MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 6:30-32
(PARALLELS: Matthew 14:13; Luke 9:10.)
Rest after work.—The disciples had just returned from the missionary journey through Galilee and Judea. Their Master had sent them out, by two and two together, six parties of them in all, to preach repentance and remission of sins.
1. You can fancy how they must have gone forth, all of them novices, and some of them young men. Imagine it, you who have not yet survived the memory of your own younger days: the new-born sense of our own importance, which accompanies our first attempt at responsible action; the childlike hopefulness to which no miracle of success seems impossible; all the bright illusions, all the golden dreams of youth—that time of life when every subject possesses so fresh an interest, when every effort seems so certain to succeed, when the sensation of failure is yet a thing unknown. And such a doctrine as they had to preach, and such a Master as they had to proclaim as the coming King! What could there be before them but rapid and complete victory?
2. They came back, we may imagine, with an immense deal to tell. No child that returns to its mother from a visit more overflowing with talk than they. “They told Him all things, both what they had done and what they had taught.” Here they had met an open and truthful mind; and what a pleasure it had been to instruct and encourage him! Here they had found a repentant yet desponding sinner; and how they had delighted to bind up his broken heart and to send him on his way rejoicing! And here they had encountered a captious gainsayer; and with what a clever repartee they had answered and silenced his objections! And what a ready hearing and how much success their words and efforts had obtained! They can hardly have failed to have told their Master another thing, which the seventy, who were sent out afterwards, reported, when they too returned—what mighty works they had done in His name. Nor would they fail to receive some such reply, half encouragement and half caution, as that which the seventy received (Luke 10:18; Luke 10:20). You can imagine much being said like this by that Master, still young Himself, and therefore naturally, as well as supernaturally, sympathising with the hopefulness of youth, cautious not to depress zeal, even while correcting its extravagance. “Yes,” He said, “the Spirit of good is stronger than the spirit of evil. Yes, Satan is falling from his high place of power, and he will fall. But do not boast of spiritual power; do not be exalted by spiritual success; rejoice, rather, that there is a place for all faithful labourers, the unsuccessful as well as the successful, in the dwelling of their Lord. When bright hopes are all faded, when success has turned to failure, when high gifts have deserted their former possessors, there will still remain for you a refuge and a home.” At the same time there came those words of kindly invitation, “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while.” They were, in fact, to go with their Master and enjoy a well-earned holiday.
3. And so they embarked on the calm bosom of the Sea of Galilee, and raised their sail; and the light airs began to draw them off the land, slowly and dreamily, towards the lonelier country of the eastern side. There, let us think, are the thirteen upon the lake—the crew of twelve, each one of whom is an apostle, and the Captain, whom almost all now admit to have been the Ideal Man, whom we believe to have been God manifest in the flesh. Fresh airs are breathing on the weary brows; bright waters are rippling under the vessel’s floor; an open sky is bending over them, boundless as that love of God which they have been proclaiming; no shadow of approaching horrors has yet fallen on them, and all hearts are free and joyous, for not even Judas is a traitor yet.
4. It was from diligent labours for the good of souls that those disciples were invited to seek a temporary refuge. How much more needful must it be to seek such occasional retirements from the present hurrying world! God made the world—the world of society as well as the world of nature. Even this rapid world of the end of the nineteenth century has come into existence through His providence. The Great Steersman has not abandoned the helm, but is guiding it, through all the cross-currents and changing winds, to noble objects of His own. The evil in it is not original, and (happier still) it is not inseparable. It is of His ordering that we live our lives, in close and frequent communion with those fellow-creatures of ours who form our world for their good and for our own. In the world, though not of the world, our Lord bade His disciples be. Nevertheless in the world certain evils happen to us for which occasional retirement is the cure. Let us look at one or two of these, for which we seek a remedy.
I. The world confuses our self-knowledge.—The source of self-knowledge is reflexion; and little reflexion is possible amid the bustle of the world. It happens to us, as to the disciples in the gospel—there are many coming and going—employers, customers, clients, patients, parishioners, as the case may be. The trade, or business, or profession occupies nearly all our time. Family affairs often cause anxiety. Public business, politics, religion, charity, all solicit attention, which must be given from time to time. A hundred persons have to be spoken to, a hundred subjects considered. As soon as one business is despatched another comes to be transacted. Well for us if we can keep them distinct and separate, and not mix and muddle them all. All these are outside of our real selves, so that the mind engaged in them acquires an outward leaning, and seldom collects itself inwardly at all. So reflexion perishes, and with it self-knowledge. The cure of this is retirement.
II. During our intercourse with the world our wishes and objects grow more and more worldly—that is, they become confined and bounded by this present world. We cease to feel our own immortality, we cease to have intercourse with God, and then all our aims insensibly decline. Conscience and duty become less and less our rule. We are more and more guided by self-interest or personal inclination; and by even worse things, covetousness, ambition, revenge, our motives sinking gradually, so that we cannot tell when or how they change. It is in retirement that we must resist and repair declines like these.
III.
The last evil I will name, whose proper remedy is retirement, is irritation.—Many things occur to ruffle and disturb. We become vexed and displeased, perhaps with actual enemies, perhaps with indifferent people, perhaps with our best friends. This is sure to be so. For all are sinful; and our respective faults and failings jar against each. Besides, all are short-sighted and imperfectly informed, and therefore we often mistake and misunderstand. For all these inward disturbances the remedy is retirement and reflexion. Enter into your closet and shut to the door, and pray to your Father which is in secret. Lay yourselves in the arms of Jesus; throw yourselves open to the eye of the All-seeing God. There breathe forth the wish, “That which I see not teach Thou me; if I have done iniquity, I would do so no more.” Your Father will teach you; He will guide your feet into the way of peace.—Archdeacon Rawstorne.
Lenten retirement.—We are most of us living, as many almost necessarily must live, in all the busy, anxious cares of a busy, anxious age, our duties or our business laying claim to every moment of our time, till the throng and crush of earthly things prevent us from coming near to touch the Saviour’s robe. Then it is that our solemn Lenten fast bids us come into our chambers and shut our doors, offers to the jaded, wearied soul a little rest, a short breathing-space in which we may gather strength to wrestle on, a moment’s retirement from that unceasing “coming and going” which makes up the greatness and the littleness of our life in the world.
I. Lent is a time of retirement—a special opportunity for being alone with God. As a nation we are becoming increasingly alive to the economic dangers, physical and moral, of a life without leisure. The deadening of spiritual energy, the choking of spiritual life and aspirations—these are the parallel dangers to the religious life which knows not the blessing of retirement. You will see, then, that by the rest of religious retirement we mean something different from that rest which belongs at all times to those who are living with God. For that is an abiding thing; this is occasional. Religious retirement means a withdrawing ourselves for a special purpose and at a special time, just as he whose life is the life of one. who is praying always has yet his special time of prayer, or as He whose life was lived in the full consciousness of God yet loved to withdraw Himself to the lonely mountain-top and spend whole nights in prayer to God.
II. The time that is to be dedicated to Lenten retirement must be “redeemed” time—time won, not from duties, but from pleasures. Just as fasting may not trench on that which is necessary to health, but may simply limit us in what we might do without, so in redeeming some special time for prayer and self-examination we must make up our mind to give up some luxuries Those few minutes we give, perhaps, to our social chat; the comfortable half-hour that we spend over our daily paper; the time we spend in unnecessary letter-writing, or the odd times we pass we hardly know how in mere do-nothingness—all these might be spared, or limited, and dedicated to God.
III. How will this help us in running our daily race?—
1. It will teach us self-knowledge. As we stand alone in the presence of God, every act stripped of the colouring which human praise and blame can give, without any of those secondary helps which the love of approbation and the desire to please so often lend us in the world, putting on one side those false standards by which we judge, the waxen wings which have borne us aloft hitherto melted in the rays of the sun—then we begin to know ourselves. And as we review our past spiritual life we see the shadows of selfish and interested motives darkening what once seemed clear and fair; our fancied love of God in that new light was but an aesthetic or poetical devotion to an ideal, our humility a skilfully concealed but now discovered pride; the very bright ones which seemed to guard our way are but as evil spirits in the form of an angel of light.
2. It is the great means of knowing God. For knowledge is born of intercourse and communion with its object. He who made man his study sought to learn his subject in the crowded market-place. And if we are to know God it must be by losing no opportunity of being with Him: with Him in those places where He has set His Name,—in His Church, and His Sacrament, and His Word; above all, in prayer.
IV. This knowledge of God and of ourselves which comes from retirement with God brings with it a new power for doing our duties in the world. The presence by which you seemed in your retirement to be flooded is the presence which shall go with you into the world. It is the ark of God which shall carry victory over the enemies, the real presence which transforms your very bodies into the temples of the Living God, the light which will brighten and make clear your earthly path, the continual source of strength and nourishment, preparing you a table in the very midst of your enemies, a fountain of living water springing up within you to quench the battle-thirst. In retirement and private prayer you have learnt what it is to be alone with God, and now in the roar and din of conflict you realise what it is to have God with you.—A. L. Moore.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mark 6:30. Duties of ministers.—
1. Ministers ought so to carry themselves in discharge of their calling, that they may approve their diligence and faithfulness unto Christ, who hath called them to that office.
2. Ministers ought so faithfully and conscionably to do the duties of their calling, that they may be able to give a good and comfortable account thereof unto Christ, who hath enjoined them those duties.—G. Petter.
Mark 6:31. The use of leisure.—
1. “Come.” This is the first principle in every time of leisure, such as it is fit for a Christian to take, that we should spend it in the presence and under the eye of the Master.
2. “Apart into a desert place.” Leisure for the overworked had better be sought among the works of God in nature than among the works of man.
3. “A while.” Such seasons of rest are only temporary, and are meant to nerve and brace us for work—our work, God’s work, Christ’s work. If it does not fit us for this, if it leaves us only discontented, selfish, and indolent, we have made a curse to ourselves out of a blessing.—John Ellerton.
Seclusion with Christ.—How much better would our work be done, how much more thoroughly our duty, how much healthier and more satisfactory would our worldly business be, if we could realise that that which is earthly can only bear beautiful blossom or rich fruit, when watered by the rains that fall from heaven; that the life must grow hard and barren which is cut off from its spiritual root; that Christ is ever calling us, amidst all our cares and engrossments to keep ourselves from being carried away on the flood of these, by preserving our personal fellowship with Him, and to come apart from the bustle of the world, into the silence and seclusion, where we may meet Him, and in the consciousness of His presence “rest a while.”—R. H. Story, D.D.
“Rest” for “a while” only.—This lesson is gladly learned, and too much practised. Requiescite pleaseth every man. The truth is, that the body and mind of man must after labour be refreshed with rest. But he which laboureth not is altogether as unworthy to rest as to eat. Again, such as will take rest and ease after labours must learn of Christ as well to measure their ease as their pains. He permitteth His disciples to take their rest; but He limiteth and restraineth His permission, saying, “Rest a while.” For by too much rest men are not made the more fit but the less willing to take pain.—Archbishop Sandys.
Leisure for communion with God.—I know how hard it seems to many to get room in their lives for a quiet hour. They are so compassed about with imperious demands and fretting details. “Would we could have it,” they say, “but it is impossible.” Well, it is often a great mercy when God takes such an one and lays him aside by sickness, where he must wait and be still, and is no longer oppressed with the feeling that he ought to be doing something. In that strange watch-tower of trouble his life rolls itself out before him, and he sees how brief it is, with the mystery behind it and the mystery before it, and God alone above all from everlasting to everlasting. Why should we compel the great Father thus to visit us with affliction ere we will find leisure to talk with Him and mourn for our shortcomings?—D. W. Forrest.
Solitude, says one, is the mother-country of the strong; silence is their prayer.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 6
Mark 6:31. Labour and patience.—Activity and the growth which comes by passive suffering ought always to make one single total life. Some of you will remember how in the old church at Innsbruck, among the magnificent bronze people who stand about the tomb of the Emperor Maximilian, is the great Godfrey of Boulogne, the illustrious Crusader. Upon his head he wears his helmet, and on the helmet rests a crown of thorns. The strange conjunction may mean many things. No doubt the crown of thorns is meant to represent the sacred cause, the rescue of the place of the Lord’s crucifixion and burial, for which the soldier fought. But is not such a union of symbols a perpetual picture? The helmet and the crown of thorns—activity and suffering, fighting and growing, the putting forth of energy and the drinking in of strength—these two were represented, not as coming in by turns, not as chasing one another into and out of the life, but as abiding together, making one temper, filling one character. It is the helmet and the crown of thorns worn together on the consecrated head that makes the noble, useful, growing life.—Bishop Phillips Brooks.
No leisure.—If a stranger enters a busy factory, he cannot help being struck with the bustle and activity that pervade the whole establishment. Here a powerful engine throbs and works; there are glowing furnaces and red caverns of fire. Here are wheels and spindles and revolving bands; there, hurrying to and fro with rapid steps and skilful hands, the workpeople, all hastening to accomplish their respective tasks. And there is much similarity in the condition of our ever-active modern life—when every day, and every hour, seems filled with business, and the seasons of relaxation are equally crowded with pleasures and excitements, so that we seem to exist under a system of “high pressure.” Ruskin’s blunt language calls it, “a machine-ridden and devil-driven age.” The rough sarcasm of the man who said to his fellow-labourer, who was longing for rest, “You’ll have time to rest when you are dead!” seems to give some idea of the business and activity of life in our great cities in this age. But there are many disadvantages that follow, for “he who lacks time to think lacks time to mend.”—Dr. Hardman.
Periods of repose.—For all organic life God has provided periods of repose, during which repair goes on in order to counteract the waste caused by activity. In the springtime we see movement and stir in gardens, fields, and hedgerows, which continues till the fruits are gathered in and the leaves fall; but then winter’s quiet again settles down over all, and nature is at rest. Even the flowers have their time for closing their petals, and their sleeping hours come so regularly, and yet are so varied in distribution among them, that botanists can construct a floral clock out of our English wild flowers, and tell the hour of night or day by their opening or closing. The same God who created the flowers and appointed the seasons ordained the laws of Israel, and by these definite seasons of rest were set apart for the people—the Sabbath, the jubilee year, and the annual festivals. Indeed, in every age and in every land, the coming of night and the victory of sleep are hints of what God has ordained for man.—A. Rowland.
Human claims paramount.—An old heathen philosopher bade his pupils beware of saying there was no time if a human claim was made upon their services. Never say “there is no time,” if there is a ministry of mercy to be rendered to your race. If you want to see how active men may become under the urgency of necessity, stand on Ludgate Hill, and see how human life is being exhausted, how the energies of many are being worn out. Amid the activities of a London commercial life, and with all the incentive that the promise of wealth and greatness and aught else may give, you will find no man who can give such a record of a day’s work as we find in the Gospels concerning our Saviour.—D. Davies.