“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while,” Jesus says in today’s gospel (Mark 6:30-34, 53-56).

That sounds pretty good to me, how about you? What does that mean for you today? What do you need to let go of or get away from in order to rest? Where and how might that happen for you? What kind of rest do you need today?

You may remember that a couple of weeks ago we heard about Jesus sending out the disciples two by two. “They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.” In this week’s gospel they’ve just returned from that work and they’re telling Jesus “all they did and taught.” They’ve been busy.

My guess is that many if not most of us live busy and exhausted lives. I’ve often worn my busyness and exhaustion like merit badges. Maybe you have too. I wonder if that’s what Jesus sees in his disciples and why he invites them to come away and rest. 

What exhausts you today? Maybe it’s the busyness, pace, and demands of life. It might be about work but busyness and exhaustion are not limited to those who work. I also hear retired people and unemployed people talk about being busy and tired. Sometimes we’re exhausted by the daily struggles of life, an illness, worry, grief, or financial concerns. Some relationships are exhausting. Maybe it’s the daily news, the presidential election, social media. Even good things like a newborn child, opportunities, and success can exhaust us. What is it for you? 

Next week Cyndy and I are taking Jesus up on his offer. We’re going away all by ourselves. I’m getting out of the office – no work, no emails, no phone calls, no meetings, no sermon or class preparations, no responding to financial or pastoral needs. We’re going to rest a while.

And you know what we’re going to do after that? We’re coming home, back to Uvalde and back to work. And I’ll probably do the same things I was doing before we went away to rest. And we’ll exhaust ourselves until we get another time away to rest a while. You know how that goes, right?

That sounds pretty crazy doesn’t it? Do you think that’s really what Jesus has in mind when he says, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while”?

I don’t think it is but that’s often how I’ve lived. Maybe you’ve also lived like that. We often move back and forth between exhaustion and rest. We empty the bucket of our life and then refill it. Filling and emptying. Filling and emptying. It’s an exhausting way to live. 

But what if that’s not what Jesus is inviting us to? What if we’ve misunderstood rest? What if there is more to rest than simply refilling our bucket every time it’s empty?

Here’s what strikes me about Jesus in today’s gospel. He recognizes his and his disciples’ need to rest and he recognizes the needs of the crowd. It’s not one or the other. It’s both. He goes away to a deserted place and he is present to those who show up. He isn’t angry or resentful that they’ve shown up and he doesn’t send them away. Instead, he sees them and has compassion for them.

For Jesus, rest is not in opposition to showing up and being present. He seems to understand that rest is more than getting away and doing nothing. It is not an escape, isolation, or avoidance. It’s not the choice between ourselves and others we often make it to be. 

Maybe rest is a way of being present to one another and ourselves. Maybe it’s more about what’s going on within us than what’s going on around us. Haven’t there been times when you finally got away to rest and you returned home just as tired or maybe more tired than you were before you left? Haven’t you experienced the kind of tiredness that sleep doesn’t fix? 

What if our exhaustion is a symptom that we are living half-heartedly? I give a bit of myself to this and bit to that, a piece of me here and a piece of me there. Nothing and no one gets all of me. My life is scattered and fragmented. I’m half-hearted and I’m worn out. Have you ever felt like that?

That’s not what we see of Jesus in today’s gospel. He is fully present to himself, his disciples, and the crowd. He’s wholehearted. He’s made rest an interior quality, not simply an absence of action, an escape from responsibility, or an avoidance of others. Maybe his invitation to come away and rest is the invitation to wholeheartedness. 

“You know that the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest?”
(Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea, 132)

That’s what a Benedictine monk said when the writer David Whyte asked him about exhaustion. “What is it, then?” Whyte asked the monk. 

He said, “The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness.” (Ibid.)

He continued, “You are so tired through and through because a good half of what you do here in this organization has nothing to do with your true powers, or the place you have reached in your life. You are only half here, and half here will kill you after a while. You need something to which you can give your full powers. You know what that is; I don’t have to tell you.” (Ibid.)

• What if the deep need of the world today isn’t smarter, more powerful, harder working, or more efficient and productive people? What if the world’s deep need is wholeheartedness? What if your and my deep need is to be wholehearted?
• What if Jesus invites us to “come away to a deserted place all by [ourselves] and rest a while” not to get away from life but to recover and re-collect ourselves, put the pieces back together, so we can be wholeheartedly present to ourselves, others, and the world?
• What if rest, true rest, the kind of rest Jesus demonstrates in today’s gospel “is the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be”? (Whyte, Consolations, “Rest,” 181) Maybe it’s a conversation about balance, congruency, and harmony between what’s going on inside us and what’s going on outside us. What if that’s the beginning of wholeheartedness? What are you hearing and learning from that conversation in your life today?

What is it that you love to do? What are those things to which you can fully and completely give yourself? You hold nothing back but offer all that you are and all that you have. They are the kind of things that when you are doing them time just flows. You’re in the zone. You’re in the flow of life and everything is as it should be. You lose track of time. You never want that moment to end. 

And how is it that you love to be? This is different from what you do. This is about how you are, how you be, your “beingness.” This is about your way of being, the qualities and characteristics that live within you, that express your deepest and truest identity. When you live from that place you know that you are fully yourself and you don’t have to pretend, defend, justify, or excuse. You show up with all that you are and all that you have. It’s enough and you are enough. 

What would be like and take to put those two together; what you do and how you are? To do what you love and love what you do. To love how you be and be how you love. I think that intersection is the place where we discover our wholeheartedness, where we discover our deepest and most authentic selves. It’s the place where we touch the divine in our lives and discover it in our world.

Imagine if we lived from that place and offered it to the world? What do you think that would be like? How might you do that in your life today?

I don’t want to come back from my time away and do the same old things in the same old ways and be the same old guy. I want to be changed and transformed, don’t you? I want to grow and deepen my life. I want to be more real, authentic, and Mike-like. Isn’t that what you want for yourself and for those you love and care about?

“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” Be restored. Be renewed. Recover yourself. Become wholehearted. And offer your heart to the world. 

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Image Credit:
1. Photo by Mikk Tõnissoo on Unsplash.
2. Photo by Nils Schirmer on Unsplash