The Christian Rhythm of Work & Retreat - A Sermon

Mark 6: 30-34 & 53-56

Jesus’ disciples had just returned from going out in pairs to help to proclaim Jesus’ message of repentance and Good News, to heal the sick and to cast out demons.  They had obviously had great success, because Mark tells us, they “told him all they had done and taught.”  Jesus’ generous response to all they had done for him was, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”

In these two verses we have what William Barclay describes as “the rhythm of the Christian life.  For a Christian life is a continuous going into the presence of God from the presence of men and women, and coming out into the presence of men and women from the presence of God.”  This is what a balanced Christian life should look like.

I’m sure that many of you will have noticed that at certain times of the year Ministers seem to almost disappear.  It’s quite rare to find a Methodist Minister taking a service the Sunday after Christmas and even rarer to find a Minister taking a service the Sunday after Easter.  The reason is that in the build up to these great Christian festivals Ministers find themselves taking extra services and things like Advent or Lent courses and come the afternoon of Christmas Day and Easter Day they are physically, mentally and spiritually exhausted.  They need to take time out, to enter into the presence of God and rest a while.”

It is necessary, though, to get the balance right.  It is all too easy to exhaust ourselves in frenetic Christian activity; to be so busy serving God and each other that we experience what I call spiritual burnout.    Sometimes burnout and depression can be the fault of individual ministers who feel so duty bound to keep their ordination vows that they feel guilty if they are not doing something every minute of the day.  At other times it can be the fault of over-demanding congregations who feel their Minister should be constantly available to them at their beck and call and resent it when they take time to serve in the wider community, as a Chaplain for example, or actually take time out for their families and themselves.  The result of such burnout is time off with depression or stress, divorce and family breakdown and people leaving active ministry for good.  I know this to be true because I have friends and colleagues who have experienced all these things.

But busyness as a Christian isn’t just limited to the ordained.  Potentially any Christian can do too much, giving their all to serving God is gratitude for all that God has done for them and forgetting that God doesn’t want us to be constantly active: he also wants us to spend quiet, restful time with him.  God delights when we take time out of our often busy lives to simply meditate on the Scriptures and pray. 

We cannot sustain our active work as Christians in our own strength: we need to spend time resting in the presence of God so that God can speak to us and recharge our spiritual energy reserves.

But, if there is a danger in busyness, there is equally a danger of spending too much time in withdrawal, in resting in the presence of God.  As William Barclay puts it, “Devotion that does not issue in action is not real devotion.  Prayer that does not issue in work is not real prayer.  We must never seek the fellowship of God to avoid the fellowship of men and women but to fit ourselves better for it.”

Or, as somebody once observed, “Some Christians are too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use.”

A third danger lies outside both being too active and spending too much time in retreat; and that is using God for our own convenience.  This concept is suggested in verse 56, “And wherever they went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the market places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.”  Were these people really interested in who Jesus was and in the message of repentance and salvation he brought, or were they just interested in what Jesus could do for them?

You may also recall a passage from John’s gospel where, after feeding the five thousand, Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”  They weren’t interested in who Jesus was; they just wanted more from him.

There are people who just use the church for their own convenience.  They want the church when a new baby is born, or when they are about to get married or when a loved one dies; but are not so interested the rest of the time.  They see the church as a provider of services, nothing more.

Some people treat God in pretty much the same way.  They never pay a thought to God until they need him.  The only time they pray is when they have reached their own limits; the only prayers they pray are prayers that request and even demand things of God: as though God were like a prayer slot machine providing things on demand: you put your prayer in and the answer comes out!

To an extent we are all guilty of this.  We get frustrated when church is not exactly as we want it to be because we don’t like the music or the sermon, because we are not coming out of a service feeling good or having enjoyed the worship.  Perhaps the worship was not to our taste because the preacher has done something new or different; or perhaps we have been uncomfortably challenged by a hard word from God.  And so we complain to others, gather little groups of fellow malcontents together and try to get things changed, in some cases even top try to undermine the Minister and Church Leadership team, so that the church is what we want it to be and doing what we want it to do, rather than perhaps what God is calling the church to be and do.

What we need to do to avoid all these dangers is to strike a balance between rest and devotion and activity; between praying to God for what we need, because we are indeed weak and helpless without God’s help, and praising, worshipping and thanking God for all that God has done for us and continues to do for us.

What we should be doing is coming to God to offer our love, our service and our devotion, rather than treating God as some kind of universal servant who exists solely to meet our demands.  Yes, as our passage makes abundantly clear, we need God and must rely absolutely on God for all things; but it is our duty to serve God, not the reverse.

Our passage indeed makes our need of God plain.  In verse 34 we read that when Jesus saw the great crowd, “he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”

Sheep without a shepherd are very, very vulnerable; especially in the Middle East.  They cannot find the way and get lost easily.  They cannot find the pasture that provides their food.  They have no defence against the dangers which threaten them.  In the same way people without Jesus as their Saviour and Lord are subject to similar perils.

Without Jesus in our lives it can be very difficult to know the best way to live.  Jesus himself said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”  Jesus was and is God incarnate; to know Jesus is to know God, to know what Jesus is like is to know what God is like: if we want to know God we need to know Jesus.  Once we understand that, once we grasp with our hearts, minds and spirits that the words and actions of Jesus are the words and actions of God then our way becomes clear!    The best way to live is the way of Jesus.  Once we understand and accept that and put it into practice our lives are going the right way: we are walking the narrow path that leads to eternal life.

Without Jesus we cannot find the spiritual food and drink that we need to keep ourselves going, the energy, mental and spiritual strength that keeps us living the Jesus way.  God, of course, as our Creator is the one who literally provides our physical food and drink; but through Jesus and only through him we receive the spiritual food and drink we need to live our lives as his disciples, as subjects of the Kingdom of God.  We are fed by reading the words Jesus spoke, words that are life revealing and life giving, we are fed by reading all the other words of Scripture, words inspired by the Living Word Jesus Christ through the power and influence of the Holy Spirit: words that guide us in our living and relationships with each other and with God.  People all over the world are trying to find meaning and purpose in life, moving from one self-help guru to the next, trying different spiritualties and religious paths, only to find that they are unsatisfying and lead to dead ends.  To paraphrase Peter in John’s gospel, “Jesus has the words of eternal life!  To who else can we go?”

Without Jesus we are in danger from spiritual threats that can overwhelm and destroy us.  We cannot live good, loving lives without the help of Jesus.  Without Jesus it is so much harder to resist the strong temptations that come our way.  Without Jesus it is harder to take a stand against the evil in this world and fight for justice and truth.  Once we accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour we come under his protection and receive his help.  It is not that we will no longer be tempted, indeed it sometimes seems that the more progress we make as disciples the stronger temptation becomes; and it is not that standing up to evil will be any less difficult: what it is, is that with Jesus with us we know that, ultimately nothing and nobody can take away the eternal life that is our promised reward as Christian disciples.  Paul wrote, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So let us continue our walk with Jesus, serving him in the church and in the world and taking time to retreat and rest in the presence of God; always remembering that we are God’s servants and utterly rely on Jesus Christ for all that we seek to say and do in his name.