Jesus on Vacation?

(Posted July 16, 2024)

“Come away to a deserted place by yourselves and rest awhile.  --- Mark 6:31

It occurred to me the other day. Did Jesus ever take a “vacation?”

God knows he did, or at least he tried to, and wanted his followers to practice the same. But it’s not all that easy to do, when the people clamoring around you are in desperate need of help and healing.

Just this week in the Gospel, Jesus and the growing bunch of people that are following him have spent weeks walking through Galilee, healing those who were “bleeding” physically or mentally. They have endured anger and even the threat of violence from locals who neither trusted or wanted this itinerant preacher in their towns. And when he and the group tried to escape  to a quiet place in a deserted area for just a few days, the deserted area became – well – less deserted as people discovered that Jesus the Healer was there. Not much rest follows that kind of thing.

Jesus’ So-Called Vacation

How was Jesus affected by all of the pouring out of service he provided to people?  We actually are told in the New Testament what it would do to him. As Jesus and the group crossed the Sea of Galilee back and forth, they stopped in the shore communities. There in the “region of the Geresenes,” he was called to come to shore and head to the home where a little girl was dying. On his way a woman who had been bleeding nonstop for 12 years saw the crowd following him pass in the street and took the only opportunity she had. She reached out and touched the hem of Jesus’ robe. Instantly Jesus felt the power go out from him and into her to heal her. He said, “Who touched my clothes?”

Time Off from Demands and Stress

We learn that, for Jesus, healing not only entailed a spiritual act but a physical one, too. Imagine, if we can, how Jesus must have felt when he was sending his power out to so many people, nonstop, who were more concerned with their own welfare than Jesus. I have friends who are introverts who have told me that their own energy reserves are depleted whenever people make demands of their attention. While Jesus was hardly an introvert, one thing we know today: Our own mental health is very much nourished when we make ourselves absent from the physical demands and stresses of daily life, if only for a short period of time.

So, “vacation” isn’t just a nice thing to if one can fit it in. It’s a necessity. I learned the hard way through my wonderful clergy colleague in the Berkshires who put her every moment into caring for her congregation.  They also loved her deeply. She never took time for herself. Imagine how that congregation felt when their pastor went back home after preaching another great sermon and took a nap. It was a nap from which she never woke up, at age 53. Even God the Creator mandated that we work for “six days” and then rest on the seventh.

So, as we head into the sun filled months, where there is beauty all around, yes – it’s time. Time to make ourselves “vacant” from the workaday world and go pursue God in “the cathedral of the mountains, or the “chapel of the seaside.” Time to heal, and to rest.