H. Michael Brewer
Crescent Springs Presbyterian Church
26 September 2004
DESERT TIME
Mark 6:30-34
Once upon a time America was predominantly a country of farmers. Farmers know about hard
work, but they also know about rest. The rhythm of the seasons creates times of work and times of
rest. As commerce and trade became more important a day of rest still made sense. People need
some time off, and if all the stores are closed on the same day of rest, then one merchant doesn’t get
ahead of another.
But an industrial culture has different needs. People still need to rest, but machines and
factories don’t. Workers can be given days off in a staggered fashion so that production can go on
every day. For that matter, you can even schedule workers to come in at night while other folks are
sleeping, And if you can manufacture goods every day, why shouldn’t you sell them every day as
well?
Increasingly, we’re an economy that depends on moving information around, and staying in
contact with each other. The other day I asked a fellow how I could get in touch with him later. He
gave me his office phone number, his home phone, his cell phone, his email address, his fax number,
and he apologized that his website wasn’t up and running at the moment. I didn’t say it out loud, but I
was thinking, “Pal, I’m not really all that desperate to get hold of you.”
Thanks to modern technology, we’re creating a system in which people find it easier than ever
before to work all the time and to be continually on call. Or let me put that in a different way. We’ve
reached the point where more and more people find it impossible to get away from their work. The
end result is that all time becomes work time, at least potentially, and no time is really protected for
rest and renewal.
What is lost in our culture is the rhythm that God intended for human life, the rhythm of moving
back and forth between work and play, between doing and just being, between action and rest,
between striving and meditating, between accomplishing and goofing off. It is this rhythm that stands
behind the Old Testament law about keeping one day out of seven as a holy Sabbath.
You see that same principle applied in a different way in the life of Jesus. We only read a few
verses today from the sixth chapter of Mark’s gospel, but if you review the chapter as a whole, you’ll
see the kind of rhythm I’m talking about. Jesus sends his disciples out on a preaching and healing
mission, and after they return Jesus says to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves
and rest for a while.” So they go off into the wilderness to spend some time resting. It isn’t long
before the crowds follow them, and Jesus ends up feeding 5,000 people. After supper Jesus sends
the disciples across the lake and sends the crowds home. Then Jesus goes up into the mountains
where no one can find him, so that he can rest and pray. The next day Jesus is out teaching and
healing once again.
Read the gospels through and you cannot escape the impression that Jesus made it a regular
habit to leave his responsibilities behind and to sneak off by himself. Sometimes he had to work pretty
hard not to work, but he never gave in. In our reading today, Jesus is even trying to teach that habit to
his disciples, and thus this wonderful word from our Lord: “Come away to a deserted place all by
yourselves and rest for a while.”
Maybe Jesus was lazy and irresponsible. How dare Jesus take time off from feeding and
healing people when there were so many people waiting to be helped! Let’s admit it. That’s how
many of us think. How can we take time off when there’s so much work to be done?
Jesus chose a different way. I suggest to you that even Jesus Christ, the Son of God, could not
have fed and healed others if he had not regularly gone off alone to be fed and healed himself. Jesus
purposely chose a rhythm of time with others and time alone, time spent getting things done and time
spent accomplishing nothing.
Maybe I’ve gone from preaching to meddling. Surely you have the right to work as many
hours as you want every day, and as many days as you want each week. Right? Well, maybe that’s
right. Then again, maybe it’s not. I’m radical enough to believe that for Christians every area of life is
under the Lordship of Christ. If God calls for a Sabbath rhythm in the structure of human life, then we
must take that seriously. If Jesus invites us to come away to a lonely place with him, we would do
well to accept that invitation.
I’m not talking about returning to the stringency of a Jewish Sabbath or a Puritan Lord’s Day.
It’s not legalism that we’re concerned with, but grace. And that’s precisely why our lives need to
regain some balance between work and rest. We claim to believe that we are saved by grace through
faith, but we live as if we expect to be saved by our hard work.
What do we stand to lose if we work all the time? For one thing, we lose our rightful place in
life. You and I are not God. We have responsibilities, of course, but it is not in our Christian job
description to keep the world turning. The weight of the world is on God’s shoulders, not yours, and
God can handle it even if you and I take the day off. Sometimes I think that our compulsive ways are
a sign of our weak faith. Do we really think that God will let our whole life fall into shambles if we
waste a few hours praying or coloring pictures or watching birds?
If we live without regular intervals of rest we also lose our identity. Who are you? Why do you
exist? If our answer to that is that we are here to make money, here to produce, here to contribute to
the economy, then our value depends entirely on how hard we work, how much we make, and how
much we spend. God save us from such a wretched life!
There is a better answer to the question of who you are. You are a child of God in Christ. That
means our worth has nothing whatsoever to do with how much we accomplish or how hard we work
or how far we get ahead. It’s a revolutionary idea, isn’t it? Christ has already proven your worth
when he spread out his hands on the cross for you. Of course, we want our lives to count for
something, but remember that nothing you do will ever make you any more precious and beloved to
God than you already are. You have identity and worth even when you are not working.
If we work all the time, we also lose sight of the value of others. I mean, if we force ourselves
to function like machines, we will expect that from others, too. If we live like robots, it is a small step
before we are treating other people like robots. If we don’t bother to take care of ourselves, why
should we take care of our neighbors?
Without regular time set apart from the demands of life, we lose the opportunity to reflect on
where we’ve been and to consider where we’re going. It was not a Christian, but it was a wise man
that said “the unexamined life is not worth living.” It is only through wasting time in unhurried
conversations with God, holy daydreaming and playful imagining, that we will ever get around to
asking questions like, “Am I happy? Is God pleased with my life’s direction? Am I becoming more or
less like Jesus Christ? Am I going to look back in a few years and regret the way I’m living now? Am
I missing out on unrepeatable opportunities to love and laugh and play with the kids in my life?” If we
do not even have time to think and pray about such fundamental questions, then how can we hope to
find meaningful answers to those questions?
I could go on. I could remind you that genuine community and family ties are unlikely to
develop without time in leisure and play and rest. I could talk about how we truly end up
accomplishing more in life when we make time for inward renewal and repair, for restoring our edge.
I could talk about spiritual growth and how it cannot happen without unhurried time with God, time
without distractions and without deadlines.
But I won’t go into all that. Instead, I’ll leave you a story to think about. There is a legend that
one day the Apostle John in his old age was found playing some silly children’s game with his
disciples. The leaders of the community at Ephesus were scandalized that someone like John, who
had actually traveled with Jesus, would waste his time in such foolishness. In order to answer their
charges, John sent for a bow and arrow. Then he chose a strong man from the group to fit the arrow
to the string and draw the bow. “Now hold it like that,” said John. A moment or two passed, and
then John said, “What would happen to the bow if you kept it drawn tightly?” Someone said, “Soon
the tension would warp the bow or break it.” And John said, “Exactly! And so it is with the human
spirit if it has no rest. In the end we will either warp or break.”
Soli Deo Gloria!