The Rev. Charleston Wilson
In the Name of the Living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
In 1846 the prodigious hymn-writer and Scottish churchman Horatius Bonar wrote the words to my favourite hymn. While it’s more popular in the United Kingdom than here, it is included in our hymnal. I encountered it years ago while I was taking a term abroad in England. I won’t tell you my grades from that term! The British sing it to a lovely Vaughan Williams tune called Kingsfold, and we sing it to a tune by the great English composer Thomas Tallis. It is hymn number 692 in our book, is based on the gospel appointed today and the name of it is “I heard the voice of Jesus Say.” It begins like this:
I heard the voice of Jesus say,
“Come unto me and rest;
lay down, O weary one, lay down
your head upon my breast.”
And it is that very same voice we hear speaking to weary souls today in the eleventh chapter of the gospel according to St. Matthew: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
But, despite the longstanding and ongoing invitation, I would like to suggest to you that I believe most people are not well-rested. In fact, I believe most of us are restless.
If you don’t believe me, how do you explain away the 41 billion dollar sleep-aid industry and more than 15 million Americans who take nightly prescription sleep-aids?
Medical research, moreover, tells us that a lack of rest leads to a host of other issues. And we’ve known this for many centuries. In the fifteenth century, Hippolytus de Marsillis, who was a rather devious Italian researcher of sorts, introduced and documented sleep deprivation as the most effective way to punish prisoners. His work only proved what we’ve known all along: not getting enough rest is painful.
I’ve been speaking of physical rest, of course, but the same principle is true when it comes to spiritual rest. A lack of spiritual rest causes a whole host of spiritual disorders: despair, fear, a lack of joy, chronic negativity and, most dangerous of all, the inability to feel love or receive love – from God or others.
This is a simple sermon. If you want to find rest, find Jesus.
But I must warn you; finding Jesus takes both humility and honesty. By humility and honesty, I mean that we first have to admit that we are in fact “heavy-laden.” And that act itself is both difficult and counter-cultural. And it’s difficult and counter-cultural because the world all around tells us we have to be big and strong and rely on our own initiative to overcome the things which beset us – pulling ourselves up by those old worn out bootstraps! But this is a lie!
Jesus says – simply and lovingly today – “come to me,” if you want to find genuine rest. “Lay down, O weary one, lay down your head upon my breast.”
So, we approach Jesus today humbly, openly and honestly, remembering, as St. James writes, “That God opposes the arrogant but gives grace to the humble.”
Back to the hymn:
I came to Jesus as I was,
so weary, worn, and sad;
I found him in a resting place,
and he has made me glad.
Now I’m curious about something. Have you ever noticed, when someone dies, we always say may he or she rest in peace? We do it almost instinctively. We’ve even put it on tombstones for centuries in big, bold letters – RIP (requiescat in pace), which we translate from Latin as “rest in peace.” I know we do this primarily because we believe, as Christians, that “life is changed, not ended” and to be nearer to Christ in the hereafter is to experience the deeper rest.
But my question is why we reserve this for the departed? We don’t have to! Please don’t wait until I am dead to pray that I may rest in peace! I need it now; you need it now!
Now to the third verse:
I heard the voice of Jesus say,
“Behold, I freely give
the living water, thirsty one,
stoop down and drink and live.”
I came to Jesus, and I drank
of that life-giving stream;
my thirst was quenched, my soul revived,
and now I live in him.
The great news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that when life gets hard, Jesus doesn’t tell us to work harder. Ironically, He says rest better – rest in me, come to me! And I can’t imagine a more relevant and welcome message for hard-working, weary and heavy-laden Western Christians like you and like me. Unique in all of human history, what we have today is Jesus lovingly offering Himself as the universal solution to all that weighs us down!
The hymn concludes:
I heard the voice of Jesus say,
“I am this dark world’s light;
look unto me; your morn shall rise,
and all your day be bright.”
I looked to Jesus, and I found
in him my star, my sun;
and in that light of life I’ll walk
till traveling days are done.
Phillips Brooks, the great American priest and sometime rector of Trinity Church Boston, once said:
The surprise of life always comes in finding how we have missed the things which have lain nearest us; how we have gone far away to seek that which was close by our side all the time.
Beloved, that which is and always has been closest to us – closer than our very next breath – is none other than the grace, mercy and love of God. In a word, Jesus Himself is near us – in the hearts of His faithful people, on the altars of His holy Church and on His throne in heaven.
If you want to find rest, find Jesus. Turn today to the Gentle One and let us find rest for our souls.
St. Augustine always says it best: “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in Thee.” No truer words have ever been spoken.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Charleston D. Wilson
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
5th Sunday after Pentecost
9 July 2017