August 3, 2025

Many little things, often to some degree, there's a little bit of a construction to them, but they so often can also communicate truths that we remember in our lives. I have this rather hazy and vague memory of being eight or nine years old. I remember my brother was a toddler, and we were headed to Disney World from Arkansas. We had driven down through Louisiana to the coast and going across Alabama, Mississippi, into Florida. We were with my mom's parents. And at some point in that journey, this ostensible vacation time, we had our AAA triptychs out. We were trying to find a gas station. We were somewhere right along the coast. And I remember how beautiful the ocean looked. But there was all this freneticism because we were trying to find a gas station to fill up the car. And also my grandfather, my dear beloved grandfather, was insistent that we find a place with a payphone so that he could call and check his messages from work.

Now, that was not a singular occurrence. The best we were ever able to do was to get him to relax for about three or four days, often in the context of a multi-week vacation. And then the rest of the time, he was strategizing and thinking about work-related things. And it's notable because he himself was a career minister. He was a Southern Baptist missionary administrator. And then after he retired from that, he created a business helping churches build their buildings. But he always had this very strong sense that his call and vocation in life was to work for the greater good of the gospel. But it also, there was a tension and a problem in that. Especially if we pay close attention to the lessons and readings we hear today. And he's not the only one that has fallen into this trap. There's a long history in our culture in the United States of this so-called Protestant work ethic. I'm sure many of you have heard that usage of that term. But this idea that our faithfulness, our righteousness in the kingdom is in some way dependent on what we produce. How effective we are at doing things, having productivity. That gets really warped in extreme ways in some modern context with this idea of the prosperity gospel. That your wealth and your riches are an indicator of your righteousness. But in big ways and small that continues to kind of capture and enslave us to the things of this world.

And I want to invite us this morning to really take to heart the invitation we have across all of our readings to find this time and place of respite, to get outside of our heads. To work as hard as we can to stop this frenetic process of doing and acting, and to be, to be in the present moment, and to listen deeply for the presence of God and the ways that God is calling us into deeper relationship with Him. As we look back at our Ecclesiastes reading, we have this fascinating position or reflection by the teacher. This frustration with the seamless worthlessness of the actions. All of this dizziness and what has it gotten me? All of these things that I have done and yet I am chasing after the wind. I've given up my heart in despair concerning all the toils of my labors. You know, it never quite seems to be enough. Never quite seems to get quite there. And I think about that. I think about the man who we hear about in this parable for Jesus. Because one of the things not said, but I think is so often the conclusion of experiences like this, is that our soul is never satisfied.

You know, he says to himself, I'm going to build an even bigger structure and then I can rest. Then I can take it easy. And how many of us have said that to ourselves? And then we get there and we say, ah, but it needs to be just a little bit bigger. We need to do just a little bit more. We're not quite satisfied with where we are. We can't stop and rest. We can't take that moment of peace. It's a never-ending battle unless we take that opportunity to really and truly disconnect. I think about the position of these readings in the context of where we are in the year, and I have to wonder if the framers of our lectionary chose the readings from last week, the readings for this week, some of the other readings that we'll hear in the coming weeks ahead in specific appreciation for the fact that this is the time of respite and relaxation for so many of us in our cultural context. An implicit teaching to us that rest, vacation, taking time off are important things to do. We have, too, this reading from Colossians, and I want to remind us something that I have brought up before, that every time we encounter Paul's epistles, we have to remember that they are written to a specific community with specific issues that they are wrestling with, that they are struggling with.

And we hear today Paul admonishing against these various vices, fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, greed, etc. But I wonder for us, in our context today, what are those earthly desires that keep us trapped? They may not be the same, but they nevertheless have the same impact. What might it be for us to create our own list of vices, of workaholism, of lack of rest, of frenetic doing in a space and time where we need to be more conscious of listening and stopping and being present? Just like last week's gospel passage, where we have the story of Mary and Martha. As I mentioned, it's not a complete bifurcation of wholly one being right and wholly the other being wrong. There are times that we are called into action. But there are times, too, where we are called into rest and deep listening. And what would that be for us today? To prioritize that, in this moment in time where so much seems to be driven by what we are to do and how we are to act and what it means to act and do.

And in that I want to invite us to consider another element of what we hear both in last week's gospel but also in this week's. Throughout Jesus' earthly ministry, there are encounters that he has with people, but also framings and parables that he teaches where we have a consistent theme of people demanding an outcome or requesting with passion a certain outcome. We have last week Martha not just saying, I am frustrated by what my sister Mary is doing, but demanding of Jesus that he correct Mary. This week we have this teacher, or this man coming to Jesus, demanding that Jesus decide this dispute he has with his brother. Tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me. And again and again, we have Jesus reframing these moments. And showing the folly of this kind of demanding nature. We certainly are to bring our petitions to God. To ask of God the things that we need in this life. The great prayer that Jesus teaches us. Petitions God to give us our daily bread. That there are places and times for that asking. But also, we are called not only in that moment, a petition, to give space for God's responsiveness to us. Not just what we want, God, but what is your desire for us? So often the trap is that we demand or require of God the things that we think are the right outcome or response or result.

You know, the great parable that Jesus teaches of Lazarus and the rich man. You have this rich man descending into sheol, into the place of death, and he never is able to get beyond that framing. Because even when he petitions Abraham, he demands that Abraham tell Lazarus to do things for him. It is never, what can I do to transform myself? Here is the place of stuckness I am in. I don't want to be here, God. Please help me. But in helping me, what is your desire for me? What is your place of transformation? How can I do something different? And our invitation in this place of rest, in this place of relaxation, is not simply to sit on our laurels, not simply to take time to recalibrate, but to take time for that process of reflection, of deep listening, of discerning in the quiet moments what God's desiring is for us today.

So in this season of rest and relaxation, may we find in our own connection and reconnection with God a space of rest and relaxation. An opportunity to listen more deeply, listen more fully, prepare ourselves more completely for what it is that we will be called to do and the times and places in which we will be called to act. I think about the great athlete, Scottish athlete, Roger Bannister in the middle of the 20th century. He was the first man to ever run a sub-four-minute mile. And he had gotten incredibly close on a number of occasions in the mid-1950s. But he had never quite gotten there. He would get down to like... four minutes, three seconds. Four minutes, two seconds. He just could not get below four minutes. And so what he did is after this extended period of time of training and preparation, he set a date, the 6th of May, 1954. And then he went on vacation. He went to the Scottish Highlands. He slept. He rested. He went for hikes in the woods and in the mountains. And then he came back. And he ran. And he beat that four-minute mile. But it took that time, what we now call interval training and that knowledge that we have about the importance of rest. In preparation for big events like this, he took that time to prepare himself, to listen to his body, to understand what he needed to do in order to execute most fully the call that he had, the desire that he had, the opportunity that he had to do this world-defining feat.

And so, even when we are on the precipice of great and mighty things, as we look ahead to September, to the rest of the fall, to the time ahead of us where we have all of these activities and events and important work that we're being called into as a community, as individuals within this community, let us also take this time, this moment, to be mindful of rest, to be mindful of relaxation, to be mindful of deep listening. And then finally, on one other point here, so often when we get ourselves tied into knots in these times of deep listening, or these times of deep action and activity where we aren't listening, we aren't resting, we aren't relaxing. We can get ourselves tied up into knots intellectually too and be incredibly concrete thinkers where we bifurcate and categorize our lives into this and that dichotomies. And so much of our freneticism today can be driven by these polarities and divisions. These points of conflict. And yet when we take opportunities to stop and disconnect ourselves from that, we so often find a space of new wholeness and new connectivity and new ways of being in relationship across the differences and divides that we encounter.

It's amazing when we take those opportunities to recalibrate, how little seems to be of those vital importances that we get so tied up in knots about. And how much more expansive the love and presence of God seems when we have that opportunity to be present in a restive and restorative way to the world around us. And so may we take this time in rest and relaxation, refocusing our energies on the listening and deep presence of God, letting the things of this world that so often get us tied up in all these complicated emotions, let those things fall away for a moment. So that we may rest and hear and reconnect with our God, so that when we are called into action, we may step into it most fully and most completely, ever more manifesting God's will for us in our lives and in this place. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen