Mark 6:30-34
James R. Gorman
July 23, 2000
The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright is pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, the largest and fastest growing church in the United Church. In the 2000 Yearbook of the United Church of Christ they reported a total membership of 9226. Their annual report is filled with pictures that give you the impression of an extraordinarily busy place. They have more than 20 different youth groups. An average of 3000 people worship every Sunday. They have 10 professional staff members and 20 support staff, including secretaries as well as media coordinators and the like. The motto of the congregation is "Un-apologetically Christian, unashamedly black."
I was at a meeting of urban ministers in the Great Lakes area several years ago and Reverend Wright shared with each of us copies of his congregation's annual report for 1990. In it he goes into some detail about all the things going on in this incredibly busy and well-populated ministry. The numbers only begin to tell you how constant the activity. An enormous number of people move in and out of that building on any given day, not just Sunday. And as I read Trinity's annual report to the congregation, I noted a rather poignant line. After listing all the marriages and funerals and joys and sorrows, Reverend Wright notes, "There were high moments and the low moments and there were some unbelievably lonely moments."
Lonely moments?
I would have expected to find anything BUT a reference to lonely moments in a place so busy. I expected to find some admission of confusion and lack of control. I expected to find a sense of overwhelming work in a pastor's annual report to such a congregation. Maybe even some reference to conflicts in a place so busy, among a people so committed.
But loneliness I never expected to find.
And Jesus said to his disciples, "Come away with me to a lonely place and rest for a while."
Jesus' request is an important one for busy folks. It is important for our souls to get away to a lonely place from time to time. A time of regular prayer in one sense is a lonely place, a deserted place, in which we most clearly encounter our God in quietude and silence. Jesus seems to suggest in the use of this word "lonely place" which also gets translated "wilderness" and "deserted place" -- all the same word-- that we need to get to places in our lives where nothing separates us from the love of God. Not noise, not pressing responsibilities, not TV or radio.
A lonely place where nothing gets in the way of the divine-human encounter.
The desert wilderness has a central significance in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Moses led his people out of bondage but before the promised land was to be inherited, God led this rag-tag bunch through the vast Sinai wilderness. It was there, according to Scripture, that they were distressed and tested and it was there that they discovered who they were. It was there that they were fed on some mysterious substance called "manna" (which means literally, "What is it?"). It was there that they received the Torah and the Ten Commandments. Release from bondage meant to them the risk of life in the wilderness, with no one but God to provide for their basic necessities. And the lesson in every wilderness is that God will provide.
Jesus was tempted in a wilderness. The garden of Gesthemane was a lonely place. The valley of the shadow of death, in the 23rd Psalm, is a lonely place. What lonely places and deserts and wildernesses have in common is-- oddly perhaps -- the unambiguous presence of the Holy One, the rich and abiding presence of the God of Abraham and Sarah in a land of poverty and waste and heat and deprivation. Nothing clutters our lives and we are lonely, and therefore ready to receive all that is holy and meaningful and essential and good.
But there is also another meaning to "lonely place" in this interesting story from the Gospel of Mark. It is possible to have loneliness thrust upon us in moments when we seem to be the most busy, and our world the most densely populated. You know the story. Jesus has just heard the awful news of the death of his cousin, John the Baptist, and he is trying to get away with his disciples to a lonely place. There is a crowd around him and he tries to get his disciples into a boat to go to the other side of the sea of Galilee. And, as it says in verse 33 and following, "Now many saw them going, and knew them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. As he went ashore he saw a great throng, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. And then it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, "This is a lonely place, and the hour is now late."
Do you hear an irony in that verse? All the people from the surrounding towns have followed Jesus and his disciples to this place where they were trying to retreat and it was now filled with people. And the disciples say nonetheless to Jesus, "This is a lonely place."
It is possible to hear the commandment of Jesus to go to a lonely place to commune with God without interference from worldly noises. It is also possible, in the midst of a crowd, to have loneliness thrust upon us. Even in our most populated and urbane of worlds. The lonely places in the vocabulary of contemporary civilization are places to be avoided. When we say we want to go on vacation, we rarely mean what that word literally means, "to vacate." We really don't seek out a lonely place, most of us. We seek beaches and tourist traps. My wife, Sally, and I just returned from a trip out east! Among other places that we visited was Niagara Falls. Around the falls is this Wisconsin Dells kind of business. We went to see the falls at 10:00 at night and the streets were absolutely crowded, teeming with humanity of all shapes and sizes. We clearly weren't vacating in the sense of being alone.
For most of us, we do not seek out loneliness. Most of the time it is thrust upon us. And thus, Pastor Jeremiah Wright, in the midst of his ministry to the largest congregation in the United Church of Christ, says that there have been "unbelievably lonely moments." In an extraordinarily busy ministry, there are lonely moments. Loneliness can be chosen and loneliness can be thrust upon us, but both conditions are, from Jesus' point of view, places set aside for the most powerful type of communication with God.
Another word about lonely places. If we fail to see lonely times and places (whether sought out or thrust upon us) as gifts and opportunities to commune with God, we will abuse those times and do things that are destructive. For lonely times and places are times and places of self-doubt and vulnerability. They are places where we fail to feel the support of people we love and are quite literally on our own. Such moments are opportunities to admit of our weakness and be more fully therefore with God, a God who became vulnerable on the cross for our sake.
The desert or wilderness in the biblical narrative is not just a place of loneliness. It is also a place of terror, for it is there that the beasts of the night dwell; it is there that the untamed beasts of the sea live; it is there that we are most vulnerable and naked and it is there that we could most easily die. But when loneliness is thrust upon us, it can be a time for communion with God.
The issue here for all of us is, how shall we use our times of doubt, our times of aching loneliness? Will we see them as gifts from God? Jesus counsels us to come with him to such times and places, to enter into a time of discovery and a time of setting of priorities. It is a time of deep spiritual growth, if we but follow the counsel of our Lord and make of these moments moments of comfort and spiritual grandeur. It is a time of the closest possible encounter with Jesus Christ. "Lord, you have come to the lakeside."