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.
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.
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 2nd 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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