Pentecost 20

Brothers and sisters in Christ.
We could all use a little rest. Could we not?
With all the busyness and hustle and bustle of life. With all the things there are to be done. With all the commitments and requirements that are attached to our lives, we could all use a little rest. We are busy people.
And we're right in the middle of it, aren't we? This is the busy season (as though there is a season that isn't busy)! We have work to be done. Farmers are out in the fields working long hours harvesting. The kids are in school, which carries lots of obligations, such as class, homework, sports schedules, fund raisers, extra curricular activities - throw them all in the mix. Work has deadlines, stress, possibilities of being laid off or downsized. Home has it's usual to-do list of fixing and cleaning and managing. There is lots to do. So much so that we could all use a little rest. I know I could. I am sure you could too.
And so into all of our busyness and stress and into all of our desire; no, our need for rest comes God's promise of our reading from the Epistle of Hebrews. “For we who have believed have entered (that very thing that we so need) REST!”
Most of the time when we think “rest” we think vacation. We think “go somewhere”. Get away. Relax. Kick back. Enjoy life. We think travel. Somewhere south. The beech. A good book. A golf course. Some warm air. Some time to do nothing.
When God presents for us what his rest entails it looks a bit different. What God has in mind for us is less about leisure. Not that leisure is bad. Vacations, time away, a trip with the family. All of these are good things. Blessings! Gifts from God, even. And while these leisurely trips are good things they are not the rest that God has to give, that God really wants to give and that you need to receive.
God's rest is time for worship.
Remember the 3rd Commandment? “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” Sabbath is a Hebrew word that means “rest”. It literally means “to stop”. It is rooted in the creation narrative where God did his work of creating and then on the 7 day he took his Sabbath – he rested. The 3rd Commandment is God's command that we do the same. And so the Catechism asks the question: “What does this mean?” It provides the answer. “We should fear and love God that we may not despise preaching and his Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.
God's rest involves going to church. Preaching. The Bible (God's Word). Hearing it. Gladly learning it. Listening. Studying, even.
How can that be rest? There is far too much brain activity, far too much work involved in all of those things for that to be rest. We all know what it means to go to church. You have to get up early on a Sunday morning, get the kids up out of bed, get everyone cleaned up, dressed up, and straightened up so that you can go and sit for an hour. Not exactly what we would call rest. Is it? What about sleeping in? What about relaxing? What about catching up on our personal to do lists? That's what we need, isn't it?
Not according to God. God's commandment, the God who made you from nothing, who brought you into this world, who is the architect of your very existence seems to think that this is exactly what you need. This is the very rest that you require. All that other rest is fine. It has its place. It is worth while every now and then if you can get it. But that is not the rest that you need, that you really need, that your very life is depending on. The rest that you need is the rest that God offers you today, here at church. Here in the preaching of His Word.
Why? Perhaps you already know. The reason we need rest is because we are sinners. Yes. We are sinners. Sinful people, living in a sinful world. We live through every day of our lives with the temptations to fulfill the desires of our sinful flesh – to be selfish, greedy, to get angry, to hate and despise, to lust, to covet, to be jealous, to disrespect, to steal. We carry the weight of this ever present burden every day of our lives.
Even when you go on vacation to get away from it all, your sinful nature follows you. You can struggle and fight with your sinful nature on a golf course or on a beech or a cruise-ship or at a theme park just as much as you can sitting at your desk, on your combine, or in your living room sofa. Sometimes even more so – leisure time just means your sinful nature doesn't have the distractions of work to keep itself from cooking up new ways to sin. (Perhaps that is why what happens in Vegas stay there!) We are sinners! The real rest that we really need is the rest that God offer here at church.
But look at how our text describes that rest. This might throw you for a real loop. It might even make you uncomfortable.
“Let us strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of sword and spirit, of joints and marrow and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
That's it. I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like rest to me. That doesn't even sound pleasant or desirable, let alone restful. It sounds worrisome, concerning, frightful even.
Being cut apart and dissected by a two edged sword. No thank you. Being naked and exposed, laid bare for all to see. I think I'll pass – there have been too many of those “what happens in Vegas” sort of experiences to want to have to relive them, to draw them all back into the open and have to think about them again. That surely does not sound like rest.
But it is exactly the kind of rest that we need.
In the movie The Shawshank Redemption Morgan Freeman's character, a seasoned prisoner in the Shawshank prison relayed the following quip to Tim Robbins. “We're all innocent in here.” Indeed psychologists tell us that murders and those who have committed violent crimes often construct different memories for themselves with different events and different details so that they don't have to remember the truth of the crime they committed. They convince themselves that this alternate memory is exactly the way things happened. It's true. And you do the very same thing every time you tell yourself “It's not my fault.” Every time you pass the blame for your sin along to somebody else, every time you defend yourself and your own innocence for some sin that you have committed, every time you deny your guilt and act like you haven't done anything wrong you have done the exact same thing. You have constructed for yourself a memory of the event that is more convenient for you, a memory that lets you off the hook.
The Word of God doesn't let you get away with that. Does it? God's Word sees through your lies. It sees beneath the layers of excuses that you have made. It unravels the tales you have spun to justify your actions and explain away your guilt. God's Word can't be so easily fooled. And your conscience knows it. Perhaps that's why people stay away from church. Perhaps that's why you have skipped from time to time. You feel guilty. You know your sin. And you haven't wanted to be reminded of it. It makes you too uncomfortable.
That's what God's Word does. No one can hide before the piercing, laser focused stare of God's Word. It opens you up, lays you naked and exposed so that you can no longer lie to yourself, so that you can no longer lie to God.
How can that be rest?
“Come to Me,” says Jesus, “all you who are weary and heavy laden...” All you who are weighed down with not just the cares of the world, but weighed down with guilt and sin. Weighed down with the failures of your life, with your misuse of your time and energy, with the faults, with the missteps, with the impulsive sins, with your scars from the many sins you have done with all those things that you have done, those things that you are trying to leave behind you, those sins that haunt you from your youth, from your past, from only yesterday, those things that are too painful to bring up and that you have tried so hard to bury so deeply but that just won't go away. “Come to me” says Jesus, “and I will give you rest.”
This rest is rest that only Jesus can give. Because once all of those sins are dragged back out into the open and we are naked and bare and exposed for all the world to see, we find ourselves in an uncomfortable spot. We find ourselves frightened and scared, we find that we deserve punishment and ridicule and hatred – not just from each other, from our spouse, our children, and so on – after all, how much can they condemn anyway? They are just as sinful as you are. Where we really need forgiveness is from God.
And the God who slices into your soul and spirit to lay bare all your sins, past and preset is the same one who himself was naked and exposed, who was laid bare for all to see and to ridicule and slander as he hung for you on the cross. Jesus was pierced, but not for his own transgressions. When he was divided and dissected there were no sins to be found. The blood that flowed from his hands and feet, from his side was pure – sinless, not deserving of the punishment he received. But he did it for you.
And this Jesus who died, who was pierced, who hung naked and exposed on the cross – he hung there in your place, for your sin so that when you come here to church, when you come here with your guilty conscience and your painful memories he speaks his word of pardon and forgiveness. I know what you did. I was there with you... yesterday. Last week, last month, last year, in your youth, in your anger, in your sin. I saw it all. I know it all. And I do not hold it against you. I paid for that sin with my own suffering and the shedding of my blood. I do not condemn you. Instead I forgive you.
“When I kept silent my bones wasted away within me” writes David in the Psalms (32) “through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of the summer. I acknowledged my sin to you and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgression to the Lord”, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.”
Your God is merciful. He lays his word of law on you to convict you of your sin and then he takes that sin from you . He pays for it himself and he restores you. He restores your soul. So that you don't have to hide, so that you don't have to run, so that you can stop the internal wrestling that goes on with your heart, so that finally you can rest. And that is where our Worship comes in to the picture. It is here at church that we have come for a meeting with God. Jesus Christ himself is here with us this morning to pardon you from your sins. He is here in his word. He has commissioned me to proclaim to you pardon and peace for your sin. He has commanded that this word of forgiveness be preached and proclaimed to you so that you may have forgiveness, so that you may have rest.
Today God offer to you rest. Not leisure. Not vacation. Not time away. But Rest. From sin. From guilt, from the past that haunts you. Real rest in the confidence that comes from the forgiveness of Jesus who died for you on the cross.