The first part of a new sermon series on everyday spiritual challenges. This Mother’s Day sermon focuses on busyness. Listen to this sermon now.
Second Scripture Reading—Mark 6: 30-34
I want to begin this morning with a description of someone you might know. As I give the description, I want you to let your mind conjure up whoever it is who most closely resembles the description. So here is the description: More than anything else, this person is very, very busy. This person bears huge responsibilities. In particular, one of this person’s primary responsibilities is to care for a number of people. On a daily basis, this means helping others with their problems. It means being the go-to-person in difficult times. It means consoling and uplifting, but sometimes also challenging and setting limits. Whatever this person does, however, it is done with love. On top of being the resident caretaker and fixer-upper of people, this person has a demanding schedule. Sometimes this means planning large events and parties. Sometimes this means preparing lots of meals. Sometimes this means rushing from one place to the next to get things done. If one were to follow this person around for a day, one would see just how demanding and seemingly stressful a life this person has. Has everyone had a chance to picture someone who matches at least a fair amount of this description? Maybe some of you were sitting there thinking: that sounds like me. This morning I don’t want to reinforce gender stereotypes, but I am curious how many of you pictured someone who is a mother?
Now, the truth is that when I developed that description my goal was actually to describe the daily life of Jesus. Talk about a person who had huge responsibilities. Hey, he was responsible for saving the world! He also had a band of semi-dysfunctional, somewhat immature disciples who he had to nurture and care for. On top of that, he had all sorts of people coming to him with their problems. Additionally, he had to organize large outdoor events with thousands of people and even be responsible for feeding all those people. He was going from town to town doing all of this, and our scripture for today indicates that his life was rather busy and demanding. Our scripture says the disciples didn’t even have leisure time for eating.
We can’t say for certain what Jesus’ inner psychological life was like, but one could imagine how stressful his job was. On daily basis, the task before him would have seemed overwhelming to most. Imagine if Jesus had been working for a corporation that evaluated people on measurable results in meeting a goal. Yeah, those healings and miracles are great, but you’ve got a lot more people to save. Can you picture a self-help guru trying to give Jesus some advice? “Now, Jesus, what you need is better time management.” Jesus actually brings to light what some commentators have recently noted in talking about the myth of time management. As one said, “You can’t manage time. Time never changes. There will always…be 168 hours in a week.” You can’t manipulate and stretch time in order to squeeze more into it. No matter what Jesus did he wasn’t going to be able to heal everyone and fix everybody’s problems.
Jesus never performed the miracle of creating more time. He had to deal with the realities of our finite world. He could only do so much. Jesus set out to actualize and spread the good news of God’s kingdom, a kingdom that was the exact opposite of the oppressive Roman Empire, a kingdom where the last will be first. A huge job if there ever was one. Even though the Roman Empire has long since gone away, we are still working on a lot of the same problems Jesus worked on—imperialism, poverty, and inequality to name a few. How does one make time for those jobs?
In our own modest ways, many of us have definite limitations with our time, and I think sometimes the most liberating message that we can hear is that we can’t do it all. Sometimes the most liberating message is to know that the time management game of trying to find a slot for everything can’t be won. So what does one do when one comes to that realization? Does this just open the door for the anarchy of an anything-goes-schedule? Lately, I have really enjoyed reading a book by Brigid Schulte called Overhwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time. In her book, Schulte talks about attending a workshop called “Design Your Perfect Schedule.” At one point during the workshop, Schulte sat with four other people at a table. One person was having so much trouble juggling work and family life that she felt as if her time was “bleeding.” Another person wanted to know how he could relax on the weekend without feeling guilty. Yet, another wanted to stop the world for a few days so she could catch up, and then finally, there was the young woman who had burned through two marriages as she lived life on fast-forward and was hardly able to savor a moment. Each of them was given a blank calendar covering one week with each day broken into hourly grids. The assignment was to fill up the calendar with what they had done in the past week. It was an easy assignment. The details just spilled out of people and soon the details were spilling outside the grids into the margins of the page. Their calendars were jam-packed with stuff.
After everyone was done, the leader of the workshop asked everyone what they would do if their schedules suddenly opened up and they had more time. Participants said things like, “Sleep,” “Read,” “Sew,” “Travel.” The workshop leader then asked, “Where is the time for that on your schedules?” The answer was the same for all of them: “There wasn’t any.” The leader then passed out another blank calendar and instructed them to find time. All of them were stumped. They just stared at the page feeling paralyzed. There are different approaches to this problem and one that Schulte lifts up is this: “Take time to think about what you really want to accomplish in your life and what’s most important to do,” and then schedule time for that in your day first. Don’t take the approach that you will get to it after you do your to-do list because you will never finish your to-do list. All of this can require getting beyond the perfectionism of trying to do it all. I like the motto of a group called “Working Mothers with Big Jobs.” Their motto is “Good enough is the new perfect.”
As I was reading about all this, it occurred to me that I think churches can make a vital contribution to this conversation. I think that contribution has to do with emphasizing the fundamental need for Sabbath time—that time of rest during which we consciously remove ourselves from the bustle of everyday life and consciously reconnect ourselves to God. It’s that time of rest during which we pause to think about what’s most important and meaningful in our lives. Sabbath time can be that moment during which we realize, “Hey, I am so caught up in my work that I am not doing any of the things that truly make me happy. I am not enjoying life with my family. Or, I am not doing something in my life that’s of real service to others. I am not following my passion of making the world a better place.” It can be different for different people. The key thing is to have that reflective time to be aware of one’s spiritual and religious needs. I think for most people this is something that we have to do on a regular basis. It doesn’t work to do it just once a year because then you run the risk of letting all the pressures in your life not only squeeze the important, meaningful stuff out of your weekly calendar but also out of your thoughts. Am I the only one who occasionally gets so busy with the to-do list that I forget what really matters? This is why I think it is helpful to not only have a community that helps keep one focused, but to have a community that meets on a regular basis. I think we need worship or what I am calling Sabbath time to help us stay on track with what’s truly life-giving and life-fulfilling.
The idea of Sabbath time being a fundamental need that most of us have is one of the reasons I am able to stay hopeful about churches in general. Sometimes when I am in my bleaker moments—alone, huddled in the corner of a dark room—I can feel depressed thinking about how churches have been shrinking and dying and what this means for the future of churches, but then I think about how societal trends often swing on a pendulum, and I think to myself, “You know most people are probably like me and don’t really enjoy a life that lacks Sabbath time. They might feel like they are always on the workplace treadmill, or they might feel like they are all alone in their struggles. Whatever the case may be for people as individuals, I think the pendulum is eventually going to swing the other way. People are going to realize that they need that time of reflective rest spent in community if they are to have the richer and more meaningful lives that they most desire.
Jesus had a lot of demands placed upon him and his time, but he wasn’t always running, running, running from one healing or sermon to the next. In our scripture for today, Jesus essentially told the disciples, “Hey, let’s get away from this place for a bit. Let’s find a place that we can have for ourselves, so that we can rest for awhile.” The moment of rest didn’t last very long. Soon people were hurrying to meet them at this place that was supposed to be secluded, but I like to think that it was that little bit of rest that enabled Jesus to do what he did next. He looked out at the crowds, and, as our scripture says, “He had compassion for them.”
I think a lot of us who feel busy and stressed at times could use some compassion. At the very least, we could use some self-compassion. It’s easy to compound the situation of feeling overwhelmed with life by also feeling self-critical. If only we had been more efficient with our time. If only we had made better use of it. If only we had spent more time with our family. If only we had done this and not done that. Imagining the compassion of Jesus can feel like a spiritual massage. Let those busy muscles relax for a second. Let those loving hands work out the stress. We all deserve some compassion. Let compassion give you the permission you need to rest, to reflect, and to renew your spirit. Amen.