I have no man!

[AI translation] This is the story of a hopelessly orphaned man. For 38 years he has been lying on the shore of the healing waters, but he has no access to them because there is no one to help him into the lake at the right moment... Jesus sees him, speaks to him and heals him with a single word. Once again a miraculous healing takes place through the power of Jesus. But I do not want to talk about this miracle, but about the fact that Jesus healed this man not only of his illness, but also of his loneliness, of his loneliness. It is very clear in this story how great the misery of loneliness is, and that the only help here is Jesus!I have no man! Two short words, but what immense suffering! And what a judgment on the whole of society at that time. For 38 years, a downtrodden human tormentor has been waiting for someone to notice him, someone to bend down, take his hand, speak to him. There are his fellow human beings crowding around him in the middle of a cosmopolitan city, and there is no one to pick him up and move him two metres away at the right moment... It would not take much to solve the problem of her life, just one person to think of her at the right time, but there is no such person in all Jerusalem! During 38 years of illness, here he is, all alone. Is there any compassion in the world that has not been consumed in 38 years, even if there was perhaps at first... "I don't have a man", she bursts out, bitterness welling up inside her, as soon as someone finally speaks to her.
To be left alone like that for a man: inhuman! "I have no man" - it's almost as much as that: "I am not a man!" Because true, real, full human life is possible in communion with another human being. God created man in his own image and likeness. And this also means that man is not a real man alone, in solitude, but in communion with other men. For God is not God alone, but a triune God, three times one God: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit! Man and another man, that is, man and his fellow man, are related to each other in the same way as in God the Father-Son-Holy Spirit. That is why God said of His child in Paradise that it is not good for man to be alone! The other man is crucial to man's humanity.
The pain of the human destiny without a human companion, orphaned into loneliness, is so great that the question is justified from this point of view. "Do you want to be healed?" Such abandonment, when one is so "without a man", makes one so hopeless, so bored with life, so desperate that one does not want to be healed. Suicide is the result of such a spirit. Although loneliness, isolation, and companionship are not particularly modern phenomena, the crowding of modern life is increasingly lonely, the soul is orphaned. There have always been lonely souls, misunderstood prophets, geniuses, artists, but the sad thing is that in modern life, loneliness is becoming a more and more serious problem. I am not thinking here of the kind of solitude that is good, refreshing, relaxing - like being alone on a mountain top, or a solitary walk in the woods - but of the sad solitude in which a person can live and suffer among his fellow human beings. Like the old lady who lived in a large tenement house, lonely and abandoned. Many, many people passed by her door every day. One day someone noticed that the flowers were wilting in her window. They called a locksmith, went in and found her unconscious... But how many people are left alone like that, abandoned, in distress, without the wilting flowers to draw attention to them... And how many people are walking among us, smiling at us, talking to us, who we don't even know how abandoned their souls are! People who feel like they are cast out, neglected, abandoned, with no one to pour out their hearts to, to tell what is weighing on them. She feels she has no one who understands, who really loves her, who cares, who asks what is bothering her. Or he feels abandoned, cheated, robbed, like the traveller on the Jericho road in the parable of the Good Samaritan, and there is no one to help him.
Sad but true, this spiritual isolation from others, this isolation, is part of the process of modern life's overcrowding. And yet we have never lived so close to each other, almost on top of each other, as we do in modern life. In large apartment blocks, thin walls separate one human life from another. One family's ceiling is another's floor. We can hear each other's radios, the splash of their bathwater. We know what's going on in his family, what's going on with his children, we cringe when someone next door slams a door. We know what she's going to wear on Sunday, what her husband gave her for Christmas. We know his character, his monthly income, his past, his illness - but in reality, we live our lives without each other, we have nothing in common spiritually, we are strangers to each other, like two travellers in the desert who pronounce the name of God differently. Under the tormenting weight of spiritual solitude, modern man is quick to establish some kind of relationship with another human being, but this relationship is usually short-lived and only moves on the surface. Instead of real friendship, it is more like friendship, friendship, instead of real love, it is more like a fleeting flirtation, instead of real intimacy, instead of real meeting, it is more like a polite interest... Oh, how many a man's misery of soul would be expressed if he were to formulate it in this painful lament, "Lord, I have no man..." Hence, all over the world, newspaper editors and radio columnists are receiving more and more letters on their desks, people asking them all sorts of questions because they have no one to talk to about their problems. And so, impersonally, as unknown letter-writers, they emerge from their loneliness. There are many, many more abandoned souls than we think, and they are much closer to us than we think. Perhaps you are working with one of these orphaned souls in the office, or in the factory, or perhaps you are sitting next to one here in church.
It is also possible that your wife or your child has written to some unknown spiritual columnist: I have no one to talk to about this issue! Or maybe you yourself are the lonely soul who has "no one"!
Well, Brothers and Sisters, if there is anyone who has suffered the loneliness of being abandoned by everyone, the full pain of being alone, it is Jesus! While he lived, he healed, taught, and even his narrowest circle of disciples did not understand everything. When the soul most longs for a companion, for the closeness of another soul, for his encouraging words, his look: in the agony of death, he is left alone! Alone in the dark trees of the garden of Gethsemane, he was tormented in the night. When all those who loved him and cherished him ran away from him, and when only those who hurt him, mocked him, tormented him, tormented him, when only God was left for the dying man, then, in that evil hour, even God himself left him. Abandoned by men, abandoned by God, a single thread descended to hell! Never was there such a misunderstood, lonely, orphaned soul in the world! And I find it almost natural, self-evident, that that Jesus there, at the Lake of Bethesda, chose this lonely patient out of all the many sick people, that he sees this one out of all the many sick people, who is all alone, abandoned - who has no man! So we read, "This, as Jesus saw him lying there..." For 38 years no one has seen him lying there. People have stumbled over him, yet they have not seen him. It was Jesus who saw him, and that was the beginning of his deliverance from his loneliness, his gracious lifting out of his isolation. By seeing Jesus! Because Jesus always sees such a person first. And if we were truly following Christ, it would not happen that another Reformed brother in our street would suffer abandoned and forgotten; that an old, sick woman would be alone, cold and hungry, abandoned because there is no one to light the fire, or bring her lunch, or clean her room... That is why it is oh so urgently necessary that at least those who live in the same street should know each other, take account of each other, care for each other. I can think of no greater judgment on the church of Christ than to have among its members those who complain, "Lord, I have no people!
Jesus not only saw this forlorn man, but went and talked to him. And then all this wretch's troubles were solved. Into the life of this man - to whom the other man never came - now entered the great Other, God! For the deepest reason for man's loneliness, his loneliness, is not that he has no man, but that he has no God! That is why the moment the great Other, God, enters our life, our loneliness, our orphanhood, is actually already gone. Without this Other, we are always alone, even when we are surrounded by the sympathy, celebration or sincere compassion of others. The deepest problem of being alone is already solved as soon as one meets God in Jesus. Then you are no longer alone! Don't you have people who understand you, who help you? Well, God in Jesus became just such a person. A man who himself was hungry, thirsty, tired, lonely, outcast, despised... And all this so that no one would ever again say: 'I have no man! I have no one! I do! You have a God! Jesus is here for you too! Very close to you, you can tell Him everything that is on your mind. And whenever you want. What man wouldn't take the trouble? And you can be sure that He will welcome you with love, understanding and patience. You can even be sure that he will take you in hand, that you can trust him. Try it and you will see that all your feelings of abandonment and orphanhood will disappear!
But that's not all! Through Jesus, we are restored not only to communion with God, but also to communion with the other person. Through Christ I am restored not only to God, but also to my fellow human beings. When Jesus comes into our lives, He never comes alone. But with Him we always receive others, even brothers and sisters and enemies. His brothers and sisters, and His enemies. This healed sick person, here in the story, whom no one wanted to notice before, soon becomes the focus of human interest and controversy. Now others will see it too! If Jesus really comes into our lives, His disciples will come with Him, as our good friends, our brothers and sisters, and all sorts of wretched, abandoned people who are looking to us for help.
Those who have met Jesus Christ are not only no longer alone, but never leave others alone. Yet anyone who, as a Christian, is lonely and alone, is unloving and has no sense of responsibility towards his fellow human beings. Try to take care of someone, an abandoned old person or a sick person: you will immediately no longer be alone! The one with whom Jesus is really with is never without the other person!
If only we could experience the love of Jesus with us so that others could experience Jesus' help through us. If only we could experience the presence of Jesus with us in such a way that this lament in the hearts of the people around us - "I have no one!" - would sooner or later become such a joyful exultation: I have God!
Amen
Date: 8 March 1959.