Come Away

Have you ever had your plans thwarted? Imagine that you’ve planned to go with your family on a much-needed vacation, a break from the busy-ness of life and the demands of work and school. And then, just as you set out, you get a phone call – sorry, you’re needed at work, another crisis has just broken out, you’ll have to cancel your vacation. How would you feel?

The apostles have just returned from their mission. They’ve been going from village to village, teaching, healing, calling on people to change their lives, proclaiming that the kingdom of God has come near. Now they’re back, and they’re beat. And Jesus sees them and their exhaustion, and how the crowds continued to swarm them so that they can’t even find time to eat, and he says to them “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” 

And so they get into a boat and head towards a deserted place all by themselves.

When I was in Israel a couple of years ago, one thing that struck me at the Sea of Galilee was how visually compact everything was. What I mean by that is that there is the lake itself, then a narrow shoreline where the towns and villages are located, and then a steep escarpment that rises up from lake. And if you climb the escarpment, from the top you can see everything – the expanse of the lake, the boats coming and going, and the villages that ring the lake – Tiberias, the city of King Herod, Magdala, the home of Mary Magdalene, Capernaum, Peter’s city, Bethsaida, all the Gentile villages on the east coast, right around to where the Jordan River flows south towards Jericho.

And so when the boat that is carrying Jesus and his disciples heads towards a deserted place, making for land in between Magdala and Capernaum where there is no village, everyone around the lake can track its movement. And people from all the towns around the lake recognize Jesus and see where he is going, and then they race along the shoreline as fast as they can and get to that deserted place before the boat arrives.

Now, Jesus’ intention was to take his apostles to a deserted place, by themselves, so that they could rest awhile. But when he goes ashore, he’s surrounded once again by a great crowd, and he realizes that his plan for a well-needed rest has been thwarted.

If you were Jesus, how would you feel? Frustrated? Angry? Disappointed? Overwhelmed? All reasonable responses.

But when Jesus sees the crowds, when he sees the overwhelming human need, he has compassion for them.  A compassion so great that, according to the Greek word, Jesus feels it in his gut, in the very depths of his being. And that’s important for us to know.

Over the past three months we’ve been working our way through the first six chapters of the Gospel of Mark. They are intended to be our introduction to Jesus, who Mark tells us is the one sent and chosen by God, the Son of God, empowered by God’s Spirit. This is the beginning of the good news. The most important thing we learn in these first six chapters, the first installment of this good news is that Jesus is moved by compassion towards us.

His response, especially in the face of overwhelming human need, is one of great compassion. Jesus sees the people and he is moved, and that’s meant to teach us something about God. Jesus is revealing that God’s posture towards us and our various needs is compassion.

And that’s important for us to know. Because you could imagine, and people have imagined throughout history, that God’s response towards us and our problems could be one of judgment. Or frustration. Or anger. Or disappointment. Or condemnation. But Jesus shows us something different, that the way God responds to us is with compassion, just as Jesus was moved with compassion for the people that he encountered in Galilee.

And it’s a compassion that is active, not passive. Jesus’ compassion moves him to love and to serve those that he meets. That will take different forms. In today’s gospel, he sees that the people are lost, they are like sheep without a shepherd, and so he begins to teach them many things. Then, when they are hungry, he will feed them. And he continues to bring healing to those who are not well. This is compassion in action.

In fact, it is Jesus’ compassion for his apostles who have just returned from a long journey that leads him to seek rest for them.

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

Have you ever had the experience of reading scripture, and you come across a verse and it hits you and you say to yourself, “Oh yeah, that one’s for me.”

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

Those words just get me.  Because I’m tired, life is busy, you have ups and downs, and you get stressed and you don’t eat well and you start worrying about things. . . I bet lots of you know what I’m talking about.  Sometimes you just need to go to a quiet place and rest.

Jesus is talking to his disciples here, those who had just got back from their very first mission trip on their own.  But he could have been talking to you or me. 

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

Rest is important.  And it’s not just about rest.  Because we know from other places in the gospel that Jesus would often seek out quiet times and places, to rest, yes, but just as importantly, to pray.  And he taught his disciples to do the same.

Prayer matters to Jesus, and it matters to us.

Let me tell you a story.  I had a friend, about my age.  A number of years ago, he was diagnosed with cancer and given six months to two years to live.  A big shock, as you can imagine.  But my friend was a very determined and organized guy, and so he made a list of all the things that he had to do.  Start medical treatment, update his will, arrange finances for his family, get the proper benefits from work, and so on.  His list was numbered in order of priority from one to about 10, and as determined as he was, he began to work his way through his list.  He made good progress until he came to number 8 on his list, and that’s where he got stuck.  Number 8 on his list read “tend to my spiritual life”.  That’s actually a lot harder than updating your will.  Fortunately for both of us, another friend got us together, and we started taking long walks around the neighbourhood, to talk about spirituality. 

And I remember on one of our first walks, probably about mid-way through, when he asked me about how to be spiritual, I said to him,

“Well, you know, prayer is the foundation of the spiritual life.”

And he looked at me, with a bit of astonishment, and maybe a touch of anger in his voice, and he said, “I’ve been going to church for most of the last fifty years.  How come nobody ever told me that before?”

So listen up, because I don’t want any of you to be able to say that you’ve never heard this before.

Prayer is the foundation of the spiritual life.  There.  You’ve been told.

Now, prayer can come in all shapes and sizes.  We can pray with words and we can pray in silence.  We can pray alone and we can pray together.  We can pray by walking and we can pray with our breath.  We can pray with images and we can pray with song.  Prayer is a wonderful and varied gift.  But what makes it prayer is this:  when we pray, our intention is to enter into the presence of God, to create space for God in our lives and to allow ourselves to be shaped in and by God’s presence and actions.

That’s not always easy.

But you know what?  It’s not easy to run 10 kilometers either.  Yet thousands of people in this city will run a 10k race this year.  How do they do it?  They train for it.  They start by walking, they have a weekly schedule, they start increasing the distance and the pace, and before long they have the endurance and muscle tone to run 10k.

If you want to be fit physically, you have to exercise.

If you want to be fit spiritually, you have to exercise.

“Come away to a deserted place by yourselves and rest a while.”  You make the time and you find the place.

And, just like working out at the gym, it’s helpful to have a personal trainer.

One of my favourite personal trainers for the spiritual life is Henri Nouwen.  In his book Spiritual Formation, he proposes five spiritual disciplines which can open us to the practice of prayer and help us to live a spiritual life.

The first spiritual discipline is reflection.  The spiritual life is lived in and through our everyday existence, and so we need to pause and reflect on our experiences.  This may be as subtle as becoming attentive to our own feelings and actions, or it may be as simple as keeping a gratitude journal.

Second, we read the Bible, not as an academic study or a source of information, but with a reverence and an openness to what the Spirit is saying to us in the present moment, trusting that this is where God’s story and my story will meet. 

Third, silence.  The mystics all agree, that silence is the “royal road” to spiritual formation.  As is said, God’s language is silence; everything else is a poor translation.

Fourth, Nouwen reminds us that we are to practice community.  Christian spirituality is essentially communal, not individual, and so it must be practiced in community.  It is in community, and not alone, that we can practice things like forgiveness and humility.

And the fifth practice is that of service.  A disciple of Jesus will always be responding to the needs of those around them in a spirit of true compassion.  Make service a spiritual practice. Find a regular opportunity for service, and practice it with compassion.

Those are Nouwen’s five practices: Reflection, Listening to Scripture, Silence, Community and Service.  Practice these as regular disciplines in your life and you will become more able to enter into the presence of God, to create space for God in your life and to allow yourself to be shaped in and by God’s presence and action.

Which is what prayer is.

And prayer is the foundation of the spiritual life.

“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves, and rest a while.”

Amen.

Homily Yr B Proper 16, July 21 2024, Trinity

Readings: 2 Sam 7.1-14a; Psalm 23; Ephesians 2.11-22; Mark 6.30-34, 53-56

Image by Steven Van