“I
will give you rest” –
A
Sermon for Evensong on Sunday 13th October 2024
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In this evening’s Gospel reading[1], we were given another
reminder of Jesus’ offer of spiritual rest and refreshment. It is my belief
that those who come seeking God through the Church are, above all else, nearly
always in search of that rest and refreshment.
In tonight’s reading, we first hear Jesus denouncing those
places where he has performed miracles. He is doing this, in part, because of
their lack of response. It would be easy for us to hear in his words a call to
greater activity.
Response. Activity. Most often for us, the two things become
one and the same. But what if the kind of response Jesus is calling those communities
towards is something very different indeed? What if we don’t hear his words
through 21st Century corporate ears, but instead through the ears of
an older, more devoted age? I wonder if as Jesus is denouncing those places
where he has performed those miracles, he is challenging them not to return to
their lives of busyness and corruption, instead inviting them to allow the love
of God to transform their communities into something more?
What if some of the frustration we hear coming through
Jesus’ words, a frustration so understandable after he has poured out so much
of himself into their communities; what if that frustration is based on his
call to them not returning to the mundane busyness of their lives, but to
something deeper instead?
Maybe, if Jesus’ words and actions had transformed those communities,
they would have recognised the folly of their fraught, feverish and frenzied
living, and begun to replace it with lives of peace, rest and refreshment. Not
lives without anything to do, but lives filled with purpose and order precisely
because of their individual and corporate focus upon God – lives marked by
gentleness and holy tranquillity.
Our neighbouring bishop, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, the
Bishop of Chelmsford, has been in the press recently following a lecture she
delivered at the Festival of Preaching in Cambridge a few weeks ago.[2] In that lecture she
describes the weariness that she has discovered among clergy and congregations
in her diocese since taking up post. She speaks of anxiety created from
unreasonable workloads and expectations coming from both local and central
pressures. She associates an awful lot of the weariness and anxieties as being created
by the Church of England’s preoccupation with growth at all costs…
She goes on to suggest that very preoccupation, that
frenzied activity that central church is calling everyone to in order to avert their
fears and the inevitable decline that they have convinced themselves of, is actually
causing that very decline – or at least accelerating it. Perhaps, if we were to
take the foot off the gas a little people may well be drawn to us all the more,
precisely because we become places of rest and refreshment instead.
Some of the stuff - these are my words not hers – some of
this stuff we see coming from the centre can seem almost faux-Gospel
(anti-Gospel). Why? Because when we look below the surface we see that it is ladened
with guilt and fear, or a combination of both. There is often a ‘carrot and
stick’ approach. ‘We need to see quick gains, action plans and initiatives or
else you might lose your priest…or else you will be worse off and you will not
be thought as well of as those down the road who are doing better. However, if
you have a plan that can convince us that you will be able to bring about
disproportionately quick growth, and we don’t much mind what this will entail,
then here’s a huge sack of money to help you along the way’… Carrot – and –
Stick. Fear, Anxiety, Guilt.
These things do not come from the Gospel of Christ. These
things come from a different actor. Thank God for Bishop Guli being the first
one to be brave enough among the bishops to openly speak out against it. It is
a shame that the authorities in the central church chose to give her a dressing
down for not keeping to ‘script’ when she first spoke of these things at her
Diocesan Synod shortly after coming to office – something she openly talks
about in her lecture. I think I am pretty clear in my mind which persons the
Spirit is working through.
It is so easy to focus on what is missing, and so we should
forgive those who find themselves in places of central authority, enveloped by
anxiety and fear as they feel the weight upon their own shoulders to bring
about results. When they look at the figures, the spreadsheets and the pages of
accompanying analysis, why wouldn’t they be filled with fear? And relying on
all that their lives in business have taught them, why wouldn’t they look to
all kinds of management theories and initiatives to try and turn the tide? We
can surely understand all this, because it is so easy only to focus on what appears
to be missing or going wrong. Yet, what we see when we take a step back is that
such focus, whether in the business world or in the life of the Church, eventually
only ever creates a kind of feverish and frenzied fear which feeds the
inevitable decline – not to mention the untold damage it does to individuals
and communities.
Decline - Fear – Frenzied Activity – Decline, an
ever-decreasing circle. Tonight’s Gospel suggests we are called to something
different, does it not? Maybe, in tonight’s Gospel, we can see what we have
been missing for so long.
You see, the world of the past few decades has seen change
at unprecedented levels – people are less likely to stay in the same community
for as long, families are far more likely to split up, individuals have far
less job security, homes are no longer lived in for a lifetime – and we haven’t
even touched on the accelerated change brought about by computers, the
internet, social media and artificial intelligence. This has all propelled a
pace of change in society that we could barely have imagined just ten years
ago.
Is the Church called to inhabit that same pace of change?
Or is it called to be an oasis for people to find when their souls are wearied?
Is the church called to a different kind of presence? God has a concern for the
marginal spaces and for those who feel on the margins. For many, a fear of
failure places them on the margins. A fear of not being able to keep up with
this fast pass of change puts people on the margins. Levels of anxiety and
depression in our society are at an all-time high – and is there any wonder at
it. It’s not just our young people, but people of every age.
Where do they find the space to be fed, nurtured and cared
for. Where do they get the permission to just stop and bask in something
enriching of their souls? What if, amidst all the fevered activity of the
world, our churches and their communities offered something more life giving
and refreshing?
To my mind our churches should and could be places where
people can encounter a stilling and grounding peace. The kind of peace only to
be found among the people of God.
The word ‘Mission’ in our current age has become badly
misunderstood. ‘Mission’ has come to imply feverish activity, getting people in
through the doors and their bums of pews at any cost whatever. Yet, ‘Mission’
properly understood should mean a drawing of people more deeply into the
gathered ecclesial community. That is the kind of mission we find in the New
Testament. Mission should be seen as the drawing of people into the Church as a
place where the wanderer and the weary can find their rest and be refreshed by basking
in the stilling presence of God.
What an attraction that might be to a world obsessed by
fast passed everything…
‘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.’[3]
R. T. Parker-McGee 2024
[1] Matthew 11.20-30
[2] https://soundcloud.com/user-632063010/dr-guli-francis-dehqani-encouraging-the-weary-with-a-word,
27th September 2024
[3] Matthew 11.28-30
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