Proper 7B | Mark 4:35-41
“There must be something else I should be doing.”
That’s a thing isn’t it? The kind of toxic phrase that eats, not at your behavior, but your very sense of self.
We try to convince ourselves that what we are doing, we shouldn’t be. That there must be something more important than this.
And what is “this” usually?
Resting.
Sitting.
Talking with friends.
The rebuke of our own behavior, of even rest itself, is a stunning practice for a person of faith. Unsurprising, however, for a culture priding itself on the development of the always-on gig economy.
Here’s something else to say.
When we’re getting antsy and feeling like we ought to be doing something else. Offer yourself something like “What would I miss if I left this moment?”
What would I miss if I chose to see this moment as trash, tossed aside for something better?
Would I miss the time spent with a friend? A child? With ourselves?
Would I miss the quiet, the space, the slow pace?
We aren’t “trading up” for something better or more important. We are throwing away something deeply important because we’re convinced we have to do something else.
This is why we Sabbath.
Why we rest and reconnect. Love and embrace. Why we need the time, space, and commitment to being at its most existential form.
To be — Not to do. Or to be defined by what we do. Reduced and dehumanized.
We Sabbath to connect. Love. Discern. Hope. Play. Pray.
So Jesus sleeps in the boat.
Which is comical, certainly. Sleeping in the midst of chaos. It is a kind of humorous juxtaposition that is as unsettling as it is improbable. But tell me that isn’t what it feels like to rest when our brains think we should be doing something else!
Isn’t this what we think we look like? A lazy, inconsiderate jerk who doesn’t know (how can’t he know?) that we’re all in mortal peril?
He sleeps when death is imminent. Like us when we dare stop to feed ourselves. Or take a nap. Or put time between meetings. Even sit long enough to read a book.
Can we even do that, by the way? Read books? Without the brain’s furious imposition—Don’t you have something better to do?
Maybe it isn’t words directly offered. Maybe it is a mere sensation. Like we can’t. Like our eyes and brain don’t connect. Sorry, I know you’ve read that paragraph three times, but it is just not going to stick.
And we think the answer is to not read. To do something else. Rather than to relax so we can. To make room in our lives, our hearts, our conscious selves for this one thing.
Rest, learn, become—it all goes together in this.
Be.
Jesus sleeps in the boat because they aren’t going to die. This isn’t a story only about the disciple’s fear. It is also about Jesus’s faith.
They aren’t going to die.
Jesus commands even the storm.
The storms that rage around us. Confusing us and chilling us to our bones.
The question is not a matter of death, because in this moment, we are not dying. The question is only why do we fear? Why do we not sleep?
These followers are disciples. Their singular job is to follow their rabbi. Imitate him. To literaly watch him and do what he does. Not just on the still paths of a dusty countryside, but in the middle of the storm, when tempest winds stir the rage of the waves. The disciples soaked and fearing death, where is their discipleship?
It is asleep in them like Jesus at the back of the boat. It slumbers. Perhaps it waits to be roused.
Is it possible that our first job is as we know it is. And that it is always our second to wake our discipleship—that we might no longer fear? That we may follow Jesus once again?