Sam Bush, “Rest for the Weary”

According to a recent poll, if I were to ask you how you are doing, there is a 54% chance you would say “tired.” Tiredness is so commonplace that, just to make things interesting, we compare our levels of fatigue. Betsy Berne once wrote in the New Yorker, “There is an underlying contest over who is more tired and who has truly earned his or her tiredness. According to the tired married people with kids, there is no contest. They are the royalty of the tired kingdom…smug with exhaustion.” This is all just a warning to not, under any circumstances, ask me how I’m doing. 

Chances are, the question isn’t whether or not you’re tired, but what are you tired of? Are you, like Al Green, tired of being alone? Are you, like the Kinks, tired of waiting? Or maybe, like Tom Petty - the real king of  fatigue - you’re “Tired of screwing up, tired of goin' down. Tired of myself, tired of this town.” No matter how tired you feel, you are not as tired as Tom Petty was when he wrote that song. Rest in peace, Tom. Are you tired of your body breaking down? Of grieving? Of not knowing what’s next? Of preserving your honor? 

Today’s reading from Isaiah addresses our never-ending languor. Isaiah acknowledges the reality that life is universally grueling. It says “Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted.” In other words, no one has a monopoly on fatigue. The reasons may vary, but for both old and young there is plenty of weariness to go around.

At first, this may sound depressing, but it’s comforting to know that we are all on equal footing. Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “A few hours of mountain climbing turn a rascal and a saint into two pretty similar creatures. Fatigue is the shortest way to Equality.” Now, Nietzsche and I don’t always see eye to eye, but we agree here. I play basketball with a group of men twice a week. The range of physical prowess is vast, from former college athletes to, well, guys like me. It’s a wide range, alley-oops to airballs. But, at the end of each game, we are all one big puddle on the floor, high-fiving and congratulating each other for escaping injury for another day. 

Maybe your fatigue is not the physical variety but social or mental. This year, many of us will suffer from political fatigue. Isaiah wrote this passage while the Israelites were being held in exile by the Babylonians. At that time, the Israelites were in complete despair. They thought God was totally checked out and uncaring. 

And what does Isaiah tell them? “Lift up your eyes! Who created the starry host and calls each by name? The Lord is the Creator of the ends of the earth.” In other words, let’s get a little perspective here. If you need to get recharged, look no further than the source of all power who, when there was nothing, said, “Let there be!” Let there be light and mountains and rivers and living things. God didn’t have to do that. All of life is unnecessary when you think about it. When you go back to Creation, you realize who you are and who God is and then, suddenly, your life is not a problem to be solved, but a gift to receive. 

If you can see that, you might just be able to run and not grow weary.

As Jack Kerouac wrote in his personal journal: “If a dead man were allowed to return to the earth for one day…would this resurrected man waste any time contemplating the good and evil in the world? Or would he just feast the eyes of his soul in a hungry viewing of life on earth, the thing itself: little children, men, women, towns, cities, seasons and seas!” Lift up your eyes! There’s more than enough to keep you going. 

There’s a problem though. The Israelites have tunnel vision. When Isaiah asks, “Do you not know? Have you not heard?” the Israelites probably said, “Yes, actually, we do know and have heard. We just don’t believe.” You can’t tell someone in a tunnel to look on the bright side. 

A friend recently asked me and Maddy, now that Davy is nine-weeks old, if we feel like we’ve reached the light at the end of the tunnel. We both looked at each other and said, “It still feels like we’re in the tunnel. In fact, we’ve taken up residency here. You know, the tunnel is actually not that bad once you move in furniture and get some art on the walls.” 

Where are you experiencing tunnel vision, where it feels like things are never really going to ever change? Here we are in the month of February, the doldrums of the calendar year. When the Romans first set the calendar, long before seasonal affective disorder, January and February weren’t even included. They were just a nameless, meaningless void. That’s the situation we’re in right now. It’s the season of stuckness. 

So, where is there hope when you feel stuck? Isaiah says, “Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.” Wait for the Lord. In other words, do nothing. Now, if you are tired of feeling stuck and want to snap out of your malaise, doing nothing is the least appealing option, but doing nothing is likely the best thing you could do.

As Corrie Ten Boom once wrote, “When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.” In that sense, the Psalmist’s call to be still and know that the Lord is God is not a commandment, but permission to 

do nothing, or at the most, pray. It’s an invitation for not just a higher power but the source of all power to change and guide you. 

In the place where you are trapped, rather than doing something, there’s a good chance that something is already being done without you knowing. Better yet, something was already done a long time ago, when God entered the tunnel himself, descending from on high to the depths of our despair. With Jesus, you don’t have to lift up your eyes. In Jesus, God meets you at eye level. 

George Eliot, the English novelist, wrote a wonderful book called Janet’s Repentance about a woman named Janet Dempster, who slowly finds herself trapped in an abusive marriage to a severe alcoholic. Eventually, to numb herself from the pain, she starts sipping the drinks that he leaves around and becomes an alcoholic, too. One night, in a fit of rage, he locks her out of the house. George Eliot says this: 

“She was tired, she was sick of that barren exhortation — Do right, and keep a clear conscience, and God will reward you and your troubles will be easier to bear. She wanted strength to do right — she wanted something to rely on besides her own resolutions; for was not the path behind her all strewn with broken resolutions? How could she trust in new ones?” 

She then thinks of a man named Mr. Tryan who is the new minister in town who is not dignified and has a reputation for being “very fond of

great sinners.” Janet herself would even poke fun at his earnestness but she finds herself going to his door. He takes her seriously. He says, “I know it is hard to bear. I would not speak lightly of your sorrows.” After listening to her for a long time, he says, “Do not believe that God has left you to yourself. How can you tell but that the hardest trials you have known have been only the road by which He was leading you to complete the sense of your own sin and helplessness, without which you would never have renounced all other hopes, and trust in His love alone?” He then says, “It is you Christ invites to come to him and find rest. He does not command you to walk alone without stumbling. You have only to rest on him as a child rests on its mother’s arms, and you will be upborne by his divine strength.” That is a picture of faith. Faith isn’t strength or piety; it’s a child in his mother’s arms. 

You see, fatigue is not without hope because it’s a precondition for renewal. Weariness is a precondition for rest just as death is a precondition for resurrection. Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you…and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Note that Jesus does not promise a life without burdens. We all have a yoke to carry. It’s just that his yoke is so much lighter than yours. 

Do you know why? Because he is God (it’s not a trick question!). He can carry things that you can’t carry. He can carry your regret and all the things you have said that you wish you could take back, he can carry your diagnosis, he can carry your worry and your sin. In fact, he already did. He carried them up a hill called Calvary so they would be nailed to the Cross and taken to the grave forever (may they rest in peace). Soon we will come to the altar to receive the Body and Blood of Jesus, what we call the holy food and drink of new and unending life in him.

You may feel faint and weary. When I ask you how you are doing, you very well may say “tired.” And you may have exhausted all other options. But the gospel of Jesus Christ is inexhaustible. It is a love that bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things. It is a love that never ends.