Rest in God, Heal! Prop 11B, 22 July 2012

Rest in God, Heal!

2 Samuel 17:1-14a; Ps. 89:20-37; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Hear again, from Ephesians:

“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.”

Who among us has not, at one time, experienced being a stranger?  Yet this passage says that as Christians, we are never strangers.  We are always citizens, with the saints, we are always part of the household of God, wherever we go.  Perhaps that is why so many of us find a church family that is our community even when family members are far away or beyond the veil.  We find our home here.

But the world still has a way of making us feel like strangers.  For example, the shooting in Colorado the other day made me feel a stranger to whoever could have thought that was an acceptable or even conceivable thing to do, to bring a gun into a theater, to shoot people?  Certainly there was an illness in the man that caused it, but also a sickness in our culture that allows for easy access to guns and inadequate access to mental health care.  Sometimes we feel like strangers in this world.

So… sometimes we just have to get out of here, as Jesus did at the beginning of this gospel.  Leave it all behind for a moment, retreat with his buddies.  He says, "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while."  But sometimes this resting is not about traveling—those of you who travel a lot know that it can be tiring, too.  Sometimes it’s just about stopping.   Taking. A. Pause. 

Sometimes we need to stop for a moment in order to get away from the things of the world that can overwhelm, to remember our home in God.  Remember we aren’t strangers.  This is what we call Sabbath time.

Stopping like this isn’t easy.  Try laying aside your phone, computer, television, other electronic devices for the better part of a day and just enjoying chewing and tasting your food, feeling the breeze on your skin, walking around the block.  It’s hard.  There are so many pulls on our time, on our attentions.  There were certainly pulls on Jesus.  People follow him, and people will need us too.  There is still so much need in the world, and one of the challenges is to pause without feeling guilty and without feeling bitter that others still need your help.  Still, it is important to rest, because it is only in resting that we are recharged, that we can access that compassion again—that compassion that flows out of the (partially) rested Jesus halfway through this gospel.  Listen: “as he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.”

We must rest, because as we were reminded a month ago, in the words of Teresa of Avila, “Christ has no hands but ours.”  We are needed to heal a hurting world, to be the hands of Christ for others.  One author says that we are the fringe of Jesus—because we are the flowing fabric that flies out from his body into the world and touches and heals those in need.[1]  But can we heal if we are not healthy ourselves? 

We have a tradition of resting like this, called taking a Sabbath day, or Sabbath time. 

 Many of you will have practiced it at some level and it is a time-honored part of our Judeo-Christian tradition.  It is needed more than ever in our increasingly busy world. It’s simple.  God asks that we rest one day a week—disconnect from work and enjoy the world around us, pray and enjoy your family.  As Norman Wirzba puts it—“discovering the rhythms of rest and delight.”[2]  If you have taken a day out like this, you know that it refreshes your soul and spirit.

Is it easy to take a day like this?  No.  Many must work on Sunday.  Or perhaps you have made volunteer commitments.  But rest—deliberate, God’s peace-type rest—is so important—for you, for your families, to be an example of a thoughtful Christian life. Like daily prayer, it is the backbone of living as a Christian in today’s thoroughly un-thoughtful world.

 So sometimes you need to get creative.  Say you just can’t budge your Sunday commitment, or your Saturday schedule.  Find another time during the week to be your Sabbath time, even if it isn’t a whole day to start with.  You can follow the Jewish tradition and begin on the night before and end the next afternoon.  Or it can be a half-day retreat—with prayer, a journal, a good book, on the porch or your favorite sitting spot.  Or just taking your time cooking….  Some quiet time, with God and possibly with family or friends.

Does this seem like a privilege?  Well, as the L’Oreal ad goes, “You’re worth it!”  And if you feel you rest already, it could be about being intentional more than doing more of what you’re doing.  It could be making your gardening a prayer, or spending a whole day praying while at whatever solitary task you take up.

While I lived in Chile, I got into the rhythms of rest and Sabbath time in a different way.  Not only was there less to distract me in terms of television (from 50+ stations to 3!) and the internet (I learned why it is called the “world wide wait” in many parts!), there was also a bit less homework (imagine not trying to cram in 80-100 pages of reading a night!) but there were also traditions of slower living that I learned and quickly adopted.  One was the late lunch on Sundays at 4 PM.  After a leisurely morning of church and cooking, a time just to eat at a leisurely pace, share stories and then enjoy a hot herbal tea to aid digestion. The slowness refreshed me body and soul.  Then there was my personal lunchtime tradition, many days, of taking advantage of returning to the temporarily empty apartment I shared with my host parents, eating in quiet, drinking a small cup of coffee and calmly washing my dishes before returning to the grind of university classes in downtown Santiago. 

Now, Alene and I have other traditions.  Quiet, slow mornings on Mondays with big cooked breakfasts and loads of prayer time, followed by leisurely afternoons that we try to keep clear of errands so we can go hiking or play tennis or catch a movie.  Saturday night with no television or movies, just reading and quiet to prepare ourselves for Sunday.  This might look different for you and that’s okay! These are ways for me to slow down to be present to myself so that I can better be present in all of my relationships.  I find that as a priest I need loads of Sabbath time in order to be very present to others.  This will play out very differently for a young mother or a caregiver—it may be about Sabbath moments than whole days.

It all goes back to that concept—to heal others we need to be healthy enough to look at them and feel compassion.  To be open to healing the world.  To give God a half a second in our busy lives to tell us how to do that!

And this isn’t all about coming here—church is wonderful, and it serves the need of providing Christians with a space and time for building community and praying together. 

But, as God reminds Nathan and David in the 2^nd Samuel passage today, it isn’t about building God a house of cedar or any other type.  God is free, tent-dweller that God is.  And our spirits are free too.  We need to be able to pray where we are and gather here for further support from each other, and then from here go back out and heal the world!

So my prayer is this: may we rest in Christ, at least once daily in prayer, and at least once weekly to rest and heal our spirits, so that we can find the healing within God and the compassion within ourselves to reach back out and heal the world!  Amen.

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[1] Karen Marie Yust, “Ephesians 2:11-22: Pastoral Perspective,” FOTW Year B, Vol. 3.

[2] Subtitle of Living the Sabbath by Norman Wirzba, 2006.