Choosing Rest

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD
St. John’s, Essex, CT
July 18, 2021
2 Samuel 7:1-14a; Psalm 89:20-37; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56


May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

[Good morning friends. I am grateful to my friend Kate for the invitation to be here. As I was preparing to come here, I realized that it has been a decade since I stood in this pulpit to bid farewell to you as your associate rector. It is indeed a joy to be here in this place that had such a meaningful role in forming me as a priest.]

Now anyone who has been on a road trip with me or been to a meeting I have hosted or just generally spent more than a few hours with me, knows that I cannot go very long without eating. I also assume this is true of everyone else, so snacks are never far away. I love to cook and love to eat good food. A leisurely meal where each bite is savored, where the conversation is meandering, meaningful, and punctuated with lots of laughter is my idea of a perfect evening. And so you can perhaps understand why I would find the line in our Gospel this morning so troubling, “they had no leisure even to eat.” No leisure to eat. What? How could this be? If I were there with Jesus, I would be applauding his intervention with the apostles. Too busy to eat? Not okay. Not at all. That is not enjoyable nor advisable for our health and well-being. We need to eat, and we need to take time to be with those we love. Those whose company fills our souls as well as delicious meals fill our stomachs.

The Apostles were keeping a frantic pace. So much coming and going. They were trying to do as much as they could to address the needs in front of them. Their effort was noble, but Jesus saw the writing on the wall. Their pace was not sustainable. They were on the road to burnout. They needed to take a break. He invites them away to a deserted place. He wants them to learn to do ministry at a pace that allows them to feed their souls as well as their bodies.

I think this reminder about pacing, and this reminder to do our life and ministry at a pace that sustains our bodies and souls is a particularly important one for us in this season. As the world reopens and we return to so many things we missed, it could be easy for us to quickly accelerate to an unsustainable pace, like that of the apostles. There is so much we want to do. Hopefully one of the gifts of this past year has been real clarity about where our priorities are and what really matters to us. Even amidst all the loss and challenges of this past year, I hope we have also come to see how much connection and community matter to us. How much it matters to be able to gather in the same physical space. Hopefully we have been reminded of the gifts of not hurrying from one place to another. The gifts of time at home. The gifts of quiet. (Although if you are a caregiver or everyone in your house was doing everything at home in the midst of this pandemic, quiet might have been a very rare commodity. I, for one, came to savor a few minutes of silence on the way to the grocery store.)

Jesus is onto something. We need time apart from work, from the hustle and bustle of daily life. We need time away. We need vacation and retreat. We need time to connect with God, time to remember whose we are, and that we belong to something much larger than ourselves. Without time to connect with God we risk losing our spiritual depth or giving into the myth that we can do it all ourselves.

Now it is easy to push back on this. There is so much work to do in the world. The world needs us - the world especially needs the abundant gifts that are present in this remarkable community of St. John’s. And for those of us with caregiving obligations the idea of a break or time off seems like a pipe dream. For those of us working in jobs that figured out how to go fully remote on a dime, we may even feel like we are working more than ever. We’ve lost (at least for a time) those walks between meetings, or that commute time on the train (I am guessing Geof would join me in missing those long commutes on Metro North without meetings), or time in airport lounges or just a daily commute in the car. When your office is mere steps from your bed or your kitchen, it is easy to have a day with meetings in all the available time. The days can feel far fuller than when we traveled miles and miles.

So what are we to do? Well, I think we have an important choice to make. Do we want to go along like the apostles? Do we want to do life and ministry at such a pace that we do not even have time to sit down and enjoy a decent meal? There are lots of societal messages that would reinforce that. In her work on wholehearted living, Brene Brown notes how American society sees exhaustion as a status symbol. If we allow ourselves to be defined by our productivity, by our achievements, and our accomplishments, then it is easy to just keep pushing, to just keep going without regard to our wellbeing.

Or do we want to accept Jesus’ invitation to rest, to renewal? Now that cannot always be accomplished by literally going away to a deserted place. If you get solitude for a walk in the woods or at the beach, wonderful. But I think it is important to remember the restorative power of just a few minutes. We do not literally have to go to a desert. We do not even have to be alone. We just need to slow down. We need to breathe deeply. We need to pay attention and be present - notice what is happening. Take a few moments to note what we are grateful for on this day, in this moment. Those simple actions can make a world of difference.

As we return to so much that we have missed, I hope that we will do so at a pace that feeds our whole selves - body, mind, and spirit. I hope we will make time - even just small windows - to do that which restores our souls. The world needs us. It needs our gifts. And we can only share them when we are whole and nourished. AMEN.

Bread of Life

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

Christ Church Cathedral, Hartford, CT

August 19, 2018, Proper 15B

Proverbs 9:1-6; Psalm 34:9-14; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I don’t know about you all, but I often get highly suspicious that the Holy Spirit is trying to tell me something when I begin to hear the same message from multiple sources. First off I think we are supposed to be learning something about bread, right? I mean it has been occurring over and over again in our Gospel readings for the past few weeks.

Again and again Jesus tells us that he is the bread of life. What does that mean? What is the bread of life? Well, in today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that the bread of life is the stuff of eternal life. It is the stuff that lasts. It is not flimsy or lacking substance. And this is where the message gets real and important for me. This is where it is no longer just about literal bread (although that is important too, and there will be more on that later), it is also about metaphorical bread. It is about that which sustains our souls. That which inspires us and gives us joy.

And this is where I think the Holy Spirit has been up to something. Two weeks ago, I spent a remarkable week at Yale Divinity School at a conference on the Theology of Joy and the Pedagogy of the Good Life. This conference is connected with work the Yale Center for Faith and Culture has been doing on the Theology of Joy, as well as a course they have been teaching, particularly to Yale undergrads on what makes a “Life Worth Living.” As you might imagine, there were lots of excellent presentations and conversations at a conference on Joy and the Good Life. I left that week feeling renewed and inspired. I also left reminded of how very important it is for each of us to be regularly asking ourselves, “What is it that makes life worth living for me, and am I living that life now? What do I need to do differently to be living a life that is more inline with my own values?”

In our American Society, land of rugged individualism and manifest destiny, it can be tempting to think this question of a life worth living is about what each of us desires as individuals. If we listen to the images and sound bytes of Madison Avenue, we can think that the life worth living is something that can be purchased at our nearest car dealer or big box retailer. But we know better than that. We know that a life worth living is not something you can find on a shelf or that will arrive on your front steps in a cardboard box. Our reading from Ephesians reminds that we can be easily tempted to waste our precious life: “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.”

Temptations abound, and yet we seek to be wise and faithful followers of Jesus, we seek the bread of life. We seek that which is eternal and everlasting. We seek that which is real. We seek that which transforms. The question for us is not just about what makes a life worth living, as in “What do I desire?” No, for us, as followers of Jesus it is about how we are living a life that is worthy of who God calls us to be. We know it is not just about us. It is about relationship, about relationship with God and with each other. It is about a living a life of love. A life that feels rooted and connected. A life that inspires others to seek out the eternal Bread of Life.

So back to the bread. In a few minutes, when we celebrate communion, you will notice something a little different. Today we are having real bread. I want to share a bit with you about the recipe and why I chose to make it. I think it might help provide a tangible connection to our readings and the call we have to live more deeply into our faith lives.

As I think you all know by now, I am someone who likes to get things done. Efficiently and to a high standard, of course, being my preferred combination. Funny thing about making bread, especially this bread recipe. Efficiency is not possible. This bread cannot be hurried or made more efficiently. It requires time and investment, if I want to have delicious bread that is a joy to eat. This bread recipe is from Chef Mark Bittman, and it is his no knead bread. It does not require constant attention. It requires time. You mix the dough and then you let it rise for 18 - 24 hours. Then you bake it in a hot Dutch Oven. The result is a crusty boule with a soft and chewy middle. It has quickly become a favorite bread in our house, as long as we can remember far enough in advance to make the dough. And I have found a profound spiritual lesson in the act of making it. This bread recipe invites me to slow down, to pay attention, and to savor the present. I would guess that I am not the only one who could occasionally benefit from the gift of slowing down, of taking time for reflection, time to invest in something worth doing well, because the result nourishes body and soul.

So, I hope that in our readings today, and particularly in the bite of bread you receive at communion, you find an invitation to reflect on what gives you sustenance, what feeds your soul, what is that bread of life that gives meaning to you? What is God’s invitation to you to live more fully into who you are called to be? I hope you find that reflection fruitful, and I hope that you continue to find more ways to live a life more deeply connected to our Lord, who gives us the bread of eternal life. AMEN.