A Solitary Man...

When I was younger I had difficulty making friends.


No. That’s not quite true. I made friends, but only hesitantly. The combination of my parents’ frequent transfer from city to new city and my own introverted personality kept me from diving into new friendships. I don’t think I was reclusive, but for the most part I was content to not interact with the other kids.

Mostly…

I read books. I took walks by myself. I listened to music. Solitary activities for a solitary young man. I remember going to the Salvation Army’s camp in Indiana, Camp Elm and during the afternoon free-times when the other kids were swimming in the pool or buying candy at the sweet-shop, I would sometimes go off into the woods to a spot I thought of as my own. I sat there and thought about life and God and man … - well, I thought about those things as much as any 9 year old can.

But it was in those solitary pursuits I figured out who I am. I didn’t know the Neil Diamond song, but if I had I might have sung:

I'll be what I am
A solitary man…

But at the same time, I knew that I was lonely.

I was able to be alone with myself, and alone with God, but I felt something was missing. Not just friends. I had friends. I had may friends (few close friends, though). I had many acquaintances in places all across the mid-west. I could go hundreds of miles in any direction and be able to find someone that I knew. But I still lacked something.

Community – I later realized that that missing piece was a place in a close fellowship of people, intimately bound to each other by a shared belief and a common purpose and mission. And that is what led me to becoming an officer in this Salvation Army.

If you’d asked me when I was 9 if I wanted to be a Salvation Army officer, if you’d asked me when I was 15, if you’d asked me when I was 18 if I wanted to be an officer I would have told you flat out – no. This Salvation Army is what bounced me around from place to place, uprooting me each and every time I took the risk of making friends. But I come to recognize the community of fellowship that we in the Salvation Army share.

The author of our psalm for today (Psalms 42 & 43, which should be read together as one psalm) certainly knew the blessings of community. He knew the beauty and splendor of sharing worship with his brothers. He had experienced that sublime sense of God’s presence as he worshiped in the temple in Jerusalem.

It’s quite likely that he had been a leader in that worship, one of the musicians who lead the crowds in the sacred songs and daily prayers. He had stood shoulder to shoulder with the throngs, his voice blending with theirs, his prayers going up with theirs in the smoke of the their burnt offerings on the altar. He’d shouted for joy with them. He had worshipped with them and in worshipping with them he had experienced the very real presence of God.

We believe in one God, who is infinite and perfect in every regard. We believe that there is only one God and yet we believe that that one God is in community – a triune God, of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This one God has never been alone. This God is in community. This God is in fellowship. And we have been created in his image, male and female, we are created in God’s image and we have deep within us this need for community.

But now the author of this psalm is cut off from that community. It’s not clear what has happened – some scholars speculate that it was an illness, other that he has been taken captive and forcibly removed from Jerusalem. But, whatever the reason, he has been separated from the community of worship, and in his mind – at his very essence, he feels separated from the presence of God.

His isolation is a desperate solitude. His soul is dying of thirst and he longs for the time when he will once again drink in deeply the presence of God.

As a deer yearns for running streams,
so I yearn for you, my God.
I thirst for God, the living God;
when shall I go to see the face of God?

Psychologists studying the nature and effects of attachment – human relationships- have pointed out what may seem very obvious: “The relationships that mater most to us are characteristically to particular people whom we love – husband or wife, parents, children dearest friend… These specific relationships which we experience as unique and irreplaceable seem to embody most crucially the meaning of our lives.” (Peter Marris, “Attachment and Society” in The Place of Attachment in Human Behavior, 1982.)

Our relationships are the structure, the supporting pillars of “meaning” in our lives. Think about the recently bereaved who feel that life is “meaningless.” The meaning of our lives and even our self identity is tied up, to some degree, in the way we relate to the people in our lives. If the important people in our lives are taken away, by death, or divorce, or relocation, or what have you, we will have to re-define who we are.

For the psalmist and others living in under the first covenant – the Old Testament, God’s presence was thought to be localized in the Temple in Jerusalem. They knew that God couldn’t be contained in any one building or in any one place, but still they believed that the Temple was THE place of God. God was present there as he was nowhere else on the face of the earth. His shekinah glory – the glory cloud of his presence had been visible when Solomon dedicated the Temple. His voice could be heard there. That is where he lived. The Temple was his house. Mount Zion was his home.

But our psalmist isn’t there. He is, against his will, very far away from there. He can’t see the glory cloud. He can’t sing the sacred songs with the joyful throngs. He can’t pray the daily prayers in the courts of the temple. He has lost the sense of God’s presence. He has lost his work. He has lost his community. He has lost a sense of himself.

And added to this are the insults and taunts of “the enemy,” who surround him with jeers and catcalls. ‘Where is your God, now?” Do we wonder that he is downcast?

Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God
for I will yet praise him,
my savior and my God.

He sits upon the lonely stone crags of Mount Hermon, watching the water cascade down the rocks. He hears the thunder and roar of the rushing water as it flows down into the Jordan River. And he feels dead inside.

There is wordplay we miss in translation. When the psalmist says:

Therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan,
the heights of Hermon, from Mt. Mizar… (verse 6)

he’s not simply giving geographical names. A very literal translation of this verse may sound strange in our ears:

I remember you
from the land of descent and of nets,
from the mountains at the rim.
(Mitchel Dahood, Psalms 1 – 50, The Anchor Bible Vol. 16)

This is a poetic name for the nether world, the underworld. In his desperation, the psalmist imagines himself in the depths of Sheol – the grave – at the farthest possible remove from God. The crashing chaotic waters have swept over him, have crashed down upon him and death – poetically if not literally – has swallowed him up.

He is not happy. He is very far from happy.

Why do we come to church week after week and pretend to be happy when we’re not? We smile and sing – but sometimes we’re just pretending. The psalmist makes no pretence of happiness. He is broken and dying in his spirit and he doesn’t pretend otherwise. He admits to his depression. He gives it voice.

And by admitting it and giving it voice he makes a prayer. It’s not really a prayer asking God for anything. It doesn’t even sound (to me) like a prayer that expects an answer. He has been waiting and waiting and desperately waiting for God but there has been no response and now he prays this prayer of desperate loneliness. He prays, not to influence God in heaven, but rather to change something in himself. He prays in order to produce a right state within.

Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God
for I will yet praise him,
my savior and my God.

Three times he comes back to this refrain. He prays a confidence that I’m not sure he feels – but he prays. He wrestles. He challenges. He prays. And he trusts that God will eventually and somehow answer. The psalmist trusts that God will send his light and his truth – his shekinah presence to guide him back.

Send forth your light and truth
let them guide me
let them bring me to your holy mountain
to the place where you dwell.
Then I will go to the altar of God,
to God, my joy, and my delight.
I will praise you with the harp,
O God, my God.

And whether this is a physical return to the temple in Jerusalem or it is a more inward, spiritual return to a sense of God’s transcendent presence – either way the psalmist will experience the joy of worshipping in God’s presence.

One of my favorite authors – Marva Dawn – knows a good deal about isolation and loneliness. In her life she has dealt with debilitating illness and loss of her husband. She could have succumbed to the despair that filled her life. She could have given up. But, like the psalmist, she continued to pray a confidence that she didn’t feel, in order to find that sense of God’s presence. Her book My Soul Waits: Solace for the Lonely in the Psalms is a challenging and comforting book.

“Worship is not simply a panacea of happy songs to cure forever our being downcast. It will not bring an end to our loneliness unless it truly offers us the way to meet a triple need – our longing for closer communion with God, for deeper fellowship with His people, and for the opportunity to use our gifts to express praise. This is why we can continue to hop in disturbing times: for surely we will yet praise him. We will know him as our personal Savior and God as we join together with other believers in the assembly of light and faithful love.” (Marva Dawn, My Soul Waits: Solace for the Lonely in the Psalms, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, 1998. Page 204-5)

To worship together as we do is to experience a piece of heaven. General William Booth – founder of The Salvation Army once said that “making heaven on earth is our business.” One of the ways that we do that is in our communal worship. Wherever two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name – God is there. God is present here. This humble chapel becomes the very throne room of heaven.

But sometimes it’s difficult to feel that. Sometimes we are removed – or we feel removed – from God’s presence. Depression, whether caused by chemical imbalance, stress, the burdens of overwhelming life can make us feel like our soul is slowly dying of thirst. But we can pray like the psalmist.

And maybe there won’t be an answer right away. Maybe God won’t shift the mountains and smite our enemies with thunderbolts. But in prayer we can begin to change ourselves from the inside until we are able to see and sense God’s light and truth leading us ever into his presence.

And what am I to do

Just tell me what am I supposed to say
I can't change the world
But I can change the world in me
If I rejoice

I don't know what to change
Rejoice...
U2 - "Rejoice"