When you use the Lectionary to decide on the Bible reading for a particular service, as we do in this Church, you sometimes wonder what the people who chose the readings were thinking when they made their choices. The Gospel reading for today (Mark 6: 30-34, 53-end) misses out the wonderful stories of Jesus feeding the five thousand and walking on the water which have stimulated thousands of sermons and instead all we get is Jesus travelling around towns, villages and farms meeting large crowds and healing people and, as the preacher, you think; well, how am I going to get a sermon out of that?
One interesting thing about this selection of verses is that we see Jesus attempting to take some time out from ministry together with his disciples and being frustrated in the attempt because the demands of the crowds around them were too great. That continues to be the case in ministry whether we are lay or ordained but the busyness of ministry here in the Wickford and Runwell Team Ministry and in our weekday lives cannot be sustained if it is not fed by regular times of withdrawal for prayer and recuperation.
That was Jesus’ regular practice. We read of him getting up long before daylight, leaving the town and going to a lonely place where he could pray. In order to pray effectively and well he needed to get away from the demands of ministry and away from his disciples too. He needed to be alone with God in order to recharge his batteries for further ministry to come and this is his pattern throughout his ministry; active mission together with others combined with withdrawal for individual prayer and recuperation. It was what he tried to demonstrate to his disciples in today’s Gospel reading and it needs to be our pattern too.
I’m reminded of an exhibition by the artist Micah Purnell which was called In Praise Of Stop . This was an exhibition which reflected on the theme of Sabbath as Resistance by exploring 'the practice of the fourth commandment in a contemporary age.' The exhibition included thought-provoking aphorisms such as ‘Nothing takes practice’, ‘Switch off to connect’, ‘Thou shalt not prepare for tomorrow’ and ‘Everything comes from nothing’.
In a similar vein is the book written by Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, which is entitled ‘Do Nothing to Change Your Life: Discovering What Happens When You Stop.’ In this book Cottrell invites us to slow down and stop … and breathe. He asks, ‘When was the last time you had a real day off? Ditched the 'to-do' lists? Switched off the phone? Had a lie-in? Sat in the bath until the water went cold?’ Most of us, he suggests, live at break-neck speed. Busy lives - work, family, friends, endless tasks - leave us with little time to sleep, never mind stopping and reflecting. We urgently need to learn to nurture our inner slob. As Isaiah 30:15 says, ‘In return and rest you shall be saved.’
In a book called 'The city is my monastery', Richard Carter writes that 'Rest is given to us as the culmination of creation’ and that the ‘whole of creation moves towards this time of Sabbath, and our lives have no meaning simply as cycles of survival without this arrival at the place of wonder and rest.’ The rest that is ultimately the culmination of creation is that which we will experience in heaven. Sabbath is our anticipation of that experience in the here and now.
‘Creation is not complete,’ he writes, ‘until God rests on the seventh day and contemplates all creation.’ Therefore, 'God blesses time’ and ‘consecrates it as holy.’ The whole of creation is moving towards this time of Sabbath, ‘and our lives have no meaning simply as cycles of survival without this arrival at the place of wonder and rest.'
‘When we rest, we imitate God - we enter into the rhythm of God's time,' but, more than that, 'if Sabbath is God's time, it does not end in the keeping of the Sabbath - the Sabbath enters into all our time.’ ‘When we keep Sabbath, everything we do can be infused with that sense of God's presence.'
He describes a day on holiday in Kefalonia where he pays attention to every moment of the day – the bread he buys from the bakery, the person who serves him, the wrapping in which it comes, the feel and taste of it. Later in the day, he writes, ‘I sat on the beach and watched people playing in the sea … I swam, ate bread and ripe tomatoes, and these actions were like a prayer.'
So, Richard Carter suggests that Sabbath rest is not simply about stopping but more so about an attitude of the heart which slows us in everyday life to appreciate and enjoy what we encounter in our daily lives.
In lockdown we all experienced an enforced Sabbath. An unattributed poem that was circulated on Facebook at that time suggested that our lockdown experience could be a moment in which we learn how to rest and experience renewal:
For years our land has groaned beneath the grind
Of work, work, work, of pounding feet, of churn;
For years we stopped our ears and would not mind
The gentle voice that urged us all to turn
From endless slog and strain that warps and rends
The sinews of the Spirit, toward rest:
The Sabbath's breathing wisdom God intends
For human flourishing and the land's best.
Now cafes rest, deserted and the shops,
The bank, the bustle, bargain, building, bar,
The tube's hot haggling hustle: it all stops.
Forced into stillness, now we breathe, we are.
Such tragic loss of love, of breath, to prove
How much we need to rest, to breathe, to love.
Our reading today, demonstrates some of the difficulties in regularly finding that time and the attitude Richard Carter described because of the constant demands that ministry makes on us. However, the difficulties involved shouldn’t prevent us from making the attempt to build rest periods and an attitude of slowing down and paying attention into our daily lives. By doing so, we follow in the footsteps of Jesus who specifically carved out times for prayer in the busyness of his ministry years and sought to teach his disciples to do the same. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.
In a book called 'The city is my monastery', Richard Carter writes that 'Rest is given to us as the culmination of creation’ and that the ‘whole of creation moves towards this time of Sabbath, and our lives have no meaning simply as cycles of survival without this arrival at the place of wonder and rest.’ The rest that is ultimately the culmination of creation is that which we will experience in heaven. Sabbath is our anticipation of that experience in the here and now.
‘Creation is not complete,’ he writes, ‘until God rests on the seventh day and contemplates all creation.’ Therefore, 'God blesses time’ and ‘consecrates it as holy.’ The whole of creation is moving towards this time of Sabbath, ‘and our lives have no meaning simply as cycles of survival without this arrival at the place of wonder and rest.'
‘When we rest, we imitate God - we enter into the rhythm of God's time,' but, more than that, 'if Sabbath is God's time, it does not end in the keeping of the Sabbath - the Sabbath enters into all our time.’ ‘When we keep Sabbath, everything we do can be infused with that sense of God's presence.'
He describes a day on holiday in Kefalonia where he pays attention to every moment of the day – the bread he buys from the bakery, the person who serves him, the wrapping in which it comes, the feel and taste of it. Later in the day, he writes, ‘I sat on the beach and watched people playing in the sea … I swam, ate bread and ripe tomatoes, and these actions were like a prayer.'
So, Richard Carter suggests that Sabbath rest is not simply about stopping but more so about an attitude of the heart which slows us in everyday life to appreciate and enjoy what we encounter in our daily lives.
In lockdown we all experienced an enforced Sabbath. An unattributed poem that was circulated on Facebook at that time suggested that our lockdown experience could be a moment in which we learn how to rest and experience renewal:
For years our land has groaned beneath the grind
Of work, work, work, of pounding feet, of churn;
For years we stopped our ears and would not mind
The gentle voice that urged us all to turn
From endless slog and strain that warps and rends
The sinews of the Spirit, toward rest:
The Sabbath's breathing wisdom God intends
For human flourishing and the land's best.
Now cafes rest, deserted and the shops,
The bank, the bustle, bargain, building, bar,
The tube's hot haggling hustle: it all stops.
Forced into stillness, now we breathe, we are.
Such tragic loss of love, of breath, to prove
How much we need to rest, to breathe, to love.
Our reading today, demonstrates some of the difficulties in regularly finding that time and the attitude Richard Carter described because of the constant demands that ministry makes on us. However, the difficulties involved shouldn’t prevent us from making the attempt to build rest periods and an attitude of slowing down and paying attention into our daily lives. By doing so, we follow in the footsteps of Jesus who specifically carved out times for prayer in the busyness of his ministry years and sought to teach his disciples to do the same. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment