"Vital Vocation, Promised Presence, Real Rest" -- A Sermon for First Pres of Wilson

I was honored to guest preach this morning at First Presbyterian Church here in Wilson, NC. The text was a story of Moses from Exodus 33, and I was struck by God’s promise to Moses: that God would be with him and give him rest. Thanks to the author of Matthew’s Gospel, Parker Palmer (as usual), and the Rev. Ellen Jennings for lending their words to this message as well.

Here’s a video of this morning’s worship; the message begins around minute 14:00; and I’ve shared the written sermon below as well:

Welcome to First Presbyterian Church Wilson. We want to thank Rev. David Finnegan-Hosey for preaching this morning. Rev. David is the Chaplin at Barton Colle...

“Tired.”

         That’s the most common response I get these days when I ask our students at Barton College how they’re doing. It’s replaced more traditional answers such as “Fine” and “Good,” answers that perhaps we are used to hearing and giving, especially when we suspect that the question, “How you doing?” is being asked more as a form of greeting than as an honest, searching inquiry into the state of another’s well-being.
         “Tired.” Our students our tired. And honestly, while our faculty and staff might be a bit more trained at covering it up – a few more “Fine”s and “Good”s and “Blessed”s from them – we’re tired, too. You may already know this, but Barton has been in person this semester, and in an attempt to shorten the semester and avoid the COVID-19 exposure risks of long weekend holidays, we haven’t taken any of our usual breaks from classes or workdays. No Labor Day holiday, no fall break, nothing like that. We’re pushing straight through this semester, so it is understandable that people are feeling tired.

         I think there are different types of tired. There’s that tired you feel when you didn’t get much sleep the night before. There’s that good kind of tired after a hard day of work, well done. There’s that tired when you haven’t taken a break or a vacation and so you’ve just been pushing through. There’s that kind of tired you are feeling when you say something like, “Man, I’m tired of this,” or, “Man, I’m tired of you.” There’s the tired my wife Leigh and I felt on Thursday after we’d stood in line for several hours to vote, weary but excited and grateful for the opportunity to make sure our voice, and the prophetic voice of the Church which should always speak up for the care and protection of the most vulnerable among us, was heard in the public sphere. There’s the tired I understand we are about to feel when a new little member of our family joins us in a few weeks, and the needs and sounds and schedule of a newborn become our life. There’s a lot of different ways to feel tired.

         The global and national realities in which we live bring about their own forms of fatigue. I, for one, am a bit tired of Zoom meetings – in fact, there’s been some research into some of the reasons why remote meetings drain us in a different way than in-person meetings. There’s the tiredness brought about by anxiety over health and well-being in the midst of a pandemic. Some people are tired of political ads on their TV. Others are worn out from the work they’re doing to try to make the country a more just and equitable place for everyone to live. Crisis after crisis – pandemic crisis, healthcare crisis, climate crisis, racial justice crisis – can wear us down and lead to a condition called “compassion fatigue.” There’s a lot of different ways to feel tired.

And if there’s a lot of different ways to feel tired, it stands to reason that there are a lot of different ways to feel rested, as well. There’s the kind of rest we feel after a good night’s sleep. The kind of rest when we take a vacation and turn off our computer or our phone. The kind of rest when a stressful situation or crisis has been resolved. The kind of rest when we are able to spend quality time with the ones we love. The rest we feel when a newborn infant falls asleep in our arms. The kind of rest we might feel when an important project has been completed to our satisfaction. And if the realities of this present moment give us plenty to feel tired about, it becomes so important to make sure we are getting good rest.

I say all of this because when we turn to our scriptures today, in search of good news, in search of the promises of God, we hear God speaking to Moses. “My presence will go with you,” God tells Moses, “and I will give you rest.” God speaks words of promise, not only to Moses, but to God’s people – a promise of rest.

When I read God’s words in this passage from Exodus, I am reminded of words spoken in a different scripture – the 11th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, in which Jesus says to the gathered crowd: “Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” It is no surprise that Matthew’s Jesus echoes so closely these words from Exodus – the author of Matthew’s Gospel very intentionally narrates Jesus’s life and ministry as a reflection and reinforcement of Moses’s prophetic example. The gospel of Matthew is a new Exodus; Jesus, a new Moses; the Sermon on the Mount, a new law being given from Mount Sinai.

In both Exodus and Matthew, we hear a divine promise – the divine promise of rest. And in both of these scriptures, we as people of faith are given a hint to what divine rest is like. And it appears to be something a bit more, a bit deeper, than just getting some sleep. Don’t hear me wrong. I think God’s all about us getting enough sleep. In fact, in a different Bible story, the story of the prophet Elijah, God makes Elijah take a nap on not one but two different occasions. And of course there’s Jesus who, much to the disciples chagrin, is fast asleep in a fishing boat while they’re all panicking because of a major storm. So I’m pro-nap, and I think Jesus is, too. But in today’s reading from Exodus, and in the resonating words of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew, rest is about more than sleep.

In Exodus, we see Moses, showing characteristic chutzpah, arguing his terms with God. Moses says, “Look, God, you’ve given me a pretty hard task to do, here. So who’s going to help me? It’s not exactly a one-person job.”

And God says, “Me. I will help you. My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

But that’s not quite enough assurance for Moses. Because Moses says, “Ok, but if you’re not going to show up for us, don’t send us out there at all. You say you want to favor us and bless us, God, but don’t go making promises you can’t keep. You’ve really got to be there for us.”

         Again, the chutzpah! But God doesn’t rebuke Moses for this, doesn’t say he lacks faith or should just be content with the first time God promises presence and rest. Moses keeps asking, and God really does show up – but not before God explains that Moses will not be harmed in this exchange, that he will be safe, that God will show up in a way that accommodates for the limits and the weaknesses of the human condition before the Divine Maker of the Entire Cosmos.

         So in the story from Exodus, rest is the result of God’s presence with God’s people, in all their limits and flaws, their demands and uncertainties. Rest is brought about by God’s fundamental solidarity with the human condition. And, rest is a promise that comes along the way of doing the very thing God has called us to do. Rest, here, isn’t the avoidance of a task – rather, it’s the sure knowledge of God’s presence with us in the work that God gives for us to do. Our vital vocation plus God’s promised presence creates real rest.  

         I hear a similar dynamic between vital vocation, promised presence, and real rest in Jesus’s words to the crowds in Matthew’s gospel. Jesus promises rest to the weary and the heavy burdened, yes; but his promise of rest comes hand in hand with a promise about work. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest,” Jesus says. And then goes on: “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.” A yoke, of course, is the crosspiece that allows multiple draft animals to pull a wagon or a plow – it’s something that allows heavier burdens to be lifted and moved than otherwise would be, by sharing the load. If you come to Jesus, you can set your burdens down, but there’s also going to be some burdens to carry – each others’, in fact. But Jesus promises that his gentle and humble heart is with us in this work, that he is carrying these burdens with us, that the work we are about as disciples of Christ (don’t worry, I mean the term generically, I’m not trying to convert you Presbyterians) is good work, well shared, carried together. We have a calling as Christians, a vocation, and that vital vocation, in the promised presence of Christ whom we call Immanuel, God With Us, grants real and genuine rest.

         When we discern who God has made us to be and the work God has called us to be about in the world; and when we can lean into the promises of God, even, in the way of Moses, hold God accountable to those promises of presence and solidarity; then we experience assurance, restoration, and peace. Vital vocation. Promised presence. Real rest.

         These two stories remind me of words written by my favorite author, the Quaker educator and advocate Parker Palmer. Palmer writes about that particular kind of exhaustion that we call “burnout,” and says this: “One sign that I am violating my own nature in the name of nobility is a condition called burnout. Though usually regarded as the result of trying to give too much, burnout in my experience results from trying to give what I do not possess — the ultimate in giving too little! Burnout is a state of emptiness, to be sure, but it does not result from giving all I have: it merely reveals the nothingness from which I was trying to give in the first place.” Palmer goes on to say, “When the gift I give to the other is integral to my own nature, when it comes from a place of organic reality within me, it will renew itself — and me — even as I give it away. Only when I give something that does not grow within me do I deplete myself and harm the other as well, for only harm can come from a gift that is forced, inorganic, unreal.”

         What Palmer is saying is that there is a difference between being tired, or even being overworked, and being burned out. If we have worked too much, or have not gotten enough sleep, then the solutions present themselves clearly: we need to take a break, get good sleep, rest and rejuvenate in the obvious sense of the terms. But, if we have been trying to do work that is not ours to do; if we have been violating the divine image in which we have been created and the vocation to which we have been called; or, if the very nature of our work or the societal expectations around work deny the possibility and the importance of rest and rejuvenation, something, by the way, that is all too common in a society that values people not by the reflection of the divine image in them but rather by their ability to work, to produce, to prosper financially; then we find ourselves trying to give water out of a well that not only has run dry but was never full to begin with. To find balance between rest and work means discerning what work is ours to begin with, the kind of work – the kind of calling – in which we are met by the very God who makes us and calls us and sends us.

         Vital vocation – the work to which we have been called. Promised presence – God with us, expressing a fundamental solidarity with the human condition. Real rest – not only catching up on sleep, but knowing that we are giving out of the abundance of the gifts we have been given. Vital vocation. Promised presence. Real rest.

         But how? How to discern what the work is that we are to be about in the world? Not all of us get direct messages from God like Moses does, or even messages thrown over God’s shoulder at us as God passes, making sure we aren’t burned up by God’s face. The task of discernment is, in and of itself, one of the ways that work, presence, and rest go together, hand in hand. When we pause for prayer;

when we silence our phones and silence our racing thoughts

in order to quiet down and hear the whispers of God’s voice;

   when we reflect on our day and on our life in the presence of God-with-us;

         we are practicing the very thing for which we are searching,

walking the way of Christian vocation.

And so my words to you today end, not with a grand flourish, not with the thundering voice of a preacher talking about a God who can burn our faces right off if we look too closely, but rather, in quiet and rest. I end with a prayer that the Rev. Ellen Jennings, the pastor of the church Leigh and I were members of when we lived in Washington, DC, used to pray with us every Sunday. It’s a prayer that gives us time to pause; to reflect; to listen to that voice of vital vocation, promised presence, and real rest.

I now invite you into a time of silent reflection. Remember, when we take time for worship, we heed God’s call and honor our need for Sabbath and rest. When we enter into silence, we attune our hearts and open our minds to a Presence greater than our own. As you begin this short period of meditation, please bring your full self to this present moment: set aside any distractions, lay down your burdens, and take a deep, life-giving breath… God is with you.

This is your time to reflect upon the week that has passed. (pause)
What are the joys you have celebrated? (pause)
And what concerns have you endured? (pause)
Are there things you have done that you should not have done? (pause)

 —or things you have left undone that you should have done? (pause)
As you look forward to the week ahead, what help will you need from God or neighbor? (pause)
And what can you do to nurture love of God and love of neighbor in the world? (pause)

Source of Life, for the joys we have celebrated, we give You thanks. God of Compassion, for the concerns we have endured, please tend our hearts. Spirit of Justice, for those things we have mis-done, transform us with Your love. Companion God, as we look forward to the week ahead, be ever present with us. And, Great Lover of All, as we seek to nurture love of God and neighbor in the world, guide our actions and our prayers. Amen.