Pentecost 7B (Proper 11B), 19 July 2009, Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Proper 11B 2009 Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

’Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,

'tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

and when we find ourselves in the place just right,

’twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained

to bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,

to turn, turn, turn, will be our delight

till by turning, turning we come round right.

The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and rest a while. So they went away in the boat to a solitary place. For Sabbath time.

In 1960, expert testimony concerning time management was presented to a Senate subcommittee. The experts said that, because of advances in technology, within twenty years or so, people would be radically cutting back on how many hours a week they worked, or how many weeks a year they worked, or else they would have to start retiring sooner. The great challenge, according to the experts of 1960, was what people would do with all their free time.

How many of us sometimes wonder, whether we are retired or whether we are still “working” – how many of us have thought that the technology of which the experts spoke 40 years ago actually has us enslaved? How many of us have one or more of the following: touch tone telephone, answering machine, pager, cell phone, fax machine, or computer? Sometimes it seems as if we can’t escape the E-world and its demands, demands which I have to admit are sometimes simply temptations to which all too readily succumb.

In an ancient collection of stories called Aesop’s fables, Aesop was a freed Greek slave of the 6^th Century BC who provided pointed comment on the follies of his world: One day in ancient Athens a man saw Aesop playing children’s games with two little boys. This stuffy fellow asked why he wasted his time in such frivolity.

Aesop picked up a bow, loosened its string, and said to his heckler. “Now tell us the lesson of the unstrung bow.”

The man looked at it for several minutes but had no idea what point Aesop was trying to make.

Aesop finally explained: “If you keep a bow always bent, it will weaken and break eventually; but if you let it go slack, it will be fit for use when you want it.”

There is a story about Martin Luther and his friend and fellow theologian Philip Melancthon during the height of the early days of the Protestant Reformation, at a time when pressures of reform and reorganization were not only great but also because their very freedom and even their lives were threatened. Philip, an intellectual sort, said to Martin Luther one day , “Today you and I will discuss the governance of the universe.”

To which Martin Luther responded, “Today you and I will go fishing and leave the governance of the Universe to God.”

Luther understood exactly what Jesus meant when he told his disciples, who had had no leisure even to eat, to come away with him to a solitary place by themselves. The disciples had just returned from their first missionary trip and they were tired. Jesus himself was probably tired; the Gospels record several instances when Jesus sought to withdraw from the madding crowd for a little solitude, for a little Sabbath time. Sabbath time, a time of rest and leisure.

Sabbath time and Re-Creation. There’s a story about one man who challenged another to an all day wood chopping contest. The challenger worked very hard, stopping only for a brief lunch break. But he other man had a leisurely lunch and took several breaks during the day. At the end of the day and the end of the wood chopping contest, the challenger was surprised that the other man had chopped a lot more wood than he had.

“I don’t get it,” said the challenger. “Every time I looked, you were taking a rest, but you chopped more wood than I did.”

“Yes, but what you didn’t notice,” replied the winner, “was that whenever I sat down to rest, I was sharpening my ax.”

Think of all that competes for our spare time and energy: telephone solicitations, television advertisers, junk mail, e-mail, door-to-door drives; sorting invitations to exhibits, lectures, travel opportunities, dinners, meetings, books, plays, movies, concerts; letters to read and to write, newspapers. Where does it end?

One way or another, we all feel the demands of life. We have deadlines to meet, quotas to fulfill, places to go. Things to do. We expect to be busy. And we are.

But we need Sabbath time to play and to pray. Time to worship. Time to unburden the soul and know the best rest of all, a heart and spirit at rest in God.