July 25th, 2024
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video. I’m not channelling my inner Monty Don here, but I do like a bit of weeding. It’s very therapeutic. This is going to be the last video for a few weeks while I take a break over the summer.
Summer is usually considered a time to take things easy. Schools are out, to be replaced with a bewildering variety of sport and leisure alternatives. If we take a plane to a holiday destination it can be almost as stressful as working, with air traffic controllers strikes, delays, and fights over the sun-loungers when we get there. I’m not sure that’s what Jesus had in mind when he said to his disciples, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, 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”.
Eugene Peterson in his Message paraphrase puts the same passage like this, “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
The yoke was the Jewish idiom for a rabbi’s way of reading the Torah (our Old Testament). When Jesus talks about rest, he isn’t talking about the same thing we do. For modern people rest is synonymous with escape or distraction. We work ridiculously hard and then crash for a couple of week’s expensive holiday, hoping that will sort us out. It will probably help a bit in re-charging the batteries. But as the secular guru of happiness, Alain de Botton said, “The problem with going on holiday is that you always take yourself with you”.
The main religious traditions disagree fundamentally about most truth claims, but they mostly agree that the key to happiness is to inhabit the moment; not dream of a mythical rest at retirement, or a great holiday, or the electronic distraction that our society specialises in.
The writer of Psalm 23 expressed confidence that goodness and mercy would follow him all the days of his life. He was reflecting on this while he walked through the valley of the shadow of death. The modern (self-described) mystic Frank Laubach said, “every now is an eternity if it is full of God”. The French monk, Brother Lawrence, talked of the sacrament of the present moment, practicing the presence of God while he washed the dishes in the monastery. These are just a few representatives of the tradition of Christian spirituality. It takes practice to live from attention and awareness. The word holiday is derived from Holy Day, the idea that on particular days, by reflecting on the example of a saintly person or an event in the life of Jesus, we can reframe our everyday experience and bring it into contact with eternal realities. Jesus was always busy, but never appeared unduly rushed. He had mastered the rhythm of work and withdrawal. His withdrawal was into God, not simply to physically rest, although that was important too. Jesus saw that need in the disciples when they were particularly exhausted, inviting them to take some time aside to rest. John Mark Comer said, “If you want to experience the life of Jesus, you have to adopt the lifestyle of Jesus.” He invites us to slow down, simplify our lives around the practices of Jesus – the age old disciplines of prayer, solitude, fasting and study and to seek to live from the divine centre.
Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 4: 10-11, “make it your ambition to live a quiet life.” If we understand life and quiet as I’ve just described it, very little more needs to be said.
Have a restful summer in the true sense of the word and may we all draw closer to God in the stillness to be found in the everyday. And I’ll get back to my weeding!
+Richard