The Universal Sabbath
The call to rest for all creation | The Word in the Wild, Proper 11, Year B
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”
…he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd…
We stood in the dark, the sky glowing with the yellow haze of street lights rising above the woods from the neighborhoods beyond. This was a remnant patch, saved as a screen for the power-line that bordered either side. This had once been a consistent place to find a Screech-owl, a small woodland species that nests in the cavities of trees.
For the past three years, Ari, David, and I had ventured out one day mid-spring to see as many bird species as possible in Arkansas. It was a full day, beginning in the pre-dawn dark and ending well after sunset. Over the hours we would journey through woodlands and grasslands, lakes and marshes, in search of the the abundant array of birds that find a home in the varied landscapes of our home state. But in addition to the landscapes, we would move through a rhythm—following the natural patterns of light and heat, the circular movements of activity and rest. Owls and nightjars would give way to songbirds, songbirds would fall quiet while waders foraged in the westward moving light. Then, as evening came, the songbirds would become active again, filling their bellies before a night of migration, navigating by the stars.
In that dark, suburban power-line cut, we were just at the beginning of this journey of space and time, and we could hear no Screech Owls. We played a recording, often a sure way to get an answer from the woods, but each time we blasted the whinnying call, we were met with no reply.
I almost said we stood in silence silence, but that was not the truth. We heard noise, a steady, overwhelming machine hum from a silver box that stood at the edge of the road. It was equipment for electricity, or some other utility, new from last year. New too were houses, three options repeated around a cul-de-sac. New was twenty acres of razed shale and mud, making way for apartments. The steady, moving edge of the city, had destroyed the home of a Screech Owl. The night turned to dawn but the machine never stopped its silencing roar.
The Creation lives according a rhythm—night and day, winter and summer, rainy season and dry, nesting season and migration. This rhythm is marked by repeated and varied patterns of activity and rest, work and wonder. But the Machine keeps going, moving, as best it can, in constant activity, never ending work, endless production.
“Come away, and rest a while.” Jesus calls to his disciples. It is an invitation to enter into the pattern of all Creation. For all their important work, and no work has ever been more critical than those three years they had with their master, Jesus wants the disciples to learn the need to stop, to rest, to let the silence make sense of the Word.
It was a pattern that Jesus repeated himself, often going away to a quiet place, spending time in gardens and the given world beyond the edge of the city. When we look at Jesus we do not see an exhausted do-gooder, overwhelmed by the needs of the world. Instead, Jesus lived from a restful fullness, inviting all to share the easy yoke of his way, the gentle and lowly pattern of his grace.
The Empire allowed no rest, constantly requiring work to pay taxes, and fill the baskets of the center through the exhaustion of the margins; the corrupted religious authorities demanded a labored adherence to abstractions rather than the liberating reality of the Sabbath. When the people saw Jesus, offering healing, calling for the release of those in bondage, the forgiving of debts, they recognized in his life the rest they could not find. And so they sought him tirelessly, rushing around the lake, ready to meet him on the other side.
“He had mercy on them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd.” The call to rest could easily be a move of the elites, wellness spas and weeklong meditation retreats, all serviced by an invisible staff, some on their third job of the day, just trying to make ends meet. In Jesus’ response to the crowd, we see a different way, the way not of an individual Sabbath but of a universal Jubilee.