Work, rest, and the rest of our lives
Proper 11B | Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
There is something deceptive in our reading of the gospel this morning. Nothing sinister or conniving. Nobody is trying to pull anything over. It’s just, deceptively quaint-sounding given the context. Given the subject matter at hand.
It is deceptive, like the eye of a storm. We think things are normal, like it is all over, but really, we’re only halfway through it.
Now, storms aren’t bad—they are forces of nature, weather patterns that whip through the surface of the planet. We just happen to be in their path sometimes.
And really, I don’t want to belabor the storm analogy itself. I want us to compare this seemingly calm moment to what it is supposed to be: a time of rest.
No rest for the weary
In the story so far, we remember that Jesus took up John the Baptizer’s mantle to preach repentance and the good news. He called disciples, healed the sick by the thousands and exorcized thousands of demons, was confronted by religious elites numerous times, fled the dangers of crowds, stilled a storm, and all of that pretty much scared the living daylights out of his followers.
And then Jesus sent his followers out into the world to do what he does with a big You got this! And guess what: their fame grows—it grows to the point that King Herod thinks John is back from the dead and crowds are recognizing them. They’re going to have to invest in wigs, sunglasses, and hoodies. Maybe hire some makeup artists. Just to leave the house.
That’s behind the scenes when they get back and meetup with Jesus. And they have so many stories. They want to talk about the people, the food served on generous plates, the views of mountains and rivers and valleys. They have listened to prostitutes and farmers, seen landscapes and tears that taste like joy, they have smelled roasted meat and tasted ripened grapes along their way around the region and have hearts as full as their bellies.
This was the mission trip to end all mission trips! And Jesus wants them to Sabbath. One doesn’t earn or give or take Sabbath. We must only do it. We are commanded to Sabbath.
And yet…there is still need.
The secret of Sabbath
Before we dig into what the lectionary skips over (don’t worry, we’ll get there next week…sort of), we need to remember that Sabbath is a central part of our story. It is where Jesus first challenges the Pharisees and the synagogue teaching. He challenges the simplistic vision of Sabbath as a legal concept for individual rest and not a corporate responsibility to protect the lives of others.
Jesus argues that Sabbath is for saving lives. And so, the only thing that would allow Jesus to break that command to rest and eschew work here is to save lives. Over five thousand lives.
This is the deceptive challenge of this passage. That the rest Jesus and the disciples need is elusive. And worse: Jesus seems to encourage a kind of workaholism. They need to rest, but — ope! — some people need them! Drag those weary bodies back to the salt mines, ya lazy bums!
It would be easy to see this as support for the Protestant Work Ethic’s mantra about work being good for us and perpetual work must be even better. That the poor will always be with us, so grind out some more widgets for the man! But that doesn’t fit Jesus’s teaching anywhere else—including when he talks about work.
What we have here is the opposite: necessity. Jesus believes lives are at stake. They are like sheep without a shepherd. And my guess is wolves are near.
Finally—rest
Jesus helps the disciples feed the multitudes and then puts them in boats and sends them on ahead, across the sea. He wants to get them away from the crowds they have just fed. And for Jesus’s part, he gets away too. A little solitude up a mountain.
This time of rest isn’t permanent. There are storms at sea and crowds on the other shore. But this moment, for the disciples, out at sea and away, and for Jesus, up a mountain and alone, this is it. Peace.
The Confusion
Of course, we don’t get this from the lectionary. It cuts out the feeding and the strange Jesus sighting on the water. It just tells us about the need for rest and how they weren’t going to get it. And suddenly: more people! Yay!
As someone who is ordinarily on vacation now and hasn’t had any yet this summer, I’m a little ready. And we all might get the impression that Jesus doesn’t do rest so neither do we. But that is a false impression. Like the eye of the storm. We think this all looks comfortable and normal. When what is really happening is that the mission is becoming too tempting.
In the section the lectionary skips over, there is this whole part in which Jesus catches up to them and is going to meet them on the other shore, but they freak out because they think he’s a ghost—it’s a whole thing. But then it says:
“Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.”
That’s where they are when they get to the other side. Not accepting what they are seeing and hearing.
Jesus sent them to rest to reconnect with their purpose, to be prepared for what is to come. But they didn’t understand about the loaves. About saving lives. About community and common need.
I’m not sure we know better, to be honest. That we understand about the loaves. And many of us have the hardest hearts around.
It isn’t about how
There’s a persistence to this story, though. Something we forget to actually focus on when we ask how? When our questions revolve around how he is able to do this. To just push on through. We call that drive to push on through determination. We try to make it a measurable quality; that we call grit. We associate it with strength and trot out images of soldiers and doctors like inspirational posters telling us to “hang in there” and “never, never, never give up!”
Qualities we assume are in other people, of course. That we need to acquire. Rather than focus on Jesus. And do what he does.
This, I think, is where the disciples lose it. Right after they got it.
They should understand about the loaves. That it is about saving lives. People. The ones around them. Then to keep moving. Find new people. Save lives there.
There is no “how”. There’s do. That’s it.
We aren’t to waste our time trying to figure out the right way. We must kill the perfectionism that stops us before we’ve even started, hardening our hearts to think we can’t do it. Do. It’s like the other guru, Yoda says: “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”
Living
This is why one common wisdom about having the right vision of work matters more than we know. It says that if we do something we love, we’ll never work a day in our lives.
In the post-industrial economy, this has been terrible advice for workers and it has given people the wrong impression about labor. But in the world God dreams for us, it is a beautiful metaphor for living. Because we won’t overwork ourselves or need a break or force each other to use their vacation days. Nor would we use it as a measuring stick for commitment or devotion to the work.
When our work is love, there is only to do it. To love.
Our persistent desire to shape it, define it, control it, overrule it is not our work. Our work is to love. And the people who are best at it? We say “it just comes naturally to them.” We say “they don’t have to work at it.”
Everyone is made for love. That is our work. It’s our job. We put effort into it. We strive. But there is no getting it right. There’s only doing. Being. Loving.
If misunderstanding that assignment hardens our hearts, focusing on the details of the feeding, the bread, rather than its purpose—to save lives!—then softening our hearts means focusing on the loving, the life-saving grace of food. Of being with people. Of feasting and sharing and singing. Entertaining one another with lucious food at candlelit tables, sugary elephant ears with friends at the fair, ice cream cones with a partner walking the boardwalk.
That is our task this summer: to eat. To soften our hearts. To love. And save our life.