(On Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30)
This is a great gospel reading for a lazy summer morning in a long weekend. It talks about rest. ”Come to me, all who are labored and heavily burdened,” Jesus says, “and I will give you rest.”
It’s a special kind of rest he’s inviting us into here. Not simply a matter of extra time off from work, but sabbath rest. This is the rest of the seventh day when God, like a good Jewish carpenter, saw that all was finished, all was good, and he rested. This is the sabbath rest Jesus is inviting us into. It is something we can enjoy now even as it is something we anticipate.
Because creation is a work in progress. As Jesus once said, “My father keeps on working, and so do I.” Creation is not yet finished, God is still working to bring us and all of creation to completion.
Our spiritual ancestors invited us into a certain rhythm of life: to spend one day each week both enjoying what God has already made and anticipating how it will be when this amazing world is complete, when we are complete:
No more worry or pain or tears
no more hunger or violence
no one left out or homeless.
On the sabbath, we are to enter with our imaginations into how this new world will be, how it will look and feel when it is complete.
We Christians enter this sabbath rest when we gather at this table for the eucharist where everyone has a place, everyone is fed. Here we remind ourselves and the world around us of what the world can be. Here, to use Gandhi’s words, we can be the change we hope to see in the world, the change we anticipate when creation is complete.
This sabbath eucharist s a subversive act, because it overturns the order of things as we know them. It sets our agenda for the rest of the week.
If in the fullness of God’s creation there will be no more violence, no more moms and dad mourning the loss of their kids, then we let the weapons fall from our hands now and work for peace.
If in that new day there will be no more tears or sadness or death, then we wipe the tears from each other’s eyes now.
If in that sabbath rest, no one will go hungry and no one will be left out because of who they are, then we reach out our hands in welcome now.
The future sabbath that we look forward to sets the agenda for how we live now.
But even as it sets our agenda, this sabbath gathering for eucharist also invites us to rest, to chill, lighten up, loosen our jaws, relax our grasps.
For some of us, this invitation into sabbath rest can be a challenge.
Because we are responsible people who know that our decisions about how we spend our time counts. We have to carefully weigh what we do. Simply trusting that everything will come out alright can be an abdication of our responsibility. This is, of course, an obvious truth.
But only a half truth. Life at its deepest level is not only a conscious project but also an unsolicited gift.
The task of healing--both ourselves and those we love--means not simply trying with all our might to employ our best skills and strategies. Healing is first and foremost the work of God, a gift from the Creator, something we open ourselves to receive.
Bringing about a more just society--from immigration reform to an end to the violence and the devastation of the planet--this, too, is not simply a matter of grit and endurance. We can take ourselves and all our noble work so seriously. But a just society is ultimately a gift from God, something God does. As one bishop once wrote:
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.This is the paradox in which we live: struggling with all our might for healing in our lives and in our world, working to build our community, to bring about justice…
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master
builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
...while at the same time chilling, relaxing our grasp, knowing that it is all God’s work. All is grace, all is God’s gift.
Some philosophers call this an existential tension, a paradox at the center of being human. As one theologian writes, We are like dancers who in a single moment must kick the world away from us with an airy grace, and yet, in that very same moment, press it to our hearts. A paradox at the center of our very human lives.
Sabbath rest: something we enjoy even now, something we strive with all our energy to bring about for us and for all people, something we know to be our future, something that is, ultimately, a gift of the Creator.
It’s summer, and I hope in these lazy days we’re all getting a taste now and then of this sabbath rest, time to chill with family and friends, take a hike on the beach, have an extra beer--that is, if you haven’t had two or three already.
Simply allowing life to carry us without worry or strain on our part.
The poet D. H. Lawrence, obviously a cat person, seemed to understand something about this sabbath rest into which Jesus invites us. Let me close with one of his poems:
All that matters is to be at one with the living God
To be a creature in the house of the God of Life.
Like a cat asleep on a chair
at peace, in peace
and at one with the master of the house, with the
mistress
at home, at home in the house of the living,
sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.
Sleeping on the hearth of the living world,
yawning at home before the fire of life
feeling the presence of the living God
like a great reassurance
a deep calm in the heart
a presence
as of a master sitting at the board
in his own and greater being,
in the house of life.
Maybe Jesus’ invitation to sabbath rest means learning the lessons of our cats.
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