The readings are (to read them, go HERE):
2 Samuel 7:1-14a
Psalm 89: 20-37
Ephesians 2:11-22
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
It’s a grand weekend. Glorious weather, warm (perhaps too hot for some), the sun shining. Plus, it’s summertime. School is out, some people have time off work. Holiday time.
One purpose of holidays is to give us rest. Rest from our work. Rest from school. Rest from the routine we live in. Holidays are to give us something different, so that we can have a break — so that we can rest.
These days, by this time, we might need something different. After 18 months of one lockdown after another, it is glorious to be able to go out again — to see people, to eat at a restaurant, to travel farther than 2 or even 5 kilometers from one’s own house.
But it seems people are working very hard at their resting. I feel it as I walk around a very crowded Adare. I see it in the streams of cars going by the Rectory. Each and every day the traffic is stopped in front of our house from about 11:00 in the morning until about 6:00 or so, earlier in the day and on more days than before Covid. I sense that people are desperate to have a good time.
It’s worse elsewhere, I suppose. In Dublin, for one. Or in Hawaii. We have friends there who tell us that the tourists arriving in Hawaii are working so hard to have a good time, to have something different — they are working so hard at their resting — that they are all going mad — angry, frantic, and rude.
Ah, rest. Does resting really have to be so hard?
In the Old Testament lesson, David has been working hard. He has been establishing his kingdom, and fighting against enemies, and bringing the ark of God back to Jerusalem, and building himself a house. Some of this has been going on for years. And now that all this is done, we hear that “the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him.” He has a chance to stop. He is safe from enemies, for the moment anyway. He has a house. He can rest.
This is one kind of rest. Rest from work, rest from striving, rest from immediate worry. But there is still another type of rest.
In the Gospel lesson, Jesus says to the apostles, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” Before this, they have been working. Jesus had sent them out, two by two, to all the surrounding towns and villages to preach and to heal. So now they have come back and told Jesus “all that they had done and taught.” And still, we hear, “many [people] were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.” Apparently, they have done their work so well — the power of God has been with them so much — that people are following them, seeking what they can give. So Jesus tells the apostles to come away and rest. They go away in a boat, and still people follow them. They are waiting on shore when the boat arrives.
And then we hear that Jesus has compassion on them. He begins to teach them.
The people need rest, even more than the apostles. The apostles need rest from the work they have been doing, but the people need something to soothe their souls and spirits.
Do you know that feeling when you get some rest? — maybe sink a tired aching body into a comfortable chair, or get a nice soothing drink when you are hot (or cold), or finish something you’ve been working hard to do — and you just say, “Ahhhh…” And you relax.
What Jesus offers is that feeling times infinity. It is a feeling of rest deep down in the core of your being, telling you that you don’t have to worry, or strive, or push. You don’t have to be frantic to have a good time, because the best time imaginable is already there with you.
There’s another word to describe this kind of rest. It is peace. In the letter we heard to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul talks about the peace that Christ has given. He has broken down the dividing wall between opposing camps, he has reconciled us to God, he has given us access to God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit, he has made us citizens of the household of God, in the company of the saints and the apostles and the prophets — in other words, we have become one with all the holy people who have gone before us.
But all of this is just a way of saying that Christ gives us a deep peace, deep rest. He removes all that makes us feel just wrong, gone awry, and he makes us one with God. He removes that wall between ourselves and God, between ourselves and other people. He says to us:
You do not have to strive anymore, you don’t have to work at it all so hard, including having fun, you can rest in me.
I offer you peace and rest.
Take it.
Claim it.
It is yours, for you are mine.