Scripture Text: Mark 6: 30-34, 53-56 (Proper 11B)

³⁰The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. ³¹He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. ³²And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. ³³Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. ³⁴As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

⁵³When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. ⁵⁴When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, ⁵⁵and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. ⁵⁶And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

You know, sometimes discipleship is just downright exhausting.  Oh, who are we kidding?  Sometimes just being a normal person trying to keep your head above water is downright exhausting.  Sometimes it seems too hard or too much or too complicated.  Discipleship (and life, for that matter) is really sort of a balancing act.  It is full of rhythms of converging order and chaos, beginnings and ending, and pulsing light and dark and sometimes we struggle to somehow balance all those aspects of life as we continue our journey forward. 

This passage depicts a time in the life of the disciples not unlike that.  Remember that the verses preceding the ones we read are the account of the death of John the Baptist (Why did we read that again?).  And at this point, we are told that the apostles return from sort of their first tour of service and gather around Jesus, telling him everything that had been happening with their mission.  They are excited.  They have wonderful stories of healings and teachings and people that are really listening to them.  They are becoming witnesses of the Gospel and things are beginning to change!  And yet, they are realizing that this discipleship thing is hard; it’s exhausting; sometimes it’s just frustrating.  And during this time, John the Baptist had been brutally executed.  This is certain to have cast a somber shadow over their elation at the success of their mission.  This had to be scary.  After all, John had been part of Jesus’ work.  John had, essentially, been one of them, doing what they’re doing.  But, as we know, we cannot always control or predict what happens in life. And so, in the midst of their shock and sadness and grief, and probably fear, Jesus tells the apostles (and himself), to “come away and rest”.  He tells them to go to a deserted place, a quiet place.  It was a place of Sabbath.

Now, probably with very little effort, we, too, will identify with this busy life, the throng of demands, the ongoing needs of those around us, and, possibly, even with the dangers that somehow impede our journeys.  We can even identify with those times when, like these disciples, we feel that we can’t even take time to eat, those times when there’s so much going on, when there are so many balls being juggled, that you feel like you can’t even breathe.  You’ll notice here that there were verses that we skipped in this week’s prescribed lectionary passage.  They are the account of the feeding of the five thousand.  Yeah, I’m thinking that wasn’t a time of rest, that was NOT a deserted place.  As much as the disciples wanted to serve, wanted to BE disciples, that was hard.  You can imagine that they wanted so badly to go off and rest, to go off and be by themselves to grieve, to reflect, to be.  So, Jesus tells them to stop, desist, take some time to care for themselves, and not to feel that they have to immediately respond to every cry in the world.  Yeah, Jesus got it!  Jesus knew we were human.

It is a lesson for us all.  It is part of the lesson that Jesus is trying to make the disciples realize.  They are not God; they are not the saviors of the world; they are limited human beings who need to rest.  They are not called to do all the work themselves.  Remember, they are the ones that are called to call others who call others who call others.  We are not in this alone.  This is part of human reality and, more importantly, it is part of that rhythmic dance of creation to which we all belong.  And so, the disciples did what Jesus had said to do and got into a boat and went to a deserted place.

But, as we all know, just because we choose a time to sail away does not mean that the rhythm of life stops.  We are told that there were people on the shore who recognized them and hurried to greet them.  (Don’t you hate that?  Leave me alone!)  But these people needed something—they were hungry for what Jesus offered.  Jesus responded to their needs, teaching and caring for them.  The disciples were there too, perhaps a little miffed that their “deserted place” had now become a somewhat public arena.  In the verses that the lectionary omits, they wanted to send them away.  This was their time; this was when they were supposed to rest.  But Jesus told them, “no, give them something to eat, sustenance for their bodies and food for their souls.”  So, in a way that is so familiar to us, he took the food, and blessed it and gave it to the disciples to serve the people around them.  Rest would come.

In her book, Sabbath Keeping, Donna Schaper says that “Sabbath is a way of living, not a thing to have or a list to complete.  By observing it we become people who both work and rest, and who know why, when, and how we do either.  We also recognize the occasions on which we do both at the same time.  We know how to pray, how to be still, how to do nothing.  Sabbath people know that “our” time is really God’s time, and we are invited to live in it.  We are living our eternity now—this Tuesday and Wednesday, this Saturday and Sunday.”  Isn’t that what we are trying to do—find that rhythm of life to which God invites us, that balancing act, if you will, that is God’s call to us?  This is the way that our time and God’s time converge and become one.  This is the way that our hearts beat the heartbeat of God and our ears hear God’s music.

The Jewish culture in which Jesus and the disciples lived was one that embraced time much more than space.  The understanding was that, contrary to the way we look at time, all hours were not alike.  Each hour was unique and the only one given at that moment.  Each hour held its own identity and its own purpose and within all of those hours, the Sabbath, those times when God calls us to rest and renew and return to our deepest relationship with God, were like great cathedrals, the Holiest of Holies, that sanctified time from which God then sent us into the world.

But we have lost that rhythm of being sent out into the world and renewed within God’s sanctified time, as God’s work prepares us to be sent forth again.  We are so busy doing our own work that we’re not allowing God to do God’s work on us.  It is wrapped in this holy time of rest with God that we get this glimpse of the holy and the sacred that exists for us even now.  It is what gives us the vision to do the work that needs to be done.  It allows us a chance to once again get in touch with God’s purposes for us and for the world.  It is a way of emptying ourselves.  Mother Teresa once proclaimed, “Let us remain as empty as possible so that God can fill us up.”  This is the way that God fills us up.  It is the way of becoming Sabbath, the Holiest of Holies, consecrated for God.  It is part of being a disciple.

This idea of the Sabbath being holy is not new.  In fact, ancient Judaism saw Sabbath rest and eternity as one, of the same essence.  Abraham Heschel relates a legend that claims that “at the time when God was giving the Torah to Israel, [God] said to them:  My children!  If you accept the Torah and observe my commandment, I will give you for all eternity a thing most precious that I have in my possession.  And what, asked Israel, is that precious thing which Thou wilt give us if we obey Thy Torah?  The world to come.  Show us in this world an example of the world to come.  The Sabbath is an example of the world to come…The Sabbath possesses a holiness like that of the world to come.”

I know.  Sabbath is hard.  There is just too much to do.  There are just so many hours in the day.  There are too many people depending on me.  If I don’t do it, it won’t happen.  Are any of these resonating with any of you? John Westerhoff, who is a well-known theologian, calls the phrase “if I don’t do it, it won’t happen” a proclamation of atheism.  Wow!  None of us are in this alone.  If you don’t do it, either someone else will or it just wasn’t meant to happen.  If you believe in the God who is always with you, always holding you, always guiding you; if you believe in the God who created you and loves you so much that this God would give you this gift of Sabbath to make you aware of that, if you believe in the God who calls us into this household of believers where we support each other into becoming the Body of Christ, then why don’t you believe that God will somehow empower you to find a way to get everything done that needs done?  Go back and read the Gospel passage again.  There was work to be done—LOTS of work to be done–and the disciples waited in the boat. “Come away and rest.”

In 1951, Rabbi Abraham Heschel wrote what I think is the quintessential classic entitled The Sabbath.  In it, Heschel says that “unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath while still in this world, unless one is initiated in the appreciation of eternal life, one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come.  Sad,” he says, “is the lot of the one who arrives inexperienced and when led to heaven has no power to perceive the beauty of the Sabbath…”

The traditional Jewish Sabbath begins at sundown, the Christian Sabbath with morning worship.  In both, Sabbath time begins with the lighting of candles and a stopping—to welcome the Sabbath in.  The Jewish understanding is that the Sabbath is welcomed in like a queen.  It is more than rest; it is promise.  It is a release from whatever enslaves us.  For the early Jews, that was actually embodied slavery; for us, it is choosing to be released from clocks and commitments and phones and schedules and all those burdens that we bear.  Marcia Falk writes that “three generations back my family had only to light a candle and the world parted.  Today, Friday afternoon, I disconnect clocks and phones.  When night fills my house with passages, I begin saving my life.” This is the beginning of sacred time.  This is the beginning of eternity.  This is where we find life.

Sabbath is not rest the way we think.  Sabbath is connection.  Sabbath is responding to God’s invitation to enter the holiest of holies, to leave ourselves behind, if only for a day, and find ourselves. Sabbath is not a nap, not a withdrawal. Sabbath is rest in the God we know, the God who is wanting us to connect, wanting us to find ourselves.

Every person needs to take one day away.  A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future…A day in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. (Maya Angelou)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli