Mark 6: 30-46
July 22, 2012
Ordinary
Time
First
United Church – Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
Here’s something that I’m sure will shock you:
I was better at taking care of myself before I had kids.
If you asked me to describe parenthood in one
word, that word would be relentless.
Once it starts, you never shut it off. When I’m
with my children I am constantly aware of their every need. I can be making
dinner, talking on the phone, shooing the dog out of the kitchen, letting my
mind wander to the e-mail I need to send after I get off the phone, and still –
STILL! – acutely aware that my two year old is opening up a box of crayons in
the other room and that the baby will need to be picked up soon because he’s
getting bored with his stuffed elephant.
When I’m away from my children it’s a bit of a
break, to be sure. But you still can’t “shut it off.” They never leave my mind.
When I go to a social event without them it takes me a solid 30 minutes to
realize that I can stop straining my ears for the sound of the baby monitor
because they’re not with me.
Parenting is relentless. Day after day after
day.
In all of the wiping runny noses, preparing
meals, changing diapers, kissing boo boos, doing laundry, playing games,
planning outings, and buckling the carseat there is a rhythm to parenting which
makes it exceedingly difficult to remember yourself. You become so incredibly
involved in the lives of these tiny people that you focus all your energies
there.
This is why parents who are new at it look a
bit like the walking dead, I think. And it’s why parents who have just emptied
their nest look slightly elated and lost all at the same time. And for those of
you who have walked the road of elder care or who have nursed a partner through
a significant illness, I can only imagine it’s very much the same. Your life is
consumed with caring for someone else.
When you become entirely consumed with caring
for someone else, you start to lose touch with what it means to take care of
yourself. Can I get an Amen?
And yet, as we wear these relentless hats of
caregiving, we still find brief moments of respite.
At the end of a long day, I crash into bed with
my baby and nurse him. He drifts off to sleep and I have absolutely nothing to
do but be there with him and rest. For twenty or thirty blissful minutes my
role of caregiver allows me to simultaneously care for myself. I allow my mind
to wander, to empty. I pray. I rest. I do nothing. It’s a beautiful thing.
“Rest. Come away and rest,” Jesus says to his
disciples in today’s passage from Mark. These words beckon to us from the page
like a summer rain in a drought-parched land.
Surely nothing is more soothing than the idea
of rest. Peace. Restoration.
Now some of you might be thinking, “Ugh. All I
do is rest. My days march by, one after the other and they are all the same.
How I long for the days when I was busy. When there were people who depended on
me. I’ve had all the rest I need right now. What I could use today is a little
action. A little distraction. Something new and interesting.”
To you I say, hang with me. Because I believe
today’s passage from Mark speaks to those of us who suffer from all kinds of
busy-ness and those who would love to have something to fill their days.
Jesus calls out to those of us who are weary
from caring for others and themselves.
Jesus speaks to those who aimlessly fill their
lives with nonsense because they don’t know how to quiet themselves.
And Jesus speaks to those who long for finding
meaning through restorative work – the kind that leaves you feeling
replenished, not broken down. The kind that reminds you that who you are and
what you do in this world matters.
**********************
One of the things I love about the Bible is how
it reminds me that people are people are people – no matter the era or
location. Mark’s disciples are a favorite of many Christians because they are
such a bumbling lot. Constantly messing up. Constantly missing out. Constantly
endearing themselves to us because – hey, if they can follow Jesus, surely we
can, too, right?
They’re endearing in this passage, too. Just
back from their most impressive tour yet, they are tired. They’ve been healing
the sick, traveling with nothing on their back, relying on the hospitality of
strangers, scared to death about their growing notoriety.
And they return to Jesus like small children
clamoring for their parent’s approval at the end of a long day at school – Mark
says they gathered around him and told them all they had done and taught.
Was Jesus proud of him? Surely he was. Notice,
for example, that this is the only place in Mark where the author of the gospel
refers to them as “apostles” – a clear promotion over disciples. Disciples are
those who follow Jesus and learn from him. Apostles are those who are sent out
to work on behalf of Jesus.
So I’m pretty sure Jesus was proud of them. But
does he tell them this when they come running home, bragging about all their
accomplishments? No.
What he says is this, “ Come away to a deserted
place all by yourselves and rest a while.”
Jesus knows that what theses apostles need,
more than having their egos stroked, is rest. They need to go somewhere
deserted where they can refuel. The word used here for rest is a passive verb –
to be restored – and it’s the same verb used to describe Sabbath rest in other
parts of the Bible. This is not just any old break from their duties. It’s a pause
that restores. A break that builds them up for the next journey.
Mark continues on – describing the state of
these exhausted apostles. “For many were coming and going, and they had no
leisure even to eat.”
One of the commentators I read this week said a
better translation would be, “For many were the comers and goers…” because
these are nouns in the Greek, not verbs.[1]
The comers and goers. Those that can’t stay in one place.
Our world is filled with comers and goers. Just
like Jesus’s world, I suppose.
I read an opinion column in the New York Times
a few weeks ago called “The Busy Trap” by Tim Krieder.[2]
He laments the culture of busy-ness that we seem to worship in our culture. I
laughed aloud at this story he shared,
“I recently
wrote a friend to ask if he wanted to do something this week, and he answered
that he didn’t have a lot of time but if something was going on to let him know
and maybe he could ditch work for a few hours. I wanted to clarify that my
question had not been a preliminary heads-up to some future invitation; this was
the invitation. But his busyness was like some vast churning noise through
which he was shouting out at me, and I gave up trying to shout back over it.”
I laughed because I have been on the receiving
end of such an interchange with many friends. And I cringed because I have been
the annoying, noncommittal friend, too.
Krider talks about how we all love to be busy.
You know the conversation, “Hey, how are you?” “Busy, man. Crazy busy!” because
that’s a good thing to be in our culture.
But Krider also talks about another kind of
busy-ness:
“Notice it isn’t
generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus
to three minimum-wage jobs who tell you how busy they are; what those
people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet.”
This is the kind of busy-ness the apostles were
experiencing. This was not some kind of frantic, need-to-fill-the-emptiness
busy that has surely afflicted people in every age and place. This was another
kind of busy-ness. The busy-ness that belongs to those who give care.
The busy-ness of a parent caring for a child, a
child caring for a aging parent, a nurse emptying the bedpan one more time, a
scientist closing down her lab at midnight yet again because she knows that her
work matters, a social worker closing his door and weeping for the brokenness
of a system that makes him feel like he is always, always banging his fists
against locked doors.
Tired.
Exhausted. Dead on their feet.
That’s what they were. And Jesus told them to
rest. Come away and rest.
And if the Bible weren’t so darn complicated,
what I would love to do is stand here and tell you the same. Come away and
rest, friends…all you who are weary and heavy-laden and Jesus will give you
rest.
But the problem with that lovely image is this:
the disciples don’t actually get much rest in this passage. They quickly get on
the boat and start hauling their tired selves away from the crowds. But the
crowds – those pesky crowds! – follow them. They arrive at the other side of
the shore before the disciples can get there. And Jesus – the same guy who just
told the disciples to take a break – had compassion on the crowds and began to
teach them many things.
Well, it stated to get late and the disciples
started to get annoyed. They said, “Um, excuse me, Jesus? Yeah, so we’re trying
to rest here – you know, like you told us to do? And it’s late. And these
people are loud. Can you get them out of here? Send them away to the next town
so they can go eat some dinner.”
And Jesus responds, “You feed them.”
Wait. Say what? We’re trying to rest here,
Jesus. You sent us here to take a break, remember?
The social worker lifts his head off his desk
and blots his eyes with a tissue as his phone rings for the 18th
time that afternoon.
The scientist drags her weary body to the lab
at 6am, cup of coffee in hand. She knows she won’t see the sky again until it’s
dark that evening.
The nurse checks her watch. Her shift ended 5
minutes ago, but there’s one more patient she needs to see before she goes
home.
The grown child calls her husband to say she’ll
be home in the morning, “Mom needs me to stay with her tonight.”
The father wakes in the night with a start. The
baby is crying. He groans and pulls himself from his warm bed to change yet another
diaper.
You see – Jesus understood.
Jesus understood this constant struggle between
busy-ness and rest. Between caring for the other and caring for ourselves. Did
he know that you’re supposed to put the air mask on yourself before you help
the person next to you? Yes, he did. Did he always do that? No, he did not.
As much as I want to say you’re always supposed
to rest and take care of yourself, it’s just more complicated than that. There
are occasions that simply require us to go past our breaking point to the place
where we are lifted up by a force we cannot understand. There are places and
times where we will push ourselves to care for others when we thought we had
nothing left to give. And in those places and times there will be something of
Christ in each of us.
I’m not talking about busy-ness for the sake of
busy-ness, friends. There is no true joy or meaning to be found there.
And I’m not encouraging you to be a martyr or
to continually deplete yourselves for the sake of the other. God created you to
enjoy life and God needs you to find a way to care for yourself.
There is a give and take. After Jesus told them
to rest, he told them to feed the 5,000, and after they had done that he made
them get back into the boat to seek more rest. And then he went onto the
mountain himself to pray and find his own restoration. It comes and goes in
waves, you see.
And so to all of you my challenge and deepest
hopes for you are these:
I pray that you will find restoration when you
need it. I hope that you will hear Jesus’s voice coming to you in the midst of
your care saying, “Come and rest.”
I pray that you will find the strength to go on
caring when you thought you had nothing left to give. And, when you do, I hope
your realize it is the energy of our Holy Friend holding you aloft.
I pray that you will find meaningful and
restorative work in the days ahead. I hope that you will end each day knowing
you did your best to heed Christ’s call to “give them something to eat.”
I pray that you will notice the waves of busy-ness
and restoration that pass over each of us as our days flow by. It is my sincere
hope that mindfulness will help steady your boat in the rough seas of life.
For all of you comers and goers – may you be
open to both the challenge and comfort of Christ in the days ahead.
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