Come Away and Rest (On Christian Rest, Part 4)

In our previous post, we talked about the extending of the horizon of the old covenant Sabbath through the Resurrection of our Lord, how He makes that Sabbath the occasion for a new work through His rising again. As should be apparent by now, the Sabbath means something very different for the Christian than it meant for the Jew, even if they are continuous with one another in the Person of Christ. It will help if we look to the Gospels for guidance.

In the four Gospels, we see Jesus laying claim to being the Lord of the Sabbath, as we previously discussed, but there are not many moments depicting His own ‘practice’ of the Sabbath other than by teaching in the synagogues in towns where He was on those days. At the same time, Jesus clearly shows that there is a horizon of the Sabbath intrinsic to His ministry that alters the given understanding of it by the religious authorities. Yet there is one account, unique to the Gospel of St. Mark, that I would argue is the model of our Lord’s ‘Sabbathing’ that comprehends both spirit of the fourth commandment and the trajectory of His Apostles’ future ministry.

“Then the apostles gathered around Jesus and told him everything they had done and taught. He said to them, ‘Come with me privately to an isolated place and rest a while’ (for many were coming and going, and there was no time to eat). So they went away by themselves in a boat to some remote place” (St. Mark 6:30-32).

Our Lord’s invitation to the Twelve Apostles to come and rest follows the completion of their missionary journey after He set them apart and sent them two by two. This call to rest comes about in Mark’s Gospel at a major pivot point in Jesus’ own ministry: the death of John the Baptist and the beginning of His turning toward the Passion. It is also the setting of the miraculous feeding of the five thousand. I believe there are significant points to be made on both of these counts.

We should note first that the Lord invites the Twelve to follow Him again. The verbiage here is the same as the invitation in chapter one of the Gospel when Jesus began to call the Apostles at the first with the same words “follow me.” The parallel here draws out the difference between the two moments, in that while before Jesus had called them into the labor that had reached a critical point of progress in chapter six, now Jesus was calling them to rest from that labor before a new work began.

We should note next that the Lord invites the Twelve to follow Him into a time of rest. The invitation completes the picture of the work to that point. Having been called to follow, having learned the work from the Lord, having been then empowered and sent out to do the work in His Name, the Apostles’ labor is completed as Jesus draws them back again to Himself for a time of respite before the new work begins. It is suggestive as well that the mission of the Twelve wraps up in the same breath as the death of John the Baptist. It is a telling connection that the grizzly martyrdom of the Baptist is set as the passage through which the Apostles are returned to their Lord. It is a foreshadowing of the labor ahead and the manner in which they would be called to their final rest.

It is significant that St. Mark notes the remoteness of the place. It is set apart and presupposes time and distance to reach. With that time and distance comes a heightened sense of the deliberate quality to this journey to rest. It is not a quick break on the road. It is set apart in a special way from the path they were walking. The next work of teaching and healing in the subsequent chapters does not flow seamlessly from the work before. There is a necessary distance between that work and the work that will constitute this time of rest. We should 

The invitation to come away with Jesus and rest comes after the labor of sharing in His work. It is purposed for refreshment in His presence before the more arduous labor ahead begins. One might recall a similar moment in the ministry of Elijah, who was rested and fed by God before his journey to the mountain, because otherwise the journey would have been too much for him. The feeding miracle that follows in chapter six has a similar purpose, but also a familiar, liturgical shape. As Jesus calls the Twelve to Himself, the multitudes to whom He and His Apostles had ministered begin to arrive as well. The gathering that follows unfolds with the twofold shape of our Communion Liturgy. Christ, having compassion on the multitudes and seeing that they have come (for some very far) from their homes to meet with Him, “began to teach them many things” and then fed them by the hands of His Apostles. 

I would like to suggest that the icon of Christian rest is to be found in this vignette. To rest in Christ is to answer His invitation to come, to follow Him. We do not get to see what made for that rest in the desert place between Christ and His disciples. It is not clear at all that they even rested all that much–their quiet time to finally get a meal seamlessly transformed into the feeding of the multitudes. This is perhaps the point: the Lord’s rest is continuous with the Eucharistic ministry of the Apostles. He inaugurates it, extends it through His Apostles, for the nourishment of His people. And since the time of the Apostles, this has been the liturgical shape of keeping the Lord’s Day, of honoring the new Sabbath of the eighth and first day.

The shape of a Eucharistic life fulfills the commemoration of the Sabbath while anticipating the life of the world to come and indeed participating in it. In the Eucharistic prayer of the Church, we take to the altar the oblations of bread and wine as well as an offering of our means. Together, these form a symbolic and vicarious representative offering of all of Creation. In making this offering, we are returned to the posture of the priestly, royal humanity of Eden. And God, who receives this sacrifice and blesses it, returns it to us as something it cannot of its own power be–the Body and Blood of Christ–through which we are engrafted into the life of God through Christ in the Spirit. We receive a life not marked by toil and collapse, but one that is eternal–whole and enduring. 

It is only proper that we do all that is necessary to return to be refreshed by the Eucharist. We should be willing to order the rest of our time and activity around it. I do not think that it is possible for a Christian to rest if they do not participate in the eucharistic life of the Church. It has always been the means by which the grace of being drawn in and sent out has been communicated to the faithful. This is the heart of Christian renewal, without which all other techniques and practices are emptied of substance and the power to nourish in the midst of our wilderness sojourn.