'Ye shall leave Me alone'; there is sadness, though it be calm, in that
clause, and then, I suppose, there was a moment's pause before the
quiet voice began again: 'And yet I am not alone, for the Father is
with Me.' There are two currents there, both calm; but the one bright
and the other dark.
Jesus was the loneliest man that ever lived. All other forms of human
solitude were concentrated in His. He knew the pain of unappreciated
aims, unaccepted love, unbelieved teachings, a heart thrown back upon
itself. No man understood Him, no man knew Him, no man deeply and
thoroughly loved Him or sympathised with Him, and He dwelt apart. He
felt the pain of solitude more sharply than sinful men do. Perfect
purity is keenly susceptible; a heart fully charged with love is
wounded sore when the love is thrown back, and all the more sorely the
more unselfish it is.
Solitude was no small part of the pain of Christ's passion. Remember
the pitiful appeal in Gethsemane, 'Tarry ye here and watch with Me!'
Remember the threefold vain return to the sleepers in the hope of
finding some sympathy from them. Remember the emphasis with which, more
than once in His life, He foretold the loneliness of His death. And
then let us understand how the bitterness of the cup that He drank had
for not the least bitter of its ingredients the sense that He drank it
alone.
Now, dear friends! some of us, no doubt, have to live outwardly
solitary lives. We all of us live alone after all fellowship and
communion. Physicists tell us that in the most solid bodies the atoms
do not touch. Hearts come closer than atoms, but yet, after all, we die
alone, and in the depths of our souls we all live alone. So let us be
thankful that the Master knows the bitterness of solitude, and has
Himself trod that path.
Then we have here the calm consciousness of unbroken communion. Jesus
Christ's sense of union with the Father was deep, close, constant, in
manner and measure altogether transcending any experience of ours. But
still He sets before us a pattern of what we should aim at in these
great words. They show the path of comfort for every lonely heart. 'I
am not alone, for the Father is with Me.' If earth be dark, let us look
to Heaven. If the world with its millions seems to have no friend in it
for us, let us turn to Him who never leaves us. If dear ones are torn
from our grasp, let us grasp God. Solitude is bitter; but, like other
bitters, it is a tonic. It is not all loss if the trees which with
their leafy beauty shut out the sky from us are felled, and so we see
the blue.
Christ's company is to us what the Father's fellowship was to Christ.
He has borne solitude that He might be the companion of all the lonely,
and the same voice which said, 'Ye shall leave Me alone,' said also, 'I
am with you always, even to the end of the world.'
But _that_ communion of Christ with the Father was broken, in that
awful hour when He cried: 'My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?' We tread
there on the verge of mysteries, beyond our comprehension; but this we
know--that it was our sin and the world's, made His by His willing
identifying of Himself with us, which built up that black wall of
separation. That hour of utter desolation, forsaken by God, deserted by
men, was the hour of the world's redemption. And Jesus Christ was
forsaken by God and deserted by men, that you and I might never be
either the one or the other, but might find in His sweet and constant
companionship at once the society of man and the presence of God.