Rest
Mark 1:29-39
Are you resting well? What would that look like for you?
In the US, I wonder how often in the day our sense of worth and value is affected by how busy we feel. I’ve had many conversations with friends and colleagues who sneak in some humblebrags about how they work 60-hour weeks and are so busy.
These days, most people of younger generations have to work more than forty hours a week to make rent—supplementing a low-paying job with some kind of side hustle like driving for Lyft or delivering for Instacart. And many folks who should be retired are finding that they can’t afford to retire, so we see many of the elderly continuing to be a part of the workforce when they deserve to rest.
Looking around these days, it is a bit concerning to see just how much overwork we either unconsciously celebrate, or are forced to commit to doing in order to make ends meet.
In 1905 Max Weber coined the phrase “Protestant work ethic” in his book “The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism.” His thesis claimed that a “worth ethic” that emerged in mostly Calvinist theology led to the rise of Capitalism in the US. Whether or not that is true, he does correctly identify how much the church is involved with a culture that, as time has gone on, has progressively forgotten how to rest well and continues a culture that doesn’t incentivize it.
And that is ironic when it is we Christians who worship a God that codified a day off into the creation of the entire universe! It’s ironic, in our worship of overwork and productivity that we call a “savior” one who repeatedly took time off to rest.
Jesus immediately begins a flurry of activity at the beginning of his story in the Gospel of Mark. On the Sabbath he taught at the synagogue and went to one of his disciples’ mother-in-law’s homes. She was sick with a fever, so Jesus healed her and she began to feed them.
Jesus did nothing else that day until the Sabbath was over (that night) when the town “brought to him all who were sick or possessed by demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door.” Wow. Imagine the chaos. Jesus got to work, healing diseases and casting out demons.
But the next morning Jesus woke up earlier than everyone and slipped out to a deserted place to pray. No one knew where he was, his disciples hunted for him and told Jesus when they found him how everyone was looking for him. He wasn’t being productive enough! More healings and exorcisms needed to happen! What was he doing?!
Jesus’ answer wasn’t what one might expect. Instead of getting up and saying, “alright, let’s do some more healing and demon exorcisms,” Jesus instead got up and said that it was time to move on to the next place. Jesus reminded the disciples that the healing work wasn’t his main goal, but proclaiming the message was.
It is very possible that Jesus not spending all of his time meeting every need that came in front of him might have been incredibly healthy. One thing we can do in our overwork and overfunctioning if we are one of those busy people whose business is a magnet for more business, is solve all of the problems and do all of the good. This sounds good until you think about how maybe more people than just you are supposed to be doing good work! Perhaps this is what Jesus knew as well.
Jesus was God. He could heal diseases at a touch. But if he spent his time only healing diseases, he never would have shared his message far and wide enough. If all he did was heal everything, he might have interfered with the role other healers and crisis responders played in their communities. And we likely never would have had the opportunity to hear this message millennia later if he spent more time healing than proclaiming.
There is a deep holiness to doing that which is ours to do and not also what is someone else’s to do. Jesus models that for us, contradicting the culturally (worldly) celebrated values of productivity and overwork.
