Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year B
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Richmond VA
Lectionary Texts:
O God of peace, who has taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and confidence shall be our strength: By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
At our diocesan camp and conference center Shrine Mont there is a very old sign, nailed to a very old tree just above a very, very old stone seat built out of the same huge stones used in constructing the Cathedral Shrine of the Transfiguration. It reads, in a script as old as its language, “Come ye apart and rest awhile.”
The irony is that while I have sat in that stone chair in my own efforts to rest a while, more often I see it taken over by kiddos in various stages of climbing and adventure, creating the kind of imaginative and exploratory play that happens away from the schedule of home and the screens of technology, frolicking with friends. Their joy-filled spirits are active and at the same time, they at rest in the delight of God’s presence.
Both of these visions speak to me of the holy and life-giving nature of rest.
Now, you may be wondering why it is that someone who holds two jobs and several volunteer roles simultaneously would choose to preach a sermon about rest. And that would be a fair question! I offer to you that it is precisely because I am a person who left solely to her own human nature might actually work herself into a frenzied whirlwind that I’ve learned that I must reflect on what rest truly means…and why some of us may resist it. As I’ve come to see and experience holy rest in a new way, my desire has become to deepen into the practice of resting joyfully under the watchful care of Jesus, our Good Shepherd. And I’m drawn to sharing my reflections on rest with you all today because I sense that a few of us here likely share this challenge in common.
Our lectionary readings today include Psalm 23, one of the most familiar verses of scripture and one that has been central to my re-aligned understanding of “rest.” Like that very old sign nailed to a very old tree, these familiar words can begin to become so much part of the landscape of our lives that we fail to notice them beyond the pastoral nostalgia they invoke. Not to mention, even perpetually busy people tend to like to take vacations, so images of quiet pastures and cool waters appeal to us as a sort of reward that we receive at the end of our labors…the carrot at the end of the proverbial stick that keeps us motivated and productive. We can easily start thinking about rest only on these terms: as an earned reward for our own good behavior. Of this, I am guilty.
But that isn’t at all what this Psalm suggests.
Rest, we hear in the words of the psalmist, is the first and great gift to all of us who are cared for by the Good Shepherd. Holy rest, enfolded in the care of a loving God, is the source of energy and inspiration for our common lives together. Rest is Sabbath; rest is fuel; rest is replenishment; rest is resistance to the temptation to prioritize productivity over people. And our Psalm opens by reminding us that our Good Shepherd makes us lie down to rest, not at the end of our journey but from the very beginning.
I’m reminded that sometimes I’m like an over-stimulated toddler avoiding my nap.
Rest in the care of God’s love and grace is what provides us…all of us…both the individual and collective strength that we need to traverse the journey that the Good Shepherd intends for us to make together. And, when we rest, we take time to notice and care not only for our own well-being but all of those together with us in this flock.
We are very good at talking about all the many active things that Jesus does: healing, teaching, preaching, guiding his disciples. It’s rare that our attention is drawn to the other thing that Jesus does with regularity: rest. It’s a pattern in Jesus’ ministry, actually. He deliberately pulls away and finds quiet and solitary places to rest and pray not out of exhaustion but as the foundation for his ministry. This is why we find Jesus in deserts, gardens, mountains and the far side of lakes, as well as in the cities and towns where people learn to anticipate his arrival. Jesus, our Good Shepherd, models for us the holy nature of rest as giving us what we need for the ministry we are called to do.
When rested we are strong. When rested, we are responsive, rather than reactive. When rested, we can see and hear and sense with all our being what the Good Shepherd intends for us. When rested we are less prone to wandering off into precarious places where the Good Shepherd needs to rescue us and bring us back into the fold. When rested, we can care for those with whom we travel. When rested, we come to know with assurance the Good Shepherd’s presence with us at all times and everywhere.
Cole Arthur Riley has been instrumental for me in reconceptualizing rest. In her book, This Here Flesh, Cole talks about the radically different view of rest that God has for us. She reminds us that rest is a gift not to be taken for granted: rest was denied to enslaved people to deprive them of their humanity and rest continues to be withheld at the hands of human power to make others subservient. We withhold rest from ourselves as products of a culture that values profit over people and reduces our worth to our productivity. She reminds us how counter-cultural and frankly, revolutionary it is that in response to traversing even the valley of the shadow of death we are invited by our Good Shepherd to rest beside still waters, restoring our souls to their fullness with God.
My understanding of rest began to shift as I read and listened to Cole, a Black woman with physical health challenges, poignantly detail the intersecting stigmas of race, gender and disability that she experiences, including the presumption that our individual ability to do or to achieve on our own merit earns social respectability while others who cannot or are not afforded opportunity to do or achieve in the same ways are minimized and marginalized. In scarcity, self-protection and fear of not being seen as capable do-ers, we avoid rest. Resting in God, our wholeness is restored.
“Rest” says Cole “is not the reward of our liberation, nor something we lay hold of once we are free. It is the path that delivers us there.” (p. 151)
This fundamental shift applies not only to our individual lives, but to who we are called to be as Church: a community that through resting in the care of our Good Shepherd and in relationship with God and each other can liberate God’s love to the whole world. Thus, we welcome these times to come together as community: being present, listening, praying, partaking of holy food and community, sharing this time together with God and each other not out of busy-ness or obligation but as a time to collectively come apart, to rest and to pray. And to be joyful and imaginative in each other’s company.
In a few minutes, we are going to officially welcome a new member of the flock into this joyful community of love and grace through the sacrament of Holy Baptism. Jenn, we’ve been traveling together for a while and our prayer for you is that through this holy sacrament and the waters of baptism you will experience the deep joy of joining with God’s Church; being enfolded in the care of a community that is being led by the Good Shepherd to engage the work of transformative love, justice and compassion in the world with God’s help. And all of us are going to reaffirm our baptismal covenant with you, too. These words that we will speak together are not do-gooder promises on which we will be judged for our meritorious completion. These are words of a Covenant which we enter into at Baptism and reaffirm periodically so that we can acknowledge the magnitude of God’s love for all of God’s children…the sheep we know, as well as the other sheep who may belong to other folds and are also beloved of God. The gifts we offer in this sacrament are our lives: our willingness to engage in these ways of centering God and caring for one another with God’s help. And God is promising to help us, care for us, be with us, always. And I’m here to posit to you today that by our affirmation of “I will with God’s help” we are affirming our willingness to rest fully in the presence of God so that we can know God’s plan and intention for us, and to ensure that each and every beloved person we encounter in this world has that same opportunity for holy rest in God’s loving presence. Because together, that rest is our path of liberation.
That means that with God’s help we will secure resting places for those who wander without a place to call “home” and that we will prevail against powers that would seek to diminish, marginalize or negate the inherent worth of any other child of God with God’s help. It means we will have the strength through our rest to confront fear and violence refreshed with a vision of God’s mercy and justice. And it means that our collective care will make us less likely to go off on our own or believe that our individual merit, money, power or strength will save us. And if we do find ourselves exhausted from journeying alone or in a ravine in need of rescue, our Good Shepherd will find us there with arms of love and bring us back to the flock, our beloved community of love and grace where we can be made to rest and invited with renewed compassion to care for one another as God cares for us.
Like green pastures beside still waters, rest calms our weary souls. And like the children frolicking on the rock chair, resting in the company of beloved community is also joy. It is not complacency or boredom; it is not selfish escapism or willful ignorance of our responsibility to care for one another. Holy rest is not to be withheld from ourselves or from anyone else. Rest is resistance to human abuses of power through a collective embrace of God’s abundance of love and grace that carries us, and nurtures us and makes us into a Church emboldened to go wherever the Good Shepherd leads us.
Jesus, our Good Shepherd: Grant us rest to hear your voice so we may know you who calls us each by name and follow where you lead.
small points of light 