Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. (John 16:32)
Two thousand years later, we tend to associate Holy Week with togetherness — with gatherings on Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and maybe more. But the first Holy Week was the loneliest week of all for Jesus.
To be sure, there were plenty of people around in the crowded city — holding palm branches, huddled around the bread and wine, fighting in the garden, shouting “Crucify him!” — but walking in the midst of it all was a man soon to be utterly alone. The night he was betrayed, he told his closest friends it would be so:
You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.” (Matthew 26:31)
One of the men swore up and down that he would never, ever, ever leave. Hours later, that same Peter was too afraid to say he’d even met Jesus before. A little servant girl turned the great Rock into a pile of feathers. And almost every other friend fell away — no, ran away — with Peter.
The one and only divine Son became the one and only substitute Curse (Galatians 3:13), bearing the sins of the world on just two shoulders. No one could help him bear that burden. Painfully few stayed close enough to comfort him. His closest friends all fled. The road he walked, he walked alone.
Despised and Rejected
Jesus experienced loneliness long before Holy Week, though. Early in Matthew, he says to one zealous follower, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20). Even when things seemed to be going well during his public ministry, he knew better than to entrust himself to the trending crowds.
Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man. (John 2:23–25)
Even when he was surrounded by public admiration and applause, he knew what was in man, and how fickle are human hearts. He knew just how few of the “many” would have the courage to stand with him when the world turned on him.
And so it had to be. Seven hundred years earlier, Isaiah prophesied of this world-saving loneliness:
He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (Isaiah 53:3)
We esteemed him not. We see how bitterly despised and violently rejected Jesus was as they betrayed, beat, abandoned, and nailed him to a cross. Do we see, though, that we despised him, that we loved the darkness more than the light, that we too left Jesus to die alone? That’s what sin is, after all. Sin — any sin — is a despising and rejecting of the truth, beauty, and worth of Jesus. We esteemed him not. He endured loneliness and humiliation, crucifixion and propitiation to save his despisers.
Loneliest Low
As lonely as his life often was, his death was the loneliest moment of all. The loneliness was so terrible it was palpable.
Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:45–46)
Is there any truer, clearer cry of loneliness than that one? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He was quoting the psalm, which continues, “Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer” (Psalm 22:1–2). Of all the loneliest hours and minutes, this was the lowest loneliness, the most searing isolation.
As painful as it was to watch his friends disown him in his neediest hour, this was infinitely worse. If betrayals were thorns in his head, this was the awful spear in his side. He hung there alone, weighed down by those he came to draw to himself.
Never Truly Alone
You may feel unusually lonely this week for any number of legitimate reasons, but let Holy Week remind you that you are not as lonely as you could be. Jesus already bore the deeper, darker loneliness we deserved — he bore the cross and righteous wrath alone, more alone than we’ll ever be. And he bore that greater loneliness so that we need never be truly alone.
Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. (John 16:32–33)
So, Jesus wasn’t as alone as we thought — the Father was always with him. And if we are in him, we’re not as lonely as we may feel in our tribulations — the risen Christ is always with us. “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). When he said always, he meant always, and that means those in him are never truly lonely.
