Summary
Resting for a Purpose
In Mark 6, Jesus sends the Twelve out two by two with authority over unclean spirits, instructing them to travel light and to shake the dust from their feet where they are not received. They go, preach repentance, cast out demons, and anoint the sick. When they return, they gather around Jesus brimming with stories of what they had done and taught. It would seem the perfect moment to ride the wave of momentum and send them right back out. Instead, Jesus says, "Come away to a desolate place by yourselves and rest a while" Mark 6:31.
This is a striking affirmation of rest in a culture—then and now—that ties identity to production and treats rest as laziness. God himself built rest into creation: six days you shall labor, but on the seventh you shall rest Exodus 34:21. The Greek phrase Jesus uses can be rendered "by yourselves" or "for yourselves"—both true. The disciples are to withdraw apart from the crowd and to withdraw for their own sake, ceasing from labor in order to be refreshed and rejuvenated.
But then the story seems to complicate itself. The crowds run ahead on foot and arrive before the boat lands. Jesus has compassion on them as sheep without a shepherd, teaches them, and miraculously feeds five thousand men with five loaves and two fish—after which the disciples still have to gather twelve baskets of fragments. Where, exactly, was the rest? Where was the lonely place?
The lonely place was the boat. On the way across the water, away from the press of the crowd and alone with Jesus, the disciples were physically refreshed from labor and spiritually refreshed in his presence. That is where the rest happened—not in inactivity afterward, but in being set apart with the Lord before the next work began.
This is why the church has long pictured itself as a ship embarked upon the sea of life. Worship is the boat. Gathered around Word and Sacrament, the people of God are renewed in a way that sleeping in on a Saturday morning simply cannot supply. In worship we are refreshed by the triune God—by the Christ who shed his blood to reconcile us, who claims us in baptism, who has gone ahead to prepare a place, who gives life abundant and eternal. Sleep restores the body; worship restores the soul.
And then comes the disembarking. The shore is crowded with people who need compassion, teaching, care, and the light of Christ. The church rests, but it rests with a purpose. The benediction is spoken, the doors open, and the baptized go ashore to minister—nourished by the Lord in the boat so that they can feed others on the land. That is the pattern Jesus gives in “Resting for a Purpose” 2-20-22: withdraw with him, be refreshed by him, and then go back out in his name.
Video citations
- “Resting for a Purpose” 2-20-22 — Do you open your Bibles, please? With me, too, the Gospel of Mark the sixth chapter for our study today. Mark chapter six, as we continue to look at the action gospel, the gospel of Saint Mark. When…