(Adapted from an article written in the Christian Century, 1996, “Watching from the boat,” by Martin B. Copenhaver)
I read this week in an article by Martin Copenhaver, about a pastor who resigned from a suburban church where relentless demands on his time and energy were beginning to wear him down. Instead of leaving the ministry all together, he became a missionary on the coast of Maine. In this new calling, he visits small Christian communities in isolated and remote places. Most of the things that he does there are the same as what he was doing in his church near the city – he preaches, teaches, and visits the sick. But there is a huge difference in doing these things in the hustles and bustle of the city and on the coast of Maine. “Between ports of call he travels long distances by boat. Between sermons he can listen to the wind. Before teaching another class he can study the horizon. After visiting the sick he is anointed with sea spray. Interspersed with his demanding pastoral duties he takes a watery road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
When I read the story of that pastor, I realized how much I cherish the time I have away from this church. And I know that comes off the wrong way – but I, too, need time away from this building and this work, so that I can come back refreshed and replenished… re-created by God. Any afternoon I can get away to play a round of disc golf, or during the summer to sit by the water with family, is a moment that replenishes my body and soul in the same way.
There is a reason that our word for play time – recreation – can also be said re-creation… in our play, in our rest, in our time apart, we find the strength we need to begin anew.
So much emphasis in our world today is placed on productivity – on the hours we spend working and what we make out of that time. What we never stop and recognize is that constant productivity without rest, without renewal, only leads to failure.
This is the lesson that my dad has taught me many times in small ways throughout my lifetime. He has worked with his hands repairing equipment for as long as I can remember. And the rule he tries to live by on the farm is that it is better to fix a piece of equipment once and do it right, rather than patch it up quickly and get back out in the field. In the long run – that equipment will last longer and run better when you take the time out to repair it properly.
Unfortunately, that is a lesson my dad has also taught me through bad examples. While he takes care of his equipment, he doesn’t take very good care of his own body. He doesn’t stop for as long as he needs to in order to rest and replenish his most important tool. He pushes ahead, fitting as much into his day as possible, stopping here and there for a nap before heading out into the fields once more, or before working the night shift at Quaker. And now his body is wearing out faster than it needs to. Like that pastor from the suburbs – something needs to change, or someday he will have to quit the things that he loves all together.
In our gospel lesson from Mark this morning, Jesus has something to teach us about rest – about Sabbath – about re-creation. As Copenhaver points out, “Jesus and his disciples cross the Sea of Galilee so many times that it is hard to” figure out what they are doing and why they are doing it. “Until the sixth chapter, that is, when the reason for the crossings is clear: the disciples need a break.
“The Twelve had just returned from their first mission. On that mission they discovered, perhaps to their surprise, that they could do much of what they had observed Jesus do. They were empowered to teach, preach and heal. They left on the mission as disciples, but when they returned, flushed with success, Mark refers to them as apostles for the first time. It was a new title signifying a new relationship with Jesus. No longer were they disciples with mere “learner’s permits,” unable to do anything on their own. They had been sent forth with the authority of a commission. They were apostles. When the apostles returned to Jesus they had stories to tell and victories to savor.”
I can picture a scene in which twelve children return home from the first day of school and crowd around their mother or father anxious to share all of the exciting and amazing things that had happened that day. All twelve voices are trying to speak at the same time, outdoing one another with stories, trying to worm their way into the conversation. In my house, there were just three of us children, and even our three little voices could exhaust my mother in about five minutes!
And that was only when we had Mom’s undivided attention! Other days, the phone was ringing off the hook, usually she had just gotten home from work herself and was trying to unload from her day, dinner was waiting to be made… you get the picture.
I remember a little sign that my mom had hanging up in the kitchen when we were kids, that said “take a number.” I’m not sure that we ever used the cute little numbers painted onto die-cut apples, but I remember thinking as I got older that perhaps she didn’t need to be overwhelmed by all of us at once.
The apostles return from their first missionary experience, but they too, had to take a number. Jesus was surrounded by people who needed healing, guidance, who were seeking peace, and there just wasn’t the time or space they needed to stop and debrief.
Those disciples wanted to tell him everything, but they were hot and tired and hungry and exhausted, so Jesus found a small window of opportunity and suggested that they get in a boat and seek a deserted place.
“Come away with me by yourselves… come and get some rest.”
That boat ride to the other shore was a moment of fresh air. It was the sea breeze blowing over the missionary pastor on the coast of Maine. It was the gentle wind that blows through the trees on hole 3 at the Sugar Bottom disc golf course. The apostles relaxed in the boat, took turns telling their stories, took turns listening, dug into their sacks for a piece of bread, and replenished their souls.
“When they reached the shore, however, they discovered that a crowd had followed them… The sick had run, hobbled, or been carried to meet Jesus… The people waiting for them looked like a huge gathering of baby birds, their hunger so constant that their mouths were always opened wide. It was enough to overwhelm a mere apostle. But Jesus had compassion on the crowd and began once again to feed them with his words.”
Can you imagine being in the middle of your rest and renewal, your vacation, your one day off and getting a call from the office? Having a family emergency that pulls you away? Even though it is your work, or your family, or even something that you might love… because your time of re-creation is interrupted, you get a little irritated.
If we were to continue on with our reading in the gospel of Mark this morning, the apostles did just that. As Jesus stood on the shore teaching and healing, his disciples called out from the boat – “Hey Jesus… it’s getting late! We’re in the middle of nowhere. Tell everyone to go home, get something to eat, and come back tomorrow!”
Here’s the part of the story where Jesus gets the disciples to pull a few loaves of bread and two fish out of their bags and he feeds the entire crowd with their meager offering. And it’s a wonderful story – but one we’ll save for another day.
Sensing the apostles’ fatigue, Jesus basically told them to wait for him in the boat, much as a parent might tell tired children to wait in the car while she does one more errand. All they had to do was reach into their sacks and hand over some bread – Jesus did all the rest. He realized that they just couldn’t do any more… at least not tonight.
“The sociologists call it compassion fatigue. All of us are capable of compassion on occasion. But when we’ve seen too many emotional television appeals for hunger relief or walked down too many streets crowded with human sorrow, we discover that our compassion is limited… Only God can extend constant compassion. God is the only one who never suffers from “compassion fatigue.” In the constancy of Jesus’ compassion, his kinship with this God is revealed.”
Wayne Mueller in his book, “Sabbath” puts it another way. He writes that too often, we do good badly. Sure, the disciples could have gotten out of the boat, and lent a hand. They were empowered to teach, preach and heal as Jesus did, but ministry in the name of Christ is exhausting business. They were tired and worn out, and if they had decided to help out, they could have done more harm than good.
Mueller shares a story of an experience where exactly that happened. He had been working as a part of the deinstitutionalization movement in the 1970’s. They were trying to release young people from juvenille centers and institutions and help them return to their homes. The idea was that they would be better rehabilitated living amongst their own families, rather than being locked up. It was a great idea, only very little time was taken to think about the consequences of their actions. No time was taken to listen to the families of these young people, or the communities they would return to. No teaching was done before they were sent home. Mueller writes that they didn’t even take a Sabbath day of rest to consider the implications of what they would be doing.
“Now”, he writes, “the nation is awash in lost children, some violent, many in pain… We, for our part, now rush to blame them for threatening the safety of our society, and we cannot build prisons fast enough to hold them… We were in a terrible hurry to do good, and there was no rest in our decisions. And just as speech without silence creates noise, charity without rest creates suffering.”
“John Westerhoff has remarked that atheism in the modern world is characterized by this affirmation: ‘If I don’t do it, it won’t happen.’ The apostles–even after their newfound success as teachers, preachers and healers–knew better. They waited in the boat.”
All of us who are called by the gospel and by God’s spirit need that reminder too. We need to remember that the power of God chooses to work through us, but that God also can work without us. That sometimes another person is called to respond. That sometimes we have to stand still before we can move forward. When the compassion of the apostles was spent and their ability to respond exhausted, people were fed anyway, as if with manna from heaven, and they could only watch from the boat.
And when the meal was finished, Jesus sent the disciples back onto the lake in the boat… told them to cross over to the other side, and he climbed a mountain to pray.
Even Jesus needed rest. Even Jesus needed to be replenished. Even Jesus let prayer re-create his soul.
Sabbath time is a time of blessing. We pray for strength and courage and happiness. We rest, eat, play, walk, and listen. That is the spirit of the Sabbath prayer that we heard in response to our Psalter this morning.
So today, stop. Take a deep breath. And come away with Jesus.
(I then played the music video from Norah Jones “Come Away With Me“
