Year B
Jeremiah 23:1-6
Psalm 23 
Ephesians 2:11-22
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

May the words of my mouth, O God, speak your truth…

Today Jeremiah speaks God’s words and says…  Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture…  and you know things are getting really bad when God starts off with Woe…  last week we heard God speak through Amos and say…  the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate…  and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste…  and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword…  the week before that it was Ezekiel…  and God said…  I am sending you to the people of Israel…  to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me…  they and their ancestors have transgressed against me to this very day…

And the questions we’re implicitly being asked to consider…  the questions these passages raise…  are about how today’s shepherds scatter us…  the sheep they’ve been elected to serve…  how they are impinging on the electorate’s right to vote…  about how we can stop the atrocities in Afghanistan…  and stop laying waste to this good earth we’ve been given…  about how we can stop rebelling against each other…  and transgressing against God…  because the failure to do God’s will persists to this day…  and we get hamstrung…  trapped…  we come to a standstill when we get wrapped up in partisan labels…  and point fingers…  and minimize and deny…  and…  and…  and…  I don’t know about you…  but I need a break…

The disciples saw Jesus in action…  they were sent out to do God’s work…  and now they have returned…  and they tell Jesus…  all they have done…  and taught…  perhaps with some pride…  but apparently Jesus didn’t press them for details…  or Mark doesn’t think them worth repeating.. he doesn’t ask where…  and to whom they went…  and how they were received…  he knows firsthand how demanding God’s work can be…  and he knows how amazing disbelief can feel…  how it can take the wind right out of the Spirit…  he knows the value of prayer…  and sabbath rest…  and so he simply says…  come away to a deserted place all by yourselves…  and rest a while…  come and have rest…  Sabbath rest…

But far too many of us…  and our nation as a whole…  struggle mightily with taking time off…  with silence…  with quiet…  with deep reflection…  with being contemplative…  and things like centering prayer can bring to mind things like mantras and incense…  why…  if there’s silence during our liturgy…  someone may wonder whether I forgot what comes next…  or who’s turn it is to read…  or pray…  and I’m not saying that can never happen…  but often…  it’s done to insert a needed pause to reflect about…  think about…  what it is we’re actually saying…  and to whom we’re praying…  

A 2018 survey showed that the number of vacation days available to U.S. workers has been hovering at about fourteen…  but over the previous five years…  workers took an average of only ten…  and countries where citizens reported taking the highest average number of vacation days…  were Brazil, France, Germany, and Spain…  where they all took an average of 30 days…  

And that may be because so much of the American water in which we swim…  is the water of productivity…  the water of assembly lines…  of overnight deliveries…  the water of making money…  of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps…  the water of quick answers and even quicker wit…  the water of competition…  we do not earn our paychecks based on how coherent our brain functioning is…  or for the degree to which our right and left hemispheres are integrated…  we are not paid for being a non-anxious presence…  or for the degree to which we’re enlightened…  or for having the Mind of Christ…  and when we’re consumed with doing…  we have no time for being…  for doing what Psalm 46:10 exhorts us to do…  to be still and know that God is God…

But Jesus says…  come and have rest…  and as Fr. John Shea explains…  this Sabbath rest does not mean inactivity…  but acting at a deeper level…  in concert with creation…  with the spirit of the Creator who is already acting…  the goal is to learn how to receive divine energy and nourishment…  energy and nourishment that drives the mission…  but this is not an easy lesson to learn…  the ability to receive from the transcendent source requires interior adjustments…  a shift in consciousness…  the disciples must go “in a boat” and cross over to another way of thinking…  a way of thinking that doesn’t leave other people behind…  and the many who were “coming and going” don’t distract them from eating food…  but from being nourished from God’s sustaining source of energy…  and on the other shore…  in this new consciousness…  everything begins with compassion…  the same compassion Jesus had for those who had no shepherd…  and so when Jesus went ashore…  and saw that great crowd…  he felt great compassion…  and the deepest expression of that compassion was to teach…  in that regard Jesus is a shepherd after God’s own heart because he feeds God’s people with knowledge and understanding…

And we can’t gain this kind of compassion while our hearts and minds are divided…  the Kingdom of God is founded on eliminating divisions…  we can’t gain this kind of awareness without also becoming established in the mind of Christ…  and what we gain is so crucial to our relationships with each other…  our relationship with God…  this kind of Sabbath rest…  and the benefits it provides…  is so critical…  that Exodus 35:2 says that anyone who works on the Sabbath should be put to death…  perhaps we can understand this less literally and more as hyperbole…  but it at least means that anyone who is unable to take this kind of Sabbath…  is not doing those things which ensure that unbounded awareness becomes established within us…

And reflecting on our passage from Jeremiah…  Douglas King writes…  very few of us have any sense of what it is like to possess the unparalleled power of a monarch…  but almost all of us have power of one kind or another…  but in the final word of this text…  it’s not about how humans wield their power…  but about how God wields the ultimate power…  God will do…  what human power has failed to do…  God will gather the people and bring them back to their fold…  the prophecy echoes the calling bestowed upon the first people in the garden paradise…  and God promises to restore all that has become broken in this creation…  and that task begins with the people of God…  new leaders are promised for the people…  and these leaders will wield power in constructive and compassionate ways…  creating a community beyond our current fears…  and all that exhausts us…  because God never speaks about the end of something…  without promising a greater future…  and as we emerge from almost sixteen months of COVID…  we have an opportunity to let go of the “old normal” things which really didn’t work so well…  at least not for the greatest number of people…  and to maintain only those which did…  but also to imagine things which might become part of our new normal…  so we can co-create the restoration that God yearns for…  for us…

And while we’re at it…  perhaps we can get away to some deserted places all by ourselves…  and rest a while…