It’s not a matter of how much we accomplish, but a matter of our relationship with the Lord. Having been out on their own, now they are called back to Jesus. It may be a small point, but we do see that the success of the disciples in their ministry is not measured simply by how much they accomplish. (For Jesus, after presumably three years of ministry, he would have to die to get three days of rest in the tomb!) Besides, we find out in verses 33-34 that Jesus and the disciples never get their little vacation. Unfortunately though, such messages often sound more like good advice than the Good News. No doubt you could say something about the importance of rest and maybe even tie it into a Sabbath concept. In a Gospel which is so fast-paced and where so many things happen “immediately,” it is a striking shift in verse 31 when Jesus tells the disciples to get away by themselves to rest. Still, I found three points which interested me. All in all, there is not much substance with which to work in these verses. Instead, we get verses 53-56 which provide a brief account of Jesus’ healing ministry, before the purity controversy begins in Mark 7:1. (I imagine these texts are omitted because they are included in Year A when Matthew 14:13-21 and 14:22-33 are read.) However, we skip over those two great stories. Verses 30-34 are the introduction to the “Feeding of the Five Thousand” account in Mark 6:35-44 and the incident when Jesus walked on the water in Mark 6:45-52. This Gospel reading begins with an account of the disciples’ return after they had been previously sent out by Jesus in Mark 6:6-13, and follows the unpleasantness of John’s beheading described in Mark 6:14-29.
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