Rest a While - Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Author: Pastor Scott Schul
July 21, 2024
The Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter seasons take us directly into
the drama of Jesus’s birth and death. Those
stories are foundational for us, because in Christ’s miraculous birth and
salvific death, we have the assurance of forgiveness, and the peace of knowing
that our eternal salvation is not dependent upon our perfection but
instead rests upon a promise for us made possible by the perfection of Jesus
himself.
But there’s another story that matters to us as well. It’s the story of how to live this life of
ours. After all, it’s clear from the
Bible that we weren’t born merely so we can impatiently wait to die and go to
heaven, where the real living begins. On the contrary, Jesus intended that our lives be a foretaste of
the holiness and love we will experience in fullness in heaven.
In other words, being a Christian impacts not just what happens when we die,
but also the way that we should live. To that end, during the summer months our Gospel readings often focus on
lessons from our Lord in how to live as authentic humans. We are not guaranteed happiness in this life,
but we can have meaningful lives of joy, which is a very
different thing. Happiness is fleeting
and usually centered on the self, but joy is a disposition, a rich and warm way
of life that, as the writer David Brooks once noted, “is the present that life
gives you as you give away your gifts.”1
Today’s Gospel opens with Jesus and the disciples struggling with the
news that their friend and Jesus’s cousin, John the Baptist, had been brutally
executed by the command of Herod. Their
grief at John’s death reminded them that their own lives were in equal peril,
and that following Jesus would likely carry a very steep price.
Amidst all that grief and fear, notice how Jesus responded. He didn’t lecture the disciples about their
need to toughen up, shake it off, be obedient, and do their duty. Instead, he said to them, “Come away to a
deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” He was essentially saying, “Guys, we need
some solitude and some quiet. We need to
let our weary hearts, minds, and bodies rest. We’ve been like clenched fists, always bracing for impact. It’s time to unwind, re-collect ourselves,
and in holy silence be healed, because we’re here on this earth to serve others. But in our present state, we’re no good
to anyone.”
Friends, do you see why today’s Gospel is so vital for us? Everyone hearing this sermon is likewise carrying
the trauma of some sort of burden: Declining health, the loss of loved ones,
worries about friends and family, economic struggles, the bitterness of our
present political situation… And to all
of that, add-in the COVID pandemic. We
still haven’t fully processed what that meant for us, or how it might’ve
forever changed us.
But an even more insidious thing is tearing us apart from the
inside. A 2022 article in the Saturday
Evening Post rightly proclaimed that we’re living in an Age of
Distraction. The article noted that “there
are more things competing for our attention than ever before. Today more people have access to cellphones
than to working toilets, and the average person checks their phone 110 times a
day and nearly once every 6 seconds in the evening. Our perpetual, byte-size interactions are not
only a detriment to our concentration, focus, productivity, and personal
safety, but they’re also hurting our intelligence. A study…found that when distracted, workers
suffered a 10- to 15-point IQ loss… [which] brings an adult male down to the
same IQ level as an eight-year-old child.”2
Friends, the consequence of our Age of Distraction isn’t just lower
productivity and efficiency. And
cellphones are just one symptom of a much deeper illness. This Age of Distraction is rotting our
spiritual lives. We are rattled
within and without, and the surest sign is the constant wall of sound in which
we entomb ourselves. We’ve become
terrified of silence.
Here’s how one contemporary theologian describes it: “Noise is a
deceptive, addictive and false tranquilizer. The tragedy of our world is never better summed up than in the fury of
senseless noise that stubbornly hates silence. This age detests the things that silence brings us to: encounter,
wonder, and kneeling before God. Without
silence, God disappears in the noise. And this noise becomes all the more obsessive because God is
absent. Unless the world rediscovers
silence, it is lost.”3
I think there’s a lot of truth in this quote. Even when we do come to the realization that
we need to get away and unwind, it’s rarely an escape to a silent and deserted
place with God. We simply exchange one
frantic series of distractions for another one. And let’s be honest. Usually that
away time isn’t just a vacation from work or school. It’s a vacation from church, faith, and
prayer as well, which further compounds our problems.
What happens when we become perpetually inundated with noise and
distraction? Soon enough, the noise and
distractions prevent us from hearing God. Anthony Bloom, a great 20th century teacher of prayer, puts
it this way: “We complain that God [is not] present to us for the few minutes
we reserve for [God], but what about the twenty-three and a half hours during
which God may be knocking at our door and we answer, ‘I am busy, I am sorry’ or
when we do not answer at all because we do not even hear the knock at the door
of our heart, of our minds, of our conscience, of our life.”4
Now, I’m not here to make anyone feel guilty. No one here’s getting scolded. Pastors are “physicians of the soul,” and I’m
trying to help you heal by shining a light on Jesus’s much-needed prescription
to “come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” This isn’t divine law upon which your salvation
is determined. This is graceful, nourishing,
holy medicine Jesus is giving us to restore our shattered souls so we can be
truly, authentically, and beautifully human once again.
But note that this medicine of silence and stillness is not an end in
itself. It is a means to an end,
and that end is deep closeness with God, so that we can be fully
restored and transformed in divine love. Connect this to my last two sermons. If our mouths, minds, and bodies are in non-stop frenzied motion, how
will we ever see Jesus in the boat with us as the storms of life beat down upon
us? And how will we hear his soft,
gentle voice of assurance that the sand of our suffering will not suffocate us
but can instead be reshaped into a dwelling place for us to share with
him? To live without silence and
stillness is like trying to read a book with no spaces between the words, or
listening to music that has no rests. It’s pure chaos.
A life of chaos is not what Jesus ever intended
for you. Jesus wants us to have lives of joy, and lives of peace built on the promise of his love and the
hope of eternal life in him. And Jesus
wants us to share that love with everyone, no exceptions, just as one
candle can share its flame and light countless other candles without exhausting
itself.
And that brings us to my final point. Did you notice what that deserted place did
for Jesus and the disciples? As their
bodies and spirits were replenished, they regained the ability to look beyond
themselves and, with compassion, care for others. That’s the kind of world Christ wants for us,
and the kind of world we all desperately need. We’re a long ways from that right now, but Jesus has shown us where our
journey begins. Come away to a
deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while. Amen.
Citations
1 David
Brooks, “The Difference Between Happiness and Joy,” May 7, 2019 New York Times.
2 https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2022/06/the-age-of-distraction/
3 Robert Cardinal Sarah with Nicolas Diat, The Power of Silence: Against the
Dictatorship of Noise (Ignatius Press, 2016), pp. 56, 80
4 Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray (Paulist Press, 1970), 26.
Gospel
Text: Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
30 The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done
and taught. 31 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. 32 And they went away in the boat
to a deserted place by themselves. 33 Now many saw them going
and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and
arrived ahead of them. 34 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.
53 When they had crossed over,
they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. 54 When
they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, 55 and
rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever
they heard he was. 56 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.
Copyright Rev. Scott E. Schul, 2024 All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.
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