The Gift of Rest

James 1:17-27

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

“The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”  Those are the words of the second century preacher, Irenaeus.  He did not say that the glory of God is a human being really busy, or really hard working, or sunk deep in a tangle of obligations.  No, what brings God delight is when God’s creatures are “fully alive.”  I think that emphasis on “aliveness” is crucial for all of us.  Are you alive?  Are you doing the things that bring you to life?  So, let’s talk about that for a minute.  What kinds of things make you feel alive?

 

This week I was part of a team of people interviewing a candidate for pastor in one of the congregations in our Presbytery.  One of the questions we asked the candidate was, “What do you do to rest?  How do you take care of yourself?  What keeps you alive?”

This is an important question to ask of a potential pastor.  But it seems like a pretty good question to ask of everyone.  Are you getting enough rest?  Are you living in ways that express care for yourself – for your body, your emotional life, and your spiritual well-being?  And are you continuing to engage in activities that bring you to life?  Are you making time for those things that renew you and provide the fuel you need for the road ahead?

These questions may be difficult for you to answer.  But it’s important that we ask them of one another.  Just by asking them we raise our awareness of the importance of rest, play, and joy.

Now I know that we’re all very different.  So it probably doesn’t make any sense to propose hard and fast rules that apply to everyone.  Young children, teenagers, young adults, mid career people, parents raising children, those retired – all these stages of life have their own rhythms.  And in each phase of our lives we’ll need to find wise ways to rest.  But it’s not just a matter of age and stage of life.  We’re all wired differently and have very different personalities too.  And that means that what we find restful will differ. 

So how can we tell how we’re doing?  Is there some kind of litmus test that can determine whether we’re receiving God’s gift of rest?  Well, I’m not aware of one.  But again, we can ask ourselves some basic questions that may suggest how we’re doing . . .

Am I getting enough sleep so that I wake up rested and ready for a new day?

Am I going about my daily rhythms with a bit of playfulness?

Do I find things to laugh about and enjoy even while I’m carrying out my daily responsibilities?

Are there times each day when I can rest from work and do something that recharges me?

Are there times each week when I can invest in activities that bring me delight and pleasure?

Are there times during the year when I take a break, take a vacation, step away from the grinding rhythms of work and responsibility?

Now notice, I didn’t lay down any hard and fast rules about how and when to get your rest.  I’m just trying to ask you some questions about the rhythms of your life that will help you make some changes.  The goal of today’s sermon is simple.  I hope you leave here with a commitment to enjoy your life and to begin building the kind of life that will bring you great joy and satisfaction as a person created and loved by God.

Let’s listen for some good news from our Scripture readings today.  James reminds us that God is fundamentally a Giver.  God is the one who showers us with gifts.  God isn’t first a rule-keeper or a demanding God.  God isn’t first vengeful or angry or calculating or miserly.  God is amazingly, breathtakingly generous.  To be alive in the world God created and loves is to experience God’s generosity at every moment of the day.  Our lives are borne by God’s care for us and delight in us.  And part of being formed by Christian faith is coming to understand Jesus Christ as God’s gift to the world, to welcome Jesus Christ as an expression of God’s lavish generosity.

God’s eternal “purpose,” says James, is to fashion us into “first fruits” among all God’s creatures.  That is, God wants our lives to be so full of joy and gratitude and wonder at being the beloved recipients of all God’s gifts that we become a sign of what’s possible for everyone else.  If God has called you in Jesus Christ to be part of the church that is alive to God with thanksgiving and praise, then you have been called to be a living advertisement, a breathing billboard.  God has called you to be an early adopter – not because you’re more loved than others.  But because God wants embodied, living, breathing witnesses to how wonderful it is to be alive and awash in God’s generosity.

Now James, as many of you already know, is a relentlessly practical writing.  This part of Holy Scripture is much less interested in what you believe or what you feel or think than in what you do.  Do you believe all the right stuff?  Who cares? says James.  Do you belong to a church or organization or political party and think that marks you out as something special?  Who cares? says James.  Let me see your life.  Let me watch what you do.  James is interested in the embodied patterns of how we live our lives.  Those daily patterns are a much more interesting barometer of what you really believe than what you happen to say about what you believe.  James isn’t much interested in religious talk.  In fact, James suggests that our religious talk is often a smoke-screen, a disguise or cover-up for lives that stay stuck in the same old stale and lifeless ruts.

Being a “hearer” of God’s lively Word doesn’t count for much.  What counts is being a “doer.”  This focus on “doing” God’s Word is fleshed out in several different ways in our reading.  First, we are to watch our emotional reactions to situations that don’t go our way.  We are to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry” (v. 19).  Second, we are to watch our patterns and habits of speech.  If we don’t learn to “bridle our tongues,” then our religion is “worthless” (v. 26).  Third and finally, God’s generosity is to inspire us to spend our time, energy, and money taking care of “orphans and widows in their distress” (v. 27).

So what you get is a picture of God’s generous love in Jesus Christ filling us and inspiring in us a new kind of life marked by new habits: by emotional balance, by wise speech, and by merciful compassion towards those who need our help.  I see this pattern of God’s generosity at work in so many of you.  You have let your lives be formed in these new patterns.  Of course we’re not perfect.  We lose our temper.  We use our words to hurt others, to complain, or to draw attention to ourselves.  And of course we frequently lose touch with the entire purpose of our lives - which is to become God’s friends who share in the work of caring for those who struggle.

Lucky for us, God doesn’t want perfection.  God wants us moving forward.  God wants us open, flexible, learning and growing.  And one of the ways God loves us is by giving us the gift of rest.  When we receive God’s gift of rest, we live with joy.  When we find time to rest, we are able to move through each week with deep satisfaction and inner peace.  But when we find ourselves edgy, resentful, complaining, busy, and over-committed, that’s probably a good sign that we aren’t receiving what God wants to give to us.

In Mark’s gospel, Jesus teaches us that hypocrisy is another clue that we’re missing out on God’s rest and generosity.  When we do not welcome God’s generosity by resting, playing, and enjoying life, we easily become hypocrites.  We pretend at being religious and godly when in fact it’s all not much more than an outward act.  Rather than living with joy from the heart, we make a big deal of outward religious ceremonies.  We lurch towards obeying traditions or rhythms that are brittle and stay only on the surface of our lives.  We keep up appearances.  We desperately hope that all the trappings of our lives are proof that we are godly people – our friendships, our home, the way we dress, the work we do.

But the main way that hypocrisy will work in us is that we will take great pride in avoiding certain kinds of sin.  We like to look in the mirror and take great pride in the fact that our weaknesses and failures and blind spots aren’t as bad (or at least aren’t as visible and embarrassing) as those of others.  We base our standing with God on our track record of avoiding getting involved in messes that others have gotten themselves into.   Maybe we’ve avoided fistfights, or embezzlement schemes, or scandalous affairs, or financial ruin or a nervous breakdown. 

But we have used these outward appearances to distract ourselves from the mess that’s swirling around in our hearts.  Jesus makes a little list of the kinds of impulses and energy flows that can soil the center of who we are: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, and folly.  “All these things come from within, and defile a person,” Jesus says (v. 23).

This hypocritical kind of life where we focus on outward things as a way of distracting ourselves from the tangled knots in our own hearts is yet another sign that our faces are not turned toward the generous, gift-giving God.  When we fail to rest in God’s goodness and delight in us, we will always veer towards hypocrisy.

So if you are a person created and loved by God, you are called to a life filled with pleasure, delight, satisfaction, and joy.  Now of course I don’t mean that you can avoid hard work.  The simple fact of earning a living and providing for yourself and your family is enough to keep you pretty busy all week.  Add to that all the obligations of tending a home, caring for kids, grandkids, parents, neighbors, and friends, and you’ve already got a fairly full schedule.  And this is just when everything goes according to plan.  We haven’t even factored in the difficulties brought to us by loss and grief.  We haven’t even addressed that life carries with it a certain amount of normal, healthy stress.  But we cannot ignore that amidst our work and obligation and grief and stress, God wants for us a life that is abundant, rich, and satisfying.

So here are a few more questions that might prove helpful.  When I rest or play or take time off, do I feel like I’m “getting away with something”?  When I get a good night’s rest, do I wake with an undercurrent of guilt that I didn’t get up as early as [name your most productive friend here]?  When I take a break for lunch or when I finish doing tasks at the end of the day, do I have the nagging feeling that I could and should do a little more?  When I have a day off, can I enjoy it without being overwhelmed by thoughts of getting behind?  And when I make time for some activity that really brings me alive – and maybe it’s taking a walk, or reading a book, or knitting, or watching Netflix, or having a drink with friends – can I see this as a little investment in myself? 

On this Labor Day weekend, I give thanks to God for good work.  I thank God for all the good work that all of you do.  At school, in your families, at your workplaces, and in our wider community, we honor all this good work.  But I also pray that you will laugh and play and rest.  I also pray that you will take some time to do the things that you genuinely enjoy.  I pray that you will welcome God’s gift of rest as an important form of God’s grace to you.