What Difference Does Jesus Make in Our Recreation?

"Busy." How many times, when someone asks you "How are you?" do you give that one-word reply? I do, a lot. Sometimes people fill it in for me. "You pretty busy these days?"

When Neil Rudenstine was the president of Harvard University, he overslept one morning and didn’t make it into work, and everybody was in shock. They knew that he was a zealous perfectionist who had worked nonstop for years in an atmosphere that rewarded that kind of frantic busyness and overwork. But he just collapsed and it took him three months to return. Later he told reporters, "My sense was that I was exhausted." And that is the word that was placed next to his picture on the cover of Newsweek magazine: "Exhausted!" ¹

That is the word that could be placed next to the picture of many we know, including several in this sanctuary this morning. Even though we like to talk about vacations and time-shares and recreational activities, and we have more access to these amenities than most people in the world, the truth is that Americans "take less time off and enjoy fewer days of vacation than just about any industrialized nation in the West." ² Why is that?

One woman took great pride in the fact that she never, in her 20 years of work at a company, took all of her vacation time. Year after year her vacation days accumulated but she never went on vacation, and she considered this a great virtue, indicating that she was a strong person who was dedicated to a job she loved.

Erma Bombeck gave this piece of advice to all working mothers: "Unless you deliberately set aside a little time for regular relaxation, you will not be able to efficiently care for your family. Therefore, plan to relax a minimum of an hour and a half every fifteen years!" ³

Whether we consider it a virtue or an impossibility, it is hard for us to stop, isn’t it? Even when we do manage to get away from house work or school work or work work or to get out of town, we can’t stand to tear ourselves away from cell phones and email. Gotta keep up!

I think we need to join with the little three-year-old girl who was taught to pray the Lord’s Prayer and when she finally prayed it on her own for the first time, enunciating each word, she came to the middle section and said: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from e-mail." Do I hear an amen?!

What is it that makes it so hard for us to take a break? And what difference does Jesus make in our ability to do that?

Jesus sent his disciples out in pairs with important work to do, exhausting work. He sent them out into the villages to teach and to heal and to cast out demons in his name (Mk 6:7-13). "Don’t take any food or clothing or money with you," he told them, "just trust the hospitality of others." Very intense 24/7 stuff. This is what happened when they came back together.

Mark 6:30-44

Every time I read this passage I think, "This is the reason it is so hard for us to take a break!"

Jesus’ disciples come back with all these stories to tell about the amazing miracles they have just experienced. But they can’t even finish a sentence because there are so many people with so many needs, so many interruptions.

Finally, Jesus decides to do something about it and tells them, "Let’s get out of here; come away with me to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while." Great idea. So they pile in the boat and set out across the four-mile stretch of lake to a quiet, secluded place on the other side.

But word spread fast about all the healing that Jesus and his disciples were doing, and by the time they docked the boat on the other side of the lake, it wasn’t a quiet, secluded place anymore. Thousands and thousands and thousands of needy people, "sheep without a shepherd" were waiting for them there.

This reminds me of the movie: "What About Bob?" Richard Dreyfuss is this exhausted psychiatrist trying to get away on a relaxing vacation with his family and one of his neediest and most neurotic patients, Bob (played by Bill Murray), figures out where he’s going and shows up on the front porch of his vacation home.

Jesus and his disciples are looking at thousands and thousands of "Bobs" when they dock that boat. And of course, Jesus the Good Shepherd, has compassion on them because they are so needy.

He ministers to them, the whole day long. And when it begins to get late, the disciples interrupt him and tell him it’s time to send them to the villages for food before it gets dark. It was the smart thing to do. But what does Jesus tell them? "You give them something to eat. You feed them."

How do the disciples respond to this idea? "What?! Are you kidding me?! A year’s salary wouldn’t be enough to buy food for this mob? What are you thinking?!"

"What do you have?" Jesus asks them. They scrounge around and come back. "Five barley loaves and two fish." We are talking little loaves and small fish. "What are they among so many people?" (Jn. 6:9)

Isn’t that the perfect picture of why we feel like we can NOT take a break? Every time we try, there’s just more needs!

Five thousand plus (most of the surrounding villages only had a few thousand people each), just like the sea of needs that stretches out before us and our inadequate resources every day: the dentist appointment, the car repair, remembering a birthday, paying the bills, preparing the meal, walking the dog, calling the school, checking in with your mom, responding to all your emails. Every day the demands seem to exceed your supplies.

And then there’s the overwhelming needs in the world. I have been re-reading Mark Labberton’s new book, The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God’s Call to Justice, a prophetic reminder of the kind of worship that pleases God, which is to care for those oppressed by extreme poverty and oppression around the world. In other words, we can’t say we love God and ignore the suffering in the world. (Which is why on the Amazing Grace Sunday that we remember the 27 million who are in bondage around the world today in the modern slave trade of human trafficking.)

There is a huge sea of need: the horrors that exist in our own cities and prisons, and the horrors that clamor for our attention around the world. Here we stand with our small barley loaves and tiny fish while Jesus says, "You feed them." "Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread?!"

One of the moms in this church told me recently that she is struggling with worship because when she comes it makes her feel guilty. She is already giving and giving and giving at work. Then she is giving and giving and giving to her children and the needs of her family at home. She is a giver by nature and is involved in many other ministries. Then she comes to worship and hears about more needs that God wants us to pay attention to and take care of. I have to do more?! Work harder?! Give more?!

But what happens next in the story? By the way, Jesus hasn’t stopped teaching here as the crowds are being fed. In fact, this hidden miracle that occurs next is such an important lesson that it is told six times in all four gospels.

The crowds are fed, aren’t they? Five thousand men (not counting women and children), they "all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces." How did that happen? Is it because the disciples pulled together their earnings and went and bought food? No. Is it because everybody pulled out their sack lunches and started to share? They might have shared, but their spontaneous decision to trek to that wilderness spot didn’t allow time for anybody to pack adequate provisions.

The way they were fed is the same way that the disciples were empowered to do what they did out on their missionary adventures when Jesus told them to take no food, no clothes, no money. It was the provision of God that changed those lives; it was the provision of God that cast out those demons; it was the provision of God that healed the sick. They knew that. But now that they were back, did they think it was their resources that made things happen? Yeah, that’s what they thought. And that’s what we think too.

But Jesus’ command to rest followed by this miracle of feeding untold thousands of people with their five loaves and two fish sears into their very being this one enduring truth: It is all about what God is doing, not what we do. The significance of our lives is in what God is doing, not in what we do.⁴

We are not the saviors of the world; we are not the solution to what ails the world; it is not up to us to make the world come out right. This is God’s world. We are alive only by the sheer generosity of God’s grace. It is not our doing that will save the world, but what God has already done in Jesus Christ.

That is why we rest. That is why we stop and practice Sabbath. We are saying, "I trust in God’s work, and not the work of my hands." If we don’t take time off, whether we know it or not, we are saying that we trust in our own work, not God’s.

There was a minister who had two young sons who began to stutter, so he took them to a speech therapist who was also a psychologist. After the appointment, the father met with the specialist, who named him as the main source of the boys’ problems. "When did you last take a vacation?" he asked, and the father realized that it had been a long, long time, that he had been too busy, too wrapped up in his work, to take time with his family.

And then the thought occurred to him: "I remember I used to say that the Devil never takes a vacation, so why should I? And I never stopped to think that the Devil wasn’t to be my example…" ⁵

Our busyness is what Barbara Brown Taylor calls an "imposter virtue." Real virtues, she explains, make you feel like doing good. Imposter virtues make you feel good about doing bad, like busyness.

Why don’t we keep up with the friends who know us well enough to keep us honest? We are busy. Why don’t we spend as much time with our families as we do with our computers? We are too busy.

When we stop all our busyness, we expose this imposter virtue for what it is. When we stop and unplug ourselves from everything, we are set free from the greatest idol of all time: trusting in the work of our hands. And like the disciples we have the opportunity to gather around Jesus and remember that, "he’s got the whole world in his hands."

What difference does Jesus make in our recreation? All the difference in the world.