Rest for Your Souls

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, 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." Matthew 11:28-30 (NIV) What does it mean to find rest for your soul? To have your mind and heart be at rest?  And why does this rest of soul seem so difficult to come by and so hard to maintain?Jesus’ words, “I am gentle and humble in heart,” just drip with restfulness, at least to me. Proud and harsh don’t go together with a soul at rest, that’s for sure, neither do anxious, worried, hurried, arrogant, violent, greedy, or being all about yourself.Jesus at once confronts both empty religion as well as simply ignoring the truth. The soul cannot find rest in either. Empty religion regardless of its name promotes something less than the truth and will peddle salvation and peace with God through some system of merit, of works of our own, and fill your bowl with guilt if you don’t comply. That’s why the religious leaders of the very people Jesus talked to constantly came out with new and more nuanced regulations. And that’s why people then and now turned their back on religion. Guilt is a big burden to bear it won’t let the soul rest. But godlessness does not bring rest to the soul either; it ignores the truth of the soul and of God. The truth of the soul is that exists because of God and is accountable to God, and death does not provide relief from accountability but simply ushers us into final reckoning. The truth of God is that he exists and his sovereignty extends over our lives, he can and does decree what is right and what is wrong, what is moral and what is immoral. If empty religion piles on false guilt then ignoring God fails to deal with real guilt before God. One is harsh and the other is proud. Neither can give the soul true rest.This is why I am growing ever more leery of moralistic preaching. It allows the soul to give itself a false sense of rest. It provides rest based on comparison to others, “I thank you God that I am not a sinner like …” (Luke 18:9-14). It steeps us in rest of soul based on merit and vaporizes the instant we transgress ourselves. It will strap the burden of hypocrisy on your back in the blink of an eye.This is why I am leery of empty preaching, the kind that looses itself in self-improvement, in comfort, in mere political action. The kind of preaching that leaves Jesus out or makes him secondary, the stripped down version of Jesus or the cleaned up version of Jesus. The fact is that he is more than psychotherapist, more than a guru, more than economist, more than a revolutionary, more than one among many. We exist because of him and only because of him (Colossians 1:16-17). He is not neat, comfortable, and clean, but beaten, bloody, crucified, buried, and risen because of his great love for us and our great sinfulness. He really can forgive, he really can teach me how to forgive, how to die to self, how to love God, how to love my neighbor, and how to love one another and find in that rest for my soul.Are you as amazed as I am that he says to us restless souls, “Come to me ..?”Thank you God for Jesus! Love you, pastor Hans