“It is not good for the man to be alone.” You got that right. The same goes for the woman too. It is not good to be alone. Jesus agreed. He thought that being together was better than being alone. He gathered people together wherever he went. He had a close knit group of apostles. He was well known for his dinner parties where all were welcomed. In fact, he so much believed in the importance of being together that saw it as the plan of God that what God has joined together must stay together. But you get the feeling in St. Mark’s gospel that the disciples kind of sheepishly challenged him on this. Are you sure about that Jesus? After all, you’re a single guy and some of us are married. And we can tell you right now that staying together is hard. It’s hard to stay together when there is fussing and feuding and fighting and finagling. It’s hard to stay together when (pick your side) parents don’t understand what I am going through OR children don’t understand that I know some stuff and if they listen it will help them. It’s hard to stay together when every time I look at him all I can think about is how he has hurt me. And that’s not even counting the ordinary things that pull us apart like a new job or posting, illness, or even our inevitable friend, death. So, Jesus, yes, we agree. It’s better to be together – but it ain’t easy.
Here is the dilemma of the Christian life. We all agree in the ideal that it is better to be together – marriage, family, community, church, neighborhood, nation, world. But we don’t live in the ideal world. We live in the real world. And in the real world it’s not easy to stay together. There are so many stresses and strains that pull us apart. What God seems to have joined for life all to frequently tragically breaks apart. The challenge for us then: how do we hold onto our ideal while at the same time take into account the real stuff that actually happens in life. We turn to Jesus to see if there is way.
Jesus understands. All of his efforts to bring people together seemed for naught. Even among his closest friends – one betrayed him, one denied him, the rest deserted him. So at the end he was alone – the place where it is not good to be – except for his sorrowful mother and a pitiable few. So Jesus understands how hard it is to stay together. Which is why the epistle to the Hebrews insists that we need to think of Jesus as our brother. Notice the way the author puts it – both Jesus and we have one origin, our loving heavenly Father. Therefore, says the epistle, he [Jesus] is not ashamed to call them, call us, “brothers” and no doubt sisters too. Let’s think about that for a minute. What does it mean that we call Jesus our brother? We know what brothers are like. I have two of them. We don’t agree on much. We think differently. We can argue with the best of them. But there is one thing which is true about me and my brothers – we know we have each other’s back. No matter what I asked them, they would be with me in a flash. And if they asked anything of me, I would have their six. Being brothers means unqualified support. Jesus as our brother promises the same unlimited support to us. That suggests our homework for the week. Since we want to be together even though it ain’t easy, let us turn to our brother Jesus and ask him to help carry us out of a place of being alone toward togetherness.
