In the name of God. Amen.
One of the things that I’ve really come to appreciate about watching streaming TV shows, as opposed to watching them when they’re broadcast live, is the ability to do so much of it on my own terms. I don’t have wait a week for the next episode to come out if I’m binging. They’re right there waiting for me. And it’s really nice not having to wait through commercials.
When I was growing up, my mother would record certain favorite shows of hers on the VCR to watch when it was more convenient to do so. She liked that, because she could fast forward through the commercials. But sometimes it seemed like “fast forwarding” would take more time and frustration than if you’d just sat through them. You never landed at the right place. And if you waited until you saw the show come back, there was always a little delay in your own reaction time, and then, once you finally press the button, a slight delay in the reaction time of the remote control. That’s to say nothing of if your mind happened to wander for a second. It was so easy to go too far. Before you knew it, you’d be rewinding, trying to find the start of the scene. Then, God forbid, you rewound too far… The process could start all over again!
But with streaming, none of that is necessary. There are even sometimes built-in tools to help make watching even more efficient. Some of the services offer options to skip the theme song (if there still is one). Another of my favorite features is when they let you skip the recap of the previous episode. Particularly if you’re binging – you just watched the previous episode. You don’t need the recap.
Unfortunately, in church, however, we don’t have a “skip recap” button that you can push. And today is one of those days when it would be a mistake to push it anyway. We really need a bit of a recap.
You’ll recall that last week we heard this sort of shoved-in story about John the Baptist that seemed sort of out of place in the wider story of Jesus. But, by way of recapping where we were, let me remind you that before that little interlude, the week before we’d read about Jesus sending the disciples out two-by-two to spread the work of the gospel more widely than he could do if they’d just stayed together all the time.
Today’s story picks up where we left off – the disciples had been out working as they were told to do, but now they’ve come back to report in to the boss about all they’d accomplished. He praised them for all they’d done and invited them into a time of rest and refreshment. For that reason, and maybe because this reading always comes up in the summer months, this is often a text that’s used as a basis for sermons proclaiming the importance of sabbath time.
And that is an important part of the message here. There’s even this great little analysis of this section of Mark that can be done, demonstrating the importance of sharing the work with your fellow workers – with Jesus and the disciples sort of tag-teaming their times of work and sabbath rest.
But this week, my attention went to another little detail.
You may have noticed there’s a big chunk missing in the
middle of our reading here. The reading
that’s outlined for use in church today skips over two other significant stories
– the feeding of the 5,000 and Jesus’ walking on water. They’re stories that we encounter elsewhere
in the church year, but today, the reading just jumps over them and gives us
another account of people rushing in around them and longing to be helped and
healed.
That seems to be the biggest point of the reading today – yes, Sabbath and rest and refreshment and reconnecting with God is all very important – but the focus in this selection seems to be pointing us toward thinking about their reputation.
Wherever they went they encountered these crowds. News of this traveling preacher and his band of disciples spread faster than they could travel – so much so that people seemed to know they were coming, even before they arrived at any given place. And, as soon as they saw them, they brought out their people in need of Jesus’ ministry – praying for a bit of the good news they’d heard so much about.
I’ve often imagined this reputation as a sort of
nuisance. I’ve felt compassion for Jesus
and the disciples that they could never get a moment’s peace. Everywhere they went, people needed them.
But this week, I found myself wondering: what if it were us? What if it were our legacy that wherever we were, the vulnerable came out to meet us, because we were known to be people who helped - people who embody the living Christ?
How would it shape us as a church if our commitment to following Christ were so profound that word spread faster than we could spread it ourselves? Word that we were the people who could get things done. That we were the problem solvers. That we brought the good news of God in Christ, here in our own time.
How would that shape us as a community of Christians?
I bet it would be exhausting. But I bet it would also be exhilarating. And yeah – even in that sort of scrum of
frenetic ministry – there was time for rest.
There was time for working on their relationships with God. And then there was time to get back to work.
It’s hard to imagine a world where our ministry is so obviously impactful that crowds rush in around us wherever we go. But it’s not impossible. So, imagine it. Manifest it, even. That is one model for what it means to follow Christ.
So what would it look like for us? What ministry would we do? Who would come clamoring? How would they hear about us? How could we handle so much demand? How would we stay fresh and not burn out? We might have to tag-team cycles of rest and work between us.
When we imagine the future of the church – here at St. David’s and around the world – these are the sort of questions we need to be asking. These are the sort of dreams we need to be having.
There is need in the world. Certainly for outreach – feeding and healing and clothing and housing. But there’s also a deeper need – a need for Jesus. A need for connection and meaning in a world where they seem too often lacking – or at least obscured.
The question is never, “Is there need?”
It’s always about how we’re being called to meet it. Where is the clamor still waiting to be ignited? And what can we do about it? Amen.
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