I reach a point every year when I clearly start to lose it. By losing it, I mean that all the things that I do each week, week after week, really begin to wear me down. I get annoyed with everyone I work with, and with the whole idea of what I do for a living. Really, nothing’s working out right, there are just too many problems that come back repeatedly and can’t be solved, and I seem to see nothing but a series of bad decisions I’ve made leading right up to where I find myself. And come to think of it, I said that I start to lose it at some point every year, you know, it might actually be a couple of times a year, and frankly, one of these times might be this past week. Including today. So thank goodness I live with someone who knows me well, because she can say to me, it’s time, you need to get away. Human beings need vacations, she’ll say, there’s a reason God invented time off back in the book of Genesis. And of course she’s right. As we sit here on this lazy July weekend when even Fr. Tim is off doing something else, I hope that many of you have the freedom to head in that direction yourself.
This gospel reading starts out like it is going to be a biblical confirmation of this need to get away, and that getting away is the great solution to what ails us. The apostles reported all they had done and taught, it says. Jesus said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” There are enormous crowds coming and going, and the disciples don’t even have time to eat. So these are welcome words when Jesus says: Let me get you out of here. At Jesus’s suggestion they all try to go away in a boat, but the crowds are so desperate for their attention that somehow on foot the crowd gets to where Jesus and the disciples are going even before they get there by water. The plan to get away seems to be a failure. But their exhaustion now doesn’t seem to matter. Because if you turn the page in the gospel of Mark and read what happens right after today’s reading, these disciples who were so tired and didn’t even have time to eat end up being able to feed well over five thousand people. Out of all this work and tiredness and endless crowds comes a miracle.
So what does this mean for all of us? I think for our own sanity I am hoping that the gospel lesson today isn’t that the needs around us are so great that we constantly have to be pushing ourselves beyond our limits, even when we are exhausted. Instead I am hoping the answer has something a lot more to do with what we believe God does than how hard we are supposed to work.
Because one thing that having faith means is gradually coming to know in our hearts and heads that we are loved by God as we are. Over and over again, we forget this. It is not that we don’t need to lift a finger because we are already perfect, it’s that God loves the imperfect creatures he has brought into being, and it’s not up to our little selves to convince God that we are worth it. So you know, at one big fundamental level in life, what that means is that despite all the work and all the needs we see around us, we should relax. Yes, we have things to do, there are people who need us and commitments we’ve made. But we get the universe backwards when it suddenly becomes us and our hard work who make God’s work on this earth possible, when we think we need to be doing all the lifting ourselves, pressuring ourselves because after all, what happens is up to us. But you see, it isn’t. Look what happens to these disciples in this gospel after they have been off for one of their first experiences preaching the gospel by themselves. Jesus acknowledges everything they have done and tells them to get into the boat for a while. They have done their work. The next miracle will be not be theirs to make happen alone.
The gospel today doesn’t tell us that life is about living a heroic solo endurance test, and it also doesn’t tell us to that it’s fine to get in the boat and sail away when the world’s problems seem too big to handle. But it reminds us to keep coming back to where God is, and to remember that God is here to help us with our burdens, not to stand back and watch us struggle. We are only able to keep going when we remember that we are already loved for what we are trying to do. Even with all of our failures, God is the one ready to accept us when we reach a point where we can’t do more. God’s demands can be much lighter than the ones we place on ourselves. If that isn’t the way God seems to you, then we need to spend more time with God remembering what God is like.
So if you’re going away this summer, especially if you need a vacation as much as I seem to, I hope you not only get time away, but that you get some welcome relief, and that God will load you into a boat, and help relieve you from the illusion that you’re rowing by yourself.