Preached on the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 11B), July 21, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Phillip Lienau.
2 Samuel 7:1-14a
Psalm 89:20-37
Ephesians 2:11-22
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
“For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.”
For me, this passage is viscerally evocative. I can feel in my gut the rush, the coming and going, the getting things done, and all of it important, surely. I have lived this passage, so many times in my life. Perhaps you have too.
This is a bright, shining time in the Gospel of Mark. Two weeks ago we heard about the disciples being sent out by Jesus to proclaim the Good News. Today we hear about them returning, and telling Jesus all about what “they had done and taught.” Today’s Gospel passage is really two passages put together, in the middle of which is one of the times that Jesus feeds thousands of people with a few pieces of bread and fish, John’s version of which we will hear about next week. Today’s passages frame the feeding of thousands, and are themselves full of healing and teaching.
We get the sense that the whole countryside is on fire with the Jesus movement. There is good ministry happening, and there is a kind of breathless exhilaration to it all.
Maybe you came to church this morning to participate in some of the exhilaration that a very active life in parish ministry can bring. If so, you are welcome.
Maybe you came to church this morning because the rest of your life is already packed full of things that demand your attention, in a way that you might sometimes feel that there is so much coming and going that you have no leisure even to eat. Maybe in that case you came to church to rest, to be carried for a little while by the liturgy. If so, you are welcome.
And maybe you came to church this morning not quite sure why you came. If so, you are welcome.
However or whyever you came, I think our Scripture passages today have Good News for all of us.
For me, today’s Good News can be expressed in two words that run like a river through the whole Bible, and that bring life-giving water to us today. These two words are Rest and Home.
If you came looking for rest, then I hope you hear with me what Jesus says to the disciples in today’s Gospel: “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”
If you came looking to do a lot of things, that’s great. I hope that in the midst of your generosity toward the church in terms of your time and energy, that you are also generous to yourself and hear what Jesus says: “rest a while.”
And if you are one of those people not sure what you want, I hope you too can hear Jesus inviting you to “rest a while,” because part of rest can be resting from the anxiety of not knowing what to do next. It’s okay to rest sometimes from feeling like you always need to know the answer, the when, the where, the who, the how, the why.
It’s okay to rest. It’s faithful to rest sometimes.
And I mean exactly what I say here: it’s okay. It’s not binary — rest is not always better than work. Sometimes it’s time pause a rest and get to work. But our civilization produces many messages that validate work at the expense of rest, and that’s when I think what Jesus says to the disciples is especially good for us to hear.
So far I’ve been talking about rest as it relates to physical and mental action, the sort of activity in which we are likely to engage in various ministries at church, in the administration of a household, at school, or at a workplace other than one’s home.
But there is more to rest, both in our lives, and, I believe, in our Scriptures today. This is spiritual rest — rest for the soul that is weary, wandering, weeping, or wailing.
And essential for rest is a safe place of rest, which is where our second word comes in: home.
By home I mean a spiritual home, a dedicated safe place in which to practice, together, the following of Jesus, the love of God, and love of neighbor as ourselves.
Maybe sometimes it is a physical place, such as church, right here right now. More than a physical place, though, our spiritual home is to be built and nourished within us. In the Gospels, Jesus and the disciples are often shown moving from place to place, without the kind of home-base, if you will, that we today might consider our parish church. Paul, in his letters, and in the Acts of the Apostles, is often on the move, also without a permanent home for long periods of time.
The fact that Jesus, the disciples, and Paul moved around a lot does not mean that in order to be good disciples of Jesus we need to be on the move all the time. Rather, we see in Scripture that a spiritual grounding, as sense of spiritual home, is not necessarily found in any one physical place, but is found in an interior foundation in that which is the ground of all being, the ground and source of all that is, seen and unseen, God.
Paul writes about our belonging to and in God. He tells the Ephesians, and it is appropriate for us to hear Paul saying this to us, as well, that we “are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom [we] also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”
In Christ Jesus we are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God, and we are members of God’s household. This means that we have within us what we need to be at home. But that takes intentionality on our part. We find our spiritual home within only when we recognize and affirm our membership in the household of God, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone.
This also means that when we reside in our spiritual home, and take a spiritual rest, just as our home is in God, our true rest must also be in God. But God is infinite. We, who are finite, tend to need something a little more concrete to think and feel and do, to actualize a rest in God.
Thomas a Kempis devotes, in The Imitation of Christ, several chapters to spiritual rest in God. I recommend in particular Chapters 9, 21, 23, and 25. I’ll share a little from Chapter 25, which is titled “Where Certain Peace and True Progress Are To Be Found.” Kempis writes:
“Always attend to your own business and watch what you say and do. Direct your every effort to this end, namely, to seek only to please [Jesus] and desire nothing other than [Jesus]. Judge not rashly the words and deeds of others nor meddle in what does not pertain to you. The result will be that you will only rarely or infrequently suffer anxiety… “ Later, he continues:
“Spiritual progress and perfection consist in offering yourself, with your whole heart, to the divine will, and not seeking yourself in anything either small or great, in time or in eternity. Weigh everything in the same balance, and with equal serenity of heart offer thanksgiving to God in times of trial and in periods of prosperity.”
Simple enough - though perhaps easier said than done. If you by any chance are thinking right now that this so-called rest sure seems like a lot of work, yes. Thomas a Kempis is not suggesting a quick fix to our stress and anxiety, and I think he is right about this. What is offered, however, is the kind of rest that can come from the faith that God is faithful to us.
Note that in the Gospel Jesus calls the disciples to rest, but when he and they are followed by many people, Jesus does not cut short the disciples’ rest. Instead, Jesus “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.” Maybe the disciples went back to work at this point, but I like to think that perhaps they didn’t, that perhaps they rested exactly as Jesus instructed.
I encourage us to be thoughtful about when it might be time to rest, and to resist the temptation to cut short our rest to leap back into action. I am inspired by a quote I read this week in our book of the month, Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle. Boyle in turn is quoting Pope John XXIII, although he admits it may be apocryphal. Apocryphal or not, I think it’s appropriate here. Supposedly, every night the pope would pray the following: “I’ve done everything I can today for Your church. But it’s Your Church, and I’m going to bed.”
This week I hope we all continue to each day do what we can. And I pray that part of doing what we can is finding times and ways to rest. Here today let us take a little time, pause our coming and going, and take the leisure to eat together the bread of life, so that it may be for us the cornerstone of our spiritual rest in God, who is our home.