Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Jesus of Nazareth
The first chapter of Genesis describes God creating the world in six days. The next chapter begins, ‘…And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done’. That doesn’t imply that God was tired and needed a rest. God is by nature all powerful and never tires but He stopped because He had finished what He was doing and began to enjoy what He had done. It didn’t mean to imply that there was no work still to do because, as Jesus said, ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working’ (John 5:17).
If you create a garden, you have to design and landscape it before adding plants. That all involves a lot of work. At the end of it, when the work is done and the garden complete, you rest and can enter into the enjoyment of it. But this doesn’t mean there’s no more work to do! It doesn’t mean that from then onwards you can sit idly through every day. Every garden has to be maintained but, nevertheless, in a real sense you’re able to rest in the completed work and it’s in that sense that God rested on the seventh day.
We see something similar about Jesus' own ministry explained in the opening words of Hebrews: ‘When he had by himself purged our sins, [he] sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.’ Although Jesus, God the Son, took his seat alongside God the Father, it didn’t mean there is nothing more for him to do. As St Paul explains, Jesus 'must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet' (1 Corinthians 15:25).
In the Genesis story, Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day and so the next day, the seventh, the day of rest, was their first full day on earth. They enjoyed God’s rest. Obviously, there were things to do. They had to work: ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth’, God told them, ‘and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’ But this wasn’t work as it became later.
Genesis 3 describes how the devil, in the guise of a serpent, lured Adam and Eve into sin. As a result, they were banished from the Garden of Eden and there was a curse on creation. Among the consequences, the very nature of work was transformed. ‘Cursed is the ground because of you’, God told Adam. ‘By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’
Adam and Eve were meant to enjoy God's rest forever: unlike the previous six days, the seventh day did not have an evening and a morning. But even living amidst such abundance, they forfeited their rest by wanting just the one single thing God had forbidden them: the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They were therefore vulnerable when the devil suggested to Eve that God had had forbidden her and her husband the fruit from all the trees in the garden.
That suggestion was not correct, and Eve knew it, but when she corrected the devil, she got it wrong herself. She said that they were not even allowed to touch that tree! Amidst all this misdirection and error, the devil successfully exploited Eve's discontent. He convinced Eve that God was withholding some good that was legitimately hers, so that she came to see sense in the idea of disobeying God! Later, Adam concurred and together they lost their rest. You don’t have to believe the story literally to take the point. The rest that Jesus invites us to is the quality of rest that Adam and Eve enjoyed at first.
I plan to continue this theme next weekend, when it will be clear that failure to believe and trust in God is not wanting only what he has forbidden, like the 'forbidden fruit', but includes the lawful and legitimate things that the Israelites coveted after they left Egypt with Moses: the sorts of things and experiences that we see others enjoying but which God has not provided for us. For now, therefore, I invite you to think about what you want that God hasn't provided. Not just the things and experiences that society takes for granted but are forbidden by God, like sexual impropriety, drunken excess and debasing entertainments, but the legitimate, everyday pleasures we see that others have.
Could lacking these be a cause of some uncertainty within you about God's goodness towards you? Could they create a vulnerability within you to the devil's lies and confusion about what you're missing out on? Are you susceptible to the discontent the consumer society provokes to keep us spending? Do you feel the need to have what others have in order to be fulfilled? Could this be subtly distracting you and drawing you away from the best that God has in mind for you, from resting in adequacy that only God can create for you?
Adam and Eve were meant to enjoy God's rest forever: unlike the previous six days, the seventh day did not have an evening and a morning. But even living amidst such abundance, they forfeited their rest by wanting just the one single thing God had forbidden them: the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They were therefore vulnerable when the devil suggested to Eve that God had had forbidden her and her husband the fruit from all the trees in the garden.
That suggestion was not correct, and Eve knew it, but when she corrected the devil, she got it wrong herself. She said that they were not even allowed to touch that tree! Amidst all this misdirection and error, the devil successfully exploited Eve's discontent. He convinced Eve that God was withholding some good that was legitimately hers, so that she came to see sense in the idea of disobeying God! Later, Adam concurred and together they lost their rest. You don’t have to believe the story literally to take the point. The rest that Jesus invites us to is the quality of rest that Adam and Eve enjoyed at first.
I plan to continue this theme next weekend, when it will be clear that failure to believe and trust in God is not wanting only what he has forbidden, like the 'forbidden fruit', but includes the lawful and legitimate things that the Israelites coveted after they left Egypt with Moses: the sorts of things and experiences that we see others enjoying but which God has not provided for us. For now, therefore, I invite you to think about what you want that God hasn't provided. Not just the things and experiences that society takes for granted but are forbidden by God, like sexual impropriety, drunken excess and debasing entertainments, but the legitimate, everyday pleasures we see that others have.
Could lacking these be a cause of some uncertainty within you about God's goodness towards you? Could they create a vulnerability within you to the devil's lies and confusion about what you're missing out on? Are you susceptible to the discontent the consumer society provokes to keep us spending? Do you feel the need to have what others have in order to be fulfilled? Could this be subtly distracting you and drawing you away from the best that God has in mind for you, from resting in adequacy that only God can create for you?
This is the penultimate Reflection in this series, JESUS and MONEY, but the Reflections will continue and I'm planning a series about contentment, based on St Paul's Letter to the Philippians, to begin in October.
© All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2014.
Please feel free to copy, print and share these Reflections on a non-profit basis.
