Hidden Gems
7. “And Live Your
Life”
Matthew
11:28-30
First
Presbyterian
The Reverend
Thomas A. Sweet
August 7,
2011
When
I first conceived of this summer sermon series, I imagined that the “hidden
gems” would be wonderfully rich verses of scripture that largely are
unfamiliar to us, buried in parts of the Bible
from which we do not often read. (“What?
You mean there’s a book of Obadiah
in the Bible? Nahum?
How many of you ever have heard a sermon from the book of Nahum?
Well, there is a reason for that!)
But the way it is working out for me, the hidden gems are turning out not
to be obscure texts from unruffled pages of our holy book but deeper meanings
mined from familiar passages. Such
is the case today with our text in which Jesus says, “Come
to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give
you rest.” Or, as William
Barclay’s translation has it, “Come to
me, all you who are tired and bent beneath your burdens, and I will give you
rest.”
Jesus
is talking to people who are exhausted. The
weariness, the tiredness, the burden does not come from missing a few hours of
sleep. Not that.
I want to tell you about a poet named David Whyte.
I hinted around the edges of this story a few summers ago, but I want to
say more today in the light of our scripture.
Several
years ago, Whyte, finding himself utterly exhausted, invited a friend to his
home to share a bottle of wine, some poetry, and conversation.
His friend was Brother David who was a Benedictine monk.
They read some poetry, mostly by Rilke, including this one:
This clumsy living that moves
lumbering
as if in ropes through what is not done,
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.
And to die, which is the letting go
of the ground we stand on and cling to every day,
is like the swan, when he nervously lets himself down
into the water, which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave,
while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each moment more fully grown,
more like a king, further and further on.
Whyte
says that on hearing of the swan being borne on the water so effortlessly, he
thought of his own days so filled with will and effort that seemed so often to
swim against the current of his own soul and heart, so filled with trying to be
what a hundred other people seemed to need him to be, so fearful of letting
loose to be who he deep down knew himself to be, so often trying to make square
peg conventional custom fit into the round hole of his deeper being.
Then,
almost involuntarily, it seemed, Whyte just blurted out to his guest, “Brother
David?” Whyte said he
uttered it is such an old, petitionary Catholic way that he thought Brother
David might say, “Yes, my son?” But
he didn’t. He just waited until
Whyte said to him, “Tell me about
exhaustion.”
Brother
David thought about it for only a moment and then said to David Whyte, “You
know that the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest?”
“The
antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest,” Whyte repeated aloud.
“Then, what is it?”
Brother
David said to him, “The antidote to
exhaustion is wholeheartedness.”
Brother
David, who knew David Whyte well for they were close, said, “You
are like Rilke’s swan in his awkward waddling across the ground; the swan
doesn’t cure his awkwardness by beating himself on the back, by moving faster,
or by trying to organize himself better. He
does it by moving toward the elemental water where he belongs.
It is the simple contact with the water that gives him grace and
presence. You, David, have only to
touch the elemental waters in your own life, and it will transform everything.
But you have to let yourself down into those waters from the ground on
which you stand, and that can be hard and frightening, particularly if you think
you might drown.”
And
then he read again from the poem, “And
to die, which is the letting go/Of the ground we stand on and cling to every
day.” A dying, a letting go,
so that we may be raised up to our truer and fuller self.
It
takes courage to die in the way of which Rilke and Brother David speak.
Courage comes from the old French word, cuer,
which means “heart.” We must die
to what is half-hearted in us or to that in which we do not have our heart at
all, so that we may begin to do something wholeheartedly, to live with our whole
hearts.
When
Jesus said, “Come to me and I will give
you rest,” he did not mean by that a nap or a week of sleep or a free pass
so that one can escape responsibility for oneself or accountability.
Rather, he who lived out of his whole heart, Jesus, can give the gift of
wholeheartedness to those who are exhausted by living at loggerheads with their
true hearts. That is the hidden gem
of this passage. Rest does not mean
respite. It means wholeheartedness.
Jesus
gives the gift of wholeheartedness by reminding us of the God who wants us to
live more completely into our own life, our
life, not someone else’s, not the life we think others want or need our
life to be. And he does it also by
giving to us his Spirit who breathes into us the courage to do so.
Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me…for my yoke is easy, and my
burden is light.” It is easy
and light not because we shall not be called on to do difficult things or to
experience challenges in our lives. The
gospel and circumstances will call us to do both.
The yoke of Christ is easy and light because when we live our lives
wholeheartedly we will have a sense of peace in us no matter the external
circumstances.
I
really like – surprise – the way Mary Oliver puts it.
(For those who receive our midweek email, I know this is two Mary Oliver
poems in the span of a few days. But
I do not apologize because, overall this year, I have been pretty restrained.)
This poem is called “Mornings at
Blackwater.”
Mornings
at Blackwater
For
years, every morning, I drank
from
Blackwater Pond.
It
was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,
the
feet of ducks.
And
always it assuaged me
from
the dry bowl of the very far past.
What
I want to say is
that
the past is the past,
and
the present is what your life is,
and
you are capable
of
choosing what that will be,
darling
citizen.
So
come to the pond,
or
the river of your imagination,
or
the harbor of your longing,
and
put your lips to the world.
And
live
your
life.
Oliver
joins Brother David and Jesus in saying that life is too short to live it with
half a heart. Within the parameters
of doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God, they would urge
us to listen to the Voice within us – the Spirit’s voice – who wants to
guide us in the way of abundant life and living, who wants us to live our life.
How
often we do not pay attention to that Voice because we are conditioned if not
controlled by our past and we think we cannot break free from it and that
nothing ever really can be different for us, and so we suffer along, and so we
live half-heartedly. How often we
turn aside from the Voice because to listen to it would entail major changes in
us and our lives and we either are too fearful or too lazy to embark on them,
and so we live half-heartedly. How
often we turn the volume down on that Voice because we are afraid of what others
might think of us if we followed it, and so we live half-heartedly.
How often we ignore the Voice because to act on it could well be costly
financially and in other ways, so we live half-heartedly.
But
no, says Oliver, “the past is the
past/and the present is what your life is/and you are capable of choosing what
that will be/So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination/or the harbor
of your longing…” which all are ways that the Spirit speaks to us. “Put
your lips to the world.” Kiss
it. Love it.
Engage it. And live your
life. Live it wholeheartedly.
In
the Great Commandment, Jesus said, Love
the Lord your God with what? A
sliver of your heart? A piece of
your heart? A part of your heart?
No, “Love the Lord your God
with all heart, all your mind, all your soul…”
Jesus is saying that we love God by living wholeheartedly, by being
true to the person it is in us to be. We
cannot do that if half our heart is missing or miserly or shut up or closed
down. We cannot do that if our heart
is scared or resigned or resentful.
So,
the gentle invitation for all time and for all of us, “Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I
will give you rest…” “Rest”
not so much as respite but as the courage to live with your whole heart.
That is what Jesus did for the woman at the well.
She did not need sleep. She
needed to move beyond her shame so that she could be free to live with a whole
heart. That is what he did for the
woman caught in adultery. She did
not need a nap but a sense of worth and worthiness so that she could be free to
live with her whole heart. That is
what he did for Peter after Peter three times had betrayed him.
He did not need a week or two at the Hilton but to be released from his
guilt so that he could be set free to live with his whole heart.
Whatever
is your weariness if you are weary or whatever is your burden if you are
burdened, do not despair of it. Often
these are the experiences that prompt us to heal and mature as we accept the
courage from the Christ to change and be changed.
Live your life.
Another David, David of the Bible, his prayer echoes through the centuries, forever immortalized in Psalm 51: “Create in me a full heart, O God, and restore to me the joy of your salvation.”
Amen.
Copyright © 2011 by First Presbyterian Church