Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

By Lay Preacher, Will Harron

​So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God

Amen. Please sit.

Good Morning Saints!

This morning’s gospel portion from Mark begins with one of my favorite stories about Jesus. Earlier in Mark’s gospel, Jesus has sent out the twelve disciples two by two, giving them authority over the unclean spirits, to cast out the demons, and to anoint and heal the sick.

I think about what that might look like today: Jesus calling his twelve together to transform and liberate communities from oppression, from paralyzing guilt, from the legacies of racism, sexism, homophobia and misogyny, from the crushing weight of corporate greed and environmental degradation - and to bring healing to communities where health care is inaccessible, unaffordable, or even illegal.

Two thousand years later, we still need that healing, that liberation.

And the disciples - these poor fisherfolk, renegade tax collectors, the scruffiest of small groups - did it. They healed, they cast out, they brought relief to the communities they entered and proclaimed deliverance to the homes they passed through. And they return to Jesus to tell him everything they’ve done. What a joy that must have been, to return and share their own good news.

Saints, this is where I love Jesus the most. Because Jesus wants to hear, and Jesus wants to give his disciples rest after their period of courage and ministry, and Jesus recognizes that they’re stretched to the breaking point - approaching burnout, unable to even find the time to eat. So Jesus takes them away to a deserted place, for rest, for a vacation, for a retreat, a withdrawal for strengthening and sustenance and recommitting to their work. Jesus knows we can’t work all the time. God rested on the seventh day and the Gospel is a record that the disciples, as good a group as they are, aren’t better than God. And so they get in a boat and go away to a deserted place to rest.

This doesn’t stop the needs of the world around them, though. People see them going, and follow on foot - there is such a desire for the healing they have brought, for the wholeness that Jesus’s good news shows is possible, for the casting out of spirits in a place sorely oppressed by legions of occupying powers. They follow on foot and show up at the deserted beach retreat Jesus has sought out for the disciples.

But - and saints, this line teaches me day by day- this doesn’t cut their time of retreat and rest short. God rested on the seventh day and they aren’t better than God. And in fact, God shows up to allow them to rest. Jesus takes charge of the arriving crowds, in compassion giving them what they so deeply need, and the disciples are able to continue to recover from their own shift on the front lines of ministry.

It might be hard to catch this message from today’s lectionary passage, because we hop twenty verses right to Jesus again ministering to the crowds. But early among those skipped verses is the disciples showing up at the end of their day of rest on the shore and finding Jesus still caring for the crowds - the disciples’ rest has been preserved.
Saints, that is a liberating image for me. I don’t know about you, but life, work, ministry - can sometimes feel nonstop. I need to hear that I can take my rest, my retreat, my time away. Jesus, God, my communities, will show up and support me in this, and support those who I support when I step out to take my rest. It is a delivering word to hear Jesus give his disciples, who he demands so much of, rest.

Saints - we aren’t Jesus in these stories. We are disciples. We are the crowds. We know there is always a savior there, giving healing, delivering from oppression, providing for us when we need him, alongside us when we are serving as his hands and feet, and shielding us when we need our holy rest. We are not machines. We aren’t made to run twenty-four-seven.
And yet it can be so tough to yield to that gentle voice, to let go of my compulsion to keep control and keep going, and to take my rest. I’ve got to keep going, to get to the end of my work, my projects, my communities needs, my obligations, before I am worthy of stopping and resting. It’s a challenge to unlearn the formation of a world of twenty-four-seven, but it is necessary.

I’m grateful for the teachers I’ve had in that task. One of those teachers was the Camino.

In the summer of 2010, I had just completed my junior year at Williams College. I had been attending Saint John’s in Williamstown periodically, my first Episcopal church, and I was trying to figure out what I was doing with my life. I had recently switched from a biology major to a history major, had spent a year mentoring first-year students, and was loving my time playing in the marching band. But I was seeking something more, and I was seeking a greater sort of belonging. I applied for a summer fellowship for a “personal spiritual journey,” something offered through generous alumni support, and was awarded a fellowship to walk the Camino de Santiago, the way of Saint James across northern Spain. I wanted clarity about my life that I hadn’t yet achieved. I was twenty one, darn it, I should have things mostly figured out about the shape of my life.

And so, I flew to Europe and took trains and busses to the start of the camino. I didn’t know anything about backpacking - I had a borrowed pack, too much clothes and equipment, heavy boots, and a fearlessness that in retrospect is both admirable and a little terrifying. And so I began walking. One day after another, the rhythm was the same - rise early in the morning in a hostel, eat the lightest of continental breakfasts, walk for a time, stop in a town and enjoy a mid-morning or mid-day meal, or pause at the side of the path and eat food I carried with me, arrive in mid-afternoon to a sleepy Spanish town in the middle of its siesta and check into my hostel, shower and freshen up, go to church if there was a pilgrim mass, have a big dinner at the hostel or a local restaurant that offered “pilgrim special” meals, go to bed early, and rise again early the next morning for another day of walking. It was a simple rhythm that was a soothing balm after three years of high pressure liberal arts college life.

As I walked, I met people - other seekers, Americans, Europeans, Spanish folks - as well as people out for the physical challenge, for the travelling party scene that could be found if you looked for it, for particular religious obligations, or to mentally recover from war and trauma. I met Episcopalians - some my age, some older, and Catholics, and Presbyterians and Lutherans and atheists and agnostics. I met locals, some of whom welcomed me into the local hostels they maintained, or opened ancient churches for a curious pilgrim to see, or who were just living their lives alongside the path. And I learned more about my own capacity - to walk, to pick up, carry, and lay down burdens, to muddle on day by day when the going got tedious or to be amazed by the new wonders each day of sunlight and shadow on the landscape. I learned about Saint James, about the people who ascribed miracles of healing to him, to the mystical set of stories about the camino that has draw people to Santiago for centuries, and about how to pray when I had learned to desire communion and yet, there was no worship where communion was available - certainly practice for the long drought of the pandemic. And I learned that I needed that rest at the end of the day, that there were limits to how far I could go, that my body would take me as far as I needed if I cared for it, and that there was joy in listening to those limits and cherishing the opportunities for rest.

After thirty three days I arrived in Santiago, and despite my joy, I hadn’t found the clarity I sought. I hadn’t figured it all out. And so I pressed onwards for three more days, towards the sea, to Fisterra where Europe meets the Atlantic, and one of the further endpoints of the Camino. I sat on a clifftop over the ocean, watching the sun set, while around me pilgrims celebrated. And I still hadn’t found the completion I sought. I turned my back on the ocean, turned my face towards the deepening night, and trudged back to the hostel. Where would I find this clarity, this certainty, this sense of knowing?

Saints, it seems that everyone who has hiked the Camino left their mark on every available surface. Every door, every sign, every flat surface has some sort of graffiti, pilgrim markings left in pen and sharpie, spanning the profound to the mundane. And on the door of that last hostel, amidst the signatures of pilgrims finishing their hike and leaving their final wit and wisdom, I saw words that spoke to my soul. “There is no end.”

My quest for clarity, for certainty, for finality, was one that wouldn’t end. My life is and ought to be marked by continual growth, continual change, continual seeking. I’m still on my pilgrimage, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, saints and strangers all seeking to live our lives in the way that gives the most life, that is delivered from the demonic lies that says we are not enough, we are unworthy of rest, that we don’t belong, that we are un-healable, un-savable, un-lovable. Saints, you and I are together seeking Jesus continually - whether we are the crowd seeking Jesus out for healing and knowledge, or the disciples returning to Jesus tired and with full hearts to share from our ministering.

We are constantly seeking, constantly following, constantly drawn on in our pilgrimage because there is something in this Christ we recognize. Like the crowds in Genessaret, we recognize that healing is here, that hope is here, that liberation is possible and we get up and we run towards it. In Jesus we recognize that there is more to life than an empire that says war is peace and slavery is freedom and that an unjust status quo is the best we can get. In Christ, we recognize love and we believe, we hope, we know, that transformative justice, healing, and reconciliation, are possible. In Jesus, we find ourselves changed from strangers into fellow pilgrims, saints and citizens, incorporated into a body that is more diverse and more expansive than we can even imagine, and more powerful than empires can dream. Our pilgrimage is one of rising and setting, of seeking and following, healing each other, and then resting, and experiencing our own healing. 
 
There is no end to our journey together, but there is rest for the weary. There is no end to the things we can do in Christ, but there is healing and wholeness for the wounded. There is no end to the wonders of love - but there is work for us to do, together, as saints and citizens and siblings in the Body of Christ.
Amen 

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