For sure, one of the demons Jesus faced out in the wilderness was loneliness.
Loneliness – and how you cope with it – is an issue after 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness.
Loneliness – and how we cope with it – is an issue for us, as well.
All of us, at times, feel that the world has left us, and we are left alone to fight it out.
Quite frankly, when we isolate ourselves,
when we don’t make the connections,
when we live in solitude,
we become something less than what we were created to be,
we stunt,
we cease to grow,
we become something less than human.
The most satisfied life –
the most satisfying times of your life –
come when you do for others.
That’s what Jesus said.
That’s what Jesus did.
That’s what you and I can do.
When you do for another, you will never be alone.
Joshua 1:5-9
Matthew 28:18-20
This is the third Sunday of Lent –
Lent, you remember is this 40 days that the church sets aside to help us prepare for our Easter Sunday celebration.
Of course, these 40 days commemorate the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness prior to beginning his ministry.
We are told that he was taken out into the wilderness and left off so he could confront his demons and prepare for what was to come.
For him it was a time for strengthening his faith –
no doubt by reflecting on his memory of scripture,
no doubt by a hyper-active prayer life,
no doubt by fasting to a point of exhaustion,
and no doubt by contemplating age-old truths that had been handed down to him through his faith community.
For sure, one of the demons Jesus faced out in the wilderness was loneliness.
Loneliness – and how you cope with it – is an issue after 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness.
Loneliness – and how we cope with it – is an issue for us, as well.
This feeling of loneliness has been around, probably sense the beginning of time.
The Psalmist (Psalm 22) lamented:
Dear God, right now I feel like a worm, not a person.
I feel so used by other people.
And to make it worse,
I feel resented by the very same people who use me!
Sometimes when my back is turned,
I can feel everyone making faces at me,
sneering in derision.
O God, stick close to me - I’m up to my neck in problems and all alone.
I feel like the walls are closing in around me.
And in the dark I can see starving lions ready to swallow me up and digest me into oblivion.
My strength drains away like water,
And my bones feel loose and shaken.
My heart feels like a lump of hot sticky wax melting inside my chest.
My mouth is as dry as a broken piece of clay pot,
And my tongue sticks to my jaw.
I feel trampled and beaten.
One writer wrote:
Even though it may have been written by King David, today [these words] could fit a frustrated homemaker, a retired person, an unemployed person,
a beleaguered executive, a worried union leader,
a minister or a doctor.
[Any of us here today]
All of us, at times, feel that the world has left us, and we are left alone to fight it out.
Remember, fathers can be lonely;
mothers can be lonely;
children and youth can be lonely.
Perhaps you read the devotional not too long ago:
Today, I have had another lonely day, Lord.
The one phone call I received was a wrong number.
Was there someone that needed a call from me? ...
My neighbors wave as they go about their tasks
But we seldom take time to talk ...
At church we sit in the same pews with people we do not know [very well, if at all]
Are they lonely too? ...
Our marriage has been good but sometimes I expect my husband to sense my aloneness ...
Then she wonders: Am I lonely because I am afraid to risk reaching out to an other?
To be sure, loneliness is depressing.
The Beatles sang about it:
He’s a real Nowhere Man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his Nowhere Plans
for nobody.
Such emptiness, such frustration, such loneliness depresses us, doesn’t it?
But, it is very, very common in our world and in our culture today.
It may very well be a bi-product of the nesting instinct that drove so many people in the past 20 or 30 years.
After years of self-isolation with our TV rooms, internet connections, music collections,
and all those magazines and paper-back books we read,
a recent poll discovered that today, more and more people are getting out of their nests and looking for ways to connect – with one another, with other people around them, and perhaps, with their God.
And, that’s were we come in.
For, really and truly, that is what we’re about isn’t it?
That’s what this church is for –
to help people connect;
to help people connect with one another,
to help people connect with the world around us,
to help people connect with God.
Quite frankly, when we isolate ourselves,
when we don’t make the connections,
when we live in solitude,
we become something less than what we were created to be,
we stunt,
we cease to grow,
we become something less than human.
Several recent scientific studies bear this out.
One study of interest shows that twice as many white divorced males under age seventy who live alone
die from heart disease, lung cancer, and stomach cancer [than those who don’t live alone].
Three times as many men in this category die of hypertension
and seven times as many die of cirrhosis of the liver.
The study also points out that among divorced people, suicide is five times higher
and fatal car accidents four times higher.
There is cost to loneliness.
You may have heard of another study that has gotten a lot of play:
Folks in Brazil tried to do something about the alarming number of unwanted babies being abandoned in the large cities.
The Child and Family Services built homes to care for the babies.
They provided the finest facilities – proper temperature at all times,
excellent sanitation procedures were in place,
attention was given to physical and dietary needs
attention was given to every detail a baby needed – things that he was sure not get in the hovel from where he came.
By all accounts, the babies received excellent care.
Just one problem.
The powers that be failed to provide opportunities for physical contact.
There was no holding, no rocking, no singing,
no touching, no playing with the babies.
And, most of the babies died before the end of their first year.
We need each other.
We need physical, and mental, and heart-felt connection with each other.
When we don’t have it, we become something less than what we were created to be.
And, we lash out at one another.
We build fences.
We fight wars.
We fail to thrive.
We die.
One researcher concludes:
Quite literally, we must either learn to live together or face the possibility of prematurely dying alone ... Cancer, tuberculosis, suicide, accidents, mental disease - all are significantly influenced by human companionship.
Nature uses many weapons to shorten the lives of lonely people.
It has become absolutely clear and certain –
so certain that physicians should write it on prescription pads:
Love is the absolute essential as we confront the world in its loneliness.
One popular psychologist puts it: "Love or perish." Love or perish – its that simple.
Karl Menninger adds, "Love is the medicine for the sickness of the world."
Lesle D. Weatherhead has written a very practical approach to the cure of loneliness.
He tells us that Christ operates today not so much from the Sea of Galilee as from the Thames, the Potomac, the Hudson.
He says: Christ is where people are, where the need is.
That what we say here.
That’s what we believe, isn’t it?
We rub shoulders with lonely folk every day.
In some we recognize it:
in some we would never guess it.
A friend recalls one of the most exuberant persons he had ever known.
He was on the staff of a well-known prep school where my friend was teaching and coaching track. He says, I was amazed to discover that his wife had left him, and almost everything in his life was tragic.
The list goes on:
There are the sick ones, the disabled,
those who have lost loved ones,
those who have nervous problems,
complexes, phobias,
those who are out of their environment,
who have moved nearby and have not found yet their place here.
They are the ones who have not learned to bridge the gap existing between themselves and other persons.
They find themselves alone in a sea of persons.
Any of us can wake up in the dead of night with a sense of separation, uneasiness, detachment.
It could be a warning that we are on the wrong track, that we are losing contact with reality,
that we have broken with God and with people.
It could be the shock that brings us back to a shared life.
The walls we have erected between us and God separate us from others;
the walls we have erected between us and others separate us from God.
Dwelling constantly upon the loss which is behind us can become a sickness.
Turning toward the light ahead,
focusing upon the future,
getting back into the stream of life can break the spell of aloneness.
Take a hint from the lightning bug:
The Lightning Bug is brilliant,
But he hasn’t any mind;
He flies about the universe
With his headlight on his behind.
One popular author speaks at this point:
"Lose a friend, seek a new one.
Keep cheerful.
Don’t gripe except when no one can hear you.
Don’t keep talking about how tired you are.
If you lack love and affection from others,
give more than your share to others.
If you lack creative expression, pursue a new interest as though your life depended upon it.
If you lack recognition, give recognition to others. Some of it will come back.
If you lack experiences, be planning something all the time.
Get out into the midst of people and discover that they need you as much as you need them."
Over and over again, we are finding out that the only ones who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.
Once I visited an old woman, a practical nurse, in the hospital.
Life had been rough on her, and yet she wasn’t about to give up.
She told me about the hundreds of babies she had helped to deliver.
She said, "I never went into a sick room I didn’t see something I could do."
You see, she had joined the human race;
she was on the team;
she was in a cosmic partnership;
she was a part of history:
she was involved in her work;
God was involved in her work;
she had become a part of the healing of the world.
Loneliness can be a rejection of life,
or it can become the challenge to free others from loneliness.
In loneliness some have discovered humanity.
Jesus came out the loneliness of the wilderness with a new lease on life.
Norman Vincent Peale wrote that the antidote for loneliness is “DO”. [D.O.]
He writes:
No one is going to stay lonely very long who does good things for people.
The more you do to make life less lonely and more happy for another,
the less lonely and less unhappy your life will become.
“DO” is a powerful concept in beating loneliness.
The most satisfied life –
the most satisfying times of your life –
come when you do for others.
That’s what Jesus said.
That’s what Jesus did.
That’s what you and I can do.
When you do for another, you will never be alone.
Jesus said “Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life . . .
Instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you.
I’ll be with you as you do this,
day after day after day,
right up to the end of the age.”
Amen.
The congregation of Christ Presbyterian Church in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, USA, experienced this sermon during a worship service on the 3rd Sunday of Lent, March 11, 2012.
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