July 21, 2024: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen.
“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”
This is what we just heard Jesus say in our gospel reading from Mark.
“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”
Now, Sabbath rest is important – so much so that God decreed it one of those top ten things were are to do. But what if I were to tell you that there is more to what Jesus is saying here than a relaxing trip to the Jersey shore?
So, let’s dig a little deeper, because this is a passage for our time, to be sure.
Before we get to that, this is the last time we will hear from the Gospel of Mark until September. Unfortunately, in this preacher’s view, Year B of our lectionary moves to the Gospel of John and the bread of life discourse of Jesus for an entire month. I think this is also why so many priests go on vacation in the month of August. And, I know this is about the time that some big fans of that gospel think the rest of us are crazy.
Not only that, but we don’t even get the whole gospel text from Mark. Once again, just like with the narrative from 2 Samuel last week, there are verses missing in this passage from Mark.
Between the beginning where Jesus tends to the crowd, and the last bit about the beach landing at Gennesaret, there are the stories of the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus walking on water. We don’t get to hear Mark’s version of those events in Year B (the year we hear from this gospel). Instead we spend 5 entire weeks on John 6? It makes absolutely no sense to me. But, we aren’t there yet, so let’s give the gospel of Mark more attention than our lectionary people do, and get back to the narrative for today.
His disciples had just returned from their first mission to teach and offer God’s healing grace and love in his name – and from all accounts, it would seem they were successful. That type of work, Jesus knows, while spiritually and emotionally fulfilling, is also physically exhausting. He bids them to come away to a deserted place and rest for a time.
Now, a vacation always sounds good, right? We are one overworked world, at least 98-99% of us anyway. These are sweet words for anyone to hear. But – this is Jesus, and while he is one to heal, to nourish, to restore and renew us – this isn’t just a way for him to care for his disciples, and now for us. This is far more subversive and revolutionary.
First, let us do some pushback on the lectionary, and consider the fullness of this gospel text. The disciples return from being out in the world spreading the good news, healing, and casting out demons. This message of Jesus is going far beyond wherever he happens to be physically present. They come back, and they try to retreat for rest. The crowd follows, and when it is late, Jesus engages the disciples to feed them – more than five thousand in all (I note more than five thousand, because the text only counted the men). After that, Jesus again sends his disciples on to the other side of the lake, presumably to get that long desired rest. For his part, Jesus went up the mountain to pray.
As Jesus comes down the mountain, he crosses the lake – on his own two feet, you know, as you do when you are the savior of the world. His disciples see him and think he is a ghost. Now, Jesus wasn’t going to join them in the boat, but seeing them fight against the current, he got into the boat, and the sea calmed.
As they reach the shore in hopes of that long desired rest – there rushing toward them were crowds who recognized Jesus, and many were brought to him for healing.
Think about all of that scene.
The ministry that Jesus has launched in the world – first to the disciples, then to others directly or through them – it is spreading like wildfire. The crowds are growing in number, and it seems now there is no where to hide, no way to stop the flow.
And that is a dangerous thing.
If we step back a moment and think about how various political systems work through history, we find that there are often two driving forces at work: Hope or Fear. In democratic societies, there is often ambiguity – this is a part of everyone participating in something – the outcome can vary and sometimes even take a bit longer to come into being. Yet this type of uncertainty brings with it the possibility of changing what is into what may be. It is the stuff of dreams, and it is rooted in hope.
In autocratic societies, fear is central to the existence of the state. With that there is more certainty, faster outcomes (though not necessarily desired ones for the people, as that plays no part in it except the desire of the one ruler). The certainty in this system is born of fear, which inhibits any diversion from what is prescribed by the one in power. It is a prison, fear is the key that locks the cell door.
I am reminded of a story about Nien Cheng, a woman who was imprisoned in 1966 during Mao Tse-Tung’s so called “Cultural Revolution” in which he was attempting to reassert centralized control in China. In her book, Life and Death in Shanghai, Nien Cheng writes of her experiences in prison, [describing] the brutality of her captors as they attempted to break her will and force from her a confession of conspiracy against the government of the People’s Republic of China. But she would not break, and she constantly affirmed her innocence.
At a key moment in her incarceration, Ms. Cheng writes, that she saw a tiny spider, a “creature was no bigger than a good sized pea,” crawling up the side of the cell window. When it had climbed to the top, it began the intricate process of spinning a web: She noted that “It swung out and descended on a thin, silken thread spun from one end of its body. With a leap and a swing, it secured the end of the thread to another bar.” This process, Ms. Cheng recalled, happened over and over again, until there was a frame upon which to build a web: “There was no hesitation, no mistake and no haste. It knew its job and was carrying it out with confidence.” When the spider’s task was complete, it “went to its center and settled there.” Of this moment, Nien Cheng wrote:
“I had just watched an architectural feat by an extremely skilled artist, and my mind was full of questions. Who had taught the spider how to make a web? Could it really have acquired the skill through evolution, or did God create the spider and endow it with the ability to make a web so that it could catch food and perpetuate its species?” And then she concludes: “For the moment, I knew I had just witnessed something that was extraordinarily beautiful and uplifting. Whether God had made the spider or not, I thanked God for what I had just seen. A miracle of life had been shown to me. It helped me to see that God was in control. Mao and his revolutionaries seemed much less menacing. I felt a renewal of hope and confidence.”[1]
This is the power of hope.
This Jesus knew.
He knew that healing people wasn’t about eliminating illness from the world. People still died – yes, even those he and his disciples healed would eventually die.
Healing people was about hope – and hope is a radical thing – a life changing thing – a dangerous thing if you are part of an autocratic system like the Roman Empire, or benefiting from it. Hope is the key that unlocks the prison of fear, and fear is needed to retain control over an oppressed people.
Jesus also knew that while hope was a powerful thing, sabbath rest was foundational to nourishing it.
This is why God insists upon it – upon sabbath rest.
Look, we all know what can happen to us when we are burned down to the core. Sleep deprivation leads to disease, yes, but also to despair, paranoia, irritability, and anxiety. All of which are the antithesis of hope. They are the roots of our self-imprisonment. Is it any wonder then why oppressive regimes use it as a weapon against political prisoners?
Jesus knew this.
He also understood that healing people changes things in unexpected ways – it allows them to function and participate in work and in society. This not only creates economic mobility and freedom, it transforms the places these healed people go. They become a living example that life can change, even when you are sick, or blind, or lame. That type of hope is infectious, and over time will erode fear because it is far more powerful.
Just consider the story of Ms. Cheng. Over the course of her 61/2 years in solitary confinement, it was reported that she was so “tightly handcuffed that she feared losing her hands and [was] confined in a frigid cell too small for her to lie down in[. She] lost her teeth, caught pneumonia and had hemorrhages.” Yet that moment in her cell, with that spider and her miraculous web weaving, was more powerful than all the Red Army could dish out against her. The hope she experienced in the knowledge of God, enabled her to retain awareness that oppression would not have the last word.
What Jesus was doing here – in healing, in feeding thousands, in stilling the rough waters for his disciples, in offering sabbath rest to himself and to his followers – it wasn’t about making all the ills of the world disappear. Jesus was bringing something far more transformational into the world – Jesus was bringing hope.
Hope that for all of time has toppled empires and broken the chains of their oppression.
Hope that heals the wounded soul.
Hope born of the knowledge of God’s great love for us.
So let us get our Sabbath rest here, and then in Christ’s name feed the hungry, heal the wounded and broken, soothe the troubled waters of discord and violence with peace, care for creation, and proclaim to all that they are loved – deeply and unconditionally – by God – just as they are.
That’s gonna scare some folks. They will shout at us – telling the world that we and those we serve are the problem and the cause of all their troubles. They will try to stop us – to imprison us in their cells of fear. But they will not prevail.
For we know that even a creature as small as a pea, as small as that little spider, can overcome entire armies when it serves as a living reminder of God’s presence in our lives.
So let us go out into the world and spin threads of hope into the corners of despair. The webs we weave will change us, and transform the world.
Amen.
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[1] From obituaries of her death and from Gordon MacDonald in Christ Followers in the Real World (Nashville: Oliver Nelson, 1989), 102-3.
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
July 21, 2024
Pentecost 9 – Year B – Track 1
1st Reading – 2 Samuel 7:1-14a
Psalm 89:20-37
2nd Reading – Ephesians 2:11-22
Gospel – Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
