The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
July 20, 2003

Come Away and Rest
Mark 6:30-44 

In my sermon last Sunday, I made some Pop Tarts and some pickles right here on the pulpit. The Pop Tarts stood in for Justification, the theological term for the once and for all time action of being made right in God’s eyes. Some folks refer to this process as “getting saved,” it’s the instant process of God seeing you as just, and right in God’s eyes that happens when you come to faith in God through the person of Jesus. 

Next I took some cucumbers and put them in a pickling solution. The cucumbers becoming pickles represented sanctification, which is the process of becoming holy that takes the rest of your life and more. Pop Tarts finish their process all at once—pop they’re done—pickles take longer. Cucumbers become pickles through ongoing exposure to the vinegar, spices and water. Making a pickle comes with exposure to the pickling sauce, which infuses its way into the cucumber over time. I preached that becoming more Christ like takes time and exposure to the Bible, to worship and prayer.  

Just as a reminder, I brought back the cucumbers in the spices. I also brought back a cucumber that I removed from the pickling solution right after church last week. The cucumber left out on its own is shriveling up and beginning to rot. The cucumbers that stayed in the solution still look great. Y’all are smart folks. I won’t be labor the point. You can see that the spiritual side of your lives need tending to become more Christ like. 

Now we come to this week’s Gospel reading. Jesus feeds five thousand men, plus the women and children with them with five loaves of bread and two fish. Once everyone has had their fill, the disciples collect twelve basketsful of leftovers.  

This is a very familiar story to most folks. Even people who know few Bible stories will recognize this scene with Jesus feeding the multitudes with just a little bread and fish. I want to look this week at the edges of this story—to what happens just before and just after the miracle of multiplying meals. 

As our reading for today begins, Jesus’ disciples are returning from a preaching and healing mission to the surrounding towns and villages. Jesus sent his disciples out two by two to preach that the kingdom of God is near, to do miracles, and to call the people to repentance—asking God’s forgiveness and then amending their lives to do what they know is right.  

They have returned to their leader and the reading for today begins, “The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught.” 

Jesus knows how demanding their journey was and he calls the disciples away for rest saying, “’Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going and they had no leisure even to eat.” 

Jesus sees that his followers need rest and he tries to make room for that rest. He gathers his disciples into a boat and they go to a deserted place on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. The problem is the Sea of Galilee is a sea in name only—it’s really more of a large lake. Even though it might take a couple of hours to row from one side to the other, it’s hard to get out of sight of an aggressive crowd. 

When the people see where Jesus and the disciples are headed, they run ahead on foot to beat them their. By the time Jesus and the disciples make landfall, the shore is lined with eager spiritual seekers desperate for what Jesus has to offer.  

If you have ever felt over worked, over pursued by other folks’ needs, this should hit home. This scene should be especially familiar to working moms who come home from a day of work to find household chores stacking up and a family with its own needs. In all fairness, working dads who are on their own or who do more housework than traditional gender roles call for, will also see the similarity in this scene. The disciples who have gone out on the road working hard, came back to Jesus to find no time even to eat. When their Lord tries to make room for rest, they are pursued once again by the spiritually hungry mob.  

Jesus should probably shoo the crowd away at this point. But he sees the great hunger that drives them and feels compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus taught the crowd many things. He taught late into the day. The people had been so concerned about their spiritual hunger that they ran after Jesus without a thought to how they would fill their hungry bellies later that day.  

It was then that the disciples took some compassion on the crowd and suggested Jesus send the people away to find food and lodgings in the surrounding country and villages.  Jesus, who had cared for the spiritually hungry crowd, now feeds them a miraculous meal of bread and fish.   

If we pushed on in Mark’s Gospel into next week’s reading, we find Jesus sends the disciples ahead of him to find a place to rest, while he dismisses the crowd. Jesus might have interjected a lengthy teaching session out of compassion for the crowd, but he is still concerned that the disciples find rest for their bodies as well as their souls. 

Jesus concern that his disciples rest is very scriptural. After all the creation story in Genesis tells of God resting from all he did in creation. The fourth of the ten commandments said “remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.” Keeping a day of rest was so important in ancient Israel that the command to rest applied to all, slave and free, Israelite and foreigner in the land alike.  

Exodus 31:15 states, “Whoever does work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death.” Being a workaholic was a capital crime in ancient Israel.  

Compare that to our own times. In America we see hard work as a virtue, which it is. But then we decide that if hard work is a virtue, even more work must be even better and that’s not necessarily so. I saw a recent article at WebMD which gave some of our nation’s workaholic stereotypes including, 

The techie who works 12 hours a day at a dot-com start-up. The lawyer who sweats every last detail of every last contract. The store owner who hasn’t taken a vacation in ten years. The doctor who spends every free moment in the lab. The stockholder whose heart rate fluctuates with the Nasdaq.[1] 

The article goes onto say that working more is not better and workaholics cost an estimated $150 billion per year through health-related problems. This is not a problem in our nation alone. In Japan they have coined a term Karoshi, meaning death from overwork. The 60-70 hour work weeks in Japan cause 10,000 workers a year to die on the job from Karoshi. Overwork is also listed by an association of matrimonial lawyers as one of the top four causes of divorce. While workaholic is not an official psychological term, Dianne Fassel, the author of some work related studies, says that “a workaholic will die faster than an alcoholic any day."

I want to show you the sort of toll all work and no play can take on a family. Here is a scene from the movie Liar, Liar. Jim Carey plays a dad in this scene who has carried his son to work with him. He and the son have been separated by a divorce and his time with his son is limited, yet he can’t stop working. The birthday present in the scene was bought by the secretary and the character Carey plays does not even know what he has bought his boy. 

[insert clip from Liar, Liar with the boy getting a baseball hat, glove, and ball,
but the dad has no time to go throw the ball with his son, he has to keep working.
The clip begins and ends with the Dad working at his computer.] 

Workaholics may be covering anxiety, low self-esteem, and problems with intimacy by staying busy. All that busy-ness takes a toll of its own with anxiety attacks, ulcers, strokes or heart attacks. 

But the God who lovingly made you knows you need rest. The Bible is clear that we need spiritual refreshment, which is what Jesus gave in his teaching the five thousand that day. But we all also need physical refreshment, like the food he gave the hungry people and the rest he tried to provide his disciples.  

The Bible is a realistic book if nothing else. God already knew we would be tempted to do too much. God knew it would be easy to go home from work only to work some more. Hard work may be a virtue, a good in and of itself, but God wants you and me to also know that there is more to life than work. Your body needs rest. Take it easy some times. If you feel guilty resting remind yourself that the God who made you wired your system so that you have to rest. But when you are sitting with your feet up this afternoon, telling your spouse that the preacher said you gotta kick back, remember that you need to make room for your spouse to rest too. 

I want to close with a story from 4^th century Egypt. Their were many hermits living in the desert of Egypt trying to draw closer to God through a life of prayer and study. It was the beginnings of what would become monasteries. We have many of their wise sayings and stories preserved. Here is one on work, 

Once Abbot Anthony was conversing with some brethren, and a hunter who was after game in the wilderness came upon them. He saw Abbot Anthony and the brothers enjoying themselves, and disapproved. Abbot Anthony said: put an arrow in your bow and shoot it. This he did. Now shoot another, said the elder. And another, and another. The hunter said, “If I bend my bow all the time it will break. Abbot Anthony replied: So it is also in the work of God. If we push ourselves beyond measure, the brethren will soon collapse. It is right, therefore, from time to time, to relax their efforts.[2] 

Amen.