Pentecost IX (Proper 11 B) [Mark 6:30-34, 53-36] (22-Jul-2018)

This sermon was preached at St Matthew's Lutheran Church, Maryborough, 8.15am, and Grace Lutheran Church, Childers, 10.30am.

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

And Jesus said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.”

Prayer: May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Our reading today comes from Mark chapter 6, which we’ve been reading over the last few weeks. At the beginning of the chapter, Jesus is rejected in his hometown of Nazareth; then he sends the twelve apostles out on a mission trip; and then we read about the imprisonment and beheading of John the Baptist.

John the Baptist is six months older the Jesus, and he is often called the “Forerunner”. John the Baptist’s death also points forward to Jesus’ death. John throughout his whole ministry was pointing to Jesus and saying, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And when he is beheaded, his death also points forward to Jesus’ coming crucifixion.

But in Mark chapter 6, in between the rejection of Jesus at Nazareth and the recount of the history of John the Baptist’s execution, we read about the mission trip of the twelve apostles. We read about how the apostles went out and preached repentance, they cast out demons and they healed the sick. All their provisions were to come from the generosity of the people who welcomed them. And Jesus gave them specific instructions if people rejected them, to wipe the dust off their feet at the door. So this was a very intensive time for them, and the disciples’ activities became very well-known and famous. We read: King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’ name had become known. King Herod even thought that maybe John the Baptist had come back from the dead—he recognised that Jesus and his apostles were all preaching the same message as John. King Herod had a bad conscience about killing John. We read: Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he kept him safe. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he heard him gladly. And so when Herod’s step-daughter asked for John the Baptist’s head on a platter, we read: The king was exceedingly sorry, but because of his oaths and his guests he did not want to break his word to her. So we read about this event with Herod and John the Baptist because we read that King Herod had heard about the twelve apostles, and what they were doing.

So now, we come to our Gospel reading for today. It must have been a tremendously fruitful mission trip for the apostles. They would have been received with great joy, and at the same time, they also would have been received with tension and opposition.

So we read: The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. This is a really wonderful verse. Just think what the apostles must have wanted to tell Jesus! I often think of them here all piling over each other to talk to Jesus, all excitedly, and all at once, and Jesus tells them to settle down, and talk one at a time, just like a bunch of children! And this gives a tremendous example for us too: that at the end of a time of busyness, or at the end of a day, or at the end of a week, what should we do? We should return to Jesus and tell him all about it. Sometimes, we need to tell Jesus some things where we sinned, and he can then speak his forgiveness. Sometimes, we need to tell Jesus which things were difficult and hard, and that we didn’t feel as though we did them properly. And we commend ourselves to him to learn from him how to do something next time. Sometimes, we are happy and encouraged about something, and we go to Jesus and thank him for it.

Now, this mission trip of the apostles and the beheading of John the Baptist must have happened at a similar time. In Matthew’s Gospel, we read about how John the Baptist’s disciples also came to Jesus at this time and told him about the John’s beheading. And so there must have been a real coming together of both the twelve apostles, and John’s disciples to tell Jesus about the events. There must have been incredibly exciting news from the twelve apostles, but then incredibly sad news from John the Baptist’s disciples. And John’s execution would have been very worrying for the disciples as they realised that King Herod didn’t have their back, and wasn’t batting for their team.

So what does Jesus do here? He doesn’t send them out again yet. He doesn’t just send them back into the lion’s den, or to retaliate. He says to them: Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while. Jesus has had a debrief with his disciples, and listened to everything that has happened, and now it is time for them to rest. He takes them on a retreat. The apostles need to be refreshed and recuperate, they need to recharge their batteries. It’s a bit like surfing—the disciples realise that the times are hard and their necks are on the line. It’s like being caught in a rip, but instead of fighting against it, and trying to swim in against the rip, Jesus lets them float far out to sea, so that they can then carefully swim back in for the next stage of their ministry.

And this also gives us a wonderful example, and there is incredible wisdom in it. When we work hard, we also need to take time to rest and to prepare for the next part of our work, especially when it comes to spiritual work.

A few weeks ago, we read about the event where Jesus calmed the storm, and where he simply woke up and with a short, sharp word, he stilled the wind and the sea. And also, he put at rest the disciples’ hearts, since they feared desperately for their lives. So here in the reading he takes the disciples, and he says to them, “You’ve been doing some hard work, and now it’s time for you to refresh and to rest.”

We read: For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognised them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them.

Now, what must the disciples have thought when this happened? Here Jesus has taken them across the lake so that they can all have some time of refreshment and relaxation. We read that the disciples didn’t even have enough time to eat. Maybe Peter or some of the other disciples were thinking of going on a nice sea-side trip, just like going to Tin Can Bay or Woodgate, or somewhere. Maybe they imagined themselves having a nice siesta on the beach in the sunshine with a cool drink in hand! And then they get across the other side of the lake, what’s there? The crowd! They followed them there. So much for their rest, so much for their refreshment, so much for their sea-side holiday!

In fact, we read that there were five thousand men there, and that’s not including the women and the children! There were five thousand families there! And then Jesus made the disciples to go around with the loaves and fishes and feed them all. So much for the rest! Is Jesus really a harsh-taskmaster? Is he a slave-driver to his disciples? Is there really no rest for them?

This is where the real heart and centre of the reading comes in. We read: When [Jesus] went ashore he 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.

Here is the compassion that the crowd needs, and here is the rest and the refreshment that the disciples need: And [Jesus] began to teach them many things. There it is. A rest for the disciples did not mean putting their feet up and doing nothing. The rest and refreshment that Jesus had prepared for his disciples came through his living and life-giving words, and only through his word.

Now, this brings us back to the Third Commandment, which says: Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. The word, “Sabbath”, or in Hebrew, “Shabbat”, means “rest”. And it connects back to the creation of the world, where we read: Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

Now, when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, this day of rest became a special day of worship for the Jewish people, that on the seventh day of the week, on Saturday, they were not allowed to work.  Christians don’t observe Saturday as a matter of law anymore, because after Jesus died and rose, the ceremonies of Jewish worship no longer apply. But out of freedom, we come together on Sundays to commemorate the day that Jesus rose from the dead, just as we read about in the book of Acts, where the disciples gathered together on the first day of the week.

Now, sometimes people have misunderstood this law, as if it is simply prohibiting work on one day of the week. Amongst Jewish people even today, for example, in Israel, elevators in high-rise buildings don’t operate on Saturdays because it is considered to be work. In the old days, some Christians were very strict about Sundays too, as if people were required to sit around in a straight jacket all afternoon.

However, the reason why this commandment is here is not simply to stop people from working, but to stop work in order to come and listen to God’s word. Luther says in his hymn on the 10 commandments: Cease from all the work you do, so that God may work on you. That’s what happens when Jesus teaches the crowd and his apostles many things: he is working on them, and that is the real rest and refreshment.

Now we Australians love our relaxation time. People like to go for walks, go fishing, have a beer, go on holidays, put up our feet at the end of the day… From the face of it, it looks like Australians are the most faithful nation in the world when it comes to not doing anything on Sundays. But this isn’t what Jesus is talking about. In our country, leisure and relaxation is one of the greatest idols – it’s OK to have rest and go on a holiday and chill out, but it becomes a problem when it’s what we live for. Ultimately, it makes us a selfish people, who only care about ourselves. St Paul says: [Christ] died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. So if leisure and relaxing is what you live for, you should repent, and live for Jesus, and for other people. Jesus also gives us a rest, but he gives us a rest by teaching us his word, and forgiving us our sins. He says: Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Also, there is another kind of rest that people often look for, that has the appearance of being spiritual, which comes from the “contemplative prayer” movement. Now many people today—including Christians—are finding that life is so fast-paced, and there is a great desire to seek rest and stillness in the middle of it all. The Eastern religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, often practised meditation techniques, where they would recite “mantras”, repeated phrases like the word “om”, and would actively slow down their breathing. At different times in history, there were also various Christian mystics who did similar things and would practice meditation techniques. In recent times, some Christians have found a similarity between Hindu and Buddhist techniques, and the kinds of things that some Christian mystics practised. So people would train themselves to slow down their breathing, and recite a Christian version of a “mantra”, like the word “Jesus”, or some other word from the bible. People call this kind of thing, “Christian meditation” or “contemplative prayer”.

However, there is a problem with this kind of thing. The reality is that Jesus never taught these kinds of techniques to his disciples. When the Beatles were at the height of their career, they employed a Hindu guru, by the name of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, to be their spiritual adviser, to teach them meditation, yoga, and other things like that. The Beatles recognised that they needed rest and refreshment and peace amid all the hype in their lives.

However, when Jesus took his disciples away for a rest to a quiet place in our reading today, he didn’t then start teaching them yoga and meditation. In fact, when it comes to mantras, and reciting things over and over again, Jesus teaches his disciples about prayer: When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. This expression “empty phrases” can also be translated as “vain repetitions”, or just speaking things over and over. Hinduism is the most advanced form of paganism and Gentile religion that we know about because they have so many written texts. Even though India was a long way away from where Jesus lived, it seems as though this kind of repetitive prayer was prevalent in Gentile, or pagan, religions from a long time ago. Jesus actually teaches his disciples to pray by giving them the Lord’s Prayer, for example, and doesn’t teach techniques. And if he warns against heaping up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, why do many Christians then try to imitate other religions and heap up empty phrases?

In our reading today, we read: Jesus began to teach them many things. The peace that passes all understanding doesn’t come from our achievements or our meditations or whatever, it comes from Jesus and his word. There is such a wonderful picture in our reading of our whole lives, like a see-saw, between the apostles going to Jesus and telling him everything they did and taught, and Jesus teaching them many things.

In St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he calls the Word of God, the sword of the Spirit. This is a very interesting picture of the word of God as a sword. When Jesus teaches his disciples and the crowd many things, he is speaking to them with his own sword, cutting to their hearts and revealing their sin, and also protecting them from the devil and the world and their own flesh. Once when I was a teenager, I went on a school trip to Japan. When we were leaving the airport, a few boys got held up in customs and we almost missed our flight, because they had bought samurai swords. They had no intention of using them, they just wanted them as a souvenir. But when the Scripture calls the word, the sword of the Spirit, it means you take the thing out of its sheath and use it. It’s not a sword for the mantlepiece.

I wonder if sometimes we Christians just like to have the word of God like a souvenir for the mantlepiece. We just want to sit back and look at how nice it is, but we don’t want to learn how to use it. And so we scrimp and scrape and try to achieve an inner peace which we can’t earn and we can’t achieve by our own efforts.

At the heart of our reading, we do not have a spiritual master like a guru teaching us meditation, or techniques on how to relax and calm our mind or empty our mind. No, we have the living Son of God himself, who is both true man and true God in one person. We see him in the last part of our reading today healing all kinds of sick people, people who were made well simply by touching his clothes. This fact makes all the difference. He is a true man, and we worship Jesus as our God, who died on the cross to a make the one true, perfect sacrifice for every single sin of the whole entire world, and he rose again from the dead and defeated death. Whoever believes in him will also have eternal life. This is the message that Jesus sent his apostles out to preach after he rose. He said: All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. [Every single last scrap of authority and power belongs to Jesus]. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. Even today, we’re going to baptise a child [here] at Childers, and as we hear God’s word today, Jesus teaches us many things. And he says: I am with you always to the end of the age. He is here with us as our living God, risen from the dead, who will baptise this child himself, and also, will feed us himself in the Lord’s Supper with his body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins, and also, in his word, he is here to be with us, working on us, teaching us many things, just as he did to his disciples so many years ago, and strengthening us in the peace of God which passes all understanding.

And so, rest for a while. Peace be with you! May the living peace of our living Jesus be with you. Amen.

Dear Jesus, you give us work to you, and you also give us rest. Strengthen us in your word and Holy Spirit, and lead us finally into that rest that will never end. Amen.