Made Holy: Holy Rest

Matthew 11:16-19; 25-30

‘But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market-places and calling to one another,

“We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.”

For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, “He has a demon”; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!” Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.’

At that time Jesus said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 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.’

Pastor Kris has been speaking about COVID-19 time in stages. This summer feels like a season of interim, somewhere in between those novel weeks of spring quarantine and the new rituals we’ll adopt when autumn urges more structure and weather that sends us back indoors. 

In between time is weary time. It lives in our bodies and minds and spirits, digging up trauma and remembering things we didn’t know were still with us. The weight of the unknown is heavy. And we can be fooled into thinking there are easy answers, that being right matters most of all, that we are the only ones feeling this weariness.

If you are tired, 
you are not alone.
If you are feeling sad or mad or impatient, 
you are not alone.
If you are showing up in this racial reckoning, 
making mistakes and being changed, 
you are not alone. 
If you are gaining or losing weight, 
you are not alone.
If your sleep habits have changed, 
you are not alone.
If your relationships are in tension, 
you are not alone.
If you are relishing a silver lining of this pandemic, 
you are not alone.
If you miss some things about the old normal, 
you are not alone.
If you hope things do not go back to normal, 
you are not alone.

In between is a mess of both/and, paradox, and complicated layers. Nothing is normal and yet, for now, it’s all normal. So this is your reminder that it’s okay. And you are not alone. 

This is a good reminder any day, but especially as we dive into one of Jesus’ teachings about weariness and being known and located in deep wisdom that comes from God.

I’ve had a clear picture of Jesus teaching the crowds since I was very young. In my mind’s eye, Jesus looks a lot like my childhood pastor, a tall white man with a graying beard who called the kids up to the front steps for storytime each Sunday, away from my floppy posture and contagious yawns next to my family in a pew, and into a relationship — a telling that could get rowdy or silly in which ‘wonder’ was encouraged. 

It was, what I called, the “first break-time” of our worship services, where wiggles were encouraged and our little bodies were activated for participation. It was right in the center of the sanctuary and the service. It was leader-sanctioned, and so the other grown-ups had to bless it with their patience and attention.

I’ll admit that too often I get comfortable reading stories about Jesus and thinking of him as the central or main or white character; the teacher surrounded by students; the hero of the scene; the leader sanctioned by the crowd to encourage wonder. After all, Jesus is at the core of what we believe and confess, how we speak about God in our faith tradition. 

But 2,000 years ago, Jesus was rarely at the center. He didn’t have degrees or titles or a position in the temple that gave him authority. You couldn’t find him in comfortable conversations or safe situations or assembled and agreeing with the powerful. 

He was on the margins. He was at the edges, where there were more questions than answers and more risks than rewards, and few in charge of the systems dared to bless or sanction him.

So I’m still learning to locate Jesus in historically and biblically accurate ways — especially when the reading is one I associate with a cozy, familiar landing. Especially when it’s an invitation to comfort and rest — a verse I’ve heard a thousand times.

This rest is not describing a reprieve from the pew or a catnap or a weekend up North. This rest is a re-location. A homecoming for the sake of everything still to come.

Holy rest, which is for the sake of holy work, daring labor, and revolutionary love. Holy rest, required for the pursuit of chasing glimpses of heaven, bending the moral arch toward justice, tending to the things that matter most and are never done. Holy rest, the reprieve that happens on the margins because God is there, whispering Sabbath, bearing what could bury those desperate to be known, to make change.

So let’s go back and listen again, to a Jesus tailed by sweaty and unsavory crowds. Their dreams mingle just off stage, on the outskirts of town, and in prison with John the Baptizer, who asks, “Jesus, are you the one? Is this it? Is it time? Or should we wait for another?”

And if, like me, you have started this day at the center of things, in the relative ease of a world designed to work on your behalf, you might have to move. You might need to relocate toward the margins in order to recognize a truer, wiser word. 

For Jesus himself has promised that God can hide wisdom from those who think themselves already wise, and reveal truth to those who will do something wonderful in its name. You will find these gifts of heaven revealed at the edges of the scene, just beyond the grasp of Empire, just beyond the pressure to stay put in systems designed to limit imagination and protect what we think we have, just beyond the places where sacred wonder for what could still be gets foolish. Or dangerous. 

Listen again to the wisdom of God revealed on the edges by Jesus, who wields truth like a sword that slices at lies that bind people of every age: 

This generation is like children unsatisfied and complaining, 
like critics who have already decided who I am and where I am from. 
Thank you, Father in heaven, 
for hiding the obvious from those who think they are wise, 
and for revealing wisdom to those we underestimate. 
Because only the Son knows the Father.
And no one knows the Son unless they can see what I am revealing.

Do you want to see? Do you want to know and be known? 
Are you willing to forgo being right to be in real relationship? 
Then come to me. Know me and be known. 
This is scary work, being connected and accountable and open to one another. 
But it is everything. And there will be rest in this location — 
rooted in what is wise and true and holy and real. 

You do not know how to do any of this, but I will teach you. 
There is a Great Exchange of what is heavy and what is light 
and it will change everything. 

Some mental health professionals call this invitation a return to our true self or healed self; the person we actually are, the wholeness for which we were intended. It is where we can take up space and honor the fullness of others, too. It is where we are nourished with the news that we are already and always enough — and our flourishing does not require the desecration of others, but rather the opposite. 

It’s really vulnerable to be seen and known and loved for who we actually are, apart from all our paranoia and performing, and so we reject this holy space again and again. We choose the myth that being right and being centered are among the greatest losses to ourselves. We chase and cling to earthly power, foolishness that masquerades as wisdom and truth, that justifies its steep cost, that works hard to distract us from its only antidote: 

The voice of One who calls us back to our actual selves, who calls us beloved and part of a greater whole, who satisfies creation through connection and with wonder, where the chains of our false narratives are broken and we find holy rest in what is real. 

Jesus knows who he is, no matter where he’s located. He knows his truest self and his connectedness to others — THAT is where his authority and power come from. That is how he finds the strength and imagination to bear our weary loads, to take the sin and shame that is killing all of God’s people and destroying creation in exchange for what is good and whole and alive and free.

This holy rest is not an idleness, nor is it a break that needs to be earned. It cannot be measured in PTO days or holiday weekends or COVID-19 months. It is a location. On the edges of things. Because on the edges we can see the full weight and mechanism of Empire — its lies and its unrighteous anger when we do not fall in line with its demands. 

Out here we find glimpses of the kingdom of heaven, a God who hears the cries of the people, who comes near in the body of One who is salvation and rest — not just later in the afterlife, but here and now! Who is more than enough, who is rooted in relationships, whose connection to creation reveals wholeness as a re-centering of the narrative and a widening of the scene.

Friends in Christ, today Jesus implores us to remember the power of stories — their foolishness and wisdom, their location and motivation. He’s not asking politely or strongly suggesting we come to him — it is an imperative command. He acknowledges the ways we become dislocated and separated by stories too heavy to wear, too harmful to lug around our communities and into the future. And it’s not okay with Jesus. Or heaven. So he tells us to move. 

For in these Empire stories, there is no rest for the weary. No permission to wonder about our neighbors. No glimmer of heaven’s delight in the already and not yet. 

Today is a good day to re-locate ourselves. In a story that’s true. In the bounty of being known. In the wonder and liberation of one another, so that, with Jesus, the center keeps moving out, toward healing and life for all people and for the wholeness of creation.

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