REST

Sermon 2 in Summer Sabbatical Series

Genesis 2:2-3; Matthew 11:28-30

            In the 1930’s depression – life was difficult on the hard streets of London, England.  One evening, a young man with dreams of being a mathematician came up on a young, malnourished little girl in a back ally warming herself on a steam vent.  After exhausting efforts to find the girl’s family, the young 19 year old and his mum – decided to take the girl into their home.  Many years later, after the tragic death of the girl – the man wrote about the extraordinary life of the girl named Anna. 

            The book – Mister God, This is Anna – was written under the psydenem of Flynn and published in 1974.  The book records the amazing insights little 4 year old Anna had about God – who she called Mr. God, love and life.  My favorite story from the book reveals a powerful insight into our Genesis passage this morning. 

            “Mum had this lovely gift of asking questions that landed somewhere.

            “What,” she asked us one Sunday afternoon, “was God’s greatest creative act?”

            Although I didn’t go along with Genesis, I answered, “When he created mankind.”

            I was wrong, according to Mum, so I had another shot. I was still wrong. I ran through six days of creation and drew nothing but blank looks. There was nothing more that I could think of. It wasn’t until I had run out of ideas that I became aware of the exchange between Mum and Anna. So often with Mum that smile happened. It was her Christmas-tree smile, she lit up, she twinkled, and there was no other place to look. She sort of gathered everything around her. Anna was watching her intently, chin cupped in hands. There they sat, looking at each other, Mum with her wonderful smile and Anna with her intense look. The insulation of the six feet or so that separated them was beginning to give way. Anna drilled away at it with her blue eyes while Mum melted it with her smile. Suddenly it happened. Anna slowly placed her hands on the table and pushed herself upright. The gap had been bridged. Anna’s matching smile had to wait while astonishment shaped her face. She gasped, “It was the seventh day – course it was – the seventh day.”

            I looked from one to the other and cleared my throat to capture their attention.

            “I don’t get it,” I said. “God worked all his miracles in six days and then shut down for a bit of rest. What’s so exciting about that?”

            Anna got off her chair and came and sat on my lap. This I knew. This was her approach to the unseeing and unknowing infant – me.

            “Why did Mister God rest on the seventh day?” she began.

            “I suppose he was a bit flaked out after six days’ hard work,” I answered.

            “He didn’t rest because he was tired, though.”

            “Oh, didn’t he? It makes me tired just to think about it all.”

            “Course he didn’t. He wasn’t tired.”

            “Wasn’t he?”

            “No, he made rest.”

            “Oh. He did that, did he?”

            “Yes, that’s the biggest miracle. Rest is. What do you think it was like before Mister God started on the first day?”

            “A perishing big muddle, I guess,” I replied.

            “Yes, and you can’t rest when everything is in a big muddle, can you?”

            “I suppose not. So what then?”

            “Well, when he started to make all the things, it got a bit less muddly.”

            “Makes sense,” I nodded.

            “When he was finished making all the things, Mister God undone all the muddle. Then you can rest, so that’s why rest is the very, very biggest miracle of all. Don’t you see?””

Rest is the biggest miracle of all.  Have you ever thought about that way before?  When God was creating everything – sun, moon, stars, fauna, animals, humans – God knew there was more than needed – Rest.  God created rest for his creatures:  “On the seventh day, he rested from all his work.”  Not only did God create rest, though - God blessed rest:  “God blessed the seventh day.  He made it a Holy Day

 This is the good news – the Gospel - for you and me and everyone in our 24/7, 365 world:  God creates and blesses rest for his creation!  God created rest as a gift to you and me.

And what have we done with it?  Most middle class Americans choose to live out sync with the rhythms of rest, worship and work God created.  As a result of this out-of-sync-ness our meanings and value get distorted.

Gordan Dahl describes our out of sync lives like this:

1.       We worship our Work.

By this I mean – we have made work our identity.  Rather than allowing work to contribute to well-rounded individuals – we have made our work the definition of who we are. 

            I am as guilty of this as anyone.  One of the first questions I ask a new acquaintances is this, “so, tell me what you do?”   If a person is retired, I even make this statement – “so, what did you do before you retired.”  When work defines our identity – it deflects the identity Christ seeks to build in us. 

            We measure our worth as individuals, as men and women by the work that we do.  This is why the recession has been so difficult for so many of us.  When our job or our career has been taken from us – we lose ourselves and struggle to understand our selves in God’s image rather than our employment. 

2.       We Play at our Worship.

When our lives are out of sync with God’s rhythm, rather than being the center of our lives, worship becomes something at which we simply play.  When we play at worship – we come to church to make us feel good, but not too ask too much of us. 

            Wilber Reese described the way we approach worship this way: 

“I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please, not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine.  I don’t want enough of Him to make me love an illegal alien or to send me to another country.  I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth.  I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack.  I would like to buy 43 worth of God, please.”

            When we play at worship – we miss receive the feel good parts of religion and miss the transformation that happens in a life faith and trust. 

3.       We Work at our Play –

Finally, when our lives are out of sync with God – we work at our play.  Instead of play being the one part of lives in which we find rest and joy to live lives worthy of God’s calling – our play in our American lives requires us to often go back to work to find true rest.

            One vacation to Disney World will convince you of how we as Americans work at our play.  The last time we took our family to Disney about 6 years ago, we stayed in the Pop culture resort.  Every morning, we got up at the break of dawn to catch a bus to one of the Disney parks which would open an hour early for Disney resort guests.  With thousands of others we would arrive fresh for a new day and then hustle to the back of the park to catch the most popular rides.  We would time our fast pass rides with our meal times to miss the crowds.  Then, we would stay til the park closed so that we make sure we get the most of all of the money we were investing in this vacation.  By the time we traveled home – we had created wonderful memories – but we were exhausted. 

            Now a days, vacations are not the only ways we work at our play.  Our former past times have become work.  Boys don’t just play ball for the enjoyment of the game, they join travel ball teams to give them the best chance of scholarships when they are older.  Girls don’t just dance for the beauty and body tone – they join competition teams and travel the southeast a couple of times a month.  Name any sport, any childhood activity – and you will see how we have made these fun things into work – for adults and our kids. 

           

This out of sync life where we worship our work, play at our worship, and work at our play – is not the life desires for us.  Do you remember God’s greatest creative act:  Rest.  God creates and blesses rest for his creation!

            Jesus invites us to live in-sync with his life where worship stands at the heart of our lives, work gives us purpose, and play restores our soul.  Look again at Matthew 11 from the Message:

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

I love this phrase – “learn the unforced rhythms of grace”

            When we live out of sync with God’s rhythms we get tired from trying so hard every day to make life work right – to make relationships matter.  Our lives get worn out from going and going like a hamster on a wheel hoping it all matters.  And we get burned out on religion – because we all know church and religion can be the worst at pulling us out of rhythm asking more and more of our time. 

            To all of us – Jesus invites us to get away and recover the life he desires for us.  The ministry at worked with in Gatlinburg – Smoky Mountain Resort Ministries – used a phrase to explain their ministry that has always stuck with me:  “Let your recreation become re-creation.”  When our lives become in sync with God – our time away revives us – helps us experience the rest God created for us.  God’s rest re-creates us into the people God designed and created us to be. 

            For us to rediscover – or perhaps to discover for the first time, God’s gift of rest in our lives consider this background to our English word Leisure:   

The Latin word for leisure is licere = "to be permitted.”  As we learn the rhythms of God we need to give ourselves permission to relax, to play, to enjoy life, and to enjoy God for who God.  Interestingly, the Latin for work is negotium = "non leisure.”  Work for the Romans was understood as the opposite of rest.  God’s rhythms invite us to work so that when we rest we can better experience God. 

            Jesus invites us to yoke ourselves to him in order to sync way of living to his rhythms of grace.  Literally, A yoke comprised a device that bound animals together and controlled them.  A yoke enabled them to perform productive work.”

            Jesus is speaking to a group of individuals living in an occupied country.  Their entire lives have been yoked to the Roman world.  Through the Roman military presence, their debilitating taxation system, and their harsh rule – everyone living when Jesus spoke these words were yoked to Rome.  Jesus invites them to yoke themselves not a new controlling force – not one that crushed life and health, but instead, one that brought joy and life and fulfillment.

            Living in 21^st Century America – we have our own cultural controls which lead us away from the life and rhythms of God.  While we don’t live under a tyrannical government - the cultural forces have led us one by one away from where God wants us.  No matter our age, our social status, our education, or our years as a Christian – all of us have been influenced by these cultural forces that make us worship our work, play at our worship, and work at our play. 

            Now, Jesus invites us to live in a new way.  He invites us to place his yoke upon us.  To choose to live with him in control of our lives, to let him develop new rhythms in our lives. 

            When we take on the yoke of Jesus, our retirement becomes more purposeful, restful, and meaningful. 

            When we take on the yoke of Jesus – our work becomes vital and life giving.

            When we take on the yoke of Jesus, our worship becomes more central to the heart of our lives.

            When we take on the yoke of Jesus, our play and our recreation give us rest and reward and perspective on the God ordained lives we lead. 

            As we let the rest of Jesus sink into our lives – this poem written by an anonymous monk in Nebraska may give us courage for the journey [I have now learned this poem is also found in the book Chicken Soup for the Soul which also names an author.  I found the poem in the book, When I Relax I Feel Guilty (1979)].  

If I had my life to live over again, I'd try to make more mistakes. 

I would relax, I would limber up, I would be sillier than I have been this trip.

I know very few things I would take seriously. I would take more trips. I would be crazier.

I would climb more mountains, swim more rivers, and watch more sunsets.

I would do more walking and looking. I would eat more ice cream and list beans. I

I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones.

You see, I'm one of these people who live life prophylactically and sensibly hour after hour, day after day.  Oh I've had my moments, and if I had to do it over Again I have more of them.

In fact, I try to have nothing else, just moments, one after another, and set of living so many years ahead each day. I've been one of those people who never go anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a gargle, a raincoat, aspirin, and a parachute.

If I had to do it over again I would go places, do things, and travel lighter than I have.

If I have my life to live over I would start barefooted earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall.

I would play hooky more.

I wouldn't make such good grades, except by accident.

I would ride on more merry-go-round's.

I take more daisies.

This is God’s Good News of Rest for us today.  I hope we will receive this gift as it is given – freely and completely.  Amen.