Sermons

Sermon: the Kingdom for Beginners

/ James Pedlar / 2 Comments

THE KINGDOM FOR BEGINNERS

Matthew 18:1-14

Preached at Wesley Chapel Free Methodist Church, Scarborough, ON

March 11, 2012

Henri Nouwen was a Roman Catholic priest, psychologist, and author, who is considered to be one of the finest spiritual writers of recent memory; his books have impacted millions of Christians around the world.  He was originally from Holland, but came to United States for graduate school and ended up teaching at some of the finest universities in the world: Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard.  But in his early fifties, after 20 years of living a very privileged life as an academic and famous author, Nouwen decided to give it all up and move to Richmond Hill, believe it or not.  Why Richmond Hill?  He came to join the l’Arche community there, called l’Arche Daybreak.

Some of you have probably heard of l’Arche.  It was founded by Canadian Jean Vanier in 1964 as a community for people with intellectual disabilities, or mental handicaps, and has spread around the world to 40 countries.  L’Arche is French for “the ark,” as in Noah’s Ark. L’Arche takes a unique, faith-based approach to providing homes for people with disabilities.  It is not at all like a nursing home. There are no “clients,” there are no “patients,” and there are no “staff.” At l’Arche, the “able” the “disabled” live together in community, in fact they live together in regular houses, and they relate to one another like families more than anything else.  Everyone is treated as a person of equal respect and dignity; they all take responsibility for their household, and they have relationships of mutual support and accountability.  Their households have close to a one-on-one ratio of non-disabled and disabled people.  You might think, that doesn’t sound very efficient!  Do they really need one non-disabled person for each disabled person?  But the point of l’Arche is not to be efficient, but to be a place where everyone is valued as a child of God.

So in 1985 Henri Nouwen left Harvard to move to l’Arche Daybreak in Richmond Hill. He abandoned the most exclusive circles of intellectual life in order to live amongst people who were intellectually disabled.  And, for the rest fo his life, much of his writing focused on how much he learned from these supposedly disabled people.  In his wonderful book, In the Name of Jesus, he says,

“The first thing that struck me when I came to live in a house with mentally handicapped people was that their liking or disliking of me had absolutely nothing to do with any of the many useful things I had done until then.  Since nobody could read my books, the books could not impress anyone, and since most of them never went to school, my twenty years at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard did not provide a significant introduction.”(27)

The fact that he was a Harvard professor meant nothing to these people. He was used to relying on his credentials and his accomplishments to impress everyone, but suddenly he was put into a place where people didn’t care about how many letters he had after his name.  He continues,

“I was suddenly faced with my naked self, open for affirmations and rejections, hugs and punches, smiles and tears, all dependent simply on how I was perceived at the moment.  In a way, it seemed as though I was starting my life all over again.” (28)

In spite of all that he had accomplished, this very accomplished man was learning to become a beginner again.  And he found that, when he humbled himself and became a beginner, he learned a lot about following Jesus.›š

I think of Henri Nouwen’s experience of “starting life all over again” when I read this story in Matthew 18, where Jesus calls the disciples to humble themselves and become like little children…

Read the rest here: Sermon 120311 MATTHEW 18 1 to 14

The faith of the centurion

/ James Pedlar / 3 Comments

The story of the healing of the centurion’s servant in Luke 7 ends with a remarkable statement by Jesus: “I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.”

What was so great about the centurion’s faith?   I think the answer lies in the contrast between the statement of the Jewish elders (vv. 4-5) and that of the centurion himself (vv. 6-8).

This centurion, evidently a generous man and a good citizen, was able to convince some Jewish elders to speak to Jesus on his behalf.  So, as Luke records it.

When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, “This man deserves to have you do this, because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue.”

The Jewish elders were impressed by him.  “Jesus, he is worthy of your attention.  He deserves to have you help him.  He is a good man. He loves God’s people. He gives back to the community. He helped build the synagogue!”  Even in those days I guess making a contribution to a building fund was a good way to win friends and influence people.

Notice that Jesus doesn’t say anything, but he does go with them.

And now the story takes a twist.  Jesus never makes it to the centurion’s house; he is stopped in the street.  And there a new set of messengers approach him – friends of the man.  They deliver a message from the centurion, and it is quite different from the message the centurion himself sent.

“Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you.”

There’s quite a difference between  “Lord, this man deserves to have you do this…”  and “Lord…I do not deserve to have you come under my roof.”  The elders were praising his worth, and he is denying it.  He continues,

“But say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me.  I tell this one, ‘Go’, and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes.  I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

The centurion, by implication, has just made a very strong confession of faith in Christ. When he says, “But say the word, and my servant will be healed,”  He recognizes that Jesus’ word is as good as his deed; more than that, he knows that Jesus can accomplish whatever he pleases, just by saying the word. The centurion is saying that whatever Jesus says, will come to pass.  Who has that kind of power?  There is only One.

Whenever I read this story and hear the confession of the centurion, I think of Isaiah 55:10-11 –

As the rain and the snow
   come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
   without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
   so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
   It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
   and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. 

“But say the word, and my servant will be healed.”  This is a confession of the divinity of Jesus Christ.  Only God could provide what the centurion was asking for.

What’s interesting about this story is that the centurion says this at a time when the disciples still don’t understand who Jesus is.  They weren’t quite sure what to make of him at this point.  They knew he was special – obviously, they were following him around – but they didn’t realize he was divine.  It is not until two chapters later that Peter declares Jesus to be the Messiah of God.

It is truly amazing that this Roman officer – a pagan – has a better sense of who Jesus is than the religious people.  The Jewish elders haven’t figured it out.  The Pharisees and teachers of the law haven’t figured it out.   It’s this foreigner who has to teach them a lesson in faith.

And so it is very fitting then that Jesus says at this point, “I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.”  He has been spending all his time with the people of God, and yet none of them have recognized him as the Son of God.  They question him, they argue with him, they reject him…but this non-religious soldier recognizes him and shows great faith in him.

And the greatness of his faith is found precisely in the fact that he trusts not in his own worth, but in the power of God’s Word.

The elders say, “he deserves it”; the man says, “I don’t deserve it, but say the word”;  And Jesus says, “now that’s faith!”

Leaving the graveclothes behind

/ James Pedlar / 6 Comments

A while back I was preaching on the raising of Lazarus, and I got thinking about the narrative shape of this passage of scripture (John 11:1-43).

From a dramatic perspective, the climax of the story of the raising of Lazarus comes at the end, when the dead man walks out of his tomb after four days.  But from a revelatory perspective the real climax of this story comes in verse 25, unexpectedly, as Jesus is talking with Martha.

When Martha, anxious to see Jesus and no doubt exasperated by his two day delay, runs up to Jesus on the road outside of town, she says “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  Jesus’ first answer is “Your brother will rise again.”  Martha replies, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

Martha has a completely orthodox (if somewhat distant) hope that one day she will see her brother again – that he will rise on the great Day of the Lord which is to come.  But Jesus’ next statement reveals to her the deeper truth about resurrection:

“I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.”

Life comes from God, we all know that.  And it is a mistake to think that we can know and enjoy apart from God, who gave us life.   Later, in John chapter 17 Jesus says, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”  To know God is to participate in his life; and to know Jesus is to know God – he is God incarnate.

Therefore, resurrection is not some remote benefit that we get because we believe in God; Jesus is not a ticket to heaven; he’s not giving out resurrection gift certificates, so that we can cash them in when our number is up.  No, resurrection is a personal communication of Jesus himself, who is the divine life; if we are raised, it is not because we have obtained resurrection as a benefit, but because we are joined to him who is the resurrection.

Paul says, “If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection” (Rom 6:5).    Even more poignantly Jesus says, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

Jesus’ gift to Martha, though I’m not sure she understood it at the time, was to show her that his plan was not simply to raise Lazarus from the dead, but to unite him, and her, and all of us, with himself, so that we might truly share in the love that he shares with the Father and the Spirit.  By being united with him who is resurrection and eternal life, we can know that death will not have the last word.

Why do I think Jesus statement to Martha is more of a climax than the actual raising of Lazarus?  The proof is in the grave clothes.

This is a seemingly strange detail to the story.  If Jesus could raise Lazarus from the dead, why couldn’t he remove his grave clothes?  Why did have to ask others to do that for him?

The grave clothes remind us that there is a difference between the raising of Lazarus and the resurrection of Jesus.  When Jesus was raised, the grave clothes were left behind.  The disciples found them in the tomb.  It was a once and for all resurrection.  He now and forever lives and reigns with the Father and the Spirit, one God.  When Lazarus was raised, on the other hand, it was only to die again.  Tradition has it that Lazarus lived for thirty years after Jesus death.  But he did eventually die.   What Jesus did for Lazarus was a truly great miracle, but it was only a pale reflection of the resurrection of Jesus.

That’s what Jesus is saying to Martha.  Lazarus will rise again.  But I am the resurrection.  And one day you will understand that by uniting yourself to me, you have a far greater hope; right now you are just wishing that you brother would have survived his illness;  but that is only a temporary hope, a deferral of death until a later date.  My resurrection, on the other hand, will bring complete and permanent healing.  We will leave those grave clothes behind, once and for all.

Christ as the Good Samaritan

/ James Pedlar / 3 Comments

In preparing for a sermon on the Good Samaritan, I came across some classic interpretations which see the parable as pointing to Christ.  Here are selections from three ancient doctors (courtesy of the Ancient Commentary on Scripture), and a 20th century giant:

Ambrose, from his Exposition of the Gospel of Luke, 7.73-84:

Jericho is an image of this world. Adam, cast out from Paradise, that heavenly Jerusalem, descended to it by the mistake of his transgression…He was greatly changed from that Adam who enjoyed eternal blessedness.  When he turned aside to worldly sins, Adam fell among thieves, among whom he would not have fallen if he had not strayed from the heavenly command and made himself vulnerable to them…he received a mortal wound by which the whole human race would have fallen if that Samaritan, on his journey, had not tended to his serious injuries. 7.73]

…Here the Samaritan is going down.  Who is he except he who descended from heaven, who also ascended to heaven the Son of Man who is in heaven?  When he sees half-dead him whom none could cure before, like her with an issue of blood who had spend all her inheritance on physicians, he came near him.  He became a neighbour by acceptance of our common feeling and kin by the gift of mercy.

…”And bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine.” That Physician has many remedies with which he is accustomed to cure.  His speech is a remedy.  One of his sayings binds up wounds, another treats with oil, another pours in wine.  He binds wounds with a stricter rule.  He treats with the forgiveness of sins.  He stings with the rebuke of judgment as if with wine.”

Since no one is closer than he who tended to our wounds, let us love him as our neighbour.  Nothing is so close as the head to the members.   Let us also love who is the follower of Christ, let us love him who in unity of body has compassion on another’s need.

Origen, Homilies on the Gospel of Luke, 34.3,9:

One of the elders wanted to interpret the parable as follows.  The man who was going down is Adam.  Jerusalem is paradise, and Jericho is the world. The robbers are hostile powers.  The priest is the law, the Levite is the prophets, and the Samaritan is Christ.  The wounds are disobedience.  The beast is the Lord’s body.  the pandochium (that is, the stable), which accepts all who wish to enter, is the church.  The two denarii mean the Father and the Son.  The manager of the stable is the head of the church, to whom its care has been entrusted.  The fact that the Samaritan promises he will return represents the Saviour’s second coming…

…the Samaritan, “who took pity on the man who have fallen among thieves, is truly a “guardian,” and a closer neighbour than the Law and the Prophets.  He showed that he was the man’s neighbour more by deed than by word.  According to the passage that says, “Be imitators of me, as I too am of Christ,” it is possible for us to imitate Christ and to pity those who “have fallen among thieves.”  We can go to them, bind their wounds, pour in oil and wine, put them on our own animals, and bear their burdens.  The Son of God encourages us to do things like this.  He is speaking not so much to the teacher of the law as to us and to everyone when he says, “Go and do likewise.” If we do, we will receive eternal life in Christ Jesus, to whom is glory and power for ages and ages.

Augustine, Sermon 179A.7-8:

Robbers left you half-dead on the road, but you have been found lying there by the passing and kindly Samaritan. Wine and oil have been poured on you.  You have received the sacrament of the only-begotten Son. You have been lifted onto his mule.  You have believed that Christ became flesh.  You have been brought to the inn, and you are being cured in the church.”That is where and why I am speaking.

…This is what I too, what all of us are doing. we are performing the duties of the innkeeper.  He was told, “If you spend any more, I will pay you when I return.  “If only we spent at least as much as we have received!  However much we spend, borthers and sisters, it is the Lord’s money.

Augustine, Christian Instruction 33:

God our Lord wished to be called our neighbour. The Lord Jesus Christ meant that he was the one who gave help to the man lying half-dead on the road, beaten and left by the robbers. The prophet said in prayer, “As a neighbour and as one’s own borther, so I did please” [cf 1 Cor 6.15]. Since the divine nature is far superior and above our human nature, the command by which we are to love God is distinct from our love of our neighbour.  He shows mercy to us because of his own goodness, while we show mercy to one another because of God’s goodness.  He has compassion on us so that we may enjoy him completely, while we have compassion on another that we may completely enjoy Him.

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2, III, §18, pp 418-419.

The question with which Jesus concludes the story is which then of the three (i.e., priest, Levite, and Samaritan) proved to be a neighbour to the man who fell among thieves? And the teacher of the Law himself had to reply: “he that showed mercy on him,” i.e., the Samaritan.  This man as such, as the one who showed mercy, is the neighbour about whom the lawyer was asking.  And that is the only point of the story, unequivocally stated by the text.

For the lawyer, who wants to justify himself and therefore does not know who is his neighbour, is confronted not by the poor wounded man with his claim for help, but by the anything but poor Samaritan who makes no claim at all but is simply helpful.

It is the Samaritan who embodies what he wanted to know.  This is the neighbour whom he did not know.   All very unexpected: for the lawyer had first to see that he himself is the man fallen among thieves and lying helpless by the wayside; then he has to note that the others who pass by, the priest and the Levite, the familiar representatives of the dealings of Israel with God, all one after the other do according to the saying of the text: “He saw him and passed by on the other side;” and third, and above all, he has to see that he must be found and treated with compassion by the Samaritan, the foreigner, whom he believes he should hate, as one who hates and is hated by God. He will then know who is his neighbour, and will not ask concerning him as though it were only a matter of the casual clarification of a concept.  He will then know the second commandment, and consequently the first as well.  he will then not wish to justify himself, but will simply love the neighbour, who shows him mercy.  He will then love God, and loving God will inherit eternal life.

…The Good Samaritan, the neighbour who is a helper and will make him a helper, is not far from the lawyer.  The primitive exegesis of the text was fundamentally right.  He stands before him incarnate, although hidden under the form of one whom the lawyer believed he should hate, as the Jews hated the Samaritans.  Jesus does not accuse the man, although judgment obviously hangs over him. Judgment is preceded by grace.  Before this neighbour makes His claim He makes His offer.  Go and do likewise means: Follow thou Me.

Unsafe God

/ James Pedlar / 2 Comments

I was preaching on Isaiah 6 this morning and a passage from The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe came to mind.  It’s the part where the children find out that Aslan is a Lion, not a man. 

“Ooh!” said Susan, “I’d thought he was a man.  Is he – quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”  

“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” siad Mrs. Beaver, “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.” 

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.    

  “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver.  “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe.  But he’s good.  He’s the King, I tell you.”  

It got me thinking about the images of God that are popular in our culture, and if we are honest, in the Church as well. Sometimes people imagine God as an angry punisher, ready to annihilate anyone who doesn’t measure up by hurling lightning bolts down from the sky.  But I don’t think there’s much of a danger of that in our culture today.  Maybe in the middle ages, when people were fascinated with hell and purgatory, but I don’t think there are many people today who imagine God in an overly wrathful way.  I think the opposite is more likely the case.  We tend to think of God as completely tame, endlessly tolerant, and entirely safe. 

I think sometimes we imagine a domesticated God.  Of course domestication is a term we use in relation to animals.  We domesticate our pets.  In other words, they are house trained, so they can fit into our lives and our routines and our homes, without causing too much of an interference.  Our pet dog stays on his leash.  He stays behind the fence.  He is safe.  He brings us comfort when we need it but at the end of the day, we are the master, we are the ones in control.   We imagine a domesticated God when we think that God can be kept, safe and contained behind the fences that we have built for him. 

Another imagined God that we encounter today is a Santa Claus God.  You know Santa Claus only exists for the purpose of bringing us gifts.  That’s the sole reason for his life.  All year long everything he does is oriented to that one special night when he jumps in his sleigh and flies around the world, eating cookies and milk and making little boys and girls happy by bringing them the things they asked for.  Yes, it is true, he’s making a list and checking it twice, but it seems to me he is pretty indulgent, and bring nice gifts even to kids that you would think would be on the naughty list.  We imagine a Santa Claus God when we think that God is only there to give us what we want.   When we think that the fact that we’ve been good little boys and girls means that we should get everything we ask for. 

We could probably think of many other “imaginary Gods.”   One more that I’ve seen is the personal assistant God. A personal assistant’s role is to help their boss get through their day.  They might go for coffee, they might pay parking meters, do dry cleaning, do secretarial work – and if you are a very busy person then I can see why a personal assistant would be of great value.  Their job is to make your life easier.  Sometimes we put God into that box.  We think he is there to “help get us through our day,” whatever that means.   I heard someone once saying that they were praying to God for help because they were having a “bad hair day.”  I think they wanted a personal assistant God. 

These are all safe gods; they are tame, they are domesticated, they are always pleasant, friendly, and unobtrusive.  These tame gods are not the God of the Bible. They are not the God of Isaiah chapter six.   

1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another: 

       “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty, 

        the whole earth is full of his glory.” 

 4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. 

 5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” 

 6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” 

 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” 

      And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” 

Who said anything about safe?  ‘Course he isn’t safe.  But he’s good.

A Sermon for Weary Worshippers

/ James Pedlar / Leave a comment

Matthew 11:28-30

Weary from worship

Anyone who has been involved in worship ministry for an extended period of time can probably understand why   Matthew 11:28 seems like an appropriate text for a sermon on worship – “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”  Sometimes worship can make us weary.  We have this nagging feeling in the back of our mind that tells us it shouldn’t be that way – that we should always love worship and we should always be thankful for the privilege of leading others in worship…but inevitably there come seasons in our lives when worshipping God is difficult.  There are times when we leave a Sunday service feeling like we’ve been wandering around a spiritual desert, rather than drinking freely of the water of life. There are times when we are hungry to be fed spiritually, and yet for some reason we can’t seem to find anything nourishing at Church.  Worse yet are the times when we feel nothing – when we are numb to the presence of God and don’t seem to be bothered by it at all.

These dry seasons can come easily when you are a worship leader.  It is not hard to get lost in the details of planning practices, choosing music, coordinating schedules, leading services…the next thing you know you are walking through the church doors on Sunday morning and instead of preparing yourself to encounter the living God you are feeling the urge to run in the other direction. Sometimes the life gets choked out by the pressure of leadership: particularly in free church traditions, where there is not much of a set liturgy, there is a lot of pressure on worship leaders and worship planners to deliver a “good service” each Sunday.  But aside from the external pressures that come along with being a part of any church family, there are ways in which our own approach to worship can turn it into a burden.

Worship is a burden when we see it as a way of earning God’s favour. Sometimes we slip into that mode of thinking where we believe that somehow God might love us more if we were better worshippers or better worship leaders.  That somehow we might build up a credit with God by showing up on Sundays and doing our part.  But we can’t earn God’s favour – not even by our most spiritual and worshipful acts. If we think that we are going to gain God’s approval by the things we do on a Sunday morning we we will end up carrying a burden that is too much to bear.

Worship is also a burden when it is done to win the favour of others. Maybe this one hits closer to home.  One of the dangers of the contemporary worship scene is its potential to create “worship stars” and “worship celebrities.” Even being a “successful” worship leader at your local church can bring a certain amount of status and praise from others.  But this kind of recognition is more of a curse than a blessing!  If worship is done to win the favour of others, it will become a burden that we will only carry in order to gain something for ourselves.

Finally, worship is a burden when it becomes a source of pride. If we start to view ourselves as the “true worshippers,” and draw lines in the sand between ourselves and others – either in our own church or in other churches – our worship will become a burden that will weigh us down spiritually.  If we start to gaze around the sanctuary and see who is lifting their hands, who looks like they are “really into it,” and who does not, pride will start to take over.  The worst part about the burden of prideful worship is that the proud are often too proud to notice the heavy weight that they are carrying.

The weariness of worship in Jesus’ day

In Matthew 11 Jesus is addressing himself to people who were worn out with religious observances.  I think it was quite easy to become weary of worship in Jesus’ day, especially if you weren’t one of the religious elites.   And as far as I can tell there is only one other place in Matthew’s gospel where Jesus talks about “burdens,” and that is in Matthew 23:4 – a passage where he is sharply criticizing the Pharisees for the way they were exploiting their authority over the ordinary people: “They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.”  He goes on to criticize the Pharisees for the way in which their spirituality had become all about winning the favour of others:  “Everything they do is for men to see…they love the place of honour at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them ‘Rabbi.’”  Later he talks about how they follow the letter of the law but they have neglected the weightier matters of justice, mercy, and faith.  These religious leaders – we might call them “worship experts” – are the ones who criticize Jesus for healing on the sabbath; they are the ones who are scandalized by the fact that Jesus hung around with tax collectors and sinners. Their worship and spirituality had definitely become a source of pride which weighed them down and prevented them from seeing the truth. For although they sat confidently atop their tall towers of spiritual expertise and looked down upon the amateurish masses of spiritual infants that surrounded them, they could not see that in rejecting Jesus they were rejecting God himself.  In fact, not only did they reject him, but they decided that he was so much of a threat to their power that they needed to eliminate him altogether – their reaction to Jesus was an intense desire to kill him.

These people were pretty serious about their religious observances.  They didn’t mess around.   Now you may be aware that there are 613 commandments in the Old Testament.  We all know that there are 10 big ones, but if you go through the entire Old Testament and count them all there are 613.  And in Jesus day these religious leaders, these worship experts, had added many more commandments.  These extra commandments were meant as a kind of insurance policy – what they were trying to do was to build a “fence around the law” – so that even if you broke one of these “extra” commandments on the fenceline, you still hadn’t stepped across the line of the scriptural command.  So you can imagine, if you lived a life where obedience to hundreds of commandments was central to your spirituality, and if you had to answer to a group of people who were as intense and fanatical as the Pharisees, you would get worn out with spirituality pretty easily.

The “weary” and the “burdened” in Jesus time were those who couldn’t keep up with the strict standards of the religious elites.  They were trying to please God by their observances but they couldn’t seem to colour inside the lines of the page that has been given to them by their authorities; they were trying to please their religious leaders but they couldn’t seem to keep up to the fast pace and the rigid rhythms of the song that the religious leaders were singing.   It was a spiritually exhausting environment – either you did not measure up, and ended up feeling spiritually inadequate, or worse yet, you thought you could keep up, and your spirituality and ended up becomign a source of pride – in which case, you probably wouldn’t be willing to listen to the carpenter from backwater Galilee who told you to repent and believe the good news!

Jesus promises rest to the weary

It is in this context that Jesus makes his famous invitation in Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”  He offers a solution to the problem of worship weariness which totally subverts the expectations of everyone.

He calls “all who are weary and burdened.”  He doesn’t invite the super spiritual.  He doesn’t invite the religious elites.  He doesn’t invite the worship experts.  He invites the strugglers.  The people who stagger under the weight of religious expectations. The people whose spiritual bank accounts are completely drained.  The people who know that they need to be rescued. The sinners, the tax collectors, the poor, the prostitutes, the “little children” who have no claim on his grace, no claim on his favour, who have no religious status to lean on, but must come  to him with nothing in their hands but their own burdens.

He says to them, “Come to me.”  The solution to their weariness is not more passionate spiritual practices or a kind of religious observance – it is a person.  The solution is Jesus Christ himself.  He says Come to me. Turn to me.  Put your trust in me.  No matter what your burden, I am the solution.  I am the one who can relieve your burdens. I am the one who “gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.” [Isa 40.29] I am the one “who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” [Ps 103.5]  This is what the “worship experts” of Jesus’ day could not see – that he was the living God incarnate, and they needed to come to him to be refreshed; to understand that he was the messiah, and that he could break every chain and relieve every burden.  This is what the proud and the wise could not bring themselves to do: to come to Jesus as the one who could relieve their burdens. They were “the wise” whom Jesus refers to in verse 25 – the ones who couldn’t recognize Jesus as messiah and Lord, the ones who thought they had their act together. They thought they were spiritually self-sufficient.  But Jesus said “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”  The ones who are called to come to Jesus are the “little children,” the ones who haven’t made anything of themselves spiritually, the ones who can’t lean on their own accomplishments.

And not only does Jesus call these weary, undeserving little children, but he  immediately goes on to give them a promise: “I will give you rest.”  The rest he promises them is a full and complete relief from the burden trying to earn favour with God and others by getting their spiritual act together.  It’s too late for that.  Jesus has already shown up. They don’t have time to get their spiritual act together. He has crashed down like a meteor onto the religious landscape of first-century Palestine, and disrupted everything.  He has come to them, right into the middle of their messy lives, and now he is standing there promising, “I will give you rest.”  They do not need to earn favour with God by their pious worship – he has promised it to them by his grace. God’s love and favour is theirs in Jesus Christ. It does not matter that they are a spiritual mess; the promise of rest is for them. It is the rest that comes from trusting in Christ to relieve their burdens, and set them free from the prison of spiritual self-sufficiency.  Trusting in Christ’s promise brings uninterrupted rest, because he is the complete Saviour. There is nothing that can be done to add to his faithful work.

The promise of Christ is for you

If you are a weary worshipper, the promise of Christ is for you.  I will give you rest.

If you are a worship leader who is weary and worn down from the week in and week out task of trying to lead people into God’s presence, lean on the promise of Christ.  Do you sometimes feel like you’re not up for the job?  Good!  Christ’s promise of rest is for you.  Do you feel unworthy of the honour of leading the people of God as they enter into his presence?  Excellent!  You should be worried if you don’t feel unworthy.  The promised rest that comes from trusting fully in the merits of Christ is for you.

Not all of us are worship leaders.  Are you a worshipper who feels like you’re not quite devoted enough?  Do you feel like you’re not as spiritual as the person in the next pew?  Do you feel like you are not passionate enough?  Wonderful!  Christ’s promise is for you.  Christ is speaking to you through his word today.

He is saying “I will give you rest.  I will give you rest.  You will not find rest in your own abilities as worship leader.  You will not find rest in your own passion and devotion as a worshipper.  You will not find rest in your love for God, but rather, in God’s love for you.”

You see, we can’t earn the rest that comes from being embraced by the love of God.  Not with our devotion, not with our passion, not with our talents.  And certainly not with our worship.  But we don’t need to earn it!  In our worship we celebtrate the favour we have with God; we have the rest that comes from the completed work of Jesus Christ

That is why worship under the yoke of Christ is a light burden!  If we worship to earn God’s favour – now that would be a heavy burden.  If think we can impress God with these simple songs we sing to him, we will end up crushed under the weight of a burden that our worship is not meant to bear.

But if we start from the fact that we have the promise of Christ, our worship is a light burden.  We worship the God who has already favoured us in Jesus Christ; Christ, who in his perfect earthly life has already accomplished everything he asks of us.  Christ who is the author and perfecter of our faith, who has blazed the trail before us and promised us that we will be conformed to his likeness.  When we begin with the victory that Christ has won for us, our worship is a truly free act of love and gratitude – a free response to God’s decisive action on our behalf in Christ.

What I’m saying is, when we lean on the promises of Christ, the pressure to be perfect worshippers is off. We aren’t perfect.  Not even close. We’re not adequate.  We’re not worthy.  We’re not self-sufficient.  But that doesn’t keep us up at night. We have rest for our souls because the completed work of Christ is the fountain out of which flows our love for God and all of our acts of worship.

The thing that I think so many Christians miss is that, as we make the transformation from “weary” to “restful” we can’t begin by looking inside of ourselves, at to our own spiritual state or our own spiritual resources; if we do that we’ll definitely end up weary and burdened.  Instead we need to begin outside of ourselves, with the promise of Christ and his gospel, a promise that was made before any of us had sung our first “Jesus loves me.” And the wonderful mystery of Christ’s promise is this: as we fix our gaze outside of ourselves and rest fully on the promise of Christ, it is that promise which will change us from the inside out.