1
Mark 6:30-34
40-Ord16-G-Year B
James McTyre
Lake Hills Presbyterian Church
July 20, 2003; July 19, 2009
In the gospel story today, the disciples have just returned after their first mission trip. Jesus had sent out the twelve, in pairs of two, to go teach and to heal.
And they did good. In fact, they were so successful, the people followed after them. The people kept searching them out.
Day and night it was, “Teach me about this.” Or “Heal that.” Or, “Does this look infected?”
In fact, there were so many people were coming and going that the disciples had no time to rest. They didn’t even have time to eat. They were victims of their own success.
So Jesus sees the disciples getting worn out doing good things.He says to them,
“Come away to a deserted place. All by yourselves. And rest a while.”
Off the Florida Keys
There’s a place called Kokomo
That’s where you wanna go
to get away from it all.
I am unfamiliar with this Kokomo.
I always thought Kokomo was in Indiana.
For over 150 years, the City of Kokomo has had a tradition of industrial excellence and business innovation. Kokomo features world class amenities, including 29 public parks covering over 400 acres, the Kokomo Beach Aquatic Center, and a 10,000 square foot extreme skate center. Come visit Kokomo: An innovative and growing community.
Maybe the Beach Boys got their brochures mixed up.
Or maybe Kokomo’s a generic name for your special getaway place.
Everybody has a Kokomo. Where’s yours?
Kokomo is a place where books can be read. Lightning bugs can be caught. Where a gentle breeze rustles through the leaves and whirrings of cicadas rise and fall beneath the moon.
Kokomo is a place where there are no ringtones, no email, no TV. Where human beings converse face-to-face. Where they play gin rummy, and Candyland. Where they hug each other’s neck goodbye.
Kokomo is a place where there are no unwelcome interruptions. Where everybody can come on in, take off their shoes and enjoy a lemonade.
Everybody’s got a Kokomo. Where’s yours?
According to scripture for six days, God worked, making the heavens and the earth and all that is within them. But on the seventh day, even God took a break. I wonder where God would go for vacation? Where’s God’s Kokomo? Indiana? Who knows?
From the very beginning of scripture, God has known that getting away for a break is a spiritual necessity. Even doing good works, like teaching and healing, like creating heavenly beauty – even those works wear a body out.
So even though they've been doing good works, Jesus tells the disciples, “Come away to a quiet place by yourselves and rest a while.” Jesus certainly likes to do it when he goes into the mountains to pray. God did it. Why shouldn’t the disciples do it, too?
Doing nothing. I think the majority of us don't do nothing very well. That's not universally true. Some people are supremely good at doing nothing very well. Their coffee tables have indentations where their feet go. “Koko-mo' potato chips, please.”
Most of us don't do nothing with such verve. You're Protestant work-ethic kind of people. Sloth isn't celebrated; it's sinful. Doing nothing for very long makes us nervous.
You sit on the couch long enough, you start noticing cobwebs on the crown moulding. You stare out the window and soon you notice the flower bed needs tending.
And there's nothing wrong with being productive in your free time. That's how old cars get rebuilt. In God's free time he made Iowa. How hard could that be? A weekend job.
The beauty of getting away to a quiet place isn't really about the place. Although if you can get to Kokomo, more power to you. You might spend your quiet time in the basement, cataloguing insects, or, God help you, on the golf course. It's not the place as much as it's that it's quiet. There are no interruptions.
Interruptions. Jesus wants to take the disciples away from the place where they're constantly being interrupted so much that they don't even have time to eat.
Sometimes, it's not the activity, it's the interruptions that wear us out, and make us feel like we're going crazy.
Do any of you feel as though you’re losing your mind? More and more, I can’t remember anything. I’ve been attributing that to having children. Girl children. Who remember everything. Of course I’m going to look like I have brain damage compared to them.
And then I found a study in some publication. I can’t remember which one. And it says what we’re suffering from isn’t an overload of information. Everyone says Google is making us dumb. There may be some truth to that. But the real problem isn’t the overload of information. The real problem’s the overload of interruptions.
In the study, scientists gave workers short jobs to do, but then they began interrupting their work. They'd send a phone call, or an email, or someone to drop in.
What they found was that once someone is interrupted, it takes an average of 25 minutes for their mind to cycle back to the original task. Because interruptions rarely travel alone.
The interruption led the workers to another task, which, when interrupted, led them to another task. Before they knew it they’d forgotten what they started out to do in the first place.
What the study determined was that it wasn’t the amount of information or work that got people messed up. It was the havoc wreaked on their short-term memory by the interruptions.
Interruptions rob us of our attention. Interruptions send us off chasing one wild hare after another. Interruptions wear us out.
So, here we are in this magical, 21st Century world of technology which makes us think we can take a phone call, send a text message, tweet some peeps on Twitter, and drive – all at the same time. Multitasking is supposed to be so cool. We're walking invitations for interruptions, and yet we wonder why our brains are turning to mush.
So Jesus sees how worn out his disciples are, because people are coming and going, and the disciples don't even have time to eat. They're be getting grumpy. Their eyes are twitching. Peter's laughing at John because he can't remember what he came into the room to get. Glasses? Car keys? A soda?.
What Jesus is treating isn’t psychological or physical at its root. Interruptions can be a spiritual problem. For the good of their spiritual health, the disciples need to get away, by themselves, in a deserted place.
It was upon people like this -- disciples not all that different from you and me -
that Jesus had, the Bible says, "compassion."
So Jesus puts the disciples in a boat and they all head off to some kind of Kokomo, which in the Bible is always a place on “the other side.”
Did you ever notice in scripture, no matter which side of the water they're on, there's always something better, some greener grass they're always trying to get to on “the other side.”
And then they get there, and guess what? The other side looks a lot like this side.
You read this story, and gee whiz, the people following the disciples must have been healthier than Lance Armstrong. Because when the disciples do get to the other side, all the people have already gotten there first.
Whatever needs healing, it isn't their legs.
Here's one of those places where scripture takes something – in this case, interruptions – and twists it around backward, and forces us to look at it from both sides.
Think about it:
If Jesus had really wanted to, he could have found a place where no one could reach him or his friends.
He could have come up with some kind of miraculous Cloak of Invisibility.
He could have steered the boat back to the first shore and fooled all the people who raced to the other side.
He could have. But he didn’t. And he doesn’t. He didn’t hide then.. And he doesn’t hide now.
Jesus takes something that makes us crazy – interruptions – and turns it into the stuff of miracles.
Sure, sometimes interruptions make us loose our minds. But sometimes interruptions save our souls.
Jesus hides in plain sight.
When Jesus wanted to get away and go to the deserted place, he took a route that people could see.
The quiet spot was somewhere that crowds of people could find.
Even when he’s trying to get away, Jesus isn’t some super-secret mystery that only a few more than twelve people know how to find.
And even when his peaceful rest is ruined by herds of jabbering humans, he doesn’t put up a Do Not Disturb sign. He doesn’t send them away.
He doesn’t get grouchy.
When the crowds of people invade the quiet space, it's then that Jesus is especially welcoming, miraculously welcoming, to the mobs of thirsting, hungering, needy people whose souls are a deserted place.
And upon these people who mess up his quiet time of prayer and re-creation, scripture says Jesus has compassion.
Compassion.
Jesus has compassion for people who can’t buy a break, who can’t tolerate a break, who are ready to break, without him.
These people crowd around Jesus and the disciples, wanting to see a miracle.
But you want to know what the first miracle they got was?
The first miracle was that Jesus didn’t make them wait until a commercial break to look at them.
The first miracle was the miracle of divine interruption. The people interrupted Jesus. They messed up his quiet time. And that was OK.
A compassionate Jesus invited the people into his deserted place. And this holy place got louder, and crowded – and shared.
On one hand, scripture is telling us that breaks and places free from interruption are helpful.
But on the other hand, scripture’s telling us that when we can’t get a break, when we feel like we’re going to break, those are the times when the circle of God’s compassion grows larger.
In his schedule, in his peaceful spot, Jesus makes room for you, and for me. The miracle of divine interruption is that when push comes to shove, the Almighty shares his space with us.
That’s a miracle.
But it’s no miracle, and it’s no secret what turns an interruption from an irritation to inspiration.
The difference between an interruption that annoys you and an interruption that opens the door to Jesus is that one word: compassion.
If you have compassion for the person who’s interrupting you, who knows what marvelous direction you might be led.
If you don’t have compassion for the person who’s interrupting you, it’s just an interruption, not a person.
Sometimes I really have to work hard to remind myself of this.
Sometimes I’ll get phone calls and the person will say, “I’m sorry I’m interrupting you.”
And sometimes I think, “Boy, I am, too.”
Never apologize for interrupting a minister.
I tell younger ministers (and I love being at the age I can say that), I tell them, “Interruptions ARE your job.”
If you really can’t be interrupted, let the Holy Spirit work through voice mail.
I am certain that’s why God invented voice mail.
If no one interrupted Jesus, we wouldn’t have any gospels.
But whether you’re a professional preacher or just a good neighbor, you’re going to have to accept the fact that God works by interrupting your plans.
Interruptions remind us that it’s not all about us.
If we didn’t have interruptions, we’d just wander around in the fantasy that we are the center of the universe.
A resident of our own Kokomo, population 1.
The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance that whatever you plan to do this week, at some point, your plans are going to be interrupted.
It may well be that this person is there because they need you to be a disciple of Jesus Christ for them.
I’m also absolutely certain that at some point this week, you’re going to do something that interrupts Jesus’ plans.
The Holy Spirit will have you humming along on all cylinders, and (Bang!) you’re going to do something that totally messes up the flow.
That’s when you’ve got to chill out and thank God for once again having a huge heart full of compassion for you and people just like you.
