Rev. Jay Rowland
Back Where We Belong
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
July 18, 2021
“Come to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile…”
Jesus’ disciples have just returned from being “out there”. Jesus had sent them out in pairs with instructions to bring only the clothes on their backs. Off they went to live their faith in the hustle and bustle of everyday life.
And as we catch up with them today they have returned. They gather around Jesus eager to tell him all about it. Because there is much to share.
And after hearing about their experience, Jesus says to them, “let’s get away from here and rest awhile”. It would seem that the hustle-bustle world has returned along with them.
As I’ve pondered this scene, it occurred to me that just like the disciples, you and I, we have also been “out there” for a while, out there living our faith in the hustle-bustle of everyday life … and an everyday pandemic, the best we can. And now here we are “gathered around Jesus to tell him all about it” all about these past 15/18months and counting since the pandemic changed everything.
I hear and I see Jesus listening to us, looking at us as he listens and I hear him saying to us, “come away with me to a deserted place and rest awhile”.
And here we are in church, we’ve come away to a place some might say qualifies as a deserted place, yet here to tell Jesus everything. And surely he already knows how hard this pandemic has been on you. And surely Jesus knows the toll it has had on our faith.
Just as I think the disciples learned from their going-out-there and returning, faith is inseparable from every facet of our life and experience. Faith, it turns out, is a living, breathing aspect of our human existence.
Yet it surprises us that the path of our faith isn’t linear or orderly—that actually it’s anything but linear and orderly. And that can leave us languishing.
But Jesus also knows that each and every Sunday, for as long as people have been coming to worship, people come to worship weighed down and beaten down by life … carrying heavy burdens weighing heavily on the heart and spirit. And yet in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, look around: people still come to worship. We show up here wanting, needing to tell Jesus everything.
When I stop and think about that, it’s astounding.
Given everything going on in your life, everything that’s happened in your life and in the world where you live, here you are.
Again!
Here WE are. Again.
If there were only two of you sitting here or watching out there on the internet, it would still be astounding. Here in this “modern era” … here at a time of increasingly intentional division and isolation, here you are. Here we are: Gathered around Jesus to tell him everything!
That’s astounding.
Here we again, as we are most every Sunday morning … because … why?
I mean, unlike other “choices” we have to consider,
nobody commands us or coerces or orders us to be here.
Nobody assigns us to be here. This is not a “project” or an assignment …
Being here gives us no competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Being here does not produce a financial benefit—on the contrary, many of you actually give away your money when you’re here or after you’ve been here.
What in the world?! Right?
Something is going on here. Something truly and deeply important happens when we gather to worship God. It happens whether the worship experience is “good” “bad” (or neutral). It happens whether we gather in person or remotely. And when we do, every time we gather, no matter how we gather, something happens. We cannot fully explain it, other than to say it has everything to do with the Lord and more than a little something to do with you.
Each one of you.
All of us.
Together.
And without worship, we just don’t feel like ourselves.
To me, intellectually perhaps, theologically speaking, I tend to think about worship as mystical communion with God and with God’s people which is deeply nourishing to our spirits and to our human being. Worship is communion with the Lord and with the people sitting with us in this sanctuary and with the people who are here via the internet and you know what? AND with the people in heaven. We are joined by our common love for the Lord, by our desire to worship the Lord together and by our shared experience of the community God creates through this activity of worship.
It’s not an accident. It isn’t a byproduct of something else.
It’s very much an intentional gift given to us by the God of Creation, practiced and enhanced by Jesus the Savior, and infused with the love and energy of the Holy Spirit. Worship is spiritually significant because … we keep coming back. And it’s important to say all this out loud and to think about this, right now, while we’re worshiping.
Something IS happening here. No matter what’s gone in your life up to this point, something happens when we’re here.
And God did we miss it when it was suddenly taken away.
So often in life, it occurs to me, we don’t feel like we belong. We don’t always feel comfortable or seen or known in the various gatherings which happen all through life. At its core and at its best, worship is that rare place and opportunity where we belong. This is the place where God conveys a message LOUD and CLEAR and also quietly and subtly to anyone with a heart and spirit to receive the message:
YOU
BELONG
HERE.
You belong!
Now that doesn’t mean there aren’t churches and worship services out there that send a contrary message. It’s out there. But even so, we cling to the Jesus we meet in the Gospels, and the Jesus witnessed to in the New Testament, like the God who appears all through the Bible repeatedly proclaims and invites all into community
You are part of this community.
You belong to the God community.
And not only that, you are vitally important to this community.
This is the refrain sung throughout the Bible.
It all began with two people in an abundant garden. And it continues to this very day. This community spans all eras and cultures and languages, and every step of the way it insists on including YOU. No matter what else happens. You belong. From your first breath to your last.
And then, not even death can take this away from you or take you away from this.
Meanwhile, however, this life we live and this world where we live features different “shepherds” along the way, as Jeremiah referred to, shepherds who mistreat us, who threaten us, who manipulate us, and shame us and bully us in order to prove to themselves that they are far more important than any one or any thing else in life.
Those shepherds make demands on us; they don’t care a whit about us but they make demands. AND they expect total conformity even though they have done NOTHING to earn our trust—actually they do so much to betray our trust. Those shepherds do serious damage while they’re in positions of trust and authority, but somehow, so far, we have survived in spite of them, we have survived the damage and harm they inflict. Because God is watching, God cares, and God is here too.
Meanwhile, Jesus, just like the God from whom he comes, stands before us and with us and looks upon us with compassion, because just like the God from whom Jesus comes, Jesus sees and knows that we are like sheep without a shepherd. But Jesus you’ll notice expends NO energy inflating his own importance. He neither threatens nor demands, nor does he manipulate. He does not coerce or inflict himself upon ANYONE. Not even upon those who intended to do him harm—worse than harm.
Like sheep with a good shepherd, his sheep know his voice and follow him because Jesus speaks and moves with compassion; Jesus’ every movement is to heal and restore and revive. Jesus endures injustice at the hands of earthly authority and even church authority rather than subverting it by force or guile. Jesus the Good Shepherd endured false arrest, torture, beatings, betrayal and excruciating death to show us that God’s kingdom of Love prevails.
Something is happening.
And that something is this: whenever we come together around Jesus and tell him everything about life “out there” we not only remind ourselves, we actually experience that He is our home.
He is our home even when we run away or lose our way, Jesus comes looking for us, like the Good Shepherd He is. Gently, always gently. Never forcefully. Never arrogantly. Never condemning us or condescending. But always returning to us—not because He went anywhere, but because we regularly do ...
Jesus returning to us.
Ever returning.
Whatever happens to us or in us out there, there is always a place for us. A good place. A safe place. A place of deep nourishment. A place Jesus creates for us.
What happens when we gather here around Jesus is, we glimpse that place we deeply need and to which we are destined. That place which never disappears and nothing can take away from us.
Because that place is God. And that place is Jesus. Home.
And though at times we deny it and we wander away from it and we get pushed and shoved and jostled and driven away from it at times, the Lord always always always leads us back around, again and again and again, and again, back where we belong.
