time, I do believe at a deeper level that any place of loneliness that we may find ourselves in is a place where we may meet God, one of the places where we are most likely to meet God. And so there are some ways, there are some times, there are some occasions when it would be best if loneliness were not avoided but embraced, if we can. It the place, the wilderness place if you will, that is beyond where human relationships end. It is where there is no one to talk to or to be with other than God. And it is where even our language for God fails us so that we need to confront somehow that silent nameless mystery that is at the core of our being and all being.
It is not so much that God takes away our loneliness. It may be that God was so real for Jesus that he never felt himself to be alone. The simple sentence in the gospel reading from John could be read that way. “Yet I am not alone because God is with me.” But I am not sure. I am not sure that even for Jesus that was the case, or that that was possible. I’ve already told you that I read loneliness as being sort of ever present in the Jesus we are presented with in the gospels. Yet in that loneliness, not in a way that makes it vanish, but in the loneliness itself I hear Jesus saying God is present and therefore he is able to say. Yet I am not alone because God is with me. I can only pray that for each of us God will be present in a way that would allow us to say the same. Amen.
Jim Bundy
March 18, 2007