Rest a While: Be Content
“Rest a While: Be Connected”
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B July 22, 2018
Psalm 24 Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho
Pastor Andy Kennaly
This summer I’ve been preaching a sermon series called Be(e) Keeping: A Journey Into Contemplative Faith. One year ago, my wife, Shawna and I were in Scotland, having recently started a three month Sabbatical, which involved travel through parts of Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Europe. This summer’s sermon series is a direct result of that Sabbatical experience. Contemplative Faith and inner experience involves honesty, awareness, humility, gentleness, patience, presence, and today (although my original sermon title was ‘rest a while: be quiet’) we’ll actually explore “being connected.”
I recently heard a statistic that says “the average American can only identify 10 different plants.” (Podcast) There are certainly more types than that, even in our immediate surroundings. There are different types of trees in the park, a diversity of trees on the mountains, bushes and brush along the shoreline, and aquatic plants below the surface of the water of Lake Pend Oreille. The statistic was used to point out a disconnect: that people aren’t paying attention to their environment. If you don’t pay attention, if you don’t have an acquaintance with the plants around you, how on earth can you possibly experience a connection, let alone an appreciation or concern, especially in ways that move one toward action, advocacy or care? Knowing plants and becoming aware of your environment draws us into a deeper and broader experience of our humanity, helping us live out integration with the earth. Hopefully, this even leads to such a level of respect for plants and all of life that a deep connection is honored as we recognize what we call the Christ-consciousness, or the imprint of the Divine image present in all things.
Take a look around, what do you see? (A lake, a tree, grass, birds). Someone said, “A Lake,” so tell me about the lake. (It’s big, it’s deep). The way we use language gives us away. When we look at a tree or a bee or a bird, or a lake, we tend to use the word “it” as we describe or point out this “other.” This objectifies things, we treat things as objects. But we could also come alongside St. Francis of Assisi as he calls other things by personal or relational terms, such as Brother or Sister.
The person that shared that earlier statistic also gave an example of harvesting food from a plant and this plays on that subject/object mentality. Think of your favorite garden, or fruit tree, or the most loaded huckleberry bush ever! Rather than pushing our way in and taking what we want, there are other ways of living. Instead, we can pause, recognize with awe and wonder what is before us and see it as a gift, remembering that food is sacred, and respond with gratitude. Rather than think things are ours for the taking and start plucking away, we can ask permission of the plant before we start picking. This can change our viewpoint, and rather than viewing an object, we interrelate with another subject.
When we do remove the berries from the bush or other food from the garden, we can also leave some, and not strip the branches totally bare. This is both as a thank offering, and allows other forms of life to enjoy the foods. This also helps us focus not on greed or scarcity, but on gift and abundance, contentment and trust. It helps us focus not through individualistic terms that privatize things as property and view life as an object to be exploited, but on the level of society, of our place in the commons, of being part of a larger whole. We are invited to awareness, to open the eyes of our hearts; what is revealed are countless connections.
Bee keeping is an amazing hobby and many beekeepers spend their lives enjoying the management of bee colonies, or families; not only for honey or pollen, but simply for the love of connection with the bees, an appreciation for the life bees. One of the lesser known traditions of bee keeping involves what takes place when a bee keeper dies.
A beekeeper is the main person who visits the hives in the apiary, the bee zone. So when that person dies, someone else needs to manage the bees. What tradition involves, is that after the bee keeper dies, someone visits the bees to tell them about this loss, to inform them that their beekeeper has perished. The death of the beekeeper is announced, out loud, verbally, to the bees. At some point, then, the new beekeeper introduces themselves, pledging to do the best they can as they continue the care of the bees, thanking the bees for the many years of connection with the former beekeeper, and sharing how they are honored to start this new relationship for years to come.
At a commercial level, and in many other ways, this doesn’t make rational sense. There are many bee keepers that don’t do this, either because they haven’t heard of this tradition, or they judge it as being strange. That insects would really notice who is managing them during visitations? But it’s a good reminder that much of life involves that which is beyond rational sense, and if we limit our lives to things that we can comprehend or understand or get our conscious thoughts wrapped around, then we are limiting ourselves to shallow and superficial levels. Not only that, but we get caught in a subject/object way of functioning, where we are the subject, and everything else revolves around us as the center. This objectifies the world around us, and strips away our awareness of the inherent integrity of other created beings. We become blinded to the very connections God has nurtured into being, and our world suffers as a result. We do this individually, as a society, and as a species. Our lives become painful, our politics become divisive, and the ecological crisis of the sixth great extinction gets more acute.
This morning as we read scripture from Psalm 24 and Mark’s Gospel, on the one hand these have an external sense as we look around at the larger world, and on the other hand, an internal sense, because at its core, the journey of faith is about heart-perception and inner work. These stories show us the intensity of connections, the power of loving union, and the grace of God which holds all things together. These are radical readings, in the sense of going to the root of what really matters, rather than staying superficial or surface level just to maintain comfort and status quo. Hearing the words, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it…” are only truly absorbed through a stance of humility and openness. This is not about private property or possessiveness. It’s about promise and Presence.
Jesus knows the apostles are caught up in busy-ness, and this leads to an invitation. He says, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest for a while.” They take a boat across the sea. Some lessons cannot be learned at home, in the comfort zone, limited to patterns that are familiar. Mark is painting a picture through his story, of Jesus recognizing tremendous human need, and how we participate in a world filled with so much pain and suffering, and how most of that is self-inflicted. Jesus knows that the normal operating system used by our hearts and minds needs transformed, and he’s showing us how and why we can claim our True Self in Christ, and move past that subject/object worldview.
“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while” points to our need do to our own inner work. Transforming our hearts and minds involves time with God, silence in the Spirit, allowing God room to re-wire us from the inside. No other person can do this for us, even if they wanted to, just as we can’t do inner work for others, even if we wanted to. Resting in God’s Presence, free from distraction, is harder than it sounds. That’s why we call tools for this process, “Spiritual Disciplines.”
“As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” One of my pastor friends reminds us that the word “compassion” is more than sympathy or good feelings. Jesus is experiencing something gut wrenching; he is troubled and moved, and it’s the contemplative stance that provides the foundation for his action, his moving about in the towns, villages, cities, and farms, sharing healing from the inside out. It’s because he spends time alone with God that his awareness is able to perceive at a heart level, and his response comes from the power of the Living Christ, from the unity of the Christ-consciousness that doesn’t see in “object-ive” terms, but in relational terms.
Being present in the moment, aware of the God “who has founded the earth on the seas and established it on the rivers” helps us experience the depths of faith, the unity of all things, the divine image which permeates everything, the renewing of relationship.
The Living Christ is fully present right here, and right now, and it’s our calling to allow God room to work shaping our hearts to perceive this Good News. God has never been or ever will be more divine, more radiant, more holy, and more present than this moment. May our hearts learn to perceive! May we rest in God’s Presence, and not call the world around us, “it.” As we awaken to God’s connection, to God in all things and all things in God, may God be glorified, now, even as forever. Amen.
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Episode 147: How can we mend our broken relationship with the Earth and create a world where people and land are good medicine for each other? In this interview, plant ecologist, author, and professor Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about what she has learned from plants,…
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