Sermon (22 July); Proper 16

"Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while."

What a lovely invitation Jesus is extending to his disciples.  Come away from the busyness of your lives, come away from the crowds, come away from the demands on your time.  Come away and rest.

And there’s the underlying message in this invitation too – Jesus is speaking to his disciples, to his friends.  These are people who have been working tirelessly with Jesus in carrying out the mission and ministry to which God has called them.  And Jesus sees that.  Jesus sees what these people are going through day after day as they are carrying out their work.  And he sees that they are exhausted – we’re told they don’t even have leisure to eat.  This is in the days before drive-through’s and microwaves, when eating a meal was a time for repose and reflection and rest – a time for the feeding of the body, the mind and the spirit.  So to not have time to eat meant not sitting down, not sharing company, not having proper nourishment.

This is a problem, Jesus sees.  He recognises that his disciples are in need of rest.  So he invites them away, by themselves, for a rest.

All of us can benefit from hearing this invitation.  We’re all being invited to come away for a rest.  To put aside the busyness of our lives, to schedule some time when nothing is scheduled, to refocus on how we want to be nourished.

I think that this nourishment is what we are sometimes lacking in this day and age.  We make appointments at all hours of the day, we answer the phone whenever it rings (even if it interrupts what we’re doing), we see nothing wrong with eating in the car or in front of the TV.  Our smart phones mean we can take the office with us wherever we go; we become slaves to our technology rather than using them as useful tools for our communications.  Our constant use of gadgets means that we are not leaving work at work but are instead bringing it with us to our homes, our vacations, our families.

So where is our rest?  Where is our time away?

I see Jesus’ invitation this week as a challenge to those of us here and now who are his followers.  God is telling us that it’s time for us to take some rest.  And I’m not suggesting that we all just take a week off of work; I’m suggesting that we examine our lives in to find out where we can improve our spiritual rest.  A time of intentional connectedness with one another and with God.  A time of prayer, a time of community, a time of peace.

Twice this past week we’ve seen examples of this in the media – times where people have cast aside the obligations of their everyday lives in order to be together, to support one another, to pray.  To simply be present, to seek peace.

Sadly, these examples come as a direct result of tragic violence.  First in Toronto, where gang-related shooting at a street party injured 23 people and killed 2.  Then Friday night in Aurora, Colorado,  where a gunman entered a movie theatre and fired automatic weapons into the crowd, injuring 70 and killing at least 12. 

These are devastating events; lives have been lost, innocence has been shattered, trust has been corrupted.  And sadly, this week’s events are not the first time we’ve seen this type of violence of late; I fear that this type of violence will continue to plague our society.

And so people are coming together.  They are coming together in shock, in anger, in grief.  They are coming to mourn, to support, to pray.  They are not continuing on with their busy schedules, but instead are caught up in the devastation.  They’re coming together in person, in the media, over social media.  There are photos in the news of the people attending vigils, of mementos left at the sight, of prayers being offered. 

These are people who are exhausted by the pressures of the reality before them.  These are people who need a rest from the crushing violence that society has to deal with.  These are people – like you and I – who simply do not understand why and how these horrible things keep happening.

These are people who need a rest.

These are people – you and I included – who are being invited to put the secular world on hold for just a moment and to truly listen to the invitation that Jesus is making. 

We are invited to come away from the evil that is in the world, from those acts which are unthinkably horrid.  We are invited to come away from the constant media stream detailing the evil, away from the blame-game of accusations, away from the analysis and politicking – no matter what aspect of our secular lives, we all need to come away for a time.  We need to come away from the busyness of our lives that prevents us from being with God.

We are invited to come away to a deserted place – not a desolate place, but one without this busyness.  One without distractions and explanations and schedules.  We are invited to understand these things for what they are, and identify what their purpose is within our lives.  We’re then invited to recognise when we do not need them any further.  We are invited to the deserted place where we turn off the computer, the radio, the TV; we’re invited to the deserted place by ourselves where we can focus on building and re-building community through conversations and shared experiences and communal worship.; we’re invited to the deserted place where schedules are left behind, a place where we celebrate that we are spiritual beings whose lives are so much more than the work that we can do.

We are invited to rest for a while.  To be nourished by the gift of spending intentional time with one another and with God.  To spend time thinking and reflecting on the actions of the world, and determining our Christian response.  We are invited to contemplate how our lives will be affected by what is happening in the world around us – we are invited to pray, to build community, to support one another.  We are invited to rest ourselves spiritually in such a way that we are prepared and empowered by God’s grace to exercise our ministry in a faithful way.  We’re invited to seek out the ways we can demonstrate God’s love to a world that is so desperate to receive it.

So this week I pray that you will hear and accept Jesus’ invitation.  I pray that you will take some time to come away, to a deserted place all by yourselves, and rest for a while. 

For those whose lives have been devastated by violence, I pray that they will find rest to heal.

For those whose earthly lives have been ended by violence, I pray that they may rest in peace.

For those who are struggling to know the presence of God in a world full of violence, I pray we might all find rest in Christ.

Sermon for Mark 6.1-13

This week we’re hearing a difficult message; a message of people rejecting Jesus.  Of people rejecting healing.  Of people rejecting ministry.

At first glance this is not a happy gospel – it’s one that has left many people scratching their heads and asking “So where’s the good news?”  We hear of Jesus going home, and bringing his friends with him.   He’s just left the scene of tremendous healings – physical healings as well as a few miracle cures – and astonishing teachings.  Jesus has not just laid hands on people and walked away, he has taught them – your faith will bring you health.  

So now he’s come home.  He’s come back to his hometown so that he can share the good news there. 

And instead of the joyous homecoming that we all might have hoped for, he is rejected.  He tries to teach in the synagogue, and is criticised for who he is – regardless of his message.  The past has taken over the present.  It’s as though the people have been caught in some temporal loop, where they are stuck in one old way of thinking, and are unable to see what is happening now.  These folks knew Jesus growing up, and they still see him as that child – not even as an adult, not as someone with a beautiful ministry.  Certainly not as their messiah!  No, he is seen as the same powerless child that he used to be.

And so, as we hear in the fifth verse, “he could do no deed of power there.”  Except, of course, he did – in that same verse we hear that he could do nothing, except that he DID lay hands on people and provide miraculous cures.  He did what he had done before so many times, he exercised his ministry.  He lived out his calling to the best of his ability.  He was still expecting the people to see what was new and good, just like so many others in so many towns had done before.  Yet this was not to be.  Still, the people rejected his offerings; still, the people refused to see that things had changed; still, the people denied the truth that –literally – stood before them.  

Is it any wonder, with this blatant and hurtful rejection, that Jesus and his disciples moved on?  Not like a dog with its tail between its legs, but with intent and passion.  With a desire to live out their ministry opportunities more fully, in places where they would be accepted.  And so they go – not as one group, but individually.  They go out into the world in 12 different directions to do exactly the same thing – preach the good news, provide the ministry of spiritual healing, empowering people to take control of their own lives, engaging people in acts of faith.  The disciples are invited to do just as Jesus has done – to seek out people who WANT to hear the good news, and not waste time on those who have heard it yet choose to reject it. 

So again – where’s the good news here?

The good news is that this gospel is speaking to each and every one of us.  It’s inviting us to examine our own lives and ministry and to consider what’s happening there.  

Some of us are stuck in the past – we’re constantly thinking about what used to be, rather than seeing what is.  We’ve somehow re-written history in our minds in such a way that the past is glorified – it was always good.  We’ve somehow re-written the present in our minds in such a way that nothing’s good.  And so we’re stuck, in that time loop like the citizens of Jesus’ hometown.  Our lives become difficult and our ministries ineffective because they’re out of sync; they were meant for a different time and different people, yet we continue to do the same thing now as we did then – and expect different results from what we’re getting.  Being stuck is not living the faith.

Some of us try something and it isn’t received the way we had hoped.  And we consider this to be a failure.  People can be paralysed by these ‘failures,’ moving from someone who used to be open to trying new ways to share the gospel, into people who can’t even be bothered making the effort.  These are folks who see everything as a sign of personal rejection and so they just stop, they give up.  It’s what could have happened in today’s gospel, when we hear how amazed Jesus is at the people’s refusal to believe.  Any of the disciples could have just given up.  But giving up, of course, is not living the faith.

So I see Jesus challenging us today to see things in our lives where we have gotten stuck or given up.  We know that re-living the past doesn’t work, it’s like only reading one chapter in a book over and over again – you’ll never know what the rest of the story is.  We know that we cannot convince everyone of the healing power of coming to Christ, all we can do is invite them to join us.  But we also know that sometimes we find ourselves stuck or giving up – and part of our ministry is to break free from these trappings, to engage in our ministry in God’s world.

We’re being invited to consider what our ministry is today – not what it was yesterday or what it will be tomorrow.  We’re invited to think about how we are exercising that ministry in the wider community.  We’re being challenged to go out into the world and to preach the good news, by word and by example – deciding that even if people are not ready to hear it, we’re still called to deliver it.  And we’re inspired to carry on.  

So what’s the good news?  Our ministry is never going to be perfect; but it was never meant to be perfect.  What is perfect is the message itself, because it carries the power of God.  The good news is that God gives us the faith to live in the present and to celebrate our ministry here and now.  The good news is that God gives the courage to be tenacious about spreading the Gospel.  The good news is that God gives us the strength to move beyond the people that will reject our Christian message twelve-fold.  The good news is that God is always empowering us to be Christ’s followers, Christ’s disciples, Christ’s family.