“Alonely” No More

A World Communion Meditation Preached by

The Rev. Paul Debenport

October 4, 2009

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Two weeks ago Karen preached an excellent sermon on Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand in Mark 6.  My meditation today is from the verses immediately preceding that event.  Hear the Word of God from Mark 6: 30—34, reading from Eugene Peterson’s interpretation, The Message:

The apostles then rendezvoused with Jesus and reported on all that they had done and taught.  Jesus said, “Come off by yourselves; let’s take a break and get a little rest.”  For there was constant coming and going  They didn’t even have time to eat.  So they got into the boat and went off to a remote place by themselves.  Someone saw them going and the word got around.  From the surrounding towns people went out on foot, running and got there ahead of them.  When Jesus arrived, he saw this huge crowd.  At the sight of them, his heart broke

—like sheep with no shepherd they were.  He went right to work teaching them.

The Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

_{(Scripture taken from The Message.}

_{Copyright Eugene H. Peterson, 1993, 1994, 1995.}

_{Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group)}

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Perhaps because I, too, spent an extended time in isolation in a hospital as a very young child, I was especially touched by Kelly’s scary experience.  An active seven year old, one night Kelley had to be rushed to the I.C.U. in the middle of the night.  Soon she was totally encased in an oxygen tent.  Wires and tubes snaked from under the tent to the flickering monitors nearby.  But all Kelly could hear was the hissing of the oxygen.  All she could see was the shadowy shapes of her parents through the opaque plastic shield that distorted her view and increased her isolation.  Kelly was trying to say something, but she could not speak because of the tube I her throat.  Her parents slipped her a pad and marker under the tent.  Slowly, gently—because of the tubes in her arm—Kelly printed her heart-wrenching message:  “I’m alonely,” she wrote, creating a poignant, new word.  But her parents understood its clear meaning.  Although Kelly needed to be there to be healed, the healing place had become for her a lonely lace—a scary place of isolation and separation.

So her parents did what we would have done, what my parents did for me decades ago: they broke the rules.  They reached under the tent and hugged Kelly as best they could.  They stroked her head and feet and held her hand, all the time speaking soothingly.  “We’re here with you, Kelley.  We’ll be here all night. You’re not alone.  We’re all here together.”

Slowly, Kelly’s tensed body began to relax.  Her panicked, darting eyes calmed and finally closed in healing sleep.  Her “alonely” place had become a place of community, of communion.  Kelly was “alonely” no more.

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Exhausted by the overwhelming needs of the people on their first mission trips and shaken deeply by the news of John the Baptizer’s execution, the Apostles and Jesus went looking for a remote, but not lonely place to heal.  But it was not to be, for their healing place became an “alonely” place, full of people, yes, but still scary in the peoples’ isolation and desperation.  “They were like sheep without a shepherd,” thought Jesus, as his heart broke at their isolated “aloneliness” —“alonely” for God, “alonely” for hope, “alonely” for meaning, “alonely” for community.  

So like a loving parent reaching under the separating walls of an isolation tent, Jesus calmed them and taught them the ways of God, God with them, for them, re-forming them from their isolated, separate, fearful sheep-like wanderings into a community, a fold, a people of God.  And then Jesus showed them the ways of God, which was not to leave them alone, nor alonely, or malnourished at any level.  When their literal hunger began to overwhelm their spiritual hunger, as the darkness of night gathered threatening to turn them into a mob of frenzied factions, he calmly directed them:

Sit there on the grass, all together.  Sit in groups of 50 or 100.  Here, take this bread from the resources here, and be fed together.  See your oneness; reach out to each other.  You are one with each other; you are one with God.  Trust in God; trust also in me, I’m here with you no matter what.

In feeding them, breaking the bread and himself for them, Jesus broke through the opaque tents of their isolation to touch their hearts.  And the “alonely” place became a holy place.  The “alonely” people became a holy people through the teaching, the sharing of the bread, and through being together in the safe care of God.

And that’s exactly what he’s doing for us here today, and for all Christ’s people worldwide.  Still he reaches out and calls calmly to us:

Whenever two or three [or a world of you] are gathered together in my name,

Whenever you break this bread and drink this cup, I am with you, to the end of the age.

And we are “alonely” no more.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.