ALONE!

I want to share an experience with you that I had many years ago – November of 1980.  I got a call from a funeral director to do a graveside service.  The deceased was found in his home by a meals-on-wheels delivery person.  The man died alone.  He had prepaid his funeral and made all the appropriate arrangements.  I was told the man had a daughter, but her where-a-bouts was unknown.  There was an announcement posted in the obituary section of the newspaper with the time, date and location of the graveside service. 

It was a gray, damp, cold, late autumn, northern Illinois day. I rode with the funeral director to the cemetery.  I wondered if anyone would come.  No one did, except for those of us required to be there:  funeral director, two assistants, and two cemetery workers.  We carried the casket to the grave.  With the cold and damp chilling bone and soul, I shivered through the service. I read a scripture, prayed a prayer and spoke the words of committal. It was over. We left. That’s all there was: no family; no friends; no personal words; no tears; no recognition of the difference this human life may have made.  He died alone!

I rode back to the funeral home with the director to get my car, but my mind was still on the man over whose casket I had just prayed.  For reasons unknown to me I felt compelled to drive back to the cemetery.  When I arrived the only evidence left was a slight mound of dirt and some faint tracks where the machine’s wheels had passed.  I stood at the graveside in a stupor, distressed that someone could die so alone, so isolated, so without compassion and feeling. I wondered about him; what kind of man he might have been; wondered if he had loved and been loved.  What happened to his wife; his daughter?  What had gone wrong?  Why had no one come?

As I stood there in a cold wind on that gray, damp late autumn afternoon, the loneliness I felt for another I never knew became so intense it frightened me!  I was on the verge of a panic attack. What was I feeling?  Was I feeling, in some mystical way, the despair that perhaps this man had known in his life?  I didn’t know. I searched for solace in Jesus’ words, “Not one sparrow falls to the ground without the knowledge of the Father. Do not be afraid for you are of more value than many sparrows.”  (Matthew 10:31)   At that moment, Jesus’ words and even His presence seemed so far away; so unreal; so without consolation.  Even so, I clung to those words, for not to would have spelled surrender to total despair. 

I wonder what it would have been like to have been a bystander in the background, closely following Jesus those last few days and hours of his life.  I wonder what I would have felt to see: 

• The kangaroo court, trumped up charges, false testimony and travesty of justice.  We see that Jesus didn’t have a chance – guilty even before his “trial” even began. 
   
• The hypocrisy, political conspiracy and plotting occurring behind the scenes that set the whole thing up?
   
• The spitting - I cannot imagine anything more dehumanizing that spitting on another. 
   
• Judas’ betrayal, one of the trusted insiders finking out and turning Jesus in. 
• Peter?  Peter was Jesus’ best friend, and when the chips were down he caved in to fear and denied even knowing his Lord.
   
• The disciples in the garden?  All Jesus asked them to do was be with him and show a little support while he prayed, and three different times they fell asleep. 
   
• The cruelty of the crowd who had allowed the religious and political authorities to manipulate them, and they ceased thinking for themselves and had reduced Jesus’ life down to two hideous words, “Crucify him!” 
   
• The mocking: the purple cloak; the crown of thorns; the deriding salutes, the sarcastic inscription and revolting taunts?
   
• The flogging, so vicious and repulsive, tearing away the flesh, so brutal that many never survived beyond that?
   
• The crucifixion, driving iron spikes through living flesh and bone, and hanging him up to die like a side of meat in a butcher shop? 

Did you notice the tiny line from Matthew that began our gospel reading?  It is easy to not see and not hear, but a line that is so tragic, so despairing:  “All the disciples deserted him and fled.” ALONE -  HE WAS ALONE!   

The physical pain and suffering that Jesus experienced is beyond comprehension, but to have to bear it alone; without compassion; without sympathy; without understanding, without the support of friends is to only to add unthinkable insult to monumental injury.  We expect to be hurt by our enemies, but to have one’s friends, for all practical purposes, turn into enemies; to be so deeply wounded and abandon by friends is a pain unique unto itself, and adds a level of grief and suffering to that which was already unbearable and unthinkable.   

Matthew says that Jesus’ last intelligible words from the cross were, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”   Forsaken means abandon, dumped, disposed of, ditched, discarded, forgotten, ALONE – cut off, even, in some unfathomable way, from God!

As I again make my way through the treacherous and tragic landscape of Holy Week, and then stand before his cross again and hear his mournful cry, it is almost as if I am transported back to that desolate and lonely grave on a northern Illinois prairie decades ago.  I can almost feel the chilling cold of the wind penetrate bone and soul and the enveloping overhead gray of despair threaten to consume me.   “And all the disciples deserted him and fled.”  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”    

Years later, while in a dark night of my own soul,  I had a flash of insight about my experience of that late Autumn Day of 1980.  The insight came during Holy Week.  What I finally realized was that at that grave in 1980 what frightened me the most was I got a fleeting glimpse of the interior of my own desperate soul and the loneliness and despair that lurks within me, deep under layers and layers of pretense: at how alone I can sometimes feel in the midst of a crowd or congregation; how alone I can sometimes feel surrounded by friends and loved ones; how alone I can be behind my smile and enthusiastic spirit;  how alone I truly am when I think only of myself and forget others; when I insist on being right; when I am overwhelmed by fear;  when I lash out at others in anger; when facing my own mortality; when my sin cuts me off from God and others. 

At that grave in 1980 I got a glimpse of the interior of my own soul, but at that moment it was too unbearable and too frightening to bear, and I had to turn away and bury it deep again.  

 But now I look and I see how my Lord descended to that same despairing place – ALONE – SO ALONE.   You see my friends, the journey he took was into your soul and mine, and the tortured souls of those around him: Pilate’s soul, Peter’s soul, Judas’ soul, Herod’s soul, the soldier’s souls, the disciples’ souls,  the souls of the indifferent, and the souls of the crazed, hateful crowd, the souls of the Pharisees and even the High Priest.

Passing through layers and layers of pretense, he journeys to the depths of our estranged, isolated, lonely, fearful souls with love, and forgiveness and grace and he gives us our souls back. And the Good News is that we are no longer alone, and we never have to be alone again!   Hosanna!   Amen!