A Quiet Place? Really?
Mark 6:30-44
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
July 3, 2022
The cell phone signal was 5G with 5 bars. The internet was stable. Once we figured out how to turn it on, the TV had plenty of channels. Our cute little condo overlooking Eastham Town Cove was far from isolated.
It was a change from two weeks before. At Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, there was no TV, a few rare pockets of not-very-reliable wi-fi, and my cell phone only worked when I was hiking up a mountain. For the first week of my sabbatical month, I had been almost completely removed from the troubles of the world. What horrors were happening in Ukraine? They happened without my awareness. I prayed for peace, but I did so without specificity.
That was the first half of my month—a slightly uncomfortable and occasionally blissful ignorance. The second half, on Cape Cod, was more uncomfortable and less blissfully ignorant. With easy access to news, I had to make choices about what I watched and how I responded.
During my stay in Eastham, the racist mass shooting in Buffalo happened. I felt an urgent need to do something. Normally, I might have sent out a pastoral letter. I would have been in touch with area colleagues and the Framingham Together group about a shared response. Maybe the Multi-Faith Collaborative would have planned a special Open Spirit gathering. But I was on sabbatical. I did see a round of emails from our church’s Justice and Love in Action team, as they discussed what actions our church might take. I so wanted to participate in their decision-making, and I knew that if I tried, someone would reply that I should turn off my computer and go take a bike ride. So I continued my silent lurking in my own email in-box.
Within a few days, the team came up with a plan: our June special offering for the Buffalo Freedom Gardens, would be sent with a personal note from our congregation. The plan enabled direct connection and support for a grassroots organization. It built on our passion for local sustainable food production. It was brilliant and faithful. I had been right to resist my personal need to take action right then. I had been right to trust that I am part of a community that can do more than any of us can do alone.
That experience was a powerful opportunity for me to explore that elusive balance between urgency and patience, stepping forward and stepping back, between caring for the world and caring for myself. It’s a balance we talk about all the time, sometimes in ways that don’t acknowledge how fraught it can be.
Which brings us to our gospel reading. The Feeding of the 5000 is a familiar story. Rarely, though, do we pay attention to what happens just before the miraculous meal. Jesus had sent the disciples off on their own to heal the sick and proclaim the good news. He had challenged and empowered them to do what they never imagined they were capable of doing. They experienced rejection. They saw suffering and offered healing touch. They faced down demonic forces. They used every ounce of their energy to help people see the Kin-dom of God breaking into the drudgery of life. They came back to Jesus exhilarated and exhausted.
They also came back, as Mark records the sequence, to the news that King Herod had beheaded John the Baptist. They were grieving, for some of them had been John’s disciples before his arrest. And they were frightened, for if King Herod could do that to such a beloved prophet, what might he do to them?
Jesus looked at his friends and knew what they needed. He took them away to a quiet place—a retreat, time for much-needed, much-deserved restoration. Only it was not to be. The crowds found them. Jesus looked out at the mass of people and saw they were like sheep without a shepherd. His compassion was stirred. Just like that, the retreat was over. His disciples, I imagine, felt disappointed, even resentful. Didn’t they deserve time for themselves with Jesus?
Jesus modeled good self-care in taking them off on a retreat. What was he modeling when he turned the retreat into a mass assembly? What was he modeling when he asked his frightened, exhausted, grieving disciples to plan a banquet, in the middle of nowhere, for 5000 people?
Jesus didn’t have some magic formula for how to balance caring for a painfilled world and caring for himself. I think I’m glad he didn’t. For me, it is much more powerful to know that Jesus struggled too. When I am exhausted and overwhelmed by the state of our broken world, Jesus understands, for he too got exhausted and overwhelmed. When I’m trying to figure out how to care for myself so I can care for others, Jesus understands, for he too was trying to figure that out. There are no easy answers, and I appreciate that Jesus doesn’t pretend there are.
What Jesus does is keep trying. Throughout the gospels, Jesus goes off by himself to rest and pray. Every time, he is interrupted by needs that press in on him. A child is suffering. A tax collector is searching. A storm frightens his friends. A crowd is desperate for a word of hope. The deep rest he seeks is cut short, and he does what he can to ease suffering, welcome outcasts, still storms, and share good news. Then, the next time he has an opportunity, he goes off by himself again. He keeps trying.
That is the gift Jesus gives his disciples. That is give he gives us. Keep trying, he says. When you are faced with beloved family members who need too much care, keep trying to find a few minutes to listen to a favorite piece of music. When the climate crisis stirs in you that awful mix of frantic energy and despair, keep trying to carve out opportunities to absorb the beauty of nature. When the threats to the democracy we celebrate this weekend leave you exhausted from attending yet another rally and sending yet another email, try to gather a small group of friends together to do something fun. Jesus knows it isn’t simple or easy. Just keep trying, Jesus says through his actions.
I have come to trust that the restorative power of the Holy Spirit is at work in our simply trying to seek that elusive balance. When we stop our busyness, even for a few moments, we remind ourselves that we are not the center of the universe, and we open ourselves to a power greater than our own. When we try to care for our bodies, minds and spirits, we give ourselves a holy message: we are worth it. Even when our meditation time feels forced and distracted, our choice to sit still anyway changes something inside us. How do you try to find rest and renewal in a world where there is too much that needs to be done? What is this balancing act like for you?
There’s another moment in our gospel story that offers insight into how to live in this world of overwhelming need. Jesus asks the disciples how much food they have. Five loaves and two fish, they say. The disciples, or so I imagine, look at that basket of food and think, “It’s not enough. We don’t have enough bread. We don’t have enough fish. We don’t have enough energy and time and wisdom and power. What we have to offer is not enough.”
Jesus looks at that same basket of food and sees something different. Where the disciples see scarcity, Jesus sees abundance—or the potential for abundance. “It will be enough,” he says. He gets the crowd to sit down in groups, so they can see each other’s faces. He prays, awakening the people to the presence of God’s love in their midst. Then he tells the disciples to distribute the food. They still don’t believe it will be enough. They trust him, so they do it anyway.
A miracle happens. I imagine it to be a miracle of generosity, as people who have been hiding their lunch under their cloaks are inspired by the disciples’ generosity and start to share. There is enough–more than enough. There is abundance—God’s abundance expressed in human courage to risk sharing.
I do not aspire to be Jesus—thank God, that’s already been done. I do aspire to be a disciple of Jesus. When I look at the size of the crowd and my own basket of food, I imagine it will always feel as though what I have to offer is not enough. I pray I will trust Jesus when he assures me it is enough. I pray for the courage to risk being part of God’s miracle of generosity.
The world may ask us to give more than we have. Jesus does not. Jesus does ask us to give what we can and to trust there are others also willing to give what they can. In community, when we dare to act on Jesus’ promise of abundance, there is more than enough.
And so I come back to the condo on Cape Cod—to the restorative beauty of the cove and the computer that tempted me. I come back to the on-going, life-long struggle to balance doing and being, trying to change the world and opening to the beauty of the world. I am grateful for the reminder that Jesus understands how elusive that balance is and for his challenge to keep trying. I am grateful for Jesus’ promise that what I have to give is enough, for his assurance that I am part of something larger than myself—a community whose generosity brings God’s abundance to fruition.
Friends, Jesus is with us—with you—in the struggle. Keep trying, Jesus says. What you have to offer is enough. What you have to offer is part of something greater—a miracle of abundance in community. Thanks be to God. Amen.