Scripture: Matthew 11:16-19; Matthew 11:25-30; John 14:6 Series: Welcome
A ‘Welcome’ series sermon on Matthew 11 arguing that exhaustion is universal and that Jesus’s invitation, ‘Come to me, all you who are weary,’ is addressed to everyone. To receive Christ’s rest you must first admit you are tired, lost, and in need of saving; Jesus as the truth cuts through our self-deceptions. Everyone carries some burden (echoing Dylan’s ‘Gotta Serve Somebody’), and the question is which yoke to take. Rejecting Calvinist limited atonement, the sermon insists God’s love is abundant, not scarce. True rest is giving up trying to save yourself, receiving forgiveness and love, and then sharing Christ’s peace rather than hoarding it.
Illustrations: nazi-pervitin-meth, all-nighter-no-sleep-fantasy, drowning-swimmer-refusing-help, lost-family-vacation, setting-down-heavy-load, bob-dylan-gotta-serve-somebody, texas-sports-team-burdens, gollum-ring-of-power
July 9, 2023
Rest
”But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 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.”
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
One of the most universal human emotions is exhaustion. All of us get tired. It doesn’t matter if you are an ultra marathoner or a kid who just had his first Mountain Dew, eventually the energy goes away and we all get tired. We all need rest. Humans have often tried to avoid this reality of our need for rest. It seems like a weakness. Imagine how much we would get done if we didn’t have to sleep. That report that is due in the morning? Done. That video you need to edit by 9am the next day, done at 3am. No repurcussions. That drive to Alaska. Easy, peasy, lemon squeasy. Unfortunately, our need for rest cannot be eliminated so easily.
Though we would like to avoid it, for most of human history, we have been pragmatists about sleep. We know we need it and we build society around it. Throughout history, armies have realized this and set up different guard duties or watches to be sure that someone was on guard all during the day and night.
In World War II, one of the great innovations which led to the early Nazi victories in 1939 and 1940 and at the beginning of the Russia campaign, was the broad use of Pervitin, a methamphetimine. Millions of these little pills were produced and given to all branches of the Nazi government. Their pilots were given Fliegerschokolade or Flyer’s chocolate and the tank drivers were given Panzerschokolade or Panzer chocolate, which gave them lots of energy. They used meth to stay awake for long periods of time and allow for quick conquest. Those tanks didn’t go super fast, 25 miles an hour for some, but they were able to cover long distances because so many members of the military were high out of their mind and didn’t need sleep. Until they did and there was a crash.
We all need rest. When we’re young, many of us go through periods where we feel invincible. We feel like sleep is a waste of time, and so we limit it. We go out late with our friends night after night. We stay up late studying or watching movies or reading until we’re bleary eyed and only reluctantly relinquish any power to sleep. And yet we all need it.
Jesus
Jesus said, Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. All of us are included in this call, though all of us do not admit it. We are all weary in some forms. We are all laden with weighty things in this life, though we don’t all admit it. To be saved, you need to admit you need to be saved. If you are swimming in a river or a lake or the ocean and someone comes up to you and says, “do you need any help?” You’re only going to accept help once you admit to yourself that you need help. If you think you have it all figured out, you’ll say something like, “no thank you. I’m fine.” It’s like if you are taking your family on a vacation and your spouse asks you, “do you know where you’re going?” You have to realize you’re lost before you’re going to say anything other than, “no, I’ve got it. It’s all good.” Even with all our wonderful satellites and phone apps that give us directions, we still get lost from time to time and need help. In order to ask for help, you have to admit to yourself that you need help. In order to be saved, you have to admit to yourself that you need to be saved. In order to seek rest, you have to admit that you are tired. For some of us, it’s a lot easier to admit that we’re tired. It hangs on our faces. It consumes our minds. It seems like there’s never enough time for all the things we want to do or even half the things we want to do. Maybe we are not as motivated as we used to be or we should be. What interests us now is not the same thing as what used to interest us. Or maybe we feel like we are motivated, but our bodies aren’t holding up like they used to and we are plum tuckered out.
Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 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.
The most obvious form of rest is when you are lifting something heavy and then you have to put it down to take a break. Whether you are lifting weights, carrying or pack, or moving furniture around, you have something that you are carrying and then you set it down to rest. Not all of us lift weights or move furniture or go backpacking, but all of us have burdens that we bear.
What kind of burden do you want to bear? Not the one you are carrying now but the one you want to carry. You gotta carry something. You can’t get out of it. There’s gonna be some burden you gotta carry. It is similar to what the great theologian Bob Dylan said about. You gotta serve somebody, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”
When you’re serving someone or something, you are carrying their burden. And you’ve got to carry some kind of burden in this world. Which one do you wanna carry? Do you want the heavy burden or do you want the light one? The irony of the life of faith is that often from the outside, the burden of the Christ-follower looks a lot heavier than other burdens. I mean, Jesus asks a lot of us. “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Gosh, those are some high expectations. As well, the Bible is full of commandments, regulations, rules, all of these. We may think that these burdensome regulations get in the way of our freedom. “The Bible just won’t let me be me.” But there is a heavy burden for letting you be you. Remember, you gotta serve somebody, you gotta carry some burden, it may be the devils or it may be the Lord’s or it may be the cities or it may be your jobs or it may be your families or it may be the Cowboys or the Longhorns or the Aggies. You’re gonna carry something. It may be your own burden. It may be your own unique snowflake of a burden of your desires and hopes and dreams in this world. You may think that you’ve got it all figured out. You don’t need anyone else’s burdens. You don’t need that rest. You don’t need to admit you’re lost. You don’t need to admit you’re tired. When Jesus says, “Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden,” you don’t think he is talking to you.
In the gospel of John, Jesus says, I am the way and the truth and the life. If Jesus is the truth, that means he cuts through the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves. And that is one of the most amazing things about the Christian faith. Jesus is a warrior against lies. The human heart has this amazing capacity to lie to itself about what it wants, about what it likes, and Jesus cuts right through that. But when we push away from God, and we’re left with our own desires, our own expectations, we’re also left with our own lies about the world, about what we want, about what satisfies us, about whether we’re tired or not, and what kind of rest we seek.
Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.
This passage from Matthew ends beautifully but begins in a seemingly exclusionary way. “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
Different Christians have read this differently over the years. Traditions influenced by John Calvin have focused on the exclusive nature of Jesus Christ. They talk about limited atonement, that is the idea that God didn’t come to save everybody but only a limited number of people.
But this idea is about us putting limits on God not God only choosing a few. God does not have a maximum capacity. There isn’t a heavenly fire marshall who orders God to limit the entreants to heaven.
God created everything out of nothing. There is no creature who binds God, especially not a fire marshall. So there is no limit to God’s love. God’s love is abundant, not scarce.
When Jesus says, Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest, he is talking to you. Are you ready to receive Christ’s rest?
The rest is found in not having to save yourself. you don’t need to be the messiah. That is Jesus’s job. Don’t kill yourself trying to save yourself. Receive a gift of life. You are loved. You are forgiven. Those things you did that nobody knows about, that you never want to say to anyone, God sees that and still loves you. You are loved. Lay down your head. Rest in Christ’s peace.
The peace of Christ doesn’t mean there is no work to be done. It just means now we can do it for others. We can share this peace, not hoard it. We can offer it, not cling to it like Gollum and the ring of power.
It is okay to admit you are tired. It is okay to admit you are lost. Let us rest in Christ and rise with a renewed purpose. Sure, maybe we should go to bed earlier and stop looking at our phones. But also, we should receive peace from Christ. Receive the freedom of humility in Christ, and together share that peace in this world.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.