The Rest of My Body

Scripture — Mark 6:30-34, 53-56 (NRSV)

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. 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. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. 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. . .

When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. 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.

Devotion

English was not my grandmother’s birth/heart language, though she began learning it when she was five and lost most of her first language (German). But German survived in much of her word order. I will never forget—and was reminded again when I read this passage—of the time when she sat down with my grandpa to do morning devotions and, wanting to express gratitude to the Lord for her restful sleep, thanked God in prayer for “the rest of my body which I got during the night.”

If Google Ngram Viewer (which plots the occurrence of words in published books to which Google has access to) is to be believed, the term “work-life balance” is mostly a child of the twenty-first century. The term appeared briefly in the twentieth century from time to time (I’m dying to know why it had a moment around 1940), but really takes off after 2000. Unfortunately the Ngram data ends in 2019, because I’d really like to know how much we all talked about work-life balance during the pandemic. Nevertheless, the main point is clear: we’ve been feeling for the past twenty years or so that we have had a lot more work and a lot less life, and we’ve been trying to get back to a better place.

When I first became a part of the faith and work movement, I quickly learned that there were a few terms that many movement leaders and writers considered to be no-nos. One was “ministry” or “full-time ministry” to mean only the ministry of (usually ordained) church leadership; we are all in ministry, whether we do that as church leaders or not. “Work-life balance” was another. “No,” people told me, “you should say work-life rhythm. Work is part of life, not something we do to get over with so we can then have life.”

I have dutifully avoided ever since that staple phrase of my evangelical childhood, the description of people being “called into full-time Christian ministry,” and I have dutifully said “work-life rhythm.” But I have to admit that I still feel like I have a lot more work and a lot less life than I would like. And I kind of feel like maybe Jesus in this passage would agree with me.

We see two things about the rhythm of Jesus’s life in this passage. We see that he recognizes the need for rest. When the disciples come back in Mark 6:30 and give him a progress report about all the things they have been doing to spread the Kingdom, he recognizes that they need some time to rest and recharge, and they all get on a boat to head to a quiet retreat. Except they are so famous that the crowds figure out where they are going, and as soon as they get off the boat there are a number of people there who desire teaching, healing, and—since this is where the Feeding of the Five Thousand occurs (Mark 6:35-44)—lunch.

Jesus and the disciples fulfill all these needs, and yet the needs keep coming. Since the lectionary leaves out Mark 6:35-52, the timing isn’t as clear if you just read the excerpts here, but after the Feeding of the Five Thousand Jesus sends the disciples back across the lake in their boat and tries again to get a little quiet time (this time by himself on a mountainside, Mark 6:46), but then he comes down from the mountain when he sees that the disciples are struggling with the boat, and he walks across the water to get to them. When they all arrive back on the shore, there are the usual crowds again. Reading the continual back-and-forth in this passage reminds me of the period in my life when I was the mother of toddlers. It. Just. Doesn’t. Stop.

Some people have used this story, and ones like it, to say that work-life balance, or rhythm, or flow, or however you want to conceptualize it, is an impossibility, and that the only way to accomplish ministry—especially “full-time Christian ministry”—is to spend yourself to the point of exhaustion to show that you are ready to die for Jesus.

May I point out that Jesus has already done all the dying that’s necessary.

It will continue to be true that It. Just. Won’t. Stop. It will also continue to be true that the Lord continually calls us to times apart—no matter how brief—to rest and renew. Take them. Love them. Rest in them. Don’t feel guilty about them. Thank the Lord for the rest of your body which you got during the night. And then go on.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project’s online commentary. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: How Christians Can Experience Deeper Rest.