Co-missioners,
Two weeks ago we sent you the summation of Crossings-style theology that Steve Albertin presented to our conference in January. Today we send an appendix to that presentation. Steve will introduce it himself.
Peace and Joy,
The Crossings Community
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“Give Me a Break!”: A Sample Crossings Sermon
by Steve Albertin
Introduction
For my 45+ years in parish ministry, the Crossings colloquialisms I reviewed in my post of two weeks ago have been at the heart of my ministry. They have provided me with the theological and spiritual tools to keep Christ at the center in all aspects of ministry. However, where they have been most important to me is in preaching. I am a firm believer that preaching is at the center of the church’s ministry. It starts in the weekly assembly and proceeds to shape every other part of the body of Christ.
To illustrate this at our recent Crossings conference, I concluded my presentation by offering a sermon I had preached last summer. I offer it again here. It deals appropriately with the topic of the conference, “God’s Word for Weary People.”As you read, you’ll find me saying that the weariness of God’s people can only be resolved in the sabbath rest that Christ alone provides. Look for the ways those Crossings colloquialisms (Law/Gospel, justification by faith, the Sweet Swap, the Double Dipstick Test, and the Second Use of the Gospel) shape what I have to say. You’ll find me putting all of them to use in the glorious task of delivering Christ and his benefits “for the joy and edification of God’s holy people.”
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Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
30 The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. 31He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 32And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. 33Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. 34As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.
53When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. 54When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, 55and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. 56And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the market-places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.
From Canva
After I returned from my vacation last summer, some of my friends asked me how it went. I said, “Great! I knew I was on vacation when I could no longer remember what day of the week it was.” Like many of you, my life becomes so busy and so scheduled that finally in frustration I complain, “Give me a break! I need to get away from the stress.”
So, I get away and forget what day of the week it is, only to return to a pile of work waiting for me because no one had done my job while I was gone. It reminds me what a friend once told me about going on a vacation: “No vacation goes unpunished.”
We have filled our lives with so much work, soccer games, school activities, volunteer commitments and other assorted obligations that we have no time to rest. A recent study conducted by UCLA examined the lives of 32 middle class families in the Los Angeles area. The study was intended to take a detailed snapshot of the typical American family in the early 21st century. One of the researchers was disappointed with the results. She said that the American family is so consumed with working, collecting, accumulating and “getting ahead” that they actually spend very little time together enjoying the fruits of their labors. 50 of 64 parents in their study never stepped outside their homes in the course of a week. When they gave tours of their house, they would say, “Here’s the backyard. I don’t have time to go there.” They were working a lot at home. Leisure time was spent in front of the TV or the computer.
We have no time for rest. Taking a break is out of the question.
When we think of summertime, we think of taking a break. It can be in the form of vacation or just grabbing some time to slow down and catch our breath. You do not have be a genius to know the importance of taking a break and getting your rest. Our bodies will tell us when we are tired. When we become moody, feel overwhelmed with life, and sense that we are verge of being burned out, we just want to shout “Give me a break!”
It should be no surprise that the importance of taking a break is also a major theme in the Bible. In Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, the word for “rest” or “taking a break” is ”Sabbath.” The creation story in Genesis 1 tells us that God took a break after creating the world. On the seventh day God decided to “rest.” The Third Commandment, “Thou shalt remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy,” commands us not only to take “time off” to worship God but also to take “time off,” to take a break, rest and do “nothing.”
Jesus recognized the need to take a break and keep the Third Commandment in today’s Gospel when he said to his disciples, “Come away to a deserted place, all by yourselves and rest for a while.” (6:31). Jesus’ growing fame and popularity probably made the disciples feel like celebrities, constantly pursued by the paparazzi. Everyone needed them and wanted them. They needed a break.
However, when Jesus invited them to a “deserted” place, he was not only referring to a quiet, restful place like a beach, a gentle steam or peaceful mountain meadow. He was inviting them to another kind of “deserted” place, a place where people did not want to go, a place that people have abandoned and deserted. These “deserted” places are dangerous and undesirable places—like a polluted pond, a garbage dump or a toxic land fill. My oldest brother a few years ago completed managing a superfund clean-up just west of Cincinnati. Several hundred acres of land had been “deserted” for over 30 years because it had been the site of a nuclear weapons facility in the 1950’s. No one could live there until the government had spent several billion dollars over fifteen years cleaning it up.
A classic biblical example of a “deserted place” is found in the story of Adam and Eve. After they have sinned and God comes walking in the garden, they flee. They finally must “desert” the Garden of Eden because God’s judgment is there and they cannot endure it.
A “deserted place” is a place where life has gone sour and sin has taken its toll. Think about it. When you come home tired after a good day’s work, that is a “good tired,” one for which physical rest is enough to remedy. But when you come home after a bad day of work, when people mistreated one another, when you failed and were criticized, no amount of sleep can relieve it. The burden remains. We may try to flee from it, ignore it or make excuses for it, as Adam and Eve did. However, ultimately it does not work. The guilt persists. The failures shame us. The past embarrasses us. There is no rest.
St. Augustine reflected a similar sentiment when he acknowledged the spiritual restlessness and fatigue that plagues all of us. “All our hearts are restless, until they rest in God.”
In other words, a “deserted place” is a place of judgment, a place from which sinners like us instinctively flee, a place where something has gone wrong and where no one wants to be. It is the place where the pressure to work, perform and not waste a minute never relents. It is a place where there is never enough, where we must always have more and where time is always running out. It is that place where “no vacation ever goes unpunished” and where the incomplete tasks, unmet responsibilities, unread books on the shelf—and God—never stop accusing us for all we have failed to do. We just want to shriek, “Give me a break!”
From Canva
Then Jesus says to us and his disciples, “So you need a break? Come away (with me) to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest for a while.” How strange! Why would we want to take a break, catch our breath and get some rest in a deserted place where no one wants to go? I don’t get it. What is this deserted place that will give us the rest we can get no other place? If it is not at the beach, beside a gentle stream or in a mountain meadow, where is it?
So much of what Jesus said and did seems confused and bewildering if we do not take into consideration that everything Jesus said and did can only be understood by viewing them from the end of the story, from the perspective of Jesus’ death and resurrection. This is especially true for this short episode in Jesus’ early ministry. In the Gospel of Mark, the “deserted place” to which Jesus directs his disciples is the cross. It is a “deserted place” because everyone deserts Jesus at this point in his ministry (14:50). Remember what Mark says when he reports the arrest of Jesus, he says, “All of them deserted him and fled.” Then comes the cross which is a “deserted place” even for Jesus. Recall how he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken, abandoned, deserted me?”
Yet, why would Jesus tell his disciples—and us—to go to this deserted place? Because there Jesus wants to take all that weighs us down. There Jesus offers to carry all that makes us miserable. There Jesus forgives all of which we are ashamed. There Jesus welcomes the sick and ill, outcasts, and those with broken and bruised lives—people like us. There on the cross Jesus suffers the consequences of choosing to bear in his own body the wounds and sins of the world, the criticism and judgement of God himself that we deserve. Jesus goes to the cross, to the most “deserted” place on earth, because he had compassion on those crowds he met that day in the countryside in today’s Gospel. “They were like sheep without a shepherd.” (6:34) Jesus suffered and died because he loved those who could never get enough rest, who could never seem to measure up who could only cry, “Oh God, give me a break!” On the cross Jesus is the good shepherd of the sheep who had no shepherd.
He is the good shepherd who, according to the prophets, gives to lost sheep the rest that only God can give. When God raised Jesus from the dead, God confirmed that Jesus is the one who gives to all of us restless souls the rest we crave. God confirmed that Jesus has the authority to undo the criticism we all deserve. Unlike all the other false shepherds of this world, whose promises always leave us standing high and dry, who always bind us up in conditions and entangle us in strings, this shepherd’s promise is free, generous and unconditional.
When we cry, “Give me a break!” Jesus is there to give it to us.
When we like the crowds in today’s Gospel “recognize” (6:33) that Jesus is the shepherd we need and gives us the break we want, we get to live life differently. We can actually begin to keep the Sabbath. We can enjoy the golf course, the gentle stream or a day at the beach. We know how important it is to take a break and rest our bodies. Like those crowds in today’s Gospel, we get to “gather around Jesus” (6:30) who has compassion for us through the “teaching” (6:34) of His word. We may not get to touch the fringe of his cloak, but we get to touch His body and blood at the communion table. Through this eating and drinking, the “deserted places” of our lives become “blessed places” of life where we at last receive the rest that only God can give.
Such keeping the Sabbath is not a burden to bear or an obligation to meet. Rather it is an opportunity to receive and a blessing to enjoy. This year I hope you will all keep the Sabbath, get some rest, and take some time off. But even when that does not work, when the pressures are unrelenting and you still want to cry, “God, give me a break!” you can come to this deserted place, to Christ and his cross, where at last you can get a break . . . and your heart will no longer be restless but at last will be at rest in God.
Thanks be to God!
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For Your Reflection:
1- Did you hear the Gospel? Why?
2- Did you hear the distinction between Law and Gospel? How?
3- Did you hear the Sweet Swap? How?
4- Did this sermon pass the Double Dipstick test? How?
5- Did you hear the Second Use of the Gospel? How?
