Rest?

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

July 19, 2009

Text: Mark 6: 30-34, 53-56

The decision to follow Jesus was and is a life-altering decision. The first disciples left all to accompany Jesus, and were sent out by Jesus in pairs, to show and tell Good News----that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself and that the earth would be redeemed from all that oppresses and enslaves.

What a mission statement! To be a participant in this work!

The first apostles retuned from their assignments. They had cured people and announced the kingdom and invited response. Great success! They had done much to bring hope and healing to people and communities. Jesus’ response to their reports: “Come with me, by yourselves to a remote place (where no other people can interrupt us) to rest awhile.” This is the first sign of the bedrock character of Jesus: compassion for people. Jesus cared for the well-being, the human needs of his recruits, his team members, as well as the human needs of the crowds who gathered wherever he went. Among their human needs was simply “rest.”  It is what I like to call the commandment to “accomplish nothing for a while.”

Traditionally, rest was prescribed in the Ten Commandments. “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” The Sabbath was commanded because of God’s compassion for us humans and all of the other creatures on the earth. We all need rest for our whole beings, physical, emotional and spiritual. Can you identify? Especially when we may be doing so many good and godly things. We can be “slain by the joy” of serving God and neighbor. (As Harry Emerson Fosdick reported about his excessive joyful work in his first parish.)  No time even to eat!  And our lives can be so busy generally, rest does not come easy to us. When we Christians misread Jesus on the subject of Sabbath; and when we decide that the old ways of self-denial on the Sabbath (boring!) were unnecessarily restrictive, we threw out the baby (rest) with the bath water (boredom).

I have wondered since the repeal of the Sunday closing laws in Texas: this may have been good for business, but it may be that not everything that is good for business is good for human beings. Nothing seems to shut down anymore, and so we get the idea that we shouldn’t either. Tilden Edwards wrote that we tend to move between” driven work times and a narrow escapist rest time, which means that we are either driven or drunk.”(Sabbath Time, 1992)  

How difficult to go to a “remote place.” (Have you seen the commercial on “dead zones?” They tell us that we never have to be out of touch and that, even when we are alone, we are really being followed by a crowd of technicians! What does this say about our need to be 24/7 in touch with others?)

We need new ways to envision remoteness: leaving mobile devices at home? Structured times to be unavailable? Learning to say no?

Constant activity is a spiritual issue. Daniel Yankelovich wrote about a young woman who went to a therapist complaining of exhaustion. She reported that she was out every night with her friends after working long hours during the day. The therapist asked her, “Why don’t you stop?” The young woman asked her with wide-eyes of self revelation, “You mean I don’t have to do what I want to do?” Do we confuse recreational busyness with rest? Do we communicate to our children that virtually any other activity can bump “rest” off the schedule? Edwards puts it this way: “The Jewish and Christian vision is to move between two ‘in touch’ qualities of time, united by the single-hearted awareness of the Spirit of God through all time.”

This window into the lives of Jesus and the first twelve disciples can speak to our situation as church, too.  The busy church (and smaller groups in it) are often invited by Jesus to “go remote” and rest. Busyness is not always a sign of faithfulness; it may be a sign of anxiety and distrust of God. The body of Christ and all its members need down time, too.

Now the story is that Jesus and the disciples were not successful in going remote! Such was the desperation of the people that they rushed on ahead and met them when they arrived in their boat at a different port. When Jesus saw them, what was his response? We are told that he had compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

And so the disciples’ retreat gets delayed. Jesus teaches the gathered crowd for a long while; then he miraculously feeds them; then he sends his disciples on so they can get some rest, and he himself goes off by himself to pray.

Compassion is not the same as pity, Douglas John Hall has written. “You and I can feel pity from afar. But compassion in the New Testament means that you “suffer with” those who need help….. Compassion is not an act of condescension but an act of identification.” (Quoted by Robert A. Bryant in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Pentecost)

There are eight gospel references to compassion in Jesus’ ministry, and compassion is implied in the whole of his ministry. Jesus heart goes out to people who are suffering, even those who need food to eat because they have followed him to a remote location where there is no food. And to those who had no other hope that to seek out persons with the power of healing. And we are told that even those who touched the fringes of his coat were healed.

We learn in this story that when Jesus goes back to work, so must we. To be on Jesus’ team (to be the church) means that we would not be true to our new identity if we did not have and show compassion for people who are hungry and otherwise in human distress. This is especially true when it comes to human suffering from illnesses. This was so much a part of Jesus’ ministry. It is no wonder that the church through the ages has advocated for and planted hospitals in so many places, usually the first to do. (I was born in the Nazareth Catholic Hospital in Mineral Wells, Texas, the one and only hospital in the area until the 1970s.)

And as present-day followers of Jesus, God calls us to be strong advocates for health care and disease prevention as basic human rights, not a privileges for the few.  

Even if and when our remote times get interrupted. Neighbors’ needs do not always come to us on schedule. You can almost hear the disciples can’t you? “Oh Lord, we really need some rest; push off and let’s go to where they cannot follow us!”

To be sure, we all have out limits. Even our Lord took time away to rest. But in those times when we must go the extra mile and work even though exhausted, God helps us to do what is needed. More than that. It is true as Jean-Henri Caussade wrote long ago: “Everything turns to bread to nourish me, soap to wash me, fire to purify me, and a chisel to fashion me into the image of God. God supplies all my needs.” (Feasting on the Word, quoted by Karen Marie Yust)

Compassion like Jesus’ is a form of suffering; it is one of the costs of discipleship. One image that sticks in my mind, borrowed from another: To be disciples is to “embrace our role as the fring of Christ’s cloak.” (Yust).  And we all have our limits in living this out. There has to be a rhythm of engagement and disengagement. And God blesses us in both, is present with us in both states of being.And every church does, too. We pray to be saved from compassion fatigue by being granted times apart, times to rest, to park ourselves someplace and simply be in God’s time, an appreciator of life instead of a fixer of things.

This window into Jesus’ and the disciples’ lives is great good news.

God is a God of compassion. God is “intimately related, moved and affected by what happens.” (Hall) God cares for you and me, more recent recruits into kingdom work, and wants us to get the rest we need, and obtaining such rest is not selfishness but another way of being with God and being a whole person.

And God is revealed in Jesus’ compassion for the desperate, who long for a leader who speaks with authority words of forgiveness and grace.

You may have come here today from some deep engagement in Christ’s healing ministries, seeking much needed rest.

You may have been resting for a while and are awaiting new orders from Christ.

Listen in the silence for God’s word for you.