Sabbath Rest

"Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest." Yes! These are very familiar words of Jesus. Quite broadly known, I expect, even amongst casual Christians or the broader culture, and certainly known to long time Episcopalians. In the old prayer book they were heard every Sunday in a part of the service informally known as the "Comfortable Words." They followed the Confession and Absolution of sin. They were introduced with these words: "Hear what comfortable words our Savior Christ saith unto all who truly turn to him. Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavily laden, and I will refresh you." They still appear, of course, as an option in the Rite 1 service, and we hear them every Sunday at the 8:00 service. The introduction, however, is different. Now we simply say, "Hear the Word of God to all who truly turn to him."

Jesus’ words are no longer automatically described as comfortable. Which does beg the question: What sort of comfort does Jesus offer? Does he mean to offer comfort in this passage from Matthew? To make us comfortable?

Certainly in my own life-long experience in the Episcopal church, I hear comfort and reassurance in these words. Just in the words themselves. Hearing them week after week. Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

I certainly know the longing for that sort of comfort, the yearning for relief from life’s weariness and burdens. I wonder if, perhaps more than any other feeling or experience, we aren’t all united by having shared the fatigue and burdens of life. We all know what it feels like to be weary and carrying heavy burdens. Not everyone all at the same time or all of the time. But I think one of the strongest pulls or draws towards this sanctuary and this altar is the yearning for rest, refreshment and comfort. It is no wonder that we listen expectantly to these words of Jesus’.

But how do these words offer comfort and relief? Listen again to the entire passage. "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." Jesus does not offer to remove our burdens. In fact, he seems to offer to add his yoke and his burdens. These are supposed to be easy and light. At first pass, that sounds appealing. Anything easy and light sounds good. But what does Jesus mean? Burdens are burdens. And think about Jesus’ life, ministry and death. Think about following Jesus. What is easy and light? I think in our wishful thinking we interpret Jesus’ words to mean that he will wave his magic wand and make all of our burdens disappear. But that is not what he says. He says, "Come unto me. Come. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me." Come. Come unto me.

It has been said that the rest that Jesus offers is Sabbath rest. Sabbath rest. God gave us the Sabbath as a gift, an opportunity, a holy time set apart to be with God. Sabbath is a time to share life with God. A time for us to come as close as is humanly possible to experiencing life as God experiences life. In experiencing Sabbath, we live with God and experience life as God experiences life. Come unto me, Jesus says, and I will refresh you. Come be with me in Sabbath. You will find rest for your souls.

But to experience Sabbath rest, we have to keep the Sabbath. I do not know the precise rules that govern keeping Sabbath in Jewish practice. But I do know that keeping Sabbath means doing no work. Absolutely none. No work. No professional work. No yard work. No house work. No driving. No shopping. No soccer. To keep Sabbath is to put on hold all of the things that make demands upon us, that have expectations of us or that exploit us. And it means that we are not to do anything that makes demands, or places expectations or exploits others. We must choose to lay aside our own burdens before we enter into Sabbath, before we find the rest and refreshment offered by Jesus’ presence with us in Sabbath time.

Barbara Brown Taylor is an Episcopal priest, preacher, teacher and writer. She lives in Georgia. She juggles a life of family obligations, church and professional obligations and God knows what else. I commend any of her writing to you, but this morning I want to read a rather extended quotation from a piece entitled "Sabbath resistance", published in the May 31 issue of the Christian Century.

In his book Jewish Renewal, Rabbi Michael Lerner says that anyone engaging the practice of Shabbat can expect a rough ride for a couple of years at least. This is because Sabbath involves pleasure, rest, freedom and slowness, none of which comes naturally to North Americans. Most of us are so sold on speed, so invested in productivity, so convinced that multitasking is the way of life that stopping for one whole day can feel at first like a kind of death.

As the adrenaline drains away, you can fear that your heart has stopped beating since you cannot hear your pulse pounding in your temples anymore. As you do no work, you can wonder if you are running a temperature since being sick is the only way that you ever get out of work. As time billows out in front of you, you can have a little panic attack at how much of it you are wasting since time is not only money but also the clock ticking on your life.

For reasons like these, plenty of us take an hour here or there and call it Sabbath, which is like driving five miles to town and calling it Europe. Two hours on Friday afternoon is not enough, Lerner says. We need ten times longer than that to calm down enough to draw a deep breath. We need ten times ten to trust the saving rhythm of Sabbath without worrying that our own ambition will yank the rug of rest out from under us. "You haven’t had the experience," he says, "until you’ve tried doing it for the full 25 hours, and doing it for a year or two minimum."

I have been doing it for seven years now, which is how I know the rabbi is right. For the first couple of years, I paced as much as I rested. Every few hours I caught my mind posing inventive questions. If I enjoyed yard work, was it really work? Was browsing a mail order catalogue really shopping? By year three I had come to count on Sabbath the same way I count on food or breath. I could work like a demon the other six days of the week as long as I knew the seventh was coming. For the first time in my life, I could rest without leaving home.

With sundown on the Sabbath, I stopped seeing the dust balls, the bills and the laundry. They were still there, but they had lost their power over me. [And, although Taylor doesn’t say it, I suspect she would feel the same about even the heavier burdens of life… sadness, loss, despair… I stopped seeing the burdens of life. They were still there, but they had lost their power over me.] One day each week I lived as if all my work were done. I lived as if the kingdom had come and when I did the kingdom came, for 25 hours at least. Now, when I know Sabbath is near, I can feel the anticipation bubbling up inside of me. Sabbath is no longer a good idea or even a spiritual discipline for me. It is an experience of divine love that swamps both body and soul. It is the weekly practice of eternal life…

To remember Sabbath is to remember what it means to be made in God’s image and, when the Sabbath ends, to join God in the holy work of mending the world.

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