Sermon delivered Sunday, July 19, 2015 (8th Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 11, Year B), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
(Mark 6:30-34, 53-56)
"Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while."
This is what Jesus says to the disciples in today’s Gospel reading. As Jesus’s reputation had grown, their ministry had gotten overwhelming. More and more people were seeking Jesus out, for spiritual advice, for healing, and probably many were coming just to gawk at this miracle-worker. The scriptures tell us that “many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.”
I’m sure many of you know that feeling. That feeling of pressure, anxiety – of suffocation, almost – when you realize that you have more to do than can possibly be done. When you’re cranky and irritable and your stomach growls and suddenly you realize you’ve been working so hard you forgot to eat lunch. I know I’ve been there. It’s one of the reasons my husband always reminds me, particularly on Sundays, not to forget to schedule time to eat!
As 21st century American churchgoers, we have two strikes against us when it comes to avoiding that frenzied feeling. The first is our secular work culture, which values productivity above all else, where our worth is measured by how much we can get done, how much money we can make, how many reports we can process in an hour. If that wasn’t bad enough, those of us who seek to be good Christians have the added pressure of a church culture that teaches us that we should always put others before ourselves, that holds up an ideal of “selflessness” and often denigrates any focus on oneself as “selfish” and somehow inherently sinful. This double-whammy of pressure makes it very difficult for most of us to attend to our own needs. Not only should we be accomplishing as much as possible in our work and our ministries, but we shouldn’t give much thought or attention to ourselves, because God has told us not to. I’m sure many of you are familiar with scripture passages like these:
From Philippians chapter 2: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:3-4)
Or this one, from 1 Corinthians, chapter 1: “Do not seek your own advantage, but that of others.” (1 Corinthians 1:24)
Or the words of Jesus in the Gospels, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)
In looking up some of these passages online, I found many articles from Christian websites advocating for just the kind of self-denigration I’m speaking of here. One article unequivocally stated, “Self-centeredness and self-love are totally antithetical to the teachings of Scripture.”
Certainly, following Jesus requires a kind of “dying to self,” as the biblical metaphor puts it, a relinquishing of control and the sinful desires that drive us to seek our own gain at the expense of others. But is self-love the same thing as self-centeredness? Unfortunately, the church has all too often assumed that it is, and this has led us to a church culture in which we are not expected to take care of ourselves, in which it is more highly valued for us to sacrifice our very well-being – emotionally, physically, and spiritually – in our desire to serve others than it is to tend to our own health. This overemphasis on serving others, coupled with the Christian metaphors about sacrifice and dying to self, have led to a religious context in which the goal is the flourishing of others at the expense of self, rather than the flourishing of all people, including ourselves.
But I do not believe Jesus ever taught that our call to care for others meant that we should neglect to care for ourselves. This passage from Mark’s Gospel is just one of many places where Jesus encourages the disciples to “come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while,” and perhaps an even stronger testimony to his endorsement of self-care is that he modeled this behavior himself. The scriptures tell us that Jesus “often withdrew to deserted places and prayed” (Luke 5:16).
Both Jesus’s instruction to the disciples to find quiet time alone for prayer and rest and his own claiming of this time for himself come in the context of overwhelming need. When the crowds are pressing in on him, when everyone is clamoring for his attention, Jesus doesn’t try to solve everyone’s problems or cure everyone’s illnesses. Instead, he takes the time he needs for himself and encourages the disciples to do so as well, despite the endless stream of people seeking them out and waiting for them wherever they go. It is precisely the times when it would have been most difficult for them to take a break that Jesus does so and encourages his disciples to do the same. He doesn’t say, “Well, after all these crowds have dispersed, when we’ve taken care of all their needs, then we can rest and take care of our own.” He doesn’t say this because he knows a fundamental truth of the human experience that is becoming more and more recognized today – that we can only love others as much as we love ourselves. That we can only take care of others to the extent that we are able to take care of ourselves. That we only have something to give when we have taken the time to receive, to refresh and renew our own health, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
This is why we are seeing an increasing emphasis in the church on things like silent retreats and sabbaticals. Contrary to the old model of clergy being expected to be available to everyone 24 hours a day, seminaries are now teaching clergy the importance of self-care, and encouraging us to support it among our parishioners as well. We are encouraged to take time for ourselves and to model for you the importance of doing the same in your own lives. So as we all bid farewell to Monna last Sunday as she began her three-month sabbatical, I hope it got you all thinking about the value of rest, retreat, renewal, and reflection in your own lives. The concept of sabbatical time away from work is becoming more popular, not just in academic and church contexts, but across a variety of fields. Many companies now offer employees sabbatical leave time because they realize that their employees are actually MORE productive and have more to give to the company when they take the time to care for themselves than they are when they sacrifice their own health for the sake of their work. The airline industry has reminded us of the essential wisdom of this truth in their safety videos that instruct us to put our own oxygen mask on first before assisting others. This is not a matter of valuing our own lives more highly than others, but a practical matter of survival. If we cannot breathe ourselves, we cannot expect to help others to breathe either.
But there is a flip side to this truth as well. Just as we cannot help others unless we first help ourselves, we also cannot help ourselves unless we also help others as well. It is not a matter of either/or, but a matter of both/and. It is no better to help ourselves at the expense of others than it is to help others at the expense of ourselves. As leaders of movements for human liberation across the globe have noted, our freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of others. We cannot be free while our brothers and sisters are in chains. We cannot truly live while our brothers and sisters are dying. We cannot morally put our own oxygen mask on and then neglect to help others with theirs.
Lilla Watson, a spokewoman for an activist group of Aboriginal people in Australia in the 1970s, once famously said to those seeking to aid her community, “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” The scriptures put it this way, in 1 Corinthians, chapter 12: “If one member [of the body of Christ] suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” (1 Corinthians 12:26) We are part and parcel of one another in the body of Christ. What we do affects one another, and as such our salvation is always ultimately communal rather than individual in nature. We can’t reach the kingdom of God without being willing to bring all of God’s children along with us.
Nashville singer-songwriter Tom Kimmel co-wrote a song with Danish songwriter Klaus Caprani that captures this truth. The title of the song is, “No One Gets to Heaven (If Anybody Else is Left Behind),” and it goes like this:
“Last night I dreamed my daddy woke me up and took me by the hand
And walked me down the hill and through the woods to where a little chapel stands
And everyone we knew was there, and they all seemed so happy we came by
The deacon shook our hands and then he led us to our seat beside the aisle
The preacher started talkin’ and everybody leaned in close
He said there is a light in the dark when we need it the most
And there is a way through this world if we keep this in mind:
No one gets to heaven if anybody else is left behind.
No one gets to heaven if anyone is lost along the way
And it’s so easy to doubt it, so now let us join hands and pray
We’ll meet on that beautiful shore in the sweet by and by
And no one gets to heaven if anybody else is left behind.”
Our liberation is bound up with others’ liberation. It is important to remember this precisely during those times when we want to focus solely on ourselves. Sometimes when we are awakened to our need to care for ourselves, we can be tempted to walk away from all other commitments and focus only on ourselves. When things get difficult, we think, “I just can’t handle this anymore; I’ve got to take care of myself.” Although that certainly may be true for a time, and given how serious the imbalance of focusing on others verses yourself has been, you may need a considerable amount of time to focus only on yourself. But even in those times, it’s important to remember that in order to be true to the Gospel and our calling as Christians, we must at some point return to the service of others, using the care and love that has healed us to heal others. Because our healing is bound up with others’ healing. Our liberation is bound up with others’ liberation. No one gets to heaven if anybody else is left behind.
