Sermon on Mark 6.30-34

8th Sunday after Pentecost /Proper 11 | 18 July 2021 | Text: Mark 6.30-34 | by Richard O. Johnson |

 

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He 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. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As 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.                                   When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And 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. (Mark 6.30-34, 53-56 NRSV)

“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” What words of grace Jesus spoke to his disciples! He invites them to rest! In doing so, he picks up on a theme that is woven all through the Bible—the importance of rest, the necessity of rest. We find it already in the story of Creation, where God rests on the seventh day; and in the Ten Commandments, where God establishes a regular day of rest for all creatures. We find it especially in the life and ministry of Jesus, who is always taking time to go apart from the crowds and be alone. The message should be loud and clear to us—and yet it isn’t. We do not find ourselves very often withdrawing, coming away to a deserted place, seeking solitude. We love the 23rd Psalm, but in real life the Lord has a real challenge trying to make us lie down in green pastures—we’d rather keep moving. Today, on a hot summer morning, let’s reflect on rest as a Christian imperative. I want to see if I can convince you, and perhaps convince myself, that we need to take time apart if we are to grow closer to Christ.

 

The rhythm of life

Let’s note first of all that rest is part of the rhythm of life as God intended it. That should be obvious to us if we just observe the world. The sun rises, and the earth awakes; the sun sets, and the earth sleeps. Rest is part of the rhythm. From a strictly physical perspective, a living thing that does not rest cannot survive.

But it’s true of the spiritual life, as well. Times of quiet are vital if we are to be spiritually healthy. This has never been more true than in our modern world, where everything is rush, rush, rush, hurry, hurry, hurry. There is so much to do, and so little time to do it. It is so easy to forget the importance of rest.

1. G. Jung once remarked, “Hurry is not of the devil, it is the devil!” I think what he meant is that our propensity for filling our lives with busy-ness is what, more than anything else, keeps us from God. Richard Foster puts it this way: “In contemporary society, our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in ‘muchness,’ and ‘manyness,’ he will rest satisfied.” [Celebration of Discipline, p. 15). And Foster is right. Rest is part of the rhythm of life. If we can be kept from giving it its rightful place, then all our life, including our relationship with God, is out of whack.

 

Strength for vocation

The second thing to note is that rest is a vital complement of our vocation in the World. In our culture of success and accomplishment, we often have the idea that really taking time ofi’ is shirking responsibility. Busy and successful people take work home on weekends, or even on vacations. It’s as if we can’t get our work done if we don’t spend every waking minute dabbling at it.

It is instructive to note the context of this particular gospel lesson this morning. The disciples have been out in the countryside, teaching and preaching, and now they have come back to tell Jesus about it. You would expect that perhaps he would offer some critique of what they’ve done, maybe some advice about how to improve their approach or work on their technique. But no. He doesn’t say a word about what they have done. He simply says, “Come away . . . and rest awhile.”

What that means, you see, is that the coming away and resting is a vital part of the preaching and teaching they’ve been doing. It isn’t really a vacation in the sense we think of it—time away from the job. It is, rather, an integral part of their calling. It is part of it! They cannot

complete their calling without it.

For many years I sang in a chorus under a fine conductor who taught me much both about music and about life. He would often say that to make music, there are two important things: One is the notes, the other is the rests, the spaces in between the notes. And of the two, he would often say, the rests are probably more important. It is the rests that give the music its character, its dynamic, its direction. Without the rests, the music would become oppressive and

boring.

And you know, it’s like that with life. Without the rests, our lives become burdensome, our calling becomes burdensome. We have no dynamic, no direction. The rests aren’t interruptions or pauses—they are part of the music itself.

 

The rest of solitude

There’s one more point to make, and it is this: rest has many dimensions. One is what perhaps we might call leisure. That’s a word that’s used in the gospel lesson, when Mark says the disciples “had no leisure, even to eat.” It’s the kind of rest that we often call “recreation” or “getting away from it all.” It might be an activity that gives you pleasure and that “recreates”

you—boating, or camping, or reading, or gardening, or golfing. This kind of rest is important. To be spiritually healthy, we must take time for those things, and make room for them in our lives.

But there is another kind of rest, and it is perhaps the most important and the most neglected. It is the rest of solitude. It is the rest that means getting off by yourself, in a deserted

place, alone, in the quiet. And we need that, too. The French mathematician and philosopher

Pascal once observed that much of man’s trouble stems from his inability to sit in a room alone. That’s a very perceptive comment! Many of us have great trouble being alone, being quiet. I’m

like that. Put me in a room alone, and I’ll start looking for my iPhone, or a book, or the TV remote control, or some other diversion to keep my mind occupied.

But what Jesus has in mind when he calls his disciples away is that it does us good to spend time alone, truly alone, with God as our only companion. This kind of solitude is part of the rhythm of life as well, and it is necessary for our spiritual health.

 

Secret place of the Most High

Did you ever notice how often children find secret places? We were at Ikea one day,

walking through the children’s section. There was a little chair with a gauzy pull-down cover,

designed so that a child could sit in it and then shut out the world without being in the dark. As

we walked by, suddenly the cover on this chair opened, and there was a little cherubic boy

with a big grin on his face. He so enjoyed hiding in his secret place! It’s a universal thing with

kids—maybe it’s a tree house, or under the bed, but that secret place is where they go to sort

things out.

But as we grow older, we stop finding those places. We forget about the pleasures of

solitude. Being alone becomes a drudge—or, if we’re more compulsive about it, it becomes an

opportunity to catch up on all our work, free from interruption. How seldom we manage to find

real solitude! And yet solitude is an essential part of spiritual health. I love the older translation

of the beginning of Psalm 91: “He who dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High . . .” That

secret place, that place of solitude, is not simply a place apart from the world; it is a place where

we encounter the Most High God.

 

Strategies

How can we do it? How can we carve out times of solitude when our minds can be clear,

our hearts quiet, our souls close to God? I wish I were better at it. Richard Foster’s book

Celebration of Discipline has some suggestions which make sense to me, and maybe you can

find them helpful, too.

First, he says, “Take advantage of the ‘little solitudes’ that fill” your day. The early

morning moments while you are still in bed, but no one else is awake. Instead of dozing, listen to

the silence. See what you can hear, what you can discern. Step outside five minutes before bedtime and just watch the stars and listen to the night. Turn the car radio off and let your driving

time be a time of thoughtful silence. Make full use of the moments of silence in church.

Second, he says, “find a quiet place.” Maybe it will be a chair in your house, or a spot in

your garden—just some place to be alone. Spend time there, not reading, not working, but just

being silent—resting, but active resting, not drowsy resting.

Third, he says, three or four times a year, take a morning or an afternoon off. Come away

to a lonely place, a quiet place—perhaps church, or the park, or an available room at a friend’s

empty house. Spend three or four hours alone. Think about your life, and where it is going, and

what you would like to accomplish. Do some journaling, perhaps, but mostly just think about

these things with yourself and God.

Well, that’s a lot to put on your plate! I think that if we would work on even one or two

of those things, and make them happen for us, we would begin to see how crucial solitude is to the spiritual life. It isn’t easy. One must be intentional about finding time for it. Can we do it? Is it really important? Hear Jesus’ words again: “Come away to a deserted place all by yourself and

rest a while.” Words of grace, to the disciples and to us.

 

Pastor Richard O. Johnson

Webster, NY

roj@nccn.net