Date: February 4, 2024 

Scripture: Mark 1:29-39

Sermon Title: “Seeking Solitude”

Preacher: Rev. Dr. Bob Jon

You can also listen on Podcast from iTunes and Spotify. Search for “Podcasting from Rev. Bob Jon.”

Recently, my son Daniel was expressing pain with coughing. He has always had asthma as I did when I was a kid. Usually, with the help of the inhaler, his symptom goes away. But this time, he was getting worse. So, in the morning, I brought him to urgent care. I thought he was going to get better after he was given the nebulizer treatment and some steroids. He was still not feeling better so I brought him to his pediatric doctor in the afternoon. I thought he would feel better finally. But at night, he just could not breathe, so I brought him to the emergency at Lowell General Hospital. 

When we got there, the hall was packed with people, young and old, men and women, every skin color and different religion. I was afraid it would take at least one hour before he would be seen by a doctor. Thankfully, he was admitted to a room within 15 minutes or so. He was given a stronger steroid this time, given another nebulizer treatment, and taken to X-Ray room to make sure he had no pneumonia. After staying in the room for about 5 hours, we were finally discharged around 2 am. As we were coming out of the ER, I still saw many people in the lobby, including a mother holding her crying child. 

Everyone came to the place with something in common. Everyone was either sick or caring for their sick family or friend. I know that tending to a child with asthma is exhausting. But compared with many other serious illnesses, maybe asthma is nothing. But let’s assume that there is a doctor who can cure every illness regardless of what it is. It could be something physical, mental/psychological, or emotional. If there is someone who could not only give the most accurate diagnosis but also cure every sickness or illness, what would you ask this doctor to help you or your family with? Cancer? Diabetes? Heart Diseases? Dementia/Alzheimer’s? Depression and Anxiety? 

If you are a miraculous doctor, think about all the fame, wealth, and power you will get. (It is said that Pfizer earned a record $100 billion in 2022, and more than half of it came from its vaccine and Paxlovid and Moderna made $18 billion from its sales of vaccine.) The TV and news media will want to interview you calling you the miracle man or miracle woman. You will be on the cover of every major magazine, being recognized everywhere you go. All the hospitals and major medical schools will offer you a tenure or position. The politicians notice your fame and want to recruit you to their party, promising that you would be their leader or even presidential candidate in the next election. 

But where does Jesus go? Instead of being surrounded by the crowd, enjoying the praise from people for his miraculous works, or being promoted to be their leader, he got up while it was still dark early in the morning, went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed to God. In other words, he actively sought solitude: a time to be alone with God. He could have slept like other disciples saving energy for the works the next day. Or he could have a meeting with his disciples to do their work more effectively with a better strategy. However, Jesus simply sought a place and a time in which he could be alone with God so that he could pray to God. He sought solitude. 

This is a very odd thing for many of us because many of us do not necessarily seek solitude actively. We just find ourselves alone when we are driving our cars. We find ourselves alone when we take a shower. We find ourselves alone when we drop our children at the school. We find ourselves alone when we walk the trail for some fresh air and exercise. But many of us do not necessarily seek solitude because we do not want to be alone; as Paul Tillich says, we are finite creatures with fear of not being loved or being forgotten by others. We are desperate to surround ourselves with something to avoid loneliness, such as meaningless noise by turning on the TV or radio. 

But think about Jesus who just spent 40 days in the wilderness being tempted, wrestling with hunger and thirst. Why does he go back to such a place? What is he seeking in his solitude? In The Way of the Heart, Henri Nouwen says, “Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude, we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. Jesus himself entered into this furnace. There he affirmed God as the only source of his identity.” You know when he was baptized, the voice in heaven said, “You are my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” But even Jesus needed to be reminded of who he was, what he was doing, and why he was doing what he was doing, all through prayers. 

Thomas Long, a retired professor of preaching, shares a story when he was teaching at Princeton University. Some years ago, he was serving on a committee called the Princeton University Chaplain’s Advisory Council. Both faculties and chaplains met once per year to hear about their work. One year, during the Question-and-Answer time, an older member of the council asked the chaplains, “What are the students like morally these days?” The chaplains were looking at each other wondering who was going to answer. Then the Methodist chaplain said, “Well, I think you would be pleased. They are ambitious in terms of careers, but that’s not all they are. A lot of them tutor kids after school. Some work in the night shelter and the soup kitchen for the homeless. Last week a group protested apartheid in South Africa …” 

As she talked, the Jewish chaplain smiled. The more she talked, the bigger he smiled, until finally the Methodist chaplain had to say, “Ed, am I saying something funny?” He replied, “No, I am sorry. I was just sitting here thinking. You are saying that the students are good people, and you are right. And you are saying that they are involved in good social causes, and they are. But what I was thinking is that the one thing they lack is a vision of salvation. If you don’t have some vision of what God is doing to repair the whole creation, you can’t get up every day and work in a soup kitchen. It finally beats you down.”^[1]

I believe that is why Jesus also left his disciples and even the crowd and went to a deserted place to pray. It is not that good works, such as healing the sick and feeding the hungry, are not inferior to faith growth, such as worship, prayer, fasting, or reading the Bible. But if we do not stop to reflect on who we are, what we do, and why we are here, it is easy to forget our purpose of being, and also hope that somehow our works will make a difference in this world at all. And solitude provides us with a time and place in which we realize that we are not on our own. But we are participating in the bigger plan of God, who is already working actively for our salvation today, as God has already done so through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. 

So, when the disciples finally found Jesus praying in a deserted place, they said, “Everyone is searching for you.” I am sure that they were looking for him so that he could settle there do more healing and miracles for the crowds. But he does not stay there. He knows his purpose. He simply follows the will of God as he says, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” (v. 38) So, he went throughout Galilee, healing the sick, teaching at synagogues, and casting out demons, still seeking solitude often, going to a deserted place to pray to God who gave him strength, and reminded him who he was. 

From time to time, many of us feel lonely and separated from one another. It is our human condition that no one can truly know what each one of us is going through. But we can turn this time of being lonely into a time of solitude in which we actively seek the presence of God. In a world surrounded by many harmful messages that tell us that we are not good enough, we are not beautiful enough, we are not smart enough, and we are not strong enough, solitude helps us reduce all those noises so we can hear the gentle voice of God who calls us God’s beloved, and sending us to the world to heal the wounded world, and proclaim that the kingdom of God is near, as we feed the hungry, heal the sick, forgive one another, and drive demons out in Jesus’ name. 

Aldersgate is my fourth church as pastor. When I get a call from my district superintendent saying our bishop intends to appoint me to some church somewhere, I get anxious not knowing much about that church, fear of an uncertain future, stress of packing, unpacking, and moving, and sadness about saying goodbye to people I have grown to love. I am sure you all can relate to that when you were also facing many unexpected changes in your lives. Changes with your family. Changes with your job. Moving to a new place. Changes in your health or your family’s health. And I have found it helpful to say the prayer written by Thomas Merton 

“My Lord God, 

I have no idea where I am going. 

I do not see the road ahead of me. 

I cannot know for certain where it will end. 

Nor do I really know myself, 

and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. 

But I believe that the desire to please you 

does in fact please you. 

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. 

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, 

though I may know nothing about it. 

Therefore, I will trust you always though 

I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, 

and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”^[2]

Amen.

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^[1] Thomas G. Long, Preaching from Memory to Hope, 124. 

^[2]Thomas Merton, “The Merton Prayer” in Thoughts in Solitude