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Hal Weldin
Luther Seminary
St. Paul, MN
January 2005
"Jesus heard what had happened to John.
He wanted to be alone. So he went in a boat to a quiet place. The
crowds heard about this. They followed him on foot from the towns.
When Jesus came ashore, he saw a large crowd. He felt deep concern
for them. He healed their sick people.”
- Matthew 14:13 – 14
In our
gospel lesson today, the disciples report that John the Baptist has
been killed by Herod. Jesus responded by wanting to be alone. He
hopped into a boat and went to “a quiet place.”
Can this be? Did our Jesus really
need to retreat? Did our Jesus, the Son of the Living God, run
away? I wonder what went on in the heart and mind of Jesus.
Well, at first look, there are a
couple of possibilities worth exploring.
Perhaps Jesus, saddened by the news
of the gruesome death of his friend John, just needed to go away and
be alone. Jesus, overwhelmed with the news, needed a time to
re-group, and possibly, get a grip on his feelings and emotions.
Or, maybe Jesus didn’t see John’s
death coming; he thought that John would continue to be a colleague in
spreading His new message to the world. Maybe He needed the time
alone to re-strategize what going forward would mean for Him without
John’s influence. For some, the problem with this option is that we
would like to think that Jesus, the all knowing, met no surprises. So
this text raises some questions as to how we view Jesus as divine and
human.
Or, maybe this was for Jesus one of
several “tipping points” in his life among us. Like the turning of
the tables of the money changers, the moment of sadness about the
death of another friend, Lazarus, or his blood sweating talk with God
in the garden. This news of John’s death is the first of several
“tipping point” moments in Jesus’ ministry among us, moments that
brought Him to a major pause, and allowed time to re-focus.
I find great comfort in this idea;
Jesus had overwhelming moments in his time on earth and needed to
retreat. This rings true with my experience over the past 20 plus
years of ministry. The hard work of ministry, along with the
normative challenges of life, brings us to “tipping point” moments.
Moments when emotions run high, discouragement and sadness sound a
deafening horn, and we rightly need to remove ourselves from the game
for a long, lonely pause. These moments are unavoidable, and well
within the norm for the living out of our missions in this life. This
scripture is a gifted reminder of our need to retreat.
Imagine Jesus alone in a quite
place. Jesus thinks about his friend John and the swirl of life
before him, the “God work” of taking time for listening and healing.
There are two parts of this text
that hold of my imagination. First, I wonder what Jesus was thinking
and praying about during his time alone. This is the part of the
gospel text where I wish our gospel writer would have given us another
paragraph. I desire a closer, more intimate look inside of our Lord’s
experience of retreat. Why did John’s death result in Jesus wanting
to break away and be alone? What was Jesus working out in this quiet
place? How might I learn from Jesus about these common moments of
breaking away and being alone?
I am not so interested in what
drives me to these retreat moments. I know all too dearly my own
moments of being overwhelmed and driven to a lonely place. But I am
very interested in what to do when I get there. Once in the lonely
place, I often feel a loss for what to do. I get caught in a mental
loop. I know it is not about “doing” something, but about embracing
the night of my soul, about receiving space to pause, catch my breath,
and breath again. But how do I do this? And am I doing it well or
poorly? Are these even the right questions? It feels like on every
retreat I take, I have to start from scratch.
My father and I for several years
had the practice of, once or twice a year, going to a silent retreat
together. We went to a Roman Catholic hermitage north of the Twin
Cities, where we were each given a small, one room cabin with simple
baskets of bread, cheese and fruit. Here, in our separate cabins, we
sat, read, prayed and slept for a 24 hour block of time. Driving back
home, we would talk together about our times alone with God.
While my dad was going through a
round of chemo, we shared our last retreat experience together. We
had a restful night sleep, and about mid-morning I saw my father out
walking on the path in front of my small cabin. I watched as my dad
walked across the wooded path and back again. Shortly thereafter, I
heard a soft knock on my door. The silence had become too much for my
dad, a big E (extrovert) on the Myers-Briggs personality scale. He
wanted to break the silence and talk. So we snuck past the other
retreat-ers eyes, and met down by the lake. We sat in the tall grass
and listened to the frogs.
My dad didn’t have much to say, he
just wanted to be with me, and he was more than a bit mischievous. It
was a God moment for us, while we were breaking the rules. But I
knew, in between the few words we shared, that dad was in a lonely
place with God, doing the needed work.
The second part of this text that
interests me is the question, “What brought Jesus back?” What turned
Jesus’ head and brought him back into his future? Why didn’t he stay
in retreat?
The crowds did not want Jesus to go
to, or stay in, this lonely place. They followed him. Full with their
needs, they followed their hope. The crowds didn’t go away from
Jesus, Jesus went away from them, but then, something turned him back.
The persistent need of the crowds
holds soundly true to my experience in ministry. There is never
enough. There is seldom ever a real pause. The collective voice of
those we serve doesn’t come through and say, “Enough. We are fine. Go
and take your rest.” No, the crowds will always present real needs,
and real opportunities for us to tend to these needs.
And we are privileged to tend the
needs of the crowd; it is a major part of our call. Yet it is a
balancing act. The persistence of these very needs can drain us; move
us to yet another “tipping point,” another moment of needing retreat.
We call this self-care: taking responsibility for our own needs, and
the ability to respond to other’s needs.
For some reason, let’s blame my
family system just for fun, I thought life was supposed to work like
an auto loan. You make a commitment, and you get billed in equal
little blocks, once a month. This was my image of a balanced
ministry. I have something to offer, and I make a regulated debit
from my energy account each month. Nothing could be farther from the
truth of my experience.
No, my ministry life has been one
big debit after the next, not a regular payment plan. Everything
comes due at once, and then I need to retreat. And then, in the
retreat, something turns my head, my well becomes filled again, and I
re-engage.
So what turned Jesus back? What
changed between his need to retreat, and his engaging again in the
needs of the crowds?
This one, I think I know. In the
words of Henry Nouwen, in his little book Reaching Out, “We can
not stand in solidarity with those we serve, without first entering
into our own solitude.”
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