They come back from having gone, as they were instructed by Jesus, to the towns and villages, to preach the good news, and to show the good news in action as they healed those who were impaired. And they come back now and they come back to Jesus, and they’re filled with excitement for what they were able to accomplish. But Jesus also sees something in them.

He sees that they’re tired. Perhaps the journey and the work was overwhelming for them. And so he invites them. And that’s a piece that is continual in the Scripture, particularly as it relates to Jesus. He’s always inviting. And so he invites them to come away and to rest him. But I think there’s more than just come away and rest.

And perhaps the answer can be found in reflecting on the life of Saint Paul. Saint Paul, as most of you are aware, was a great persecutor of the church. He was steeped in the traditions of Judaism, and as such saw this new movement of Jesus as a threat, a threat to the tradition, a threat to, in a sense, Judaism.

And so he goes about persecuting these new believers, because he wants to show that they really do not have any power to survive. And then you have that incident when he’s on his way to Damascus, where he is, again, bringing letters that empower him to bring those who have become believers to Jerusalem for trial. But on the way, he has that powerful experience of the risen Lord.

He’s knocked off his horse as it’s described. And the brilliance of Jesus blinds him. And it begins a process, a process of conversion. He goes back. They lead him back into the city. And there he is ministered to by one of the Christian leaders. And he begins to, in his sense, be transformed to change his understanding. Remember, this is a man who was deeply steeped in the traditions of Judaism.

He knew the Scripture of Judaism. And so he goes off. This is the point that very doesn’t get the emphasis it should. But he goes off for three years into the desert of Arabia, and there he processes what the experience was literally. He comes to know the Lord in a very personal way, and it, in a sense, goes back to that first reading where the prophet tells the people how God will send to them a true leader, because history of Israel is a history of chaos.

Kings come and kings go, People put their faith in the king because they’re always looking for the leader who’s going to, in a sense, bring them out of their troubles. And initially, the kings tend to be very upstanding individuals. But shortly, when they realize the power that they have, they begin to see the kingship not as service, but as basically for their own glory.

And so that’s the process that goes on and on and on. Paul was steeped in that, and he was very aware that there was something unique about Jesus. And when he’s in the desert, he’s having this experience of the Lord, and he’s recognizing is that everything that had been prophesized comes to be fulfilled in the risen Lord.

And he comes to understand that this is the true leader. This is as in the words of the Scripture. This is the true Shepherd whom the father has sent into our midst to rescue us. to be in lay out for us a true pattern, a pattern of life that leads to peace and justice. Paul becomes so engrossed in that.

That it literally puts him on fire. And that fire drives him throughout the region of the Mediterranean, going from town and village, country, traveling, taking risky journeys, but all of it for the purpose of sharing what he has come to know, the person he has come to know, the risen Lord, and how the risen Lord opens up the door to God’s ways and lays out for all a pass, a path that leads to holiness.

And we tend to think of holiness as something out there. But Paul’s understanding of holiness was that you would come through Christ by the power of the spirit, to live at one with the father. And in that sense, you would see before you this past that would lead not to the ways of men, but to the ways of God.

And you would be directed then to be instruments, instruments of God’s love, reaching out and embracing others, drawing them into the truth, the truth of who we are and what we are about. For we are in God and we are about God. And that’s what Paul was leading to. And I think Jesus sees when the disciples come back.

They’re filled with all holy what we great things we were able to do. And he calls them, come aside because he wants them to take time to process what they experienced. And the reason for processing it was for them to come to recognize that all the good things they were able to accomplish.

Were the gift of God. And God gave them the ability to do those things. And rather than being inflated with themselves, he wanted them to come to gratitude, to gratitude for how God had touched them and how God was working through them. They would come to know the true leader, and then coming to know the true leader, they would be freed.

They would be freed to realize the goodness that was in them and how they could use that goodness, not for themselves, but for the glory of God in a sense. Mark puts this in here because he wants to say to us, and that’s true discipleship. See true discipleship to which each and every one of us is called by our baptism, is to recognize and be gracious and have great gratitude for the fact that God uses us, uses us for good.

We pray that as we come to the Eucharist, we come to be renewed in that goodness of Jesus that we will have the strength to continue on the journey of discipleship.