Life Together: The Day Alone
Pastor Holly Johnson
Spirit Garage
Mark 6:45-51; Life Together “The Day Alone” (chapter 3)
September 15, 2024
“After saying farewell to them, he went up on a mountain to pray.” (Mark 6:46)
Jesus has been busy. He and his disciples are kind of moving from town to town, and he’s trying to keep things low-key, but people keep finding out about him and coming to hear the teacher, see the healer.
Just at the end of last week’s text, we had a part where Jesus said, “come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile” for many were coming and going and they had no leisure to even eat. So they took a boat to a deserted place, and you know what happened?
It wasn’t deserted anymore when they got there. The crowds figured out where they were going and beat them there on foot. Jesus had compassion for them, so he taught some more. Then they were a little stuck because no one had any food in this deserted place. This is where the five loaves and two fish come in–-remember this is the food the disciples have brought along when Jesus said it was time to get away for a little while because they didn’t even have time to eat.
He tells them, “you feed them.” You know the rest of that story (Mark 6:30-44). Then he tells them to get back in the boat, while he dismisses the crowd. And then after saying goodbye he goes up to the mountain to pray.
There is a rhythm of life that Jesus is introducing here. A rhythm between being with people, and being alone. A rhythm of speech and of silence. Both are necessary. Both are part of your communion with God.
We’ve been exploring Bonhoeffer’s exploration on Christian community, called “Life Together” for a couple of weeks. This is week three, and the chapter this week is called “The Day Alone.” Here Bonhoeffer tells us that after a time of quiet, we meet others in a different and fresh way.
In Jesus’ case, after his day alone, I guess that fresh way meant looking like a ghost, walking on water in the midst of a difficult windy night. He meant to just pass them by, but they saw him. Interesting detail I never picked up on. But in any case, he joined them in the boat, and then the storm calmed.
Perhaps the storms of his own mind had calmed in that time alone too.
Bonhoeffer tells us there are perils in being together and in being alone.
On the one hand, there are those who cannot endure being alone, who have bad experiences with themselves, and they come to community just hoping to stave off loneliness or whatever they encounter when they are alone. They fall into the “void of words and feelings.” Bonhoeffer says they are often disappointed and then they blame the Christian community for whatever it is within them that wasn’t fixed by being in community. And so, you are to beware of being in community if this is you.
And the reverse is also true: “Let the one who is not in community beware of being alone.” If you scorn the fellowship of others, you reject Jesus and your call to community. You can fall into the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation and despair. I think by this “self-infatuation” he’s talking not so much about loving yourself, but about being so inwardly focused that you are “navel-gazing.” That's how Martin Luther, hundreds of years earlier would describe it. You can be so turned in on yourself and your own thoughts and feelings that you could hardly notice anyone else’s joy or pain.
We are each called from community to solitude, and from solitude into community. In our solitude we learn to be in community and in community we learn to live alone.
What does this time alone look like? It is silence, meditation, private prayer, and intercession.
First, silence. No podcasts, no music, no book, no new york times, no tik tok. It is a listening silence, a humble stillness that is silence in conjunction with the Word. The way he describes it sounds a lot like a Quaker service, actually. Where there is a great deal of silence before a word is spoken. If a word is spoken. That which is unnecessary remains unsaid.
There is room for that in all of our lives.
In silence and when alone, we also spend time meditating on scripture. It’s different than reading together because each place and context with which you encounter a living word, it takes on new meaning for you. In seminary one of our assignments in preaching class was to read the scripture you were preaching on in three different locations, in order to experience what difference you encounter when reading it in a different context. When we read scripture in a small group like Thursday night Zoom Bible studies, we might hear the text in a certain way, and get the reflections on what a few other people are hearing. When I read the text with all of you in mind to prepare for a sermon, and try to put that scripture in conversation with Bonhoeffer, I will hear and see and read different things.
When I read it alone, it is with the assumption that, as Bonhoeffer says, “It has something utterly personal to say to us for this day, and for our life. It is not just a word for a whole church, but also for us, individually.” And so each of us experience it differently in our time alone.
After reading scripture, your time alone can lead you into private prayer: Bonhoeffer says “prayer means nothing else but the readiness and willingness to receive and appropriate the Word, and accept it” in one's personal life, work, decisions, wants and desires. So we meditate on what the scripture says for our lives, and we pray for the clarification of our day, for our growth and strength in living out our lives as Christians in the world-maybe some help in figuring out what that means.
When you’re praying, (or at least when I’m praying) it’s easy for the mind to wander, thinking about people or problems or events that we keep ruminating on. Bonhoeffer has words for this too: Just incorporate those people or events into your prayers.
Bonhoeffer assumes we also should be praying on behalf of others too-what is called “intercession prayers” Bonhoeffer assumes that everyone has their own circle of people who have requested prayers, so you pray for them. But more than that–-you pray for those people in your life who you know need prayers. Those people in your life who are difficult to love. Those people in your life. Each person’s circle is different, and this way, the whole world is covered in prayer.
Maybe you were one of those kids who had a night time prayer that sounded something like, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. And God bless Grandma Steber, and Uncle Peter and David and Phillip and Aunt Lila and Mom and Dad and Luther and Angela and August and Adam, Sarah, Carla, Nancy, Roseanne, Stephanie, Julie, and Kelsi and Merideth and Margaret, and our next door neighbor Pam, ….and if you were a babysitter for this kid and they really didn’t want to go to bed, that list could get really really long. And that's pretty sweet and just fine.
Intersession, Bonhoeffer says, “means no more than bringing another into the presence of God, to see him under the cross of Jesus as a poor human being; a sinner in need of grace.” And the reason for this prayer? “Then everything in them that repels us falls away; we see that person in all their destitution and need.” We feel it as our own, because we are all there in need of grace and love.
In other words, the prayer is not for God. It is for us. And it is for our relationships.
When Jesus went up on that mountain to pray, there wasn’t a foot of the cross just yet. He’d eventually be on that cross. Still, it is clear to me that he went and prayed—prayed for all the people in his circle, using the scripture that was his. And eventually that circle included the whole world. And eventually that circle included all people of every time and place. Including us. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Whatever that time alone brings you, you bring the blessing of that time back into the community. And then you also receive the blessing of time together in community. What a beautiful experience.
Amen