Mark 6:30-34

³⁰ The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. ³¹ He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. ³² And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. ³³ Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. ³⁴ As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

Mark 6:53-56

⁵³ When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. ⁵⁴ When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him,⁵⁵ and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. ⁵⁶ And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

These past few weeks have been very reflective as you could imagine.  My goodness!  So much going on in culture…so much information overload…it’s good to be aware…but lots to process.  And, in all of this, trying to remember who I am, who we are!  Phew!  I am looking forward to getting on an airplane tonight…I may just collapse for a bit…

Through it all, there’s a sense that I, along with many of us, are becoming more aware that we are moving towards being something more.  We are defying roles, labels, stereotypes,  in ourselves and in culture and becoming deeply connected in our humanity with one another.

This is why Jesus came.  Jesus embodied this sense of oneness.  He redefined “family” as more inclusive and closer than we could imagine.  He redefined religion to being more about relationship.  He redefined humanity as not belonging to different categories, clans, or whatever, but to abolish what divides and to bring us together.  

Our lectionary passage this morning in Ephesians that we didn’t read says just that…what’s more, it reminds us of the universal nature of Christ.  That Christ brings us together with one another and with those who have gone before us and after us.

As someone who officiates funerals, I often think about death, what’s next, what does it resurrection look like.  There are no certainties, but Scripture tells us that we are somehow connected in this life and in the next.  It is an eternal journey.

Jesus is calling us toward living life, real life, together.  He’s inviting us along on a journey, a lifelong journey.  A journey built on authenticity.

That’s why, in our gospel lesson, that so many folks wanted to be around Jesus.  He was vulnerable, honest, real.  More than words or the miracles, they believed in Jesus because Jesus believed in them.  He was a lover.  A lover of all people and things and lived it out.  Belief, love, trust, that can bring expansive growth where labels and dogma simply don’t matter anymore.  Where simply being around someone like Jesus can bring healing as people become more aware, more real, and more themselves.  

Throughout difference experiences in life, I began to see Jesus as a real human, someone who I can come to and believed in me, which enabled me to believe in him.  This Jesus who has a deep compassion for me and for others.  This Jesus who yearns for me and my community.  This love compelled me to come to the call of being a pastor…to have a passion for others to know themselves and this Jesus who loved so well and to know that they can be loved and have a sense of community, of relationship with others and with God.  

This same Jesus has been moving me towards this place of love my entire life, to places where our attachment to roles, definitions, boundaries, fall away and are all wrapped up into a deeper attachment to love and connection to all people and things and where wisdom springs forth.  

Our scripture this morning shows a Jesus that ALL can come to, no matter where they are in life.  Just like me in many ways, the folks in Israel at the time this passage was written were steeped in a religious culture, they knew the stories.  Yet, they were stuck in a cultural system over that took precedence over authentic relationship, they didn’t know that God was calling them into an intimate relationship with God and into a community of intimate relationships with others.  Jesus appears on the scene, Jesus, like some folks in our lives, demonstrated a love, a deep and authentic desire for relationship with others.  He also shared good news that God’s love was extended to everyone, not just those who were in synagogue or the temple every week, but everyone.  

Jesus calls us to BE someone better, love well, show justice, compassion and demonstrative action for the poor, for those on the margins of community, for those who have felt real persecution or oppression.  And, the way to experience that being was not to simply sit in church every week, but to know deeply the love that God showers upon you and to develop ways to understand that love just as you would invest in any friendship, spend time with God as you interact with your neighbors, family, friends.  

Our passage gives witness to people hungering for God, and feeling compelled to come to Jesus, to experience this love, and Jesus calls them into the desert, to slow down and contemplate what God has done for them.  I can also relate to that as God has called, and continue s to call me to places like the Abbey of Gethsemani in KY…or even literally the desert when we lived in SoCal when I was getting my Masters in Divinity to get away with him.  And, quite frankly, I’m looking forward to some time away in a place I have loved most of my life, Scotland, and to be alone, as well as catching up with lifelong friends and colleagues, and Debbie coming out at the end of my time there.

Jesus calls us, his church to do the same, to take time outs in our days and sometimes longer to experience relationship with him.  As we do this, as we our allowing ourselves to be alone with God, we may find this God deep within us, as well as in the silence of pulling away…as we empty ourselves of all of the distractions that we are used to.   In our scriptures, we see those following Jesus and that the crowds came because they were consumed by God’s love being emptied into them and that love was contagious.

The writer in Ephesians reminds us that we were once Gentiles, unbelievers, did not know God’s love.  Yet, God’s love came and was demonstrated to us through Jesus.  In Jesus, we are shown and told that we are one in our humanity.  Jesus abolished the felt need for the rules that were outside regulators of behavior, and gave us himself.  Jesus was and is the perfect humanist!  He wants us to be our truest selves.  

God’s story of love has power to change us, to inspire us, and like the disciples, to change the world. It is given freely to us by God’s Spirit, and we are called to come and be joined together, all of us, with Christ as our example and cornerstone.  

Friends, we have much to be thankful for, and much work to do of self, others, and God awareness.  May we know that this God is calling us towards divine union with God’s Self and everyone and everything, just as God is calling our neighbors, those who have been excluded by religious folk, all of humanity in Christ’s shared humanity with us.