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The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost , 07/22/2018
Sermon on Mark 6:30-34, 53-56, by Richard Johnson
30 The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. 31 And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 32 And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. 33 Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. 34 When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things.
53 When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore.54 And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized him 55 and ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard he was. 56 And wherever he came, in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. And as many as touched it were made well.[Mark 6.30-34, 53-56 ESV]
Back in the 1930s, the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a little book entitled Life Together. It is about Christian community, its rhythms and its purpose. The first chapter in the book is entitled “Community”; the second chapter is “The Day with Others.” But what is striking is the third chapter: “The Day Alone.” Here Bonhoeffer suggests that being alone is an important part of what it means to be a Christian.
That’s an uncomfortable idea to many of us. In our culture, many people would do almost anything to avoid being alone. Being alone is, well, lonely. It is difficult for us. It is so difficult that we have invented all kinds of gadget and technology to give at least the sense of having company. We get up in the morning, and we turn on the television or the radio—not really to watch or listen closely, but just to have the company of noise. We get in the car by ourselves, and on goes the radio or the CD player; or we go on a walk or go to the gym and we put in earbuds and listen to our iPod—again because we’re anxious not to be alone.
Come away by yourselves
But Bonhoeffer reminds us that an important part of the Christian life is responding to Jesus’ invitation in today’s gospel: “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” It is part of the rhythm of faith, and it always has been.
Think, for instance, of the Old Testament provisions for the Sabbath. So often we read those provisions and think about how burdensome they seem—how starkly prohibitive. By the time of Jesus, the Sabbath had become an occasion for legalism of the worst kind; Jesus was constantly committing what the Pharisees considered violations of the Sabbath, and he was quick to criticize the way the Pharisees had perverted the purpose of it.
And yet that purpose is one he firmly embraced. The purpose of the Sabbath was to set aside the ordinary pursuits of life, to take time apart simply to rest. That is just what he is urging on the disciples in today’s lesson. The disciples have been hard at work, doing the ministry Jesus had entrusted to them; and now he says, “Come away by yourselves.” It is a wonderful invitation of grace.
It is, you see, in the withdrawal from ordinary life, in solitude and silence, that we encounter God. “Be still and know that I am God,” says the Psalmist. What he means is that until we find the time and the will to quiet the noisiness of our lives—both the outward and the inward noisiness—we cannot truly know God.
That’s all well and good, you may be thinking, but how do find this silence? That’s a fair question, and it deserves an answer. How can we get away from the busy-ness and noisiness of life and find this rest that Jesus offers? Let me offer some suggestions:
Find time to sit quietly
First, can you find time in every day to set aside everything else and sit quietly? It need not be a large block: five or ten minutes apart would be a good start. Five or ten minutes when you can be by yourself, with no radio, no television, no iPod or computer, no distraction. Five or ten minutes just being quiet, just following the Psalmist’s advice in Psalm 131: “I have calmed and quieted my soul.”
Archbishop Anthony Bloom tells a story about an elderly woman who came to see him shortly after he was ordained, seeking some advice about her prayer life. He felt inadequate for the task, but he listened to her and then suggested that perhaps she was talking so much that she didn't give God a chance to get a word in. He suggested that she go to her room, put it in order, sit in her chair, look around for a moment, and then just knit for fifteen minutes before the face of God.
She didn't think much of that advice; it didn't seem very pious. But after a while, she tried it, and she came back and reported that this had really helped her. She began, she said, by liking the idea that she had fifteen minutes to do nothing without feeling guilty. She looked around and discovered what a pleasant place she lived in, and then she began to feel quiet and peaceful. Then she knit before the face of God. These are her words:
“I became more and more aware of the silence. The needles hit the armrest of my chair, the clock was ticking peacefully, there was nothing to bother about, I had no need of straining myself. Then I perceived that this silence was not simply an absence of noise, but that the silence had substance. It was not absence of something but presence of something. The silence had a density, a richness, and it began to pervade me. . . . All of a sudden I perceived that the silence was a presence. At the heart of the silence there was He who is all stillness, all peace, all poise.” [Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray (Paulist Press, 1970), 92-93]
It is in that heart of silence that we find the peace of God.
The world can do without me
Then, can you find time occasionally to spend a longer period in silent solitude? This is harder. How can the world do without me for several hours at a time? But you know what? It can! Your family can, your spouse can, your job can. Think of it as spending time with a friend, good solid time with a friend you haven’t seen lately. The friend is Jesus. After all, in the gospel lesson Jesus doesn’t say to his disciples, “Go awayto a deserted place”; he says, “Come away.” That means he’s coming, too. Again, solitude is about presence—the presence of Christ with us.
Now a question that often arises is this: What do you do in this solitude? For some years I’ve occasionally been seeing an acupuncturist for some pain in my hip. The way it works is that he does the treatment, and then I have to lie perfectly still for 30 minutes. I’m face down, so I can’t read. When I first started, I thought, “Oh, this is great! A time when I can just be quiet and reflect on things.” Unfortunately, I usually end up falling asleep! Perhaps that’s why Anthony Bloom advised the woman to knit while she sat in silence!
Solitude is not a passive thing. It may sound that way, but it is in fact very active. It requires active listening. What you listen for is not really an audible voice; it’s more a kind of inner listening. One way to do it is to ask God to direct you. Perhaps you are seeking direction on some problem—a decision you must make, a relationship that is difficult. Ask God to tell you what he wants you to know about this. And then be quiet. Let him whisper to you in the still, small voice.
Waiting for God’s Word
Another way of listening in solitude is to read the Scripture—but in a special way. You are reading, not to learn more about some issue, or to meet your goal of reading a chapter a day. Read slowly, reflectively. Savor every verse. Stop after each verse and consider what God might be saying to you.
Another activity: take an inventory of your life in this silence. Think about what you are doing with your life, and how you might want to change it, with God’s help. Again, ask God to guide your thinking. Take notes while you think, for it is easy, when things come to you in solitude, to forget them an hour later.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it this way: “Silence is nothing else but waiting for God’s Word and coming from God’s Word with a blessing. But everyone knows this is something that needs to be practiced and learned in these days when talkativeness prevails.” “These days when talkativeness prevails”—and he was writing 80 years ago, before the 24-hour news cycle and iPods and smart phones! How much more today do we need to practicesolitude and silence, to work at it. [Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (Harper & Row, 1954), 79]
Pull up the rope ladder
In Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick, the narrator spends a good deal of time talking about the Whaleman’s Chapel, presided over by Father Mapple. The pulpit in the chapel is very high, and Father Mapple has designed it so that it will feel familiar to his congregation of whalers; so instead a stairway into the pulpit, he has installed a rope ladder, like one you would see on a ship.
The narrator describes Father Mapple climbing into the pulpit, and then very deliberately drawing the ladder up after him. He puzzles about why Mapple is doing this, but then he realizes that it is a kind of symbol of the clergyman’s “withdrawal for the time, from all outward worldly ties and connexions.” [Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or The White Whale (St. Botolph Society, 1892), 41.]
That is a perfect image for this solitude to which Jesus calls us. It is a time to pull up the rope ladder, to be apart from the distractions of the world, and simply to rest in the presence of the one who invites us: Come away by yourselves. . . and rest a while.