Life can get awfully busy at times: work, home, church, volunteering, social activities. Each area of life brings its own set of demands on our time and our energy. When theses demands grow too large, we run in search of solitude; for time and space to empty ourselves of the negative energy that builds up due to the pressure. We long to be renewed and refreshed so that we can gain a new perspective; so that we can face the challenges that life brings us.

The rushed pace of the American life makes it difficult to find that break which we truly need. We search for solitude, longing for its healing effects. This need in our culture is evident by the large number of spa facilities and retreat centers that exist. When we succeed in finding an opportunity to enjoy some solitude, we count ourselves as lucky. When it ends we quickly find ourselves wishing that we could experience it again.

But solitude alone is not enough to renew us. It needs something more to truly be effective. William Cowper speaks to this in his poem “Retirement” when he says:

How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude!
But grant me still a friend in my retreat
Whom I may whisper – solitude is sweet.

Solitude is sweet only when we seek it out and when we have someone to whom we can relate the experience. When solitude is forced upon a person, it loses its healing powers. Those who don’t have that friend to whom they can whisper may agree more with Octavio Paz who wrote, “Solitude lies at the lowest depth of the human condition.”

We have just completed what is for many the hardest time of the year: the Holiday Season. It begins with Thanksgiving where our nation focuses on the blessings that come from having a family and close friends with whom we can share the richness of life. It continues straight on into the Christmas season where the stress is on finding the perfect gift for the loved ones in our lives. This is followed by only a slight pause before we rush headlong into Valentine’s Day with all the pressure of finding that special someone and showing them how much we really care. There is hardly a chance for someone fighting to keep solitude at bay to catch a breath and regroup. With constant talk of “the cheer of the season” and “the romance that is in the air,” those who aren’t experiencing either of these are pushed to the side or end up feeling like charity cases when they are brought into celebrations by people who “just want to help.”

All of the messages about being with loved ones only serve to underline how different someone is when they don’t fit into the stereotypical family or couple molds that our society has constructed. It can leave a person feeling utterly alone with no support structures. Jean Paul Sartre came to the conclusion that that feeling is the only one that is true. One must realize that he or she is alone in order to move forward. He explains:

Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.

We probably all have experienced times when we felt completely alone in this life; left to face struggles by ourselves. But our scripture passage for this evening tells us something different. In it, Jesus is trying to address the fears of his followers who have recently learned that Jesus is planning to leave them soon. They fear that they will have to face the world alone and that is a scary proposition. They have left everything that was familiar to them – their families, their work, their daily routines -- to follow this man and now he is talking about leaving them.

But Jesus wants them to understand that even though his bodily presence will no longer be with them, they will not be left alone. He begins by calling his followers to obey his commandments. This, no doubt, reminded the people listening of God’s promise made to their earliest ancestors. It is a promise that had been handed down from generation to generation. For the Jewish people, God’s promise to those who obeyed God’s commandments had always been security through land and descendants. And so, God’s love was made real to them through their home and their family; real signs in their everyday life that God had not abandoned them.

Having reminded them of this promise of external signs of God’s presence with the Jewish people, Jesus expands the promise to include an internal dimension for each individual. God the Father will send another, the Holy Spirit, to dwell within them and to continue the work that Jesus began in them. This promise of an Advocate, or Spirit, was something completely new.

Jesus’ break from this familiar paradigm must have been hard for his followers to understand. The Christian Church has had 2000 years to work with this idea so it might not seem so jarring to us today. But what Jesus was promising was a radical idea. God would not only be with those who followed Jesus’ commandments but would be inside of them. No relationship could be closer than that!

This kind of relationship is actually true to the nature of God, Jesus explains. God the Father is in Jesus the Son, as is Jesus the Son in God the Father. The Spirit of truth comes from the Father and continues the work of Jesus the Son. This is the work of the Trinity – the one God who is manifested in three persons. Theologians throughout the history of the Church have struggled to find clear images to express how God is both one and yet three; how the three persons of the Trinity are in a constant flow of giving and receiving, dwelling within one another and yet being distinct.

One image that is regaining popularity is that of the movement of the Trinity as a dance. The contemporary theologian Jürgen Moltmann explains it like this:

In the rhythmic vibrancies and movements of the dance steps, space is measured in terms of time, and time in terms of space. In the movements of the dance, the antithesis is united and the unity divided. Union and disunion alternate and are one in their alternation. In the rhythm of the dance the antitheses are reconciled.

In dance, therefore, time and space take on new characteristics which allow separate entities to become united. Picture Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as they glide across the floor. See how there are two people and yet they move as if they are one. This is one way to think of how the triune God moves and works in and through the three persons: parent, child, and spirit.

Jesus explains to his followers that what he is proposing is actually the opposite of what they fear. Instead of being left alone, they are being invited to join in the dance. He tells them that if they love him and keep his commandments of loving God and neighbor then the circle of the dance will open and space will be made for them to join in. The result will be a deep and abiding peace from Jesus for that person.

According to Gregory of Nyssa, a leader of the Church in the 4th century, this dance is the ideal that has existed since the beginning of creation:

Once there was a time when the whole of rational creation formed a single dancing chorus looking upward to the one leader of this dance… And the harmony of that motion which was imparted to them by reason of [God’s] law found its way into their dancing… And this victory will come and thou shalt be found in the dancing ranks of the angelic spirits.

God does not leave God’s creation in solitude. We do not have to face the circumstances that come without any support. God is constantly present. God invites us to join in the dance.