The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
July 31, 2011
Vol. 14 no. 31
People come to church buildings precisely because they are “lonely places,” and precisely because they are not. Many people are drawn to the church as a community, a place to meet people and belong even if one belongs nowhere else.
The better word may be solitude - an aloneness filled by the presence of the divine - so never quite lonely. There is nothing like sitting in a full sanctuary absolutely quiet during prayer. Silence is not nothingness, but a presence that encourages us to hear the Word worth hearing.
Both stories today find the protagonists cornered in a lonely place. Jacob crosses the River Jabbok because he has nowhere else to flee from the justifiable wrath of his duped brother Esau. But he is not alone, and the wrestling match that ensues defines and names him. A match he loses, yet by which he is affirmed by the God of his fathers.
Jesus escapes to a lonely place in order to avoid the people who adore him. He needs to be alone in order to revive his strength and spirit, but the hordes pursue. He teaches again, and notice that no Gospel records what he taught - probably using his old lecture notes.
Time to eat, and the burden of being host falls upon Jesus. The feeding of the five thousand gathered to listen is the exemplar of a community who silently hears God speak in the food they pass to one another, share, and eat. Trying to figure out how five loaves of bread and two fish get distributed evenly and adequately is like understanding how a human being gets crippled by an angel. It may make sense, but never add up.
Both locations matter. It is their quality of loneliness that creates a spirit we might sense today filling our venerated room of worship.
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan