Margie Quinn
I feel like a broken record after preaching on the Gospel of Mark over the last month. I’ve reiterated that it’s a fast-paced gospel. Jesus is on the move, trying to flee from the crowds after healing and preaching so that, well my guess is that he can get a little alone time, but also so that he can continue to spread the good news before his inevitable arrest and execution. It’s a gospel on steroids, a gospel that is out of breath. Jesus calms storms, feeds thousands, walks on water. Most resonant with me, though, is the constant, compassionate way in which Jesus heals the people deemed unhealable, untouchable and unloveable.
In our passage this morning, we meet the Disciples and Jesus, gathered together after Jesus has sent them out in twos to heal people and share the freeing news of the gospel with them. I can feel their eagerness as the Disciples share with Jesus all of the work they have put in. Perhaps they gathered around him, talking over each other impatiently to relay their experiences: “I sat with a woman who was sick and anointed her head with oil!” “I cured a man of his loneliness by offering him comfort and presence.” “I told a big group about you over dinner the other night.” “I had some challenging conversations with people very different from me, offering hope where they had none.”
I can imagine Jesus’ beaming face, communicating to them with one look the same sentiment he received from God at the beginning of his ministry, “You are beloved, with you I am well-pleased.”
We learn next that amidst their comings and goings, the Disciples have forgotten to nourish themselves, even to eat. How many of us get so caught up in the flurry of our days that we forget to feed ourselves, to breathe? I can hear the gentleness in Jesus’ tone as he says, “Come away and rest a while.”
The tender, loving words of a shepherd who attends to his flock.
Before they can even take a load off in a deserted place, the frenzy of people swarm them, him, once again. There is, as usual in the Gospel of Mark, an urgency with which people pursue Jesus. Why?
The system has failed these people. In this same chapter, we read about King Herod’s birthday party, in which the political elite serve up John the Baptist’s head on a platter. The people in power continue to spread fear, threatened by the growing whispers of hope.
These frenzied crowds are people who are vulnerable in a predatory world, voiceless and seemingly ignored when they try to speak up and beg to be made well. Who guards their human dignity? Who fights for their economic stability, access to healthcare, reproductive rights?
They have gotten too accustomed to fending for themselves. They have grown bitter and calloused, unable to utter the words “hope” lest they be disappointed once again. No wonder they chase Jesus around. They are a flock desperate to be brought back into the fold.
They have heard that Jesus, as Matt Skinner writes, “who is a dangerous figure in the eyes of the higher-ups, who claims spiritual authority, challenges the powers that be, who draws people to deserted places, along seashores, in villages and cities and farms and marketplaces,” is giving support to harassed people, feeding hungry people and healing sick people.
So, Jesus, when confronted with another crowd, doesn’t shoo them off or send them to voicemail. He “had great compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”
Compassion, meaning that Jesus chooses to involve himself in their suffering.
We know the words commonly associated with Jesus. Messiah, Savior, Redeemer, King of Kings, Bread of Life, Son of the Living God–we read the many words that attempt to describe the fullness of the one who came to liberate and claim spiritual authority. But here, today, we have a new word: Shepherd. Does that give you solace, too?
This shepherd has great compassion on them and chooses to involve himself in their suffering. He sees their longing eyes, hears their desperate cries and as usual, stops what he is doing to teach and heal.
He devotes himself to healing not just physical wounds, but I believe that he works to ensure the human flourishing of heart, mind, spirit. He restores their brokenness, notices their loneliness, offers provision amidst scarcity. He offers rest, he offers food, he tends to his flock.
What would it have been like? To experience compassion from this authority figure? I look around at our leaders today and shake my head in resignation. We live among shepherds, who, as Jeremiah states, “use their words to scatter rather than attend to.” Shepherds who destroy and divide a flock that is desperate for healing and hope. Then, I read about this shepherd who brings everyone back to the fold and I rest in the words of Mark. I read God’s promise in Jeremiah, that God will “raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd, and they shall no longer fear or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing.” I take a deep breath and remember: My help, my hope, is in the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.
This maker of heaven and earth sent a shepherd to us, whose compassion had consequences. His actions altered economies in households and neighborhoods, transformed relationships, urged people to consider old allegiances. They give people hope. Remember hope? “The thing with feathers,” as Emily Dickson describes it, “that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without words, and never stops at all?”
And never stops at all.
Lately, my hope wants to stop, to withdraw, to resign itself into scoffing, mocking, numbing.
Until I read about a healer. A shepherd. In whom I place my hope. Who doesn’t use cynicism and fear to control people, who doesn’t stifle human flourishing, who doesn’t threaten the flock but instills in it a thing with feathers, who calls hope out of hiding. Who sees us as beloved. Who leads us beside still waters, prepares a table for us, who invites us to come away from our bustling lives and panicked outlooks and rest awhile, who offers us goodness and mercy all the days of our lives.
A shepherd who folds us all in, missing no one, healing everyone. Who sees our world, our country, the hopelessness and haggardness, the desperation and despair, and has compassion on all of us. May we rest, knowing that our hope is in the one who attends to us and takes care of us, even in deserted places.
Amen.