I went out for lunch this week. I was at the Australian Brewery on Friday and we were waiting for our food when suddenly an alarm started going off. An automated announcement was saying, “There’s an emergency, you must leave the building.” To which we all just looked at each other and kept on sitting there. To be fair, I was next to the emergency exit. I was pretty confident I could get out of there quickly if we needed to. But it went on for a while in this loop, and no one moved. The staff didn’t seem to move, so we stayed. And then eventually the staff walked around and said, “It’s just an error. It’s fine.”
So we put up with the sound of this speaker for a while. A few people gave up and left. Then they came back after a little while and said, “Really sorry, but of course the alarm has turned off the stoves in the kitchen. It’s going to take us 15 minutes to get them up and running again. Do you want a free drink?” We were like, “Yes, we do.” And so, we took our free drink and we waited on. And then 15 minutes later, they came back and said, “Sorry, the stoves haven’t started. We’ll just give you a refund.” By that point, we were enjoying our free drinks. We just said, “You got anything cold?” And we sacrificed ourselves for a salad and enjoyed that at the price of a very cheap meal. And we enjoyed it.
When that kind of situation happens, a lot of things are going on there. There are certain responsibilities that people have that they feel embarrassed about; they promised they were going to feed you and they’re not able to feed you. There are certain things they’re doing from a business perspective where they’re just saying, “This is our reputation. Who’s going to come back here with this kind of experience?” So, they want to go over the top and be really generous in trying to get you on board. But also, they are just in a position where they’re losing money and funds. There’s a reality where it’s not common for us to have a huge amount of compassion in that moment. We’re like, “I paid money for this and you should spend your money to appease my lack of getting the services here.” That’s a space we live in.
The expectation of responsibility. I mean, the story of the feeding of the 5,000 isn’t a business transaction, but you can see places where people feel responsible.
I think it’s a space we live in in all of society, and we can see a little bit in some of the stories in the Bible that it’s a space that isn’t new to us. The expectation of responsibility. The story of the feeding of the 5,000 isn’t a business transaction, but you can see places where people feel responsible. People who say, “These people are here on our behalf. What are we going to do about it?” I love the way Joe read that when they say, “Feed them,” and the way you read that, like, “With what?” It’s this real accusation, like, “What the heck are you talking about? We’re going to feed these 5,000 people?”
When The Chosen filmed that scene—I don’t know if it’s a historical moment—but they had three groups of 5,000 volunteers come. They said, “If you’re a fan of The Chosen and you want to be one of our extras, we need 5,000 people.” And so they had 15,000 people come and they moved them in shifts to film over multiple days so they could have 5,000 people there each day to film those scenes. With the world of CGI and set extensions, often TV shows with a TV show budget will just have a small crowd and make it look big. But they just went, “We’ve got people that love this show. They will come and film it.” We’re told in the Bible 5,000 men, so it possibly was more like 15,000 people there. We’re not sure the exact number, but you see a little bit of how big a crowd of 5,000 genuinely looks like in that scene.
There’s a whole lot of things happening in that story. We looked at the feeding of the 5,000 just in January in John chapter 6, so I want to take a little bit of a different angle as we think about this. I want to think about the feeding that is happening at multiple levels in Mark chapter 6 because we have the disciples who we’re told need rest, we have the crowd who need teaching, and we have a crowd who quite literally in the end need food. So, we’re going to anchor what we talk about this morning in those three categories: the disciples who need rest, the people who need teaching, and the crowd who needs food.
But I also want to think about it in the context of where we’re at in Mark’s gospel. If you were here last week, you would know the story just before it is the beheading of John the Baptist. What happens in Mark 6? At the start of Mark 6, Jesus sends his disciples out two by two. They go out on their own. It’s their first mission trip. I love the way the NLT says after they came back from their “ministry tour” is the words there in the translation. They’re out on this ministry tour two by two. It must be really daunting and difficult for them. And while that is happening, Herod throws a birthday party where he invites all the important people in the area. And that birthday party results at the end in the beheading of John the Baptist. And then we get the disciples who come back. So as we think about this feeding of 5,000, I want to put it in that picture of what Mark is telling us in that moment because we have two feasts happening back to back. We have the feast of Herod in the palace and we have the feast of Jesus in the wilderness. And I don’t think it’s an accident that Mark’s trying to bridge those two for us and help us see what’s going on there.
The Disciples Who Need Rest
We have the disciples who are in desperate need of rest. They’ve just come back on this huge mission for them. And it does feel a little bit like this big contrast between Herod’s stars of the red carpet. This is what Mark said, that Herod had a party for his high government officials, army officers, and leading citizens of Galilee. That’s Herod’s party. It’s a red carpet affair. He’s got all the people who see themselves as the superstars of Galilee, quite strongly contrasted to these guys who are portrayed as the servants of Jesus, these ones who have gone out in Jesus’ command and authority to do this ministry.
And so we get the disciples back from this ministry tour, these servants, and we’re told they told him all they had done. The picture is they gathered together. You can imagine they’re telling each other—they were out two by two, they haven’t seen each other for a while—they’re telling each other what they’ve done. And so we get this picture of this excitement of the report. We saw a little bit of this just a couple of weeks ago as our kids went to school. The first couple of days of school, coming back and telling you all the things that happened. For us in our house, Olive has just gone to high school, which means Olive and Jet are for the first time not in the same school. And so they’re reporting more than just what happened, but things about the school. And then Olive met up with friends of hers that she hasn’t seen from school, and you could just hear them explaining their different high schools and the excitement that happens when you get together after different things have happened in different places. You have a shared experience and then a separate experience when you come back together. That’s what’s happening in this scene.
And then they’re telling Jesus about it, which I think is just great. He knows what he sent them out to do. You can imagine they’re saying to Jesus, “Can you believe it? We prayed for people and they were healed.” Jesus is like, “Yeah, I can believe it. That’s what I told you to do.” I feel like the picture I get is Christmas morning in my house. Santa doesn’t visit our house; he discriminates against us. And we provide a stocking for our children. That’s always been the deal. We get credit for that. But they come to us first thing in the morning and open their stocking and they are showing us the amazing things in their stocking. And they know that we gave it to them, but still there’s like, “I got this!” “Oh, yeah. I know. I put it in there.” That’s what seems to be happening in this story. They’re like, “Jesus, can you believe it?” He’s like, “Yeah, I can.”
And then in the picture of all that and everything that’s happening, Jesus invites them to rest. Look at what it said. He says, “Then Jesus said, ‘Let’s go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest a while.’” And he gives us a picture of just how busy it’s been for them. He said this because there were so many people coming and going that Jesus and his apostles didn’t even have time to eat. Now, we’ve read this passage. We know what’s going to happen down the track. But right now, here’s a group of disciples that just desperately need rest. And God cares about their rest. It’s important for us just to take a moment to pause on that and recognize what’s happening there. God cares about their rest.
To actually stop your work is to say things will go on if I don’t do it. It’s actually a thing of breaking some of our self-idea that the world is dependent on us.
The theme of rest is such a strong theme from the beginning of the Bible. You might remember right back at the start in the account of creation, God rests on the seventh day. And there’s a whole lot happening in that space. The first one is we know he’s not resting because he’s tired, because he’s God. So more than just tired rest is going on. Right from the start, we get a picture of rest being much more about community and being communal. The seventh day in creation is the only day that doesn’t have an evening. We’re not told it ends. It seems like God’s rest there is with his creation. It’s a communal connecting. So we get that picture of rest right at the start. But we’re also told it very clearly is a picture of needing to replenish your energy when we get things like the Ten Commandments where it says six days you will labor and do your work and on the seventh day you will rest. There’s a picture there that it is a picture of recuperating from energy.
One of the great things about the TV series The Chosen is you’re seeing little glimpses of culture all the time. And one of them is the culture of the Sabbath. They call it the Shabbat; they use the Hebrew word there as they talk about it in the series, always talking about the Shabbat. And of course, it comes around every week. So, while we see glimpses of it in the Bible, in the retelling of The Chosen, you see it all the time, just this Shabbat, this rest, this day of rest that they’ve been commanded to do. And even as we think about that and we think about the Ten Commandments, we would go through that list and say that even though Jesus has fulfilled the law, everything in the Ten Commandments seems like they’re things that we are still held to as New Testament believers. And this day of rest sits in that space. God cares about rest.
So it’s a relationship, it’s an energy thing. There’s also a level of just the emotional rest that comes with peace. And so you get the picture of the Bible talking about the Israelites wandering in the desert and then the promised land is their rest. That is of course the energy picture, the relationship picture, but also just the place that this is God’s place for them. It’s a place of belonging. And so to rest is important to God and it should be important to us. We need to work on our rest.
Rest does a whole lot of things for us in our lives. One of them is the acceptance that the world doesn’t entirely depend on us. To actually stop your work is to say things will go on if I don’t do it. It’s actually a thing of breaking some of our self-idea that the world is dependent on us. The same thing is true even with mission. Jesus is telling the disciples who have been on mission that God has his plans. We will take our rest because we can trust God’s mission into his hands. And so there’s this space of trusting God in taking a time for rest. There’s a picture of God caring for us, knowing our limitations and caring for us. And there’s a picture of God restoring us even in relationship with him. And so that idea of rest, of Shabbat, is important for us to observe. And I think it’s something we really struggle with, to find time to step back from things and take rest.
The Idolatry of Busyness
The reality is that I think we have a huge idolatry with busyness. You probably know that classic idea that when someone says, “What have you been doing this week?” it feels like the answer is, “Ah, I’m so busy,” which you probably are. The reality is sometimes I feel the pressure of saying I’m busy even if it was a quiet week. I feel bad for having a quiet week. To say, “Yeah, actually a nice, cruisy week this week,” feels like I’m saying I’m just a bit lazy, which is not what that means. You’re allowed to have a cruisy week. Now, there is a difference between being lazy, of course. God calls us to be faithful in our work, whatever that is, whether it’s employed work or caring for our families. God calls us to be faithful in work. There’s a difference between that and being lazy, of course. And yet we have this huge problem in our society that if you are not running from place to place, then you are just not as good as someone else who is running from place to place.
My first job I ever worked for was working as a sound engineer for concerts, and my boss told me, “If you ever have to walk across the room, always walk fast so that everyone thinks, even if you don’t, that you have somewhere you need to be so they don’t stop you on the way to distract you from what you’re doing.” To just look like you have somewhere you need to be, even if you don’t. It feels like we live by that mantra. That’s the way things feel. If you don’t look like you have someplace you need to be, well then you’re just not quite as successful and not quite as filling your life in the way that someone else is.
I think we feel this. I observe this particularly in the space of parenting. I know it’s not just moms, but the particular idea of the stay-at-home mom. There’s this huge thing we talk about, “mom guilt.” The idea that a mom feels both guilty if they work and are not there for their kids. I think that’s true for both genders; parents can feel guilty for not being there for kids. But also, if you do commit prioritized time for kids, there’s another guilt that says, “Yeah, but there’s another parent over there. They can do it all. They can be there for the kids and they can hold down a job, so why can’t you?” And I think we live in a space of this comparison that is like we need to do all these things, and we need to work on rest. I don’t say things too forcefully often from the platform. I say this because I’m in this category as well. We need to get it together. We need to get our Shabbat together, if you allow me to say it like that. We have to work at it. It’s a crazy idea that you have to work at rest, but we do. We do have to work at it. We have to figure out how that works with our life to honor God in being faithful in our work, faithful in ministry opportunities, and faithful in our rest.
I think another real example I see in life is the space of retirees, that space of retiring and that feeling like, “What am I going to do?” I’ve committed so much of my life to work. The largest portion of my week and time has been spent on work. Now what am I going to do with my time? And there’s a great danger to just quickly fill that space, fill that space with things that keep us busy. Some of those things might be leisure-driven things, but nonetheless things that keep our life busy. So, we keep on pumping away at that rhythm. We need to work at our rest.
The People Who Need Teaching
This is a picture of the disciples who need rest. And it’s a picture of people who need teaching. It’s almost a contrast, isn’t it, that Jesus says, “We need rest. Let’s go take some rest.” They go to a quiet place, the people show up, and Jesus says, “Actually, I’m going to do some ministry.” That’s what he does. I want to say the picture here isn’t that Jesus says to his disciples, “I told you guys you need rest, but get back to it.” He doesn’t do that. Actually, he does the ministry. There isn’t a picture that Jesus says, “Ah, forget about the rest.” There’s actually a picture where he keeps doing stuff himself.
Another thing I love about the picture of The Chosen is the way they bring out Jesus’ humanity. The start of season two is this great scene where the disciples are just getting to know Jesus. You see them wandering around. There are lines of people lined up for healing and the disciples are just chatting with each other as they walk past these lines. They’re talking about their shifts and they say, “Oh, you’re on the next shift. You go out there and help Jesus.” And so there’s this whole scene that happens around the campfire and the disciples are coming and going to help Jesus. At the end of the day, they’re all sitting around the campfire and Jesus kind of stumbles back into the campsite. He’s sweaty. His feet clearly are sore from a whole day of standing and he just says to them, “I’m going to bed.” And they’re all just laughing around the fire as Jesus stumbles off to bed exhausted.
Jesus serves to their greatest need, their spiritual hunger, an opportunity to point them to an even greater rest. Not a rest from energy right now, but a rest of eternal communion with God.
We know that Jesus had the same struggles of humanity that we all have. We know that Jesus himself needed rest. And so here he sees great compassion. And even in that space of himself needing rest, he shows his compassion to a people who are in need. And the need he shows them is their greatest need. Verse 34: “Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat, and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.” Jesus serves to their greatest need, their spiritual hunger, an opportunity to point them to an even greater rest. Not a rest from energy right now, but a rest of eternal communion with God.
And I think we want to also take that space as we think about our idolatry of busyness. As we may quickly turn to hearing about the idolatry of busyness, we quickly turn to just beating ourselves up over the fact that that’s what we do. That I just can’t find the space to have rest. I know that I do this, but I should really work this out. And we get a picture here, not just that Jesus is judging us for all our mistakes, but it’s a picture of compassion that he is drawing people towards him and towards understanding and knowing him better. And it’s in that space that we start to find transformation as we figure out our priorities in our life. And so it’s not just a picture of God telling us you need to rest, but of Jesus showing this incredible compassion on people as he teaches them and encourages them and pastors them, is the picture we get, towards him.
A Tale of Two Feasts: Herod’s Palace vs. Jesus’ Wilderness
We have disciples who need rest. We have people who need teaching. And then we have this crowd that needs feeding. In this whole picture, we get a bit of a glimpse of Psalm 23. “The Lord is my shepherd,” and they’re like sheep without a shepherd, we’re told. But if we haven’t fully got the picture of Psalm 23 yet, we get even more in this next section. Verse 39: “Then Jesus told the disciples to have the people sit down in groups,” Mark tells us, “on the green grass.” That’s not a detail we often hear. It feels like it’s not a detail you might find in the Middle East, in Israel. But there are areas of green grass. There are areas of fertile land, but Mark has put that detail here specifically. I don’t know why the people are still standing. Is Jesus saying, “Stand up from here. I found a grassier spot over here,” or have they just been standing there the whole time? That shows us a picture maybe of the eagerness they have to see and hear from him. But once again, Jesus is inviting rest, isn’t he? He’s saying, “Take a seat.” And we get this “He leads me by green pastures” picture. This is the good shepherd caring for the sheep.
And we see that Jesus hasn’t forgotten the disciples. Right at the beginning, he said they’ve been too busy to eat. Now he says, “Let’s deal with this and find some food.” He does bring them into that process. He does take the opportunity to also teach them something about dependence, but he also cares for them. The very thing that the disciples haven’t had time to do, Jesus says, “Let’s make sure we do that.”
The world offers us a funeral in a palace and Jesus offers us a feast in the wilderness. That is the picture of rest that we get from Jesus.
And I think in all this picture, we get such an incredible contrast to the feast that happened in Mark 6 just before it. Because here Jesus is full of compassion, caring for those that he needs, caring for the needs of those that are there, caring for the servants that have served. And the contrast we have is this picture that Herod has in a palace. Jesus gets his people to sit down on the green grass in a wilderness. Herod invites his successful stars, the red carpet stars, into his palace. And so we get this palace picture of the superstars rather than servants. We get a picture of performance. We’re told that Herod’s daughter performs a dance for them all which pleases him. And so we get a picture of working towards approval of others. And she pleases Herod. And we’re also told the guests are also pleased by this dance. So much so that Herod says, “Ask me anything you like.” And so there is a reward for her performing for them. So we get that picture that’s going on.
We get the picture of Herod’s wife who is so full of hate and vengeance over John the Baptist, who has spoken out against her, that in order to deal with—rather than dealing with her own guilt—she responds with this hateful vengeance of saying, “Why don’t you ask for John the Baptist’s head?” So, we get that horrific picture happening in this feast in Herod’s palace. And so the story of that feast ends in a horrific death. What a contrast is this feast happening in a palace that ends with a funeral and the feast that happens in the wilderness that ends in life. That is the picture we get of God’s rest: that the world offers us a funeral in a palace and Jesus offers us a feast in the wilderness. That is the picture of rest that we get from Jesus.
The Ultimate Rest in Christ’s Broken Body
And something incredible happens in this story that points us to the greatest kind of rest, and that happens when Jesus breaks the bread. There’s a very clear picture as Mark tells us this story of Jesus breaking bread there that is a foreshadowing of what we’re going to see in the Last Supper. And while Mark hasn’t got to that part of the story yet, it’s expected that people that are reading this story have already, many have heard and experienced some of those things. And so there’s already that kind of language and echoing. But you hear it there. Jesus took the five loaves and two fish. He looked up towards heaven. He blessed them. Then breaking the loaves into pieces, he kept giving the bread to the disciples so they could distribute it to the people. We get this pattern of take, bless, break, and give. That’s what Jesus does. He takes it, he thanks God for it, he breaks it, and he gives it. It’s the same pattern we see in the Last Supper as he talks about his own body.
While Herod has a party with the stars, Jesus has a feast looking towards his scars. The world offers a funeral in a palace. And Jesus offers a feast in the wilderness, a feast in the wilderness that leads to eternal life.
The Gospel of John really spells it out to us. He makes it super clear Jesus is making this connection to his own body, to his own self. Mark just gives us this little glimpse of this pattern and we can see the same thing: that the ultimate rest Jesus wants to point us to is rest in his eternal providence, in his own broken body. And so while Herod has a party with the stars, Jesus has a feast looking towards his scars. The world offers a funeral in a palace. And Jesus offers a feast in the wilderness, a feast in the wilderness that leads to eternal life.
And so as we think about rest and all the forms that has in our lives, the number one form of rest we want to draw our eyes to is that eternal life. And so if you’re in a space where you’re still trying to figure out what you think of Jesus, we certainly want to say there are opportunities like Alpha where you can unpack that more. But we also want to say take that rest. Just take it and receive that eternal life that is offered through Jesus’ own broken body. If that’s something you want to talk to me or one of the leadership team about, we would love to talk about that with you. This is the invitation.
And with it, we want to rest in Jesus. We want to reassess our busyness and our patterns and rhythms and the places where we’re being faithful in our work, but also faithful in our ministry and faithful in our rest. We want to reassess the idea of the world relying on us, the mission relying on us, and remember that we can trust things into God’s hands and take the rest that he has called us to take. We want to reassess the spaces that we’re called to serve as we seek to provide for the people who need teaching and feed the people who need feeding. We want to work hard at our rest.
His name is Jesus. His name is Jesus. His name is Jesus. The light of the world.