FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA

Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth

 

The Second Sunday in Lent

March 16, 2003

 

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY:

THE STAGES OF LIFE, DEATH AND RESURRECTION –

“LETTING GO OF LONELINESS”

 

Scripture:  Matthew 13:53-14:21

 

INTRODUCTION

 

The season is Lent and we are on our way toward Jerusalem, walking together with Jesus and His first disciples and talking with one another in this series of sermons about “The Stages of Life, Death and Resurrection.”  Last week we explored “Our Struggle With Stress,” and this morning we focus on “Letting Go of Loneliness.”

 

A generation ago, the English poet W. H. Auden was sitting at a table in a 52nd Street restaurant on the east side of New York City.  Looking around, he watched the men and women who had gathered there and saw evidence of boredom, frustration and fear.  Auden turned over the menu, and this is what he wrote:

 

          “Faces along the bar

           Cling to their average day;

           The lights must never go out,

           The music must always play…

           Lest we should see where we are,

           Lost in a haunted wood;

           Children afraid of the night,

           Who have never been happy or good”

 

I believe that what Auden witnessed in that New York City restaurant is called loneliness.  And it was John Lennon, living in Manhattan, who wrote a song about it with this unforgettable line:  “All the lonely people, where do they all come from?”

 

Well not just from New York.  They, we come from Chicago, Los Angeles and London, from Minneapolis, Mobile and Macon, and from right here in Atlanta, Georgia.  They, we are young and old, male and female, rich and poor, gay and straight, single, married, widowed and divorced from every race, color and creed.  They, we are lonely people, and some of them are here today.

 

Dr. Wade Huie, the distinguished retired professor from Columbia Theological Seminary, helps us recognize them.  He says:

 

         “Loneliness is a six year old who doesn’t know the name of any other first graders…Loneliness is a mother whose children are away at school…Loneliness is an executive who lost his closest friends on the way up the corporate ladder…Loneliness is watching a TV commercial with a fully stocked refrigerator when all you’ve got to feed your children is peanut butter and jelly…Loneliness is lying in a hospital bed, looking up at the ceiling and asking ‘How long?  How long?’…Loneliness is saying ‘No’ when all the other girls are saying ‘Yes’…Loneliness is a photograph on the living room piano, worn thin with the ritual of remembering…Loneliness is realizing that, in some ways, you can never go home again.”

 

And I saw a Peanuts cartoon in the paper a while back, with Charlie Brown facing Lucy, who is in a little box labeled “Doctor – Psychiatric Help – 5 cents.”  He says to her, “Can you cure loneliness, Doc?”  She replies, “For a nickel, I can cure anything!”  With his head slightly bowed, Charlie Brown replies, “Can you cure deep-down, bottom-of-the-well, no-hope, end-of-the-world, what’s-the-use loneliness?”  And in exasperation, Lucy exclaims, “For the same nickel?”

 

You see, loneliness is rampant in our world today, and no nickel prescriptions or easy answers will make it go away.  But as Christians, we can know that God doesn’t want us to be lonely, and He has shown us how to lean into it and learn to let it go.

 

I.

 

In the 13th and 14th chapters of the gospel of Matthew, there are three snapshots from the album of Jesus’ life and ministry which deal with the reality of loneliness, and the first photograph could be labeled “Find someone you can trust.”

 

Matthew reports that when Jesus returned to His own country, to Nazareth which was His home place, He taught in the synagogue and the people were astonished, saying “Where did He get this wisdom and discover how to do these mighty works?  Is this not the carpenter’s son…whose mother is called Mary and whose brothers and sisters we all know?  Where did this man learn so much?”  (Matthew 13:53-56, paraphrase)

 

Matthew says They took offense at Him (verse 57), and if you read the rest of the story from the 4th chapter of Luke, you will find that those people tried to wipe Him out.  Why?  Because He challenged them to change their narrow-minded ways and they didn’t like it.

 

It was Robert Frost who once said, “Home is where, when you go there, they have to take you in.”  And for the most part, that is true.  But what can we do when even in our own families and communities, we feel isolated and lonely?

 

It can happen, it does happen you know.  Martin Luther King, Jr. grew up in Atlanta, but as he became a leader in the Civil Rights Movement, he wasn’t welcomed by everybody here when he came home.  And in your family and mine, there are sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, in-laws and out-laws who don’t always feel that they are accepted or that they belong.

 

I’ve told you before about a young woman, sitting on the porch one summer evening, talking about a member of the family with her grandmother.  In the course of conversation she said, “He’s just no good.  He’s completely unreliable and he’s one of the laziest people I know.”

 

“Yes” said the grandmother as she rocked back and forth in her rocking chair, “He’s gone off into the far country.  But Jesus loves him.”  “Well, I’m not so sure of that” the young woman persisted.  “Oh yes,” the grandmother assured her.  “Jesus loves him.”  She rocked for a moment more and then added, “But of course, Jesus doesn’t know him like we do.”

 

The truth is, Jesus knows all of us exactly as we are, and He loves us with a love that will never let us go.  What we as lonely people need, is to find at least one person we can trust who loves us in that same way – with acceptance and affirmation and a firm commitment and dedication to stick with us, come what may.  It could be a family member or a friend, a colleague at work or a fellow student at school – it might be a sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous or a member of this church.  Whoever it is, that person must be someone you can trust.  And as you begin to reveal yourself to them, God will use that person to help you let go of your loneliness.

 

II.

 

Now if the first photograph in Matthew 13 and 14 could be labeled “Find one person you can trust,” then the second snapshot in this biblical album might read: “Pray for God’s presence and healing touch.”

 

King Herod, caught in a crossfire between his wife and his daughter, gave the order for John the Baptist to be beheaded.  And Matthew says that as John’s disciples came and took the body and buried it, they went and told Jesus.  The next verse in Matthew 14 is simple and straightforward, but full of sorrow and pain.  When Jesus heard this, He withdrew from there in a boat to a lonely place apart (Matthew 14:13).

 

Jesus and John had been connected from their birth.  They were cousins and kindred spirits and fellow travelers in their journey of faith.  So when John was executed, something deep down in Jesus’ soul died with him.  And that is what we call today “the grief process.”

 

Whenever, however we lose someone we love, and walk through the valley of the shadow of death, the loneliness can be overwhelming until we discover that God’s presence and healing touch sustains us every step of the way.

 

On a Sunday morning in 1847, a man named Henry Francis Lyte, who was a Scottish pastor in a congregation called “The Wee Church of St. Andrews,” preached what was to be his last sermon to the people he had loved and served for more than fifty years.  His health had finally broken and the doctor ordered him to take a sabbatical leave.  Reluctantly, the pastor and the church members agreed.

 

As Rev. Lyte pronounced the benediction, walked down the aisle and out the door, his people followed down the pathway into the harbor where a small boat was waiting to take him to a larger ship.  The congregation stood there on the shoreline with tears in their eyes as they waved goodbye to this man who meant so much to them.

 

The ship stopped the second night in Northern France, and as the passengers came down to breakfast the next morning, they noticed that Rev. Lyte was not among them.  They sent someone to his room, who knocked on the door, but there was no answer.

 

So they unlocked the door and inside the room, stretched out across the bed, was the lifeless body of Henry Francis Lyte.  In his hand there was a piece of paper, and on it was a poem that man of faith had written.  The poem has since been set to music, and it is today one of the most beloved hymns of the church.  Listen to the words which have become so familiar to all of us:

 

“Abide with me, fast falls the eventide;

The darkness deepens, Lord, with me abide:

When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,

Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

 

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;

Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;

Change and decay in all around I see;

O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

 

I need Thy presence every passing hour;

What but Thy grace can foil the tempters power?

Who like Thyself my guide, and stay can be?

Through cloud and sunshine, O abide with me.

 

I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless:

Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.

Where is death’s sting?  Where, grave, thy victory?

I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.

 

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;

Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies;

Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee:

In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.”

 

You see, Henry Francis Lyte was not afraid to live and he wasn’t afraid to die because he knew that he was not alone.  And we can know that too.  Because God, through Jesus Christ, has helped us find the one person we can trust and has surrounded us with His holy presence and healing touch.

 

CONCLUSION

 

Which leads us to the final scene in our scripture lesson from the 14th chapter of Matthew, and there is one word I would choose to describe it.  That word, from the old King James Version of the Bible, is “inasmuch.” 

 

Matthew says that as Jesus withdrew to a lonely place, the crowds followed Him from the towns.  And when He saw them, Jesus had compassion on them and began to heal the sick.  Then, as evening fell, the disciples said to Him “Lord, this is a lonely place and the day is now over.  Send the crowds away, for they are hungry and need to buy food for themselves.”  But Jesus answered “They need not go away – give them something to eat.”  And what those disciples and the crowd of people witnessed that day has been called ever since “The Feeding of the 5,000.”  Jesus said the blessing over five fish and two loaves of bread, and when the disciples were done serving all of the men, women and children, Matthew says that everyone had been fed.  (Matthew 14:13-21).

 

Now here’s the point of the story:  when we feel lonely, isolated and unrecognized even in the midst of a crowd, that is precisely the moment when God may be calling us to reach out and help somebody else.  Dr. Karl Menninger, the founder of modern day psychiatry and a Presbyterian elder from Topeka, Kansas – Dr. Menninger once said, “If I felt an anxiety attack or break down coming on, I would leave the house, lock the door behind me, cross the street to find someone, anyone in need and try to help them.”

 

And when we do that, God can and will perform a miracle in us.  How do I know?  Because Jesus told us so – Matthew 25, verses 35-40:  I was hungry and you gave me food, thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to me…Truly I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it unto me.

 

My friends, if you have come here today with a sense of loneliness deep down in your heart, then know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God is here in this place and you are welcomed by this church with open arms.

 

And as you remember those scenes from the life of Jesus Christ in the gospel of Matthew, chapters 13, 14 and 25, then (1) find someone you can trust, (2) pray for God’s presence and healing touch and (3) never forget that word “inasmuch” – Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you have done it unto me.  And He has promised to be with you and me, from here to eternity!

 

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

 

 

 

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