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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Rest is this profound concept in Hebrew literature. It's what God does and what God commands. So maybe it does have more to do with power than you'd think. Today, we begin the first of two summer series that are thematically connected. I would argue they're also about a variety of kindnesses that have the power to heal what is broken and dysregulated in us and in our culture.
Speaker 1:Our first series is called Inside Out, and it reflects on summer spaces that are within and a little closer to home. And our second series is called Outside In, and it reflects on summer spaces beyond home and a little more far reaching. And like we set it up for you every summer, you can pop in and out of both of those series. We get you, Calgary. You are all about making the most of summer.
Speaker 1:I mean, no one does it quite like you. So we designed these series to walk hand in hand with your experience of the season. So that is what we're gonna do. We're gonna reflect theologically on summer both within and without. Let me tell you why I am excited about this InsideOutside series.
Speaker 1:Besides hearing from my esteemed colleagues and dear friends here at Commons, I am excited because I really believe that this summer series has the power to heal us. I mean, not completely. And not in a way that takes away all of our pain or the confusion we wake up to every morning, but in a way that reminds us of the nearness of the world Jesus kept pointing to all around us and even within us. A world that is built for flourishing, giddy on joy, and animated with love. So first up, we're gonna talk about rest today.
Speaker 1:And not just take a nap rest, though I see you millennials and gen z and your wholehearted devotion to the nap. You love it. But we are pushing past the nap today to talk about the work of rest. But before we dive in, let us pray. Loving God like we do every week, we take a moment to catch up to ourselves in this quiet moment.
Speaker 1:We are in summer mode. We feel that, feeling the warmth of these bright days, and you are with us. We are in summer mode contemplating what it means to rest and play a little more, and you are with us. And we are in summer mode, balancing still work and responsibilities, and also there, you are with us. So we take a deep breath together, and then another.
Speaker 1:And we notice our feet on the floor, our backs against our chairs, and we are supported. We maybe drop our shoulders just a little bit to remind ourselves that we are here and we are open. So may the beauty of God rest upon us, establishing the work of our hands. Amen. So as we set out on this summer series, Inside Out, we hold onto the literal and metaphorical meaning of the word home.
Speaker 1:The poet and philosopher John O'Donohue said that home is a subtle, implicit laboratory of spirit. And I take that to mean that who we are in the world begins with who we are at home, both in our houses and apartments, but also in the spaces where we feel most at home, including our aspiration to feel at home in our bodies. So today, we'll begin with Jesus' invitation to rest in Matthew eleven and twelve, and we'll explore a riff on wisdom, the work of rest, Sabbath, and Shalom, and bodies. So in Matthew 11, Jesus has been just finished calling out these unrepentant cities, you know, as you do. And that sounds harsh, but it's more like, woe to you city.
Speaker 1:If you can't see the good in all its glory when it's right there in your midst, he means himself. Then Jesus drops into a prayer where he says that he and the father are inseparable. All things are handed over to him by God. And he says he reveals the divine. Then Jesus lifts his head as his amen, scans the crowd, and says, come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Speaker 1:Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Now here's the thing about the people Jesus is talking to. Everyone is weary and burdened. These aren't middle class people.
Speaker 1:Most people in Jesus' day were poor and subsistent and illiterate. So let's assume he's speaking to everybody. And what does he say he'll give them? Rest. Why rest?
Speaker 1:Why not money? Why not privilege and power? Well, frankly, he doesn't have those things, not as we'd measure them. Rest is this profound concept in Hebrew literature. It's what God does and what God commands.
Speaker 1:So maybe it does have more to do with power than you'd think. You see, right here in this section of Matthew's gospel, Jesus is under attack for how he teaches about faith. He's not like the other religious teachers. He's not like the pharisees and the scribes. Pharisees and scribes were honestly kind of religious snobs.
Speaker 1:They demand perfection. And later in Matthew, Jesus calls them out for tying heavy burdens on people's shoulders, burdens too heavy to carry. So Jesus challenges devotion. Rules won't get you what you want, but maybe rest will. Something that's easy to miss in Jesus' words about rest is that Jesus is speaking from the perspective of the wisdom tradition, and that's lady wisdom to you.
Speaker 1:Wisdom is personified in scripture as a godly woman who calls out in the street to everyone who hears her. She gives solid life advice, which you'll find in books like Proverbs. And she understands creation because get this, she was right there with God at the beginning of it all. Proverbs eight. One of my favorite things in the bible is when these two motifs, the wise woman and the beloved son, come together as one.
Speaker 1:Jesus isn't afraid to be, I'm gonna say it, girly. Womanhood is not pejorative to him. It's wisdom. So back to rest. The gospel writer seems to riff on a wisdom text from the wise sayings of Serac, compiled two centuries before Jesus.
Speaker 1:And you can find Cerac in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles. Here's a taste, and I invite you to listen for how much it sounds like Jesus. Draw near to me, you who are uneducated, and lodge in the house of instruction. Why do you say you are lacking in these things, and why do you endure such great thirst? I opened my mouth and said, acquire wisdom for yourselves without money.
Speaker 1:Put your neck under her yoke, and let your souls receive instruction. It is to be found close by. So Sarac names this yoke, and Jesus seems to borrow both the image and the idea. But what are they both talking about? Maybe you've heard that yoke is about oxen, and that's true.
Speaker 1:A yoke distributes the weight of the work across the two animals. The New Testament epistles refer to this kind of yoke to speak about two people yoked or bound together. But yokes also get put on human bodies. A person out doing work in the field would put a yoke across not one, but both shoulders to distribute the weight across the body. But let me tell you, that's not a yoke that you're keen to put on.
Speaker 1:That's a yoke you cannot wait to take off. Finally, yoke means something more than fieldwork in the rabbinic tradition. It's about learning and instruction to help with life's heavy burdens. It's not that you won't carry burdens, you know, feel the weight of them in body and spirit, but wisdom lightens the load. So Jesus isn't saying, come to me and be my coaxant in the field.
Speaker 1:He's not even saying, come be my servant as you toil for the Lord. He's saying, I have a whole new way to learn about how to be human. Your emperors and governors, they keep you down. Your religious leaders make your life so tedious. But I, he says, I am gentle.
Speaker 1:I understand what makes life hard for you, And I am not trying to add to that. I'm the God of the blessed be. Blessed be the poor. Blessed be the peacemakers. Blessed be the hungry.
Speaker 1:So learn my way. I bring lightness to all that you carry, everything that drags you down. And when you follow me, you will find rest for your soul. And the Greek word for soul here is psuche or psyche, and it means your true being, your whole life. Now I get that that sounds abstract.
Speaker 1:I mean, how does Jesus lighten the load of, say, your family dealing with a new diagnosis or a job that you used to love that has soured for you or the stress of trying to hold your attention to something that you actually care about rather than what the algorithms feed you? I mean, how many times do I have to tell Facebook that I don't care about celebrity gossip? Show me less of this, Facebook. I care about my friends, but it doesn't matter because I am drowning in celebrity gossip. Go ahead.
Speaker 1:Ask me about JLo and Ben. I know too much. I don't wanna care. But you know what? In a funny way, Jesus is telling the Pharisees something similar.
Speaker 1:People don't care about what you think they care about. They want food when they're hungry, leaders who look out for them, and truth that opens life and doesn't shut it down. So Jesus and his disciples, they take a walk and they grab a snack and they get into an argument. I kinda like all three of these things. Here's where the rubber meets the road.
Speaker 1:Jesus' word about rest in chapter 11 and the story in chapter 12 are linked with the phrase at that time to show that these pieces belong together even though we see separate chapters. And so Jesus walks through a field on the Sabbath, and his disciples get hungry. They pull off heads of grain, and they munch on them. And the Pharisees see this and they say to Jesus, your disciples are breaking the rules of the Sabbath. And Jesus goes, haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry?
Speaker 1:He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests? Or haven't you read in the law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are innocent? Now harvesting a snack with your hands when you're hungry is not against the law here even when it's not your field. Just don't get out your sickle and take more than you need in that moment. The religious leaders are trying to catch Jesus on a technicality about the Sabbath.
Speaker 1:Can you harvest even a little bit on the Lord's day of rest? After all, Exodus 34 says, six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, even in plowing time and in harvest time you shall rest. So really, Jesus? Are you really teaching people that what they're doing is okay? 100%.
Speaker 1:Yes. He is. Jesus says to the pharisees, David. You remember him. Right?
Speaker 1:He walked his men right into the tabernacle and they ate the consecrated bread meant for priests and David is innocent. And you've heard of priests. Right? They work all day long on the Sabbath because rituals take work. Priests light fires and slaughter animals and lift them up on the altar, and all of that should be against the law.
Speaker 1:But it isn't, is it? So Jesus' arguments are sturdy. He goes to the scriptures, which they all agree are the authority, and he tracks down David, and he references priests, but he offers a new interpretation. And that always, always gets our boy Jesus into trouble. When Jesus says, what David did, I can do, he's saying he's the new David, the one that hungry people are waiting for.
Speaker 1:And this world this world you're trying to protect, this world of rules and temples and burdens too heavy to carry, look around you. You want to know where the temple is? The structure meant to outline God's presence here on earth, our very own garden of Eden, it's right here. And I imagine as he says this, Jesus' hands brush across the bristle tops of the grain as the whole golden field waves in the wind. What's practical here is that work and rest aren't opposites.
Speaker 1:They're partners. They're cocreators. And you and your wisdom determine what's needed for your work and rest in your context. I really think that Jesus trusts you to determine that. You know when your work is as rest to you, and you know when it has just crept in too far, and you know when it's time to stop.
Speaker 1:So Jesus says, something greater than the temple is here. And the writer is saying that Jesus fulfills everything the tradition establishes. David, priests, the temple, every sacred ritual. And Jesus can therefore talk to us about the Sabbath. So Jesus quotes the prophet Hosea to get at the heart of Sabbath.
Speaker 1:It's mercy, not sacrifice. It's being for the innocent and not against them. Then Jesus says, for the son of man is Lord of the Sabbath. The Sabbath isn't over. Jesus didn't cancel it.
Speaker 1:The point is to remember what Sabbath is for. Sabbath is about our relationship to time. It goes all the way back to creation. In the creation poem, God makes the world in six counted days, and then on the seventh, God rests. In Exodus liberation, God's people are delivered from slavery and told, rest, to remember that your oppressor does not own your body or your time.
Speaker 1:And in the prophetic tradition, you live Sabbath by loving mercy, not sacrifice, care for others, even enemies, matters most. Jesus doesn't break the Sabbath or cancel rest. He fills it right up with a divine energy that both settles and propels. Rest leads to shalom, peace that points to wholeness in the widest possible sense. When you step into Sabbath, you take off the garb of your work and say, even without all that I produce in my job, even without the roles that define my days, even without the reputation I have built up for years, I am enough, and I can rest in God.
Speaker 1:Here's the deal with rest. Rest is a state, and it's a practice. It is a noun, and it is a verb. I used to think I was a bad Christian when it came to rest. I have friends who practice Sabbath strictly.
Speaker 1:They have a day a week for rest, digital detoxing, and spiritual rejuvenation. They've claimed for years something that is absolutely true. If you have a regular rhythm of rest, you will get more work done when you're working. It's been studied, and it's true. But we don't rest so we can work harder.
Speaker 1:We rest to keep our work in check. My practice of Sabbath, of rest, is so much more basic. It is very simple. I prioritize sleep. I make sure I've always got a novel on the go.
Speaker 1:It is so good for my mind. I stretch in the quiet of the morning before I start the day. I wash my face and let my mind wander while I floss my teeth at night. I make sure that when my brother or my sister or my nieces or my nephews call, I always have the space to take their call. Always.
Speaker 1:And I stare out the window a lot. I mean, a lot. I don't nap. I don't take a strict Sabbath. I often work on my day off, and I don't think any of that matters very much.
Speaker 1:What does matter, what really matters is that I piece my life together. I hold myself together with Sabbath and Shalom, rest and peace wherever I can find them. And what following Jesus shows us is that rest and peace, Sabbath and Shalom are not under lock and key. They require no incantation, no strict set of rules unless, of course, rules bring you life. The Sabbath is set free so that you can put yourself back together after a long day or a dry season or a knock down struggle.
Speaker 1:In our rest, we heal. Minds, spirits, and bodies heal. Tricia Hersey, the founder of the NAP Ministry, which is a real thing, says that rest is resistance. Rest disrupts and pushes back forces that wear down bodies. Hersey says capitalism and white supremacy are toxic systems that refuse to see the inherent divinity in human beings and have used bodies as tools for production and destruction.
Speaker 1:Hersey urges us to see our bodies as a miracle and a place of reverence where existing in exhaustion is not normal or acceptable. In other words, you don't earn rest. Rest is naturally what you need. So where are you at with rest right now? Are you getting enough?
Speaker 1:By the way, I see you parents. I get it. What's in your way? Is what you ask of others interfering in their rest? And what small pauses are restful to you?
Speaker 1:As ordinary as they are, can you shift to see a pause as something sacred? We'll end today in the bible's prayer book. The psalmist offers this picture of a body at rest with God. It's from Psalm 16. I've adapted it a little bit.
Speaker 1:So feel free to close your eyes or just drop your gaze down. Loving God, you alone are our portion and our cup. You make our home secure. The boundary lines have fallen for us in pleasant places. Surely, we have a delightful place that feels like home.
Speaker 1:We will praise God who is our counselor even at night and in our dreams, our hearts instruct us. We keep our eyes on the living God. With God at our side, we will not be shaken. Therefore, our hearts are glad and our mouth speaks gratitude. Our bodies rest secure.
Speaker 1:May your body rest securely inside your summer spaces. Amen.
Speaker 2:Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Speaker 2:Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.