Sermon: “Stop and Go”
If the passage the last time I preached was a fast moving scene, between Jesus and Nathaniel, then these 10 verses are even faster and more intense. Those words, faster and more intense, are evidently ones that Filmmaker George Lucas used when his actors in Star Wars asked for guidance on their reshooting the scenes. “What do you want from us, George?” They would ask. “Faster, more intense” was his succinct reply. And this is the perfect way to describe the Gospel of Mark and our reading from it today.
Mark takes us with Jesus from synagogue to home to a whole city gathered to healings to a quiet retreat to a search party to embarking on a new journey.
This is early in Jesus’s ministry. Excitement is high. People are learning of the great things he can do and they flock anywhere he goes. He has a sudden celebrity and responsibility, which makes it hard to slow down and take a break.
This reminded me of Ned Belanela, the busiest man alive, a character on a comedy podcast I listen to. Ned has an absurdly long list of jobs and domestic tasks to take care of. Here is just a selection of Ned’s comedic to-do list:
His jobs include: Toymaker, Event Planner, Lawyer, Two different restaurants, Doctor on the Side, and Mall Santa. His to-do list also includes: talking to his contractor, renewing his newspaper subscription, ordering Christmas presents for his kids, planning a Hanukkah parade, and speaking to his Instrument Nurse, because, well, naturally, his Tuba is clogged. On top of all of that, he has an Artificial Intelligence named Bruba who helps him monitor his Mother and Grandmother’s smart houses. To quote Ned, he is stressed out.
I love this silly list because it feels more like the busyness of my life. Jesus’ busyness, though relatable, can feel a bit holy sometimes – I still haven’t gotten the hang of doing housecall healings. But managing family and multiple jobs and strange tasks – well, that was yesterday and will be tomorrow.
The relatable part with Jesus is this: it is hard to slow down and take a break.
But he does.
There is a retreat right in the middle of our Gospel Reading today. It’s a hinge of sorts. Quiet. Remote. Unplugged. A time and place for quiet and reflection and prayer. Taking time in the hustle and bustle to retreat. It’s something we all need to do from time to time.
If this is me, I know for me that means unplugging from social media. Maybe it means turning off Cable news. It definitely means, get away, to a place your soul can find some peace. And pray. To be a healer, you need to be healed. If we do not treat ourselves well, if we do not heal our own wounds, it is possible or likely we will do more harm than good. So we pour out your cares to the Lord, the one who tells us, you who are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest.
For a lot of us, it’s hard to get away. Whatever the level of busyness in our lives, there is always something to do. A task at work we don’t feel we can leave to others. Childcare responsibilities that no one else can take on. Chores around the house that still need to be done. Or even here at church – someone had to lead that study, clean up that area, plan worship, convene that committee. Jesus goes off to retreat, but his disciples come looking for him “Everyone is searching for you!” they almost complain. And so it can feel like for us – something is always searching for us, giving us a reason not to retreat. Because if we leave, who will take care of it?
Now, on the other side of this is a truth about the gospel – the gospel is undeniably an activity, meant to benefit all people, even the world. There are many needs and many people. For Jesus, it could seem non-stop. I mean, in our scene today, it says, “And the whole city was gathered at his door”. Imagine all of Jacksonville at Jesus’ door.
For us, whether it’s the work of the church, proclaiming the gospel, or all the kinds of work we do in our communities, volunteer, employment, working in our families, even working land and relationship to the earth, this is all gospel activity, good news of God’s love for all creation. We have things to do, no doubt about it. And there is nothing wrong with that.
Our reading today is practically free of sin – or at least it is not about malice or wrongdoing between people. We have some vanquished demons, but the humans seem to be more or less on the same page. Instead it seems to be acquainted with the common experience of being busy as heck. As a parent who rouses the kids and does two school drop offs in the morning, in Jacksonville traffic, before plunging into days sometimes full of meeting after meeting, before school pick up, and dinner prep, and exercise if I can fit it and then, well, I’m exhausted just talking about it. Jesus’s disciples hunting for him sounds like my kids anytime I disappear for a moment: “Dad? Dad?” As in the scriptures, sometimes it feels like everyone is searching for you.
So that is the experience for some of us. But for others’, you’re not seeing yourself in the busyness. You might wish there was more. Or you might wish you had the energy or capacity for more. But sometimes we can’t keep up the pace.
I have a friend who, as long as I have known them, has always been at the center of the best causes, using their resources and their voice to make the world a better place. But I noticed recently that they had become much more quiet. I learned yesterday that they received a hard diagnosis a month ago. Sometimes our retreats are not temporary recharging, but necessary slowing down, to take care of ourselves or others.
The Gospel readings often give us different prisms through which to see ourselves. Sometimes we see ourselves in Jesus, not as Saviors, but following in his footsteps of ministry. And other times we may see ourselves as Simon’s Mother-in-law and many in this city, who need healing. We know the hard truth that healing may not come quickly or with any guarantee as it does in this passage.
We may even read ourselves as the disciples hunting for Jesus. It seems they did not quite understand the need for retreat. Perhaps sometimes we don’t understand why someone needs to retreat. But instead of demanding of the people around us that we are hunting and searching and need them, perhaps we can give people space when they need it and even encourage them to retreat, whether that is to catch their breath or to take a hiatus so they can take care of themselves and others.
I had to take time to withdraw and retreat like this when I went through my divorce. I remember sitting at a park in San Marco, and as my kids played basketball, I sat on a bench, looking out over a small marsh, and read this poem by Wendell Berry:
“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
Whatever role we see ourselves in, I hope we will all see the need for retreats. If Jesus needed it, so do we. If we are to keep up the gospel activity, we need time away to reflect and prayer. We need time to ourselves and time with God. And if life deals us more difficult times, we need not worry that the world and the gospel will suffer if we withdraw – for the good news both lives without depending on us, but also the good news of God’s love is for us in our solitary struggles.
I think in these times and places of retreat, we may find love ourselves as our neighbor. Writer Esther de Waal in her book The Celtic Way of Prayer suggests this insight: (95) “Unless we learn to live with ourselves, how can we live with others? Unless we know ourselves, accept ourselves with honesty and forgiveness, how can we possibly know or accept other people? I know that maturity comes only from staying still, from facing what has to be faced, perhaps from engaging in a battle with the forces that threaten me from within and without.”
So let us retreat, and may we find, in the quiet place, that Jesus is with us there. May we hear the voice which whispers, “Be Still and know that I am God.”
Matt Hartley 