Mark 6:30 - 34
When I was growing up Sundays were special days. We were taught by the nuns that you weren’t to do any servile work on Sunday, unless it was absolutely necessary. Servile, by the way, seemed to mean work with your body as opposed to your mind. My mother heard somewhere that you could do servile work for about an hour before you got into the area of serious sin, and being a workaholic, she did. But on the whole, they were special days. YOu could only fulfill your Sunday obligation on Sunday. Masses were held in the mornings, not the afternoon or evening. We had three options, one of which was the “choir mass” which took a lot longer than the other two. I was in the boys choir and we had to sing once every four weeks. The other weeks were done by the men’s choir, the women's choir, and the girls choir.
After mass we would generally do something we didn't do during the week. Maybe take a drive in the country, maybe visit my cousins on their farm. There wasn’t much going on because the whole society closed down on Sunday. You couldn’t go shopping.
Today we get a glimpse of something our society forgets -- the need to rest. Most of us feel guilty when we aren’t doing something productive. In my case that doesn’t mean I am always productive, but I feel guilty when I’m not. Today, Jesus has just recently lost his cousin to Herod’s executioner. He has sent out his apostles and they were back with the excitement you might imagine -- they’ve driven out demons, they’ve healed people, they’ve even preached and people actually listened. If I were an apostle I’d be champing at the bit to get back out there to the ministry. And Jesus recognizes that. But he says, “Come away, by yourselves, to a secluded place, and rest a while.” He echoes his Father, who rested on the seventh day of creating the world.
Come away: you can’t do what Jesus is asking if you are in the middle of your workplace. Some people have a special area in their homes where they go to pray or to think. But physically moving into a special area is important. We are bodies as well as souls. That of course is the reason we have retreats and pilgrimages and days of recollection; we come away.
By yourselves: In the gospel story there are people everywhere following Jesus. He’s a rock star. As we will see in the next part of the gospel, they follow him and his apostles and Jesus finds it necessary to multiply loaves and fishes to feed them. It doesn’t say whether they actually got away in this gospel story, but I’m sure it wasn’t the first time Jesus gave them this commandment. If we are to rest as Jesus wants us to, we need to be by ourselves. There is a variant translation of this passage that says, “Come away with me”. And that’s not a bad idea. Bring Jesus with you when you are by yourself.
To a secluded place: you’d like to be free of interruptions when you come away. I’m guilty of having my cell phone near even when I am trying to rest for a while. Who knows what I might miss? Secluded to me always conveys something like a cabin in the woods or a boat on a lake. There’s an element of nature. I have a cousin who is a self-proclaimed “spiritual but not religious” person. She knows she’s spiritual because, among other things, she feels a connection with an old oak tree in her yard. That’s not silly. We human beings need to recognize that we are part of nature, just as we are part of God’s kingdom. That’s probably why we have national parks and cottages by the sea. In a secluded place, we have an opportunity to feel our oneness with God’s creation.
For a while: How long are we to be away? Jesus doesn't say. He could have said, “for an hour, for a day” but he leaves it open. I think after we’ve withdrawn we should return when we sense that we are rested and ready to go back to the tasks of our vocation. In another place Jesus tells us, “Come to me all you who labor, and I will give you rest”.
Jesus’ command, and it is a command, to his disciples is very important for us today. We no longer have a society that closes down on Sunday, kind of forcing us to do something different. And because there are no longer markers -- even the Church doesn’t help much since we can fulfill our Sunday obligation any time between 4:00 PM Saturday and midnight Sunday -- the danger for all of us is that we no longer have a rhythm in our lives that makes our labor more effective, that makes our minds more attentive, that makes our relationships more rich. Sunday used to be a mini-retreat that was observed by everyone, Catholic, protestant, even atheists. And perhaps society was richer for that.
But we don’t have that anymore. So it is up to us to take Jesus’ command seriously and build that rhythm of rest into our lives. And when the Lord tells us to do something, we can’t feel guilty when we are doing just that.
