Come and Rest

[Our lessons were Jeremiah 23:1-6; Psalm 23; Ephesians 2:11-22; and Mark 6:30-34, 53-56.]

I read the other day about a speech given recently by Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric. He said that women who take time off for a family do so at the risk of their careers. “There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.” Mr. Welch said women who take time off can still “have a nice career,” but their chances of reaching the top are smaller. “We’d love to have more women moving up faster. But they’ve got to make the tough choices and know the consequences of each one.”

I read a lot of comments about Mr. Welch’s speech with many agreeing and many disagreeing that this is the way it should be. Only a few comments questioned whether this is, in fact, the way it actually is in 21st Century America.

Unfortunately, I do think that in many cases for women and men, survival, not just advancement, in the work force comes at the expense of the family. When times are hard (and for many of us, these are the hardest times we’ve seen) and jobs are scarce, we see employers often taking advantage of their leverage over their employees to work longer hours, often for less pay. After layoffs, fewer employees are left to do the work which never seems to diminish. Working parents are forced to leave sick children in schools because they either fear or actually have been told that their jobs are in jeopardy if they miss work to care for them. As Mr. Welch says, if you’re “not there in the clutch,” there are consequences. But what does it say about our culture if it forces people to choose between their families or their jobs?

The Church does have something to say on this. It rejects the idea that each person has no value but his or her ability to contribute to a company’s or economy’s bottom line. Instead it calls for a solidarity in which there is a unity that binds us together and works to help the most vulnerable in society, whether they are refugees or orphans or widows. Even when language, culture, or distance separates us, we are still our brother’s (and sister’s) keepers. As Pope Benedict recently pointed out in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate (or “Charity in Truth”), “the primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity: ‘Man is the source, the focus and the aim of all economic and social life’.” If there is no true “work-life balance” as Mr. Welch asserts, that is something to be deplored, not celebrated.

We are a busy people who often don’t feel we can take time for rest, especially now. I read a story not long ago that employees are increasingly feeling that they can’t take their authorized vacation time, because they may be absent “in the clutch” in Mr. Welch’s term. We don’t have the freedom to rest from our labors.

It is against this context that we hear today’s Gospel lesson. Jesus has sent the disciples out for the first time to call people to repentance, cast out demons and anoint the sick. As they return, they are clearly exhausted. That sounds increasingly like us today.

“Many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.” Does this sound familiar at work or even at home? It does to many.

After they report what they did to Jesus, does he urge them to do even more with a greater effort? No, he asks them (and us) to “Come away and rest for a while.”

Many of us are not permitted by our cut-throat economic culture to rest. Many more of us make that choice for ourselves. After all, if we are resting, we aren’t producing. But when we ask people how they are doing, the reply is often things like “I’m exhausted.” “I’m running myself ragged.” “I’m wiped out.” “I’m spent.” “I’m running on empty.” “I just need a nap.” (I myself often identify with the last one.) We are over-worked, over-extended, stretched-thin, stressed-out, and burnt-out.

We are wearied by many things in our lives. Modern life’s pace is faster than ever before, computers and cell phones sending their instantaneous messages around the globe. These technological marvels have not led to more leisure time for us. Instead, most people are busier than ever.

I have read that the Germans have a word for how we often feel: weltschmerz or “world weariness”. As one writer puts it,

We are wearied by many things in our lives. In our work lives, people speak of being tired of the rat race, the daily grind, or climbing the corporate ladder. In our political lives, people are tired of broken promises, empty rhetoric, and partisan bickering. In our personal lives, we are tired of being alone, tired of the bar scene, tired of the routine. We are tired of feeling angry all the time, or feeling afraid all the time, or feeling worthless all the time.

But Jesus tells the weary disciples “Come and rest for a while.” And he tells us that too. While work does have value, it is not the measure of our existence. When we gather around Jesus, we may tell him all the things we have done and all the things we have taught. We hold up before him our busyness and our weariness as objects worthy of praise and reward. We tell him that we have been so busy that we haven’t even had time to eat. Surely all these things will prove how important and valuable we are.

And our Jesus looks past all of this to remind us that all that we are and all that we do are gifts from God in the first place. Rather, he looks into our hearts and sees what we truly desire, what we truly need. In the words of Psalm 23 which we heard today, Jesus makes us lie down in green pastures and leads us beside the still waters and restores our souls. And he says to us, “Come away to a place all by yourselves and rest a little while with me.”