THE CURE FOR LONELINESS
W. Carl Ketcherside

Once I wrote a book and titled it “One Great Chapter.” It was one of thirty-two volumes I produced in my writing heyday, a word which means “period of greatest vigor.” In it I analyzed chapter eight of that unparalleled treatise in which “the apostle to the Gentiles” wrote his heart out to the Romans. I have often wondered if those in Rome, caught up, as they were, in dreams of politics and of power, really appreciated it as much as I do, almost two thousand years after it was dictated to Tertius. There are many great chapters in the new covenant scriptures. There are no inferior ones. As I begin to write about John 17, I pray it will not reach the proportion of a book. I know you are praying that even harder than myself. But my heart is filled and I cannot promise.

The chapter contains the longest recorded prayer of Jesus. It was not the longest, for sometimes he continued all night in prayer. But it was the longest one preserved for us by the disciple whom he loved. It was uttered just after he had finished speaking to the apostles. They had just told him that at last they were sure of one thing — that he knew all things. He had just remarked that he had come from the Father into the world, and now he would reverse the order and leave the world and go to the Father. What this kind of language does to the theory of the unitarians, I shall leave them to tell you. There were no unitarians when Jesus spoke these words. For your information, there were no trinitarians either.

It was a day when wisdom was elicited by questioning. Ever since the day of Socrates, four hundred years previous, the dialectic method of instruction and investigation by questions and answers had prevailed in many of the schools of thought in the Greek world. But the disciples said it was so apparent and sure that Jesus knew all things, it would have been useless for any man to ask him profound questions to test him. And that fact made them believe that he came forth from God whose “judgments are unsearchable, and his ways past finding out.” Every human method falls flat on its face when used against God. The fact that Jesus knew all things, and that any man was an ignoramus to question him was enough for his disciples. It ought to be enough for us today as well.

Jesus questioned them “Do you now believe?” Then he told them that very soon they would be scattered, everyone to his own home, his own ways, his own thoughts. Jesus would be left alone, bereft of human companionship, or arm to lean upon. But then, almost casually, he gave the prescription for one of the most widespread maladies of our modern sophisticated culture — loneliness. Never before in the history of humanity has there been such loneliness as now exists. And it exacts its due, a frightful personality toll from millions. Jesus pointed out that human companions would fail and leave him alone. But he remarked that he was not alone because the Father is with him. Not that he was with him, or would be with him, but he is with him.

That is the cure for loneliness — to have someone with you. I think of an elderly woman in the inner city who wept bitterly as she told me, “I’ve got a home, I’ve got plenty to live on, but I’ve got no one to talk to.” I am helping a man who went on a three-day alcoholic binge, and lay on the floor from Christmas Eve for almost three days in a stupor, and who said, “I had no one who loved me or cared for me. I went crazy.” Jesus knew he was not alone when men ran away. He said he was not alone because “the Father is with me.” That is the best prescription available. We need never walk alone!

Jesus spoke these things to the disciples that they might have peace in him. A lot of good folk are betrayed by their dependence upon their dictionaries. A dictionary is like any other tool. It is not for universal use. One definition it gives of peace is “the absence or cessation of war.” But just because a nation is not firing cannons at another is no indication of peace. They may have substituted insults for cannonballs. Our peace is personal. “He is our peace.” The peace we have in him is tranquility resulting from reconciliation. “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The peace of which Jesus speaks heals, repairs, and makes whole. It is active and not passive. As Shakespeare said of sleep, it “knits up the raveled sleeve of care.”

In the world we will have tribulation. Tribulation is from the Latin tribulum, a threshing instrument. It refers to a flail which was brought down continuously upon the unresisting grain. There are those who seem to be always under the rod. They hardly rise from one catastrophe until another strikes. This is our fate in the world. In all of this we are told to be of good cheer. Our mood should be one of conquest and not surrender. We do not fight for victory. It has already been won. All we need do is to claim it. “I have overcome the world.”

After speaking these words Jesus lifted up his eyes to heaven. Most of us do not. We close our eyes and bend our heads downward. We would think it strange if one looked upward with eyes open. But it is not the attitude of the head, but that of the heart which counts. It is not the pose or posture of the outer man but it is the petition of the inner man which constitutes prayer. One of the most effective prayers I ever heard was uttered by a man hanging head down two stories up, with his foot caught in a chain dangling from a scaffold. I do not recommend it as a position which all should choose. I am more interested in the words with which Jesus began his prayer, “Father, the hour is come.” —4420 Jamieson, St. Louis, MO 63109.