From the Sunday Note, with additional thoughts:
The apostles gathered together with Jesus
and reported all they had done and taught.
He said to them,
“Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.”
People were coming and going in great numbers,
and they had no opportunity even to eat.
So they went off in the boat by themselves to a deserted place.
People saw them leaving and many came to know about it.
They hastened there on foot from all the towns
and arrived at the place before them.
When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd,
his heart was moved with pity for them,
for they were like sheep without a shepherd;
and he began to teach them many things. Mark 6:30-34, Sunday’s Gospel reading
Jesus had just recently sent the Twelve out by twos to announce the Kingdom and heal people—a focused and intense kind of work. They need a break. He suggests they go to “a deserted place.” The translation is careful, literally “a desert place,” a place where people do not live. A place to get away from everybody.
That did not happen. The people they had preached to and healed among had spread the news, and now many more were eager to see what this was all about. This crowd beats Jesus to the place. To our Gospel writer, Mark, this is delightfully ironic. A deserted place might be where a prophet such as Elijah went on retreat, so to say, but the desert is also where the poor, oppressed Israelites and Moses went—and met the Lord there. “See,” Mark is saying to us, “it happened again, just as with our ancestors—into the desert they went, to meet the Lord they did not yet know!”
And as with the original Exodus, the Lord’s “heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd.” And as there in the desert, the Lord “began to teach them many things.”
One thing this suggests to us is that when we do NOT sense the presence of God, we should take some time out to reflect. To shut out the usual cacophony from our phones, computers, and our fellow chatterers, so we can pray, ponder, read some Scripture, mull things over. In that “deserted space” he can teach us many things. If we are there to listen.
For further reflection:
The “many things” the Israelites were taught in the Sinai desert were the basic elements of the Torah –the “instructions” or “laws”–the ways God expected them to live. The Christian equivalent would be the instructions for life in the Sermon on the Mount. The Torah outlines a clearly Jewish life; the Sermon, a Christian equivalent. Plenty for us to reflect upon in that!
However, there is also a personal level of “instruction” for each one of us individually, a fruit of our reception of the Holy Spirit. Within an outline of corporate life as the Body of Christ, each of us has a personal calling from our Lord that we are invited to fulfill. Discernment of the next steps in that personal call should be an ongoing concern in our daily prayer time with the Lord. Over a lifetime, that will be “many things,” and they will involve many changes in the ways we live and interact with the people around us and how we handle all the challenges that come up. Many. This life is a pilgrimage. We don’t get to sit still for too long at any one time.
Your thoughts, comments, questions welcomed.