Abundant Life: Rhythms: When to Stop

Anthony W. Franklin

After Pentecost • Sermon • Submitted 3 years ago

0 ratings

· 10 views

Stopping and resting gives meaning to work.

Notes

Transcript

Scripture: Mark 6:53-56

Mark 6:53–56 NRSV

When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

Nowhere and No Time to Rest

Getting lost while driving can be an unnerving experience.

It is even worse feeling lost when you are not the one driving. Moments like these make holidays, vacations, and celebrations more exhausting than work days and we miss the joy and excitement we think we should be experiencing in those moments.

If you are having flashbacks and experiencing PTSD, take a moment, take a deep breath..., and let it out.

If we take a step back and look at these moments in a broader perspective, they fall in a bigger category of rest time that gets sabotaged. Not just interrupted. Sabotaged. If you are enjoying a day out and run into a friend you have not seen in a long time, that may be an interruption, but it is a joyful surprise. Those are ways God meets you in an unplanned way, and enriching the gift of a day apart from work. I have never had a grandparent hang up on my phone call because it was a day off and they were not expecting a call.

More often than not, we sabotage our own times of rest. We do that either directly, by refusing to stop, or indirectly, by letting others run our lives for us. The ancient Hebrew people got to remember who their God was and how He liberated them from slavery every week, no matter what kind of life they led. Slaves don't get a day off. God made them take one because they needed to remember who and Whose they were. It is easy to claim to be a child of God and live like a slave of the world, and you can even have good motives for doing so.

By this point, some of you are probably thinking, "Well, here comes the annual sermon on sabbath-keeping." Others of you may be wondering what that word sabbath even means. I bet there are a few of you who are still trying to figure out what in the world this has to do with the passage we just read today. Well, hang on, because this is not your normal sabbath sermon. It's about the God-given rhythms of our life that move us from one place to another, and the work, and rest, it takes to get there.

Our passage today is a short passage that tells the end of a long set of stories. Fortunately, those stories are pretty popular ones that you may be very familiar with, so today, we are going to see just how Jesus made His way from point A, to point B, to finally arriving at point C. And, if we dig deep enough, we may discover not just how, but why He did it this way.

Thesis: Jesus shows us that stopping and resting gives meaning to work.

Feeding the 5,000

Our stories start out with the return of the 12 disciples. They barely have time to debrIef when they are all overrun by people around them. So Jesus tells them to get in a boat and go find a place to rest. They have reached a point where rest is no longer an automatic, built-in, part of the day. It is something they have to seek out. They get into a boat and try to find a deserted place. Even here though, the people seek them out. Jesus and the disciples were so successful in reaching people and connecting to those spiritual needs that they can no longer keep up and now they realize that they cannot escape it either. The compassion of Jesus pours out upon the people though, and as He teaches them, they realize that these people have followed them too far and will go without food for the day they spent following Jesus and the disciples. 5,000 men, plus their wives and children, may be too weak to make it back home. So Jesus tells the tired and hungry disciples to feed them. Is that interruption or sabotage? We are going to dig deeper into this particular story, but for now, I invite you to consider the flow of this series of events from the perspective of the disciples, as they watch, follow, trust, and obey Jesus. Tired, hungry, maybe a little homesick, Jesus tells them they need to get out of town, get alone, and get some rest. They try, but it doesn't work. Have you ever tried to follow and obey God and it didn't work? Did you question whether you did it right? We are so formed by the world of business, education, and the drive for success, and the disciples were too. When business is booming, we take that as a sign that God is pleased with us. When we get all A's in our classes we think we are doing right. When things are not working out, we begin to doubt that this is God's will. After all, why would God want us to fail? And yet, if you were to read the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, and mark the places that were successes by our standards and the stories that God called successes, I think you would discover that most of them would be completely different, completely separate ideas. Then, in the face of failure, Jesus seemingly flip-flops, asking his weary disciples to feed this hungry, grumpy, needy, crowd. What does He provide as their resources to use? Five loaves of barley bread and two fish. Listen, we can speak reverently about Jesus, telling everyone that He was the best person and certainly the best leader that ever lived, but this story here... this is bad leadership by anyone's standards. You don't send the weak and weary out to meet insurmountable needs, and give them too few resources to do the work. If anyone else did this, they would not just be called foolish, they would be called cruel. So what is Jesus doing here? There is a lesson here, but it is not a parable or sermon kind of lesson. It is not a truth that Jesus is trying to get the disciples to believe. He is trying to show them what it means to walk with God. Your relationship with God is not a switch you turn on and off. We don't get up and go to work until we are spent and then come back to God to be refreshed. We take God with us while we work and He is the strength that helps us do that work. Those of us who have ministries, ways of working for God, are doubly guilty at times because we spend so much time working for God that we sometimes try to make our time off separate from God and other people because reading, praying, worshipping, etc. feels like work. The disciples, and we often right along with them, are blown about by the wind, trying to find the time and energy to do everything - including rest. But look at Jesus. It doesn't matter if He is in the middle of the crowd or on His own. He always sees God right in front of Him, leading the way. At work, at play, at rest, and in those moments trying to decide what to do next we are tempted to jump or reach for the next thing in front of us. We keep our eyes open for the next open door. But Jesus doesn't look at doors. He doesn't look at the success rate of His ministry or how many people He is reaching. His eyes are fixed firmly on God. He sees God lifting up five loaves and two fish, saying watch what I can do with this. And the hungry disciples eat last... and they each have leftovers to take with them.

Walking on Water

Naptime: Take two. Jesus again sends the disciples away from the crowds to rest and to prepare themselves for the ministry ahead. This is the story of Jesus walking on the water. I know many of you already know the lesson of this story. If you want to walk on water, you have to keep your eyes on Jesus. Well, John Ortberg might argue that first, you have to be willing to step out of the boat. Here again, Jesus invites the disciples, or at least Peter, to step out beyond his own ability and to do the impossible. Peter, having witnessed what Jesus did with five loaves of bread and two fish is beginning to understand that following Jesus will lead you into impossible situations sooner or later. He is willing to give it a go. Full of impertinent, naive, courage, Peter has two flaws for every strength and yet none of that matters if he is keeping his eyes on Jesus. While he cannot see God working very well outside of Jesus, he is in effect doing the very same thing Jesus is... focusing on where God is. Now this is all well and good if you are one of those few people who have visions of God every day. What about the rest of us who do not "see" God with our eyes quite so much as we listen for what sounds like Him or try to figure out what the signs of God's presence might be? Think about the sheep and the shepherd. Sheep do not see well either. They listen for the sound of the shepherd's voice and follow the guidance of the shepherd's staff when they get out of bounds. They are often tempted to go run through the bushes in attempts to find greener grass on the other side, but the shepherd, and sometimes the other sheep as well, help steer them toward the path the shepherd leads them upon. That is the disciples doing their best to follow Jesus. But remember, Jesus is following God that same way. I'm going to read a prayer for you that I'm sure Jesus knew by heart, and may have even been praying through these stories. Take a moment, close your eyes, and listen to these words as you imagine Jesus going from village to village, preaching, teaching, healing, feeding thousands of people in the wilderness, and walking on the waters to get to His next destination. Psalm 23

Psalm 23 NRSV

A Psalm of David. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.

The Worth of the Work

Here is the thing about sabbath. Jesus didn't work 6 days and stop on the 7th. In fact, He was accused of being a lawbreaker by the Pharisees, very specifically for doing work on the sabbath day. Jesus did not have his own separate sabbath day that He used outside of Sunday or Saturday. I'm not sure Jesus even kept a calendar, which probably drove someone who worked with Him crazy. He had moments where he went away to be with God alone, and they were usually moments before His ministry was about to change. But He was no closer to God in those "alone" moments than He was when He was hard at work doing the routine of preaching, teaching, and healing. He was no further from God in those moments when the routine was drastically interrupted and they had to find food for more than 5,000 people. He never left the hand of God, carrying Him through those moments of big crowds and lots of energy, or quieter times with His disciples. Every moment for Jesus was a moment keeping His eyes fixed on God and feeling God help Him walk on the waves that life brought to Him. Rest is not just a weekly part of life, it is a daily part of life. Those of you who have cared for small children know that it is not measured in hours, it is measured in blessed moments. But it is not something you can simply grab or rigidly plan. It is something we follow God into. It is our green pastures and still waters that our Good Shepherd knows and wants to nourish our souls with. When we follow Jesus to those places of rest, He shows us the worth of our work. How many green pastures and still waters have you missed because you were too busy working, planning, fixing, helping, doing your good deeds? How many did you miss because you were trying so hard to rest in your own way? How often have you missed Jesus meeting you right in the middle of the work because you were focused on conquering the waves and keeping your head above the water? When we stop when God tells us to stop, it gives us the opportunity to look back on our work and see that it was good and where it fits into God’s plan. We cannot see that in the middle of our work. But when we let Jesus show us what He sees, we see how God can work miracles from our meager lunch bags, from our moments of foolish courage, and even from the fringes of our clothing as we follow Jesus through life.

If you follow Jesus and keep your eyes fixed on Him, He will make you a fountain of grace that will flow and touch all around you… and it won’t matter to you if it looks like success or failure in the eyes of the world, because you will know you are following Jesus faithfully. And because you are always in the presence of God, all who come near to you will find themselves in the presence of God.

Related Media

Related Sermons