Mark 6: 30 -
34, 53-56
July 23, 2006
Rest Awhile
Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay
Today’s sermon is for the multi-tasker,
the stressed, the frustrated, the interrupted, the tired. If you aren’t one of those, listen anyway,
because people you love and depend upon are.
According to a study by the National Sleep
Foundation, the average employed American works a 46-hour work week; 38% of the
respondents in their study worked more than 50 hours per week.
Not included in
the numbers I just shared are the hours spent outside of work.
Hours spent
caring for children and parents and friends.
Hours spent driving kids to doctors
appointments and sporting events. Hours
spent keeping up homes and lawns and keeping up churches and … keeping up.
Do you sometimes go to bed at night and
wonder when it was during the day just spent when you had more than five
minutes of interrupted time? Time to be
still, to be non engaged, to be in prayer, to BE.
I was at a meeting this week where many
around the table were either retired or on renewal leave and they were
rhapsodizing about naps and I will confess to you that I was getting a little
snarly and whiny inside myself as I imagined what it would be like to let go
every day and be still and drool and dream and refuel. I’m glad for them. And I suffer from nap envy.
And I know I am
not alone. You may feel some of that
longing for rest, for stillness, for Shalom.
Barabara Brown
Taylor is one of my heroes.
She is an
Episcopalian priest and is known as one of the top ten preachers in the
She can write,
too. Her writing about pastoring and
life feeds me every time I encounter her.
So I was interested when I saw that she
had written a new book. And truth be
told, after reading the title, I’m a little afraid of her new book.
It’s called
I share a bit of how she sets up her book,
because it has much to do with this sickness of too much, too much, too much.
She finds herself wondering how much she
is willing to live a life where she feels so disconnected from… well, life.
“On what
grounds did I fast from the daily bread of birdsong and starlight?
The obvious answer was that I was a priest
(and here, you can put in any profession that consumes you, my friends),
with more crucial things to do than to go for a walk around the park. I had been blessed with work so purposeful
that taking time off from it felt like a betrayal of divine trust. I was a minister of the gospel in a
congregation…, set in the center of a
city of never-ending human need. .. When I went home at night, I carried with
me all the stories I had heard that day, from the young woman who had just discovered
that the baby she carried inside of her was deformed to the old man who had
just lost his wife of fifty-seven years.
I knew that I would hear more such stories the next day, and the day
after that, with no healing power but the power of listening at my command.
I knew that there were wonderful stories
out there, too, but most people do not need a priest to listen to those
stories. Plus, when you are tired, you
cannot hear those stories anyway. You
get jumpy, like a fireman who has just finished a double shift and cannot go
out to eat without expecting to hear a big explosion from the kitchen…
In my case, I knew I was tired when I
started seeing things that were not there.
Driving home in the evening, I would see the crushed body of a brown dog
lying in the middle of the street uup ahead, causing a great howl of grief to
rise up inside of me. By the time I
reached the corpse, it had turned into a crushed cardboard box instead.
When this happened twice in a row, I knew
I was tired…” (pg. 5-6, Leaving
Church)
We all have our markers. The things in life that tell us that we are
tapped beyond what is safe or smart to spend.
And I suspect that maybe half of us in
this room have seen those things, felt them in the sweet gift of our body,
sometime within the last month. Maybe
even today.
Well, we aren’t
alone and we aren’t without soul kin in this business of dealing with too much.
Today when we
ask: what would Jesus do?
We find the
answer. He knew how important it was to
get away.
To separate
from the things that can consume all the sweet succulence of soul.
To rest and
regroup and bear witness to the wisdom that caused God to call us to Sabbath
rest.
Prior to today’s reading, Jesus had sent
out the twelve disciples and charged them with proclaiming the word of God and
healing. They had done so, and they had
cured many. So in this morning’s reading
they have just returned to the side of their teacher to debrief and share their
stories and Jesus knew well that their stories were sacred and needed time and
space to hear and share.
So, knowing in the way of Barbara Brown
Taylor that in the midst of the demands of life it is sometimes impossible to
listen, Jesus called his disciples away from the demands of life and invited
them into a time apart. A time away from
the endless demands, in order that they might
speak and hear and tell and listen and savor the lessons of their heart,
the lessons of their discipleship.
And you know
what, it WAS a great idea.
But the demands of those desperate for
healing was so intense that they determined where Jesus was headed and they got
there first.
Foiling the
much needed retreat. Interrupting the
gift of time apart.
And you have
been there, too, right?
Just when it seems you have everything in
order -
On a small scale, you have the bowl of
popcorn and the book you have long wanted to read and you have an hour to
yourself and - your child needs you, or your boss calls, or your mother falls
and breaks a hip or, or, or.
And here again,
we have a lesson from the text to guide us in our response.
Even as we are interrupted and pulled away
from the promise of rest, we respond. As
we weep and gnash our teeth inwardly. We
respond in the way of Jesus. With
compassion.
We do quick mental calculus and determine
whether we are crutch or necessity and we get up and practice the healing power
of compassion.
But
I want us to note this, and note it well, we who work too much and give too
much and spend ourselves down to the nubbins of our hearts.
Jesus knew well, and practiced the wisdom
that we MUST spend time apart. Or we
cannot tend others with compassion and grace.
And we surely can’t tend ourselves well if we don’t spend time apart
filling the well of our souls.
When we start
mistaking cardboard boxes in the road for dog carcasses.
When insomnia
stalks us. When we are so tired we can’t
listen well or laugh well or love well.
Take time apart. Really.
Your mind-body-soul life depends upon it. And those who love you depend upon it, too. You can’t live the compassion and justice
breathing beauty of the gospel if you’re running on empty.
It’s
summer. Slow down. Yield.
Rest awhile.
Amen