Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 19, 2009
Lessons designated by the Common Lectionary include: 2 Samuel 7:1-14a, Psalm 89: 20-37, Ephesians 2: 11-22 and Mark 6: 30-34, 53-56
In our gospel lection this week, Mark doesn’t say its summer. He seldom gives details like that, but when I read this story its summer in my imagination. It’s hot, humid and a time when energy is running low. It was a time when Jesus and his disciples were even too busy to eat. They were out preaching and teaching in the villages of the Galilee and people were responding. The movement was building and consequently demanding more and more from all of them. They were tired.
Finally, Jesus decided it was time for a break. So they boarded a boat and headed for a quiet spot across the lake. But our gospel lection tells us a great many people anticipated that move and managed to arrive on foot before they did. Even so, as Mark tells us, Jesus continued to teach with such effectiveness and energy that by meal time when they were hungry in that remote spot there was such a willingness to share food and be a caring community that the event was remembered as the feeding of the five thousand — all from only five loaves and two fish.
What’s impressive and comes through a careful reading of this story is how much energy Jesus and his disciples must have expended and how tired they must have been.
Most of us know what busy days and weeks are like. Every so often there are times when we feel a heavy kind of weariness, when we get tired of answering phones, faxes, e-mails, attending meetings or even going to work. Most of the time we’re not necessarily displeased or depressed about our lives, we’re just tired. The contemporary world is filled with the potential for frustration and discouragement that goes far beyond what is healthy. And so the picture we began with of Jesus and his disciples teaching a crowd that had chased them around the lake and robbed them of their intended rest is an important one. How did Jesus keep going without seeming complaint? Why was he never put off by all the demands made of him? Yet the energy flowed and the needs of the people were met. They were fed and it became a remembered event. What made it happen?
For one thing, I believe it had to do with their sense of purpose and commitment. Scripture tells us that the people were in need of a spiritual and moral compass. They were like sheep without a shepherd. So Jesus shepherds. He teaches his disciples to shepherd. Energy, as is so often the case, arises out of that commitment. So when we feel tired or when we’ve begin to believe that what we’re doing doesn’t matter, the reason may be that we’re not clear about God’s intention for us. And for such clarity, it becomes critical that we set some time aside and begin — whatever we want to call it — prayer, meditation, perspective-gaining time.
Jesus is a great model for this. The gospels tell us that he often went off by himself to pray. And out of that time of prayer and perspective-gaining, energy was renewed within him and his spiritual power was restored.
There’s a difference between nervous energy and spiritual power. Caffeine and prayer aren’t the same. All too often we keep ourselves hopped up and running in all kinds of ways on coffee or coke under the illusion of the importance of our efforts. But to feel that quiet, inner, gently burning committed force that was displayed in our gospel lesson, we need to simply retreat in order to restore ourselves.
Again, the biblical answer to tiredness comes through reflecting before God on all those situations that make us tired and bring us low. As we do that and ask for God’s help in letting go of our anger, discouragement or aloneness, we’re given renewed faith in God’s purpose for our lives. Prayers of exhaustion and defeat are also the prayers of resurrection, renewal and new energy.
But first, we need to take time for prayer and all that it means. Summer might well offer us that opportunity!
Ralph Ahlberg
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