The Reading: Genesis 2:1-3
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended the divine work which God had made; and God rested on the seventh day from all the work which God had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it God had rested from all the work which God created and made.
The Gospel Lesson: Matthew 11: 28-30
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
A WINTER WALK--REST UNTO OUR SOULS2-12-52
God, we sometimes hear your Word and don’t know what to do with it. Today may be one of those times, let us listen closely to what You are saying behind the words, to what You are saying to our spirits. May the listening and the speaking bring You honor and glory. In Jesus’ Name, Amen
I think we are in for a special journey today as we look at these two scripture passages as we end our study on the Spiritual Walk. Jesus promises “rest unto our souls”—whatever does that mean? We will return to the specific Gospel lesson in a moment. Before that, I want to look briefly at why it seems so difficult for us to seek, much less, find, such rest, even though we talk about it quite a bit.
Why are we unable to trust in the divine invitation to rest? Our answer leads us to four truths. Here is the first truth—we take ourselves too seriously. God, must laugh compassionately sometimes at the lengths to which we will go only to prove to ourselves and to others just how important and indispensible we are.
There’s a story I love. You gotta go “back in the day” to understand this—remember when they let the “mature” kids be crossing guards at the schools? Well, it seems that Edward, who lived just two blocks from the school, was late from school. His mother was getting a little worried. In Edward comes, sputtering and muttering and his mother asked, “Why are you late? I was getting worried.” “Oh, Mom, they let Jeremy be the crossing guard today and he made us all wait 10 minutes until a car came along, so he could stop it.” Mmmm, there’s a little of Jeremy in all of us. So perhaps we take ourselves so seriously that we come to believe that our jobs, or those things which define our very selves, are too important to take a few moments away to commune with God.
The second truth is that we don’t take God seriously enough.
The reading today is from Genesis 2, the first three verses. Listen again in RC’s version, The heavens and earth were done—all of them. On Day 7, God ended the divine work. And God rested on the seventh day. God blessed the seventh day and even sanctified it for the purpose of rest. This is what God did about rest—later, in the Ten Commandments, God will command us to rest, but here God finishes the creation and creates a space and a time, blesses it, yea, sanctifies it for nothing more than rest.
Regardless of how we describe creation, there comes a time after the chaos subsides, and the world is filled with wonder, God rested. Declaring the day sanctified, a word rich in meaning such as 1. To set apart for sacred use; consecrate. 2. To make holy; purify. 3. To make productive of holiness or spiritual blessing. There are other meanings, but they all suggest the same—the setting aside of a time or place, the making holy of such a time or place. Those of us whose tradition talk a lot about “sanctification” may think we know all there is to know—I think we don’t. I think that in our earnest attempts to live holy and pure lives, we may have missed one of the most ‘sanctified’ aspects of live itself—rest unto our souls.
The third truth that we fail to admit is that we, most of us, are afraid to slow down for fear our lives will overtake us. There is a familiar scene from Indiana Jones and the Tale of something or another, where he steals some powerful statue and runs into numerous problems getting away. You can tell I’m not a big fan of Indiana Jones. However, this familiar scene is a great metaphor for our lives as pretty soon a giant boulder is rolling after Indiana down the tunnel and is gaining on him with every roll. You may be familiar with the quite frightening scene. I sometimes picture my life and the activities I schedule myself for in it in a similar fashion—don’t stop, don’t turn around, and whatever you do, don’t acknowledge the boulder. Sometime, several years ago, I had back stage passes to what was then MGM studios. That used to happen a lot for those of us who knew people in “high places” at Disney. Anyway, I was touring the Indiana Jones Adventure and I saw the big boulder. I asked for a demonstration of how they did it. I was allowed to stay on the attraction and as the boulder threatened to take over the “Indiana for the day”, the floor opened up (unbeknownst to the audience) just as the boulder appeared to crush him and he landed 4 feet below on a cloud of memory foam and was able to walk up the secret pathway to where he would suddenly miraculously appear. Ever since then I have thought a similar escape hatch would be the coolest thing ever. Wouldn’t it be amazing if just as the boulder of life threatens to overtake us, the floor drops out and lands us in a pile of foam, safe again.
We come to our fourth truth—we miss the fulness of Jesus’ call to each of us in Matthew. Why is this?—see Truths 1-3. In reality, I believe that we may confuse Jesus’ call to find rest, here in Matthew, with Psalm 23. Will you think with me now about Jesus’ specific call? “Come to me, all of you who are tired and don’t know where to turn. I am the source of the rest you are seeking. Walk beside me, be yoked to me as an equal—this way you can learn from me. You will learn what it feels like to be meek and lowly of heart and as you do, beautiful rest will begin to flood your souls. Walking beside me, yoked to me is the easiest thing in the world. You’ll be amazed at how light your burden will become.”
Sometimes it’s hard for us to hear these words of Jesus as comforting—we look at oxen, yoked together, straining together, sometimes in harmony, sometimes not. But Jesus is calling us to be in perfect union with him. He wants us to walk beside him as he walks beside us—is this not the perfect description of the spiritual walk. Today, in our last sermon of this series, we end our many week discussion with a glimpse of what we almost all crave—pure, free, graceful, rest. I think I had always envisioned spiritual rest as a kind of hammock made of angels’ wings, where I could swing back and forth in the breeze of the Holy Spirit. Nothing to do but just sigh deeply and breathe in the wholeness of God’s unmerited grace. This is not what Jesus says—no “come over here and lie down and take a little rest and everything will seem better in the morning”. Jesus said, come, place yourself so closely beside me that we are yoked—that everywhere I go you go—in all my compassion work, you are there. In all my caring for the poor, you are beside me, in all my tears for the world, you are there. In all my outrages against injustice, you are there. Suddenly, this doesn’t sound so restful at all. But, this is what Jesus says.
And so I dig deeper to understand. Many of you know that in New York, I did a little showing of dogs, enough at least that I learned the lingo. There is one competition that I didn’t get into to, but I loved to watch and this was showing dogs in a brace. This is where two dogs are shown together on one show lead. The dogs are in no way ‘forced’, and the point of the competition is to get these two dogs to go through the steps of being shown together. Now, even two dogs who love each other with throw a fit or two about being leashed together, so it does require training. But what it mostly requires, is the perfect matching of the two dogs before you ever even try to get them to walk together. There are some obvious rules, you don’t show a big dog with a little—dogs must be nearly carbon copies of each other to be winners. And you don’t usually show a hyper dog with a lazy one unless you, yourself, are a glutton for punishment. Bloodlines are compared, physical traits, character traits—all go into the choosing.
If we assume that Jesus takes as much time, choosing to whom He will be yoked, we can assume that He really, really wants us. “Come to me”, He says. Come, walk beside me, be yoked to me”. Our invitation, then, is that, when we tarry from the busy-ness in our lives long enough to hear Jesus softly call, we learn that the whole of our spiritual walk is described in the words of this invitation. And as the hardened spaces of protection in our heart begin to slip away, we walk closer and closer to Jesus, our feet in perfect harmony, beside the feet of Jesus, not behind, not in front, beside, doing the work of our Lord, finding rest unto our souls. Amen and Amen.
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