Proper 11 B + Rest and compassion + 7.21.24
M. Campbell-Langdell
All Saints, Oxnard
(2 Samuel 7:1-14a; 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 assassination attempt on a former
president the other day only seemed to highlight the divisions in our country,
and the ways we feel like strangers from each other. Who knows what
was going on in the mind of the shooter. But once again a tool, a gun, was
misused for gratuitous violence and peoples’ lives were lost. No matter
how we feel about certain political figures, violence is never the solution for
resolving political difference, but our world seems to have lost track of that.
It makes some of us despair for hope for the future. 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." 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 reminds us that we have our home
in our Christian identity and our eternal identity as Children of God. This
is something we remember when we take rest, what some of us 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. Reading your Bible, meditating and as one
friend said it this week, luxuriating in God. 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 constrained
by the fact 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 Teresa of Avila said, “Christ has no
hands but ours.” We are needed to help God 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.[i] But can we heal if we are not
healthy ourselves?
Many of you will have practiced the tradition of
Sabbath-keeping 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 our family and friends. As
Norman Wirzba puts it— “discovering the rhythms of rest and delight.”[ii] 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. Some must
work on Sunday and/or Saturday. 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. We need this all the more now, when our world seems so
fraught with distress.
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.
At different times in my life, I have tried on this practice
to varying degrees. Now, Alene and I have other traditions. We take our
time on Mondays to go slowly and have intentional prayer time, and we try to
keep the day clear of errands so we can go walking, occasionally kayak or catch
a movie. During the week, sometimes we experiment with screen-free nights.
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. Susannah Wesley would famously sit down and flip her apron over her head
and pray or just rest for a few minutes! What sabbath means is time to enjoy
the gifts that God has given.
Whatever you do, try to take time to rest. 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. It helps us to remember that we are not
strangers but citizens with the saints.
And also, 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 with God’s help!
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 our little part of the world in the way we are called to do. And
eventually, may we all feel at home with each other. Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment