TEACH & NOURISH
SERMON PREACHED BY FR. TONY NOBLE ON SUNDAY JULY 19th 2009
Mark 6: 30 “Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest awhile”.
Twelve months ago I was getting ready for my sabbatical. For those of you who don’t know, I spent the month of August looking after the Church of Saint George, an Anglican Church in Taormina, Sicily.
That sabbatical led me to starting up a blog – something I was slightly apprehensive about. However, once I got into the swing of things nothing could stop me. I am still keeping the blog and try to make a comment about something that has happened every few days. You can still go to my website and see what I did during my month in Sicily.
Many people were fascinated with the wonderful pictures that appeared on my blog from various places in Sicily that I went to. The truth is – I didn’t take any pictures. I didn’t even take a camera with me. What happened is that back here at All Saints’ Parish Office, Terry would see where I had been, would then surf the net, find the appropriate picture and then put it on my blog.
In fact I have hardly ever taken a camera on holidays for 20 years. I remember 22 years ago I made my first visit to America, and I took heaps of photographs. The most interesting of those pictures actually hangs in my condo here in University Heights – it’s of me standing at the statue of Liberty, and in the background are the twin towers of the World Trade Centre.
1987 was a great experience for me to visit this country for the first time. Australia has always had a strong connection with America since the war on the Pacific, and going back to the 19th century, so as a young Australian it was great to finally come to America.
Two years later I made my second visit, and I took my camera again. Since then I have hardly ever taken a camera. I was wondering about this. Why? It’s because America ceased to be an object or a destination that one takes photographs of.
After those first 2 trips to the USA I felt at home. I had made good friends and became familiar with not only places, but lots of things Americans….like tipping, driving on the right side of the road (or as the English say, the wrong side of the road!), and feeling a strong connection with people, and churches, and cities.
And so for 20 years America became an annual place to visit, often on my way to England for Church duties or on a vacation in Europe. My visits to America became an experience of returning to my second home, in which I both participated and received.
I no longer saw America as a destination, like a Disneyland to visit. It had become part of me and of my life, stimulating my life personally and as a priest. Of course, I never imagined actually moving here to live and become Rector of this parish.
Taking no camera has become very much part of my travels these days. People find that strange that I don’t want to take pictures. You see, travel has become the way to experience both culture and life in another country. Every year I try to go to some country that I have never visited so that I may increase my experience of people, and places, and cultures.
That’s a vacation. When I go on my annual pilgrimage to Walsingham in England – to the great Shrine of the Virgin Mary – it has the added dimension of being a spiritual experience. It is a bit like the retreat I go on in Lent – though, of course when I go on retreat in Lent I keep silence and hardly communicate with human beings.
A pilgrimage is not like that. There is not much quietness. It is more fun – as those who came on pilgrimage with me two years ago to Walsingham will tell you. We had a lot of fun, and we were hardly quiet!
This going away for a spiritual purpose and experience is something that many people cannot do, and I feel that I am blessed as your Rector to be able to do this. Going away for a spiritual retreat is something that everyone ought to aspire to – some of you do. But in your busy lives it is not always easy to find a week or even a few days to go away.
I am sure that this is why Jesus took the apostles away to a lonely place. It wasn’t just to get away from the crowds – though it had become necessary – but it was to have time to reflect, to pray, and to renew their spirits, and to reflect particularly on what had been happening.
Jesus had sent the apostles out to preach repentance, and they came back to tell Jesus what they had done that – that they had healed and preached. Now Jesus takes them away to a lonely place so that these newly commissioned apostles can reflect on the enormity of the task, and to seek God’s grace and strength for it to continue. That is the purpose for a time of going away spiritually.
This scene of the apostles going off to a lonely place with Jesus is actually a significant point in Saint Mark’s Gospel. Earlier in the gospel we hear about the call of the twelve and their commissioning and sending out by Jesus to evangelise. Saint Mark records in chapter 6: “They went out and preached that men should repent”, and this was followed by healing the sick and anointing them with holy oil – the Sacrament of Unction.
Prior to this event, we have heard in the Sunday Gospels Saint Mark’s account of the ministry of Jesus – he preaches and teaches, he heals and even raises the dead, and the crowds follow him.
Having given the apostles authority to do this same thing, to preach and heal, he calls them away for a time of prayer and reflection, to refresh their spirits and focus their minds. But we hear that the crowd still followed. They weren’t going to let them get away. And Saint Mark has this wonderful verse: “He had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd”.
This is a very interesting and significant comment, for Saint Mark is introducing to us the image of Christ as the Good Shepherd. It is not explicitly like in Saint John’s gospel, where Jesus says: “I am the Good Shepherd”. Here Saint Mark subtly introduces the image of Christ as the Shepherd of the sheep.
It’s the same with many instances in Matthew, Mark, and Luke – an image, or a symbol, or a theme is introduced in the context of the ministry of Jesus. But we have to go to Saint John’s Gospel to see how these images and these symbols have a theological context – and Saint John teases out the meaning in an explicit way.
This image of Christ the Good Shepherd is significant for two reasons at this point in the Gospel of Saint Mark.
Firstly, we have been hearing in Saint Mark’s Gospel about the establishment of the Church through the preaching of the apostles, through their mission to be the ones sent by Jesus. A ministry of preaching and the Sacraments – and last week I pointed out that those two thing are the two sides to evangelism.
Now Saint Mark, having established the mission of the Church, introduces the concept of the Church as the flock of Christ, with Christ as our Good Shepherd.
So we have gone from a mission of preaching, to the establishing of a community – a flock under Christ the Good Shepherd. In that context we see the appointed twelve are meant to be shepherds themselves, and they represent the sacred ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons that has been handed on to us two thousand years later.
They are called to be the shepherds after the example of him, who is the Good Shepherd – and so are all clergy. Christ still performs his role as Shepherd through his priests in particular – and particularly as we celebrate the Eucharist Sunday by Sunday with and for our people.
This is why the feeding of the five thousand follows in this story Mark chapter 6. Having called the apostles and sent them out, and establishing them as the ministers of the Gospel, with this image of the Good Shepherd – we now move to the feeding of the five thousand – the wonderful image of the Eucharist.
At first sight, the feeding of the five thousand is a miracle of necessity. The demanding crowd needed to be fed and it was dusk – and of course there is no place where food can be obtained apart from five loaves and two fish.
These people who will not let Jesus alone have a need and they have to be fed. But this miracle is in all four Gospels, and from the beginning the Church understood this as an image of Holy Communion. Just as Christ fed all those thousands, so he feeds us in the Eucharist. Here there is a logical sequence. The Church needs to be centered, and nourished, and is also defined by this wonderful Sacrament of the altar we call the Eucharist.
Here is a deeper meaning in chapter 6 of Saint Mark’s Gospel which is beyond what it first seems. Preaching of repentance was followed by healing and the sacraments, and the Church was established in that way. The appointed apostles go away to enable them to reflect, in order to be preachers, healers, and shepherds of the flock. Then follows the Eucharist.
The establishment of the Church and it’s life as the body of Christ, centers on the coming together of the people of God Sunday by Sunday, to offer the bread and wine, and receive back the Body and Blood of Christ – so that we might be fed and nourished by Jesus himself.
It is through the Mass that Jesus still cares for his people, still cares for you and I. He strengthens us, refreshes us, nourishes us, gives us direction and focus and inspiration through the simple receiving of the Holy Communion.
As we look again at Saint Mark 6 we have the pattern of the Eucharist. In the first part Jesus teaches his people – as he does in the first part of the Mass, the Liturgy of the Word. Then in the second part of this Gospel reading, Jesus feeds his people – as he feeds us in the second part of the Eucharist, the Liturgy of the Sacrament.
So Saint Mark 6 itself becomes the pattern of the Eucharist.
It is only through the power of this Holy Sacrament that the clergy can possibly be teachers, preachers, healers, good shepherds. And it is only in the power of this Holy Sacrament that you and I, all of us, can be evangelists and speak of Jesus – and be enabled as the psalm says: “To declare thy name unto my brethren”.