Sorry to be missing a couple of weeks. The pastor was on vacation.
Sermon – Preaching in Holes: Rest as Resistance
Mark 2:23-28; Exodus 16:13-30
8/2/26
Just in case you have not been paying attention or have not been around for at least a couple of weeks, I am back this Sunday after two weeks off. I am grateful that Paul Baker was able to come help lead worship the last two weeks, but it is also good to be back. Hopefully, I remember how to do all of this.
That would be a cute tidbit to introduce today’s sermon on what it means to find rest, but rest was not as free and flowing as I had anticipated. This last week was especially busy with the storm of the year in Farmville trying to steal our Educational Wing roof. We also suffered the death of Doris Davis. Several church members ended up in the hospital, and there were the regular things that needed to be addressed in anticipation of this Sunday and beyond.
All of this goes to prove that rest is hard to come by. There is nothing novel or earthshattering there. Some people will even make the case that they will rest when they are deceased. For some people, rest in terms of Sabbath (the biblical idea of resting) is God’s fundamental law. It is one of the ten commandments, number 4 – in fact. In some places in Scripture, doing any work on the Sabbath Day gives you a death sentence Exodus 31 and 35 carry this threat, and Numbers 15 shows this being carried out where a man is caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath and is dragged to Moses. The people are not even sure the right response, but Moses pronounces a death sentence. In other places, such as the one I read about gathering manna, it is not always cut and dry. When the people on the Sabbath went out to look for manna but found none, they seemed to be working, also, but there was no penalty other than their looking foolish.
We largely do not know what to do with the idea of rest, either. As a culture, it is seen as laziness or smart or to be avoided or healthy, depending on who is judging. Rest, as in not working, can be a sign of success or joblessness – wealth or poverty. People can be evaluated by how much they have done, but considering we all have different motivations, capabilities, and demands, that might not be the wisest choice. One of the reasons pastors struggle with proper work/life balance is that their salary comes from the people who share in the church, and there is an underlying notion of having to earn that salary. It is not a bad idea, but it can also really create unhealthy expectations.
Rest is a reflection of God’s heart and will – maybe even God’s nature. The only reason this is a topic in the Bible is because God instituted rest on the 7th day of creation as a divinely inspired model of life and put that sabbath rest into law. That expectation shaped the Jewish people for hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus ran smack into it.
What Jesus shares here in Mark is wonderfully helpful. It may not have sounded all that convincing or groundbreaking as I read it, but it is really, really good stuff. Any basic reading of the gospels will show that Jesus is always running into trouble with this one law – keeping the Sabbath. Usually, the problem is that he heals someone on the Sabbath, but here he is allowing his disciples (and probably himself) to pick grain to eat. They are hungry, and they are standing in a food source. As always, Jesus is assailed by those who call out this flagrant breaking of the Law. There is no way he can have any moral or spiritual authority if he flouts God’s Law so brazenly. He always has a response. Sometimes he uses an illustration of common life like rescuing an endangered animal. Here, he shares a story from David’s life that is even more a violation than what they were doing, proving that God is not trying to oppress the people but give them what they need, even on the Sabbath.
I’ve been thinking about this, friends, and honestly, while my rest was not as restful as it might have been, I should have probably prepared this message at the beginning of my time off to frame my time off and to help prepare me to appreciate what it was I was trying to do. Here’s the thing: I think rest is fundamentally not about laws. It’s not about just trying to make you do something to do something. Rest is actually supposed ot make us better children of God. There is a point, right? Yes, it is a Law. Yes, we are supposed to keep this idea of rest and Sabbath, but it is supposed to help us, and that’s Jesus’ point. The Son of Man is the Lord; Jesus is the Lord. Jesus’ words echo for us: we are not here to serve the Sabbath, but the Sabbath is here to help us. Now, how might that happen?
Some people really like routines. I know there are people here who are like that. I am one, for sure, and I am counting down the days until my wife goes back to school from her summer vacation – NOT BECAUSE I DO NOT ENJOY TIME WITH MY WIFE – but because I desperately crave that routine back. When she is home or the kids are home, it throws everything off. I stay up later and get up later, and it is harder to manage my demands that have not changed. One day we will both be retired, and we will be spending far too much time together, but for now, it is every summer and things get thrown off when people are home…. I know I am not the only person in this room who feels like this. I know that. You cannot wait until people go back and you can get back on your schedule. But what does that become? A rut, right? We get stuck in this way of life, and when we get stuck in a way of life and a way of doing things, it gets harder and harder to grow. It is harder and harder to change.
You know what I was saying about our roof situation earlier in the service? It seems catastrophic even though it is not catastrophic, but it is dramatic how much happened to our roof in the recent storm. What happened after? Call after call and message after message. I do not know how many churches reached out us – more than I would have ever expected. So many churches and individuals reached out to us with prayers and promises of whatever support we might need. And that was something I would have never known from the heart of others if we were just living that same life as every day. We get caught in routines and ruts and the way we always do things unless something happens to force us to see things differently. We miss so much of life when we get locked into the routine and nothing else.
So I am thinking about rest. What does rest require us to do? If we honest-to-goodness rest, we have to stop. We give up the routine. We give up the rut for that day, right? We take time and carve it out of what we normally do. And it forces us to stop and actually make space for different things and different priorities. We actually reorder our time and our attention for that one day or for whatever time is our rest. Biblical, God-given rest forces us to be different, and we can spend that time in devotion to God, in service to God, in love of our neighbor – whatever makes us a better child of God.
This idea of rest as a rejection of that wheel, that treadmill, that grind of the day-to-day life is essential to our growth in life in God. There is plenty about the day-to-day that I do enjoy and is good and fulfilling, but sometimes we just need to stop. And we need to move in different directions and think of different things and enjoy different ways of life because when we do, we grow. Rest is a statement of faith. It says God is not done with us. It is a statement to our neighbor that we also believe God is calling us into this way of life together. Rest is also nourishing and refreshing. There is so much here in this gift of rest that we really should take seriously. And we give rest a bad name when we start labeling laziness. In truth, we can actually use more rest than less rest. We can always use more when it is intentionally looking for God’s help and seeking God’s grace in new ways.
To God be the glory. Amen.