September 2004

John 13:31-35

Because we are human, we experience loneliness. Being lonely is part of the human condition. The novelist Thomas Wolfe said, "Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?" For some, loneliness comes only occasionally. It may appear in the still of the night. It may come when you're facing a very big responsibility, which you are not sure you can handle. It may come when somebody dislikes you, judges and rejects you, thus making you an outsider. For others, loneliness is always there. They are always lonely. It has been described to me as having a gnawing feeling of discomfort -- being in a deep pit, feeling empty and disconnected, having a continual sadness.

There is one thing that can solve the loneliness problem, something every human being yearns for more than anything else. And yet it is so elusive, and a most difficult thing to achieve.

What every human being wants and needs more than anything else, I believe, is to be intimate with other people. I am not speaking of sexual intimacy. There are times when sexual intimacy creates an intimate emotional connection, but much of the time it doesn't. The intimate relationship we crave, that we yearn for, is one in which we feel safe, where it is okay just to be. There may be differences and conflicts, but the nature of the relationship is that we feel safe. There is empathy and forgiveness. That's what we all want and need, but it is very hard to come by.

Now, with all the sophistication of our modern society, in all the studies by sociologists, psychologists, and theologians about what human beings need to feel whole -- you would think that by this time we would have reengineered the way we live in order to live more healthily and happily. But that hasn't been the case.

As a society we champion invention and technology. Look at the automobile, for instance. It is a wonderful thing. It can take you wherever a road leads. It has a heating system, a cooling system, a telephone system, a stereo system - it has everything but a kitchen and a bathroom.

But note this factor about the automobile. It's a kind of isolation booth. Look around at the cars on the road. Usually there is only one person in there.

And then, when you drive through parts of any community built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, you see houses with front porches. There was a day when people would sit on their front porches and watch their neighbors go by. There was contact and communication. People knew each other. And now what do we have? We have backyards, decks, and high fences -- another place of isolation.

Many of us live in high-rise apartment houses, which are wonderfully comfortable places to live. But how many of us find community there? How many of us even know our neighbors? On my hallway there are six apartments. I know everyone who lives there by sight. I know the names of three of them. I am friends with one, because she has a dog. It's the dog that brought us into friendship.

Another feature of modern life is the dishwasher. Everyone seems to have one now. When I was a teenager I pleaded for my parents to get us a dishwasher, but they never did. Instead, we had community as the family worked together. One would clear the table, another would wash the dishes, another dried them, another put them away. We were sharing in the tasks of living.

Then there is the television set. What a miracle! Any place in the world can be in our living room in an instant. How many of us have said, "When I'm lonely I put the television on"? It is a sad thing that a passive piece of equipment is what we depend on to take away our loneliness.

And the airplane -- that's another great miracle. In a few hours' time you can go any place on the planet. Yet you are on a plane often for hours, sitting next to somebody, shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, and except for, "Excuse me, may I go to the bathroom?" there's no conversation. Two living beings, living souls, inches apart yet worlds from each other. Mannequins at Lord & Taylor's have better communication than this.

And then there is the cell phone. You can't leave home without it. How many times have I been on the elevator and heard, "Oh! I forgot my cell phone" -- they have to go back up. I have done this myself. And yet maybe that little rascal, which sometimes rings in the middle of the sermon or a prayer, is the very thing that can help us to communicate with each other better and nurture our relationships.

What can we do to break our loneliness? We know that most of the time technology won't help us, and social scientists won't help us; we must find our own way. The first thing, I think, is never to blame anybody else for your loneliness. Nobody can impose loneliness on you. We tend to think so, but that isn't the way it is. Relationships change. Sometimes they end. People die. Vacuums are created by these losses. But we need to learn how to deal with it from the inside out.

There have been two instances in my life when my loneliness was intense, deep and extended - I look back on them now, and I can see that my loneliness was a friend. The first time I was in my middle thirties, working as an Associate Minister with Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, my predecessor, and one of the great orators in the world at that time. One spring day he said, "Arthur, I'd like you to start preaching the first service." He had been preaching two services, and the sanctuary was always full for both services. I said, "No, thank you, Dr. Peale." I was thinking, "There is no way I am going to do that." It can be a disaster when a young man who doesn't know what he's doing shares the pulpit with somebody as great as Dr. Peale. He let it go. Then in the fall his doctor said to him, "Norman, if you want to keep going you've got to cut down to one service," and he brought it up again. This time it was an order, not a request, and so I started preaching at the first service.

It was quite an experience. The church wasn't full any more. On a very good Sunday there were three hundred people, and I knew some of them were there to be certain they would have a seat for the second service. I had hoped the Elders and Deacons would tell me I was doing a great job and all would be well. But none of that happened. It was very depressing and lonely.

I now know what they were doing. They had the responsibility, as Board members, to make sure that the church had a future. Their job was not to coddle me and tell me I was wonderful. They wanted to see if I had what it took to fill that pulpit. I was out there by myself and was filled with fear. Through that I learned a huge spiritual lesson. I learned that the only place I could go was to God. I learned that loneliness is one place where God and the person meet. And from that meeting comes strength and peace and hope.

A second time came after the ending of a long relationship. I was lonely and depressed, and had never admitted to being lonely and depressed before. I didn't know what to do with it. One summer day, a psychologist friend came to visit me. I told him what I was feeling. His response became some of the best advice I have ever received. "Arthur," he said, "Give each emotion its time." I'd never heard that before. "When you are lonely, don't run to the telephone and try to get over it that way. Live into the pain. Be present with the pain and in time it will pass, and it won't come back in the same way." It was very painful, but it worked.

I did one other thing with the pain. I used it to go even deeper with God, and I finally got to the place where I could say, "God, Your will be done in my life. You do it. I can't handle it."

Usually when I talk about loneliness I quote something I read many years ago that really stuck in my mind: loneliness is the only prison that can be opened only from the inside. I believe it is important to understand that it is our responsibility to reach out and create contacts with others. We must take the initiative and begin to build ourselves into community, to try to find that like-minded soul, that simpatico person that we can dialogue with and eventually become friends. Then one day we will have the relationship where there is that wondrous safety. But we are the ones who have to do the work to get there.

One of the mistakes we often make when we are lonely is to complain, press, and make demands on others. We grab hold of the other person and we end up pushing them away. Rather than desperately reaching out, it is better to recognize our own pain and emptiness, our gnawing feeling of needing to connect. Then we can follow the advice of my psychologist friend, live into the pain and go deeper. After we become stronger, when we share our vulnerability the other person is not as likely to feel threatened and overwhelmed.

Jesus is a great role model for how to build oneself into community. In the scriptures it says, "And He chose twelve men to be His disciples." He needed to be with them. Yes, they were His disciples. Yes, they were His students, but they were also His friends, and He needed them.

When He was really in trouble, the last night of His life, He went to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. He asked His friends just to watch with Him -- He didn't want to be alone. The fact that they didn't do it very well is another story. But He was not afraid to say, "I need you."

Then He pulled it all together with this remarkable teaching: "In a little while I'm not going to be around any more. You're going to have to get along without me. I want you to love one another as I have loved you, and by this everyone will know you are my disciples."

The lesson here is to do as Jesus said, to learn "to love one another as I have loved you." We have to continue to nurture and encourage our relationships. Because in our world today, living in high-rise apartments, or with fenced-in backyards, driving our automobiles which are like isolation booths, if we're not careful we can get lost and have nobody. And there aren't going to be neighbors across the street, missing us on the front porch and wondering "What's happened to so-and-so?" It is our responsibility to make sure we don't get lost.

Maya Angelou tells a wonderful story about her Aunt Tee in her book Wouldn't Take Nothin' for My Journey Now. Aunt Tee ran a big fourteen-room household for a wealthy couple in Los Angeles. There were always visitors and parties; it was a wonderfully warm place to be. But as they got older, fewer people came to dinner, and there were no more parties. As Aunt Tee described it, at supper the two of them would just sit there like sticks, no conversation, nothing - two dead people that were still breathing.

Now, Aunt Tee knew how to have a good time. She knew how to build contacts. Every Saturday night she invited the servants from the other houses up and down the street for a big meal and a party. They would play music and dance, they would tell jokes, they would sing. One Saturday night her employers knocked on the door. "You always seem to have such a wonderful time on Saturday night. Would you mind leaving your door open so we can hear you?"

That is a pathetic story. Ralph Waldo Emerson once counseled that we must remember to keep our friendships in good repair. Let this story be a parable for how your life is not going to be, standing on the outside trying to get vicarious pleasure because you have let your friendships fall into disrepair.

My last thought about breaking our loneliness is the most important of all. Invite Jesus into your life. Ask God to help you in overcoming your loneliness. As I said before, God meets us at places where human beings cannot.

I love the old hymn In the Garden. It is really saying let Jesus be our friend.

And He walks with me and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own.
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

Living out what these words say can help us overcome our loneliness. Let us pray:

Lord, for the sadness of our loneliness, we know You have compassion. Inspire us, give us strength, give us internal leadership, that we will overcome, we will find that relationship, that place where we feel safe and okay. AMEN