On any given day, if you were to ask me “How are you doing?” I’d likely respond by saying,
“Oh. I’m so busy. Busy. Busy! Busy!!”
And I don’t think I’m the only one around here who is “busy.” Many of us find that it is easy to get caught up in the business of life.
A cell phone company has the slogan “Get it done on the run.”[1] In other words, “You are so busy that you have to be on the run while you are getting it done.” It doesn’t really matter what “it” is, as long as you are doing something. As long as you are busy!
That slogan is indicative of a major message within our culture. It’s a message that says that value and worth are found in “doing”; are found in producing.
And so, the main reason that I’m quick to tell you that I’m sooo busy is because I want you to like me. I want you to think I have worth. I want you to think that I’m valuable. I want you to think that I’m “getting it done on the run.”
And yet, many of us might have the sense that while we are getting it done, while we are traveling from place to place, going from meeting to meeting, that while we are so busy, life is passing us by. The older I get the more it seems like time goes by faster and faster.
Which brings up the questions – “What really matters? What really provides value and worth?”
At the beginning of our New Testament passage today, the disciples tell Jesus that they have been very busy. The story says that “They gathered around Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught.” Earlier, Jesus sent them out to teach the Good News to those who had been abandoned by society. The Good News that, while their society had abandoned them, God hadn’t. God was with them. The apostles were to be a witness to God’s presence by healing and curing the sick. Here we see that “doing” is important. And so after the apostles told Jesus all that they had done and taught, Jesus basically responds, “Good. Good. Now come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest for a while.”
I wonder what the apostles thought about resting. Was one of them tempted to say, “But Jesus. We’re busy! We don’t have time to rest! We need to teach the Good News! We need to heal people who are hurting! We’ve got to keep doing thing!” We don’t know, but we do know Jesus thought they needed to rest.
Why rest?
It’s interesting that our religious tradition is largely based on the spirituality of rest. This emphasis on rest goes all the way back to the Exodus from Egypt. The Exodus is the major turning point in the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew slaves had to produce bricks to build the pyramids and palaces of Egypt. The value and worth of the slaves were directly connected to the amount of bricks they made. The Hebrew slaves were enslaved to an economic system that claimed their value was based on doing, on producing more and more.
But the good news for the Hebrew slaves was that God is not like the Egyptian economy. No. In God’s economy, your value and worth is not based upon you “doing.” The value of a human being is based upon humans simply being.
So God works within history to free people from this kind of slavery. But it seems that we need structures in our lives to keep us from going back to a kind of ancient Egyptian economic system that claims value is based on “doing.” And so, just after the Hebrews left Egypt, God gave them that structure in the 10 commandments. You might remember one of those commandments is the commandment of Sabbath, of rest. The seventh day was to be a day of rest. The commandment says, “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there …”[2] Please note that the point of rest is not an excuse to be lazy. The point of rest is to remember. Remember that you are not a child of an economic system that claims your value and worth is dependent upon how much you produce. Rest is to get away from that kind of economic system and remember that you are a child of God and as a child of God your value and worth is determined simply by you being alive.
But this is hard. Because the message that human value is based on production is a resiliently stubborn force that infects more than the culture of ancient Egypt. Ancient Israel, after the Exodus, often fell back into this mentality and struggled to hold onto this idea of rest. We see it throughout the Hebrew scriptures, even in our psalm lesson for today. Psalm 23, probably the most famous psalm because of how it ends, has a beginning that is just as important. The psalmist wrote that God “makes me lie down in green pastures.” Sometimes God has to make us lie down and rest because we are so caught up in a culture of doing. Rest might seem unnatural in a culture that insists we keep doing, so God has to make us rest.
And so Jesus says, “Come away … all by yourselves and rest a while.” Jesus and his disciples were surrounded by a crowd of people, so many people that, as the story says, they had no time “even to eat.” Jesus wanted to move away from the crowd and the expectations it had for him and his disciples in order to find rest. To reconnect with God. To remember that their value and worth weren’t dependent upon impressing others through their teachings, healing, or “doings,” but upon the God who is love.
Sometimes we need to move away from the expectations of the crowd – or of our culture – and rest for a while in the love of God. Rest is important because the human heart is restless until it rests in the love of God.[3] When our hearts are restless we are run by the expectations of others, of our culture, that says our value is based on doing. This mentality infects the economy of all human cultures, including our own, but it doesn’t infect God’s economy. God’s economy is based on a radical love for all people. Our “doings” or not doings in no way effects Gods love for us. But that is easy to forget in a culture that emphasizes doing. Until we find time to rest and remember the radical love of God, we will seek to find love, admiration, success, or approval in all the wrong ways. In ways, in relationships, in business practices that might seem exciting in the moment but that are ultimately destructive to the things that actually matter.
Doing is a good thing. But so is resting. Resting in the love of God matters, because when we rest in the love of God we discover what really matters. Sometimes we have to say “no” to a culture that emphasizes doing and producing so that we can say yes to those things that really matters. Yes to connecting with God. Yes to connecting with family. Yes to love and compassion for all people, including our enemies. Yes to caring for creation and all that is in it. Yes to resting in the fundamental reality of the universe that loves everyone and everything.
So, come away. Rest. Remember that you are loved. And, from there, then go out and do.
May you rest in the fact that you are loved by God, and may we “do” by sharing that love with one another and with the world.
Amen.
[1] U.S. Cellular. See http://www.uscellular.com/smartphones/index.html. As of July 20, 2012, “Get It Done On The Run With A Smartphone From US Cellular.”
[2] Deuteronomy 5:15.
[3] See St. Augustine, Confessions, 1:1.
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