life

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Familiar but Fresh…Freely and Lightly

Posted by David Ward on 16/04/2025
Posted in: Bible, discipleship, Personal thoughts, Spirituality. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
Matthew 11:28-30 MSG

I think this must be one of the most quoted verses from The Message version of the Bible. It is such a dynamic translation of Jesus words to the crowds that had gathered around him. He’d just been teaching his twelve ‘apprentices’, before they set out with him to the surrounding villages, teaching and preaching.

A group of the ‘apprentices’ of John the Baptist, who was in Herod’s prison at this time, came with a question from John, “Are you the Messiah…or should we keep looking?” As Jesus answered them, a crowd gathered, and after John’s apprentices went on their way Jesus began to speak to the crowd. He talked about John the Baptist’s place in the long line of prophets who spoke about God’s plan to Israel, and who were largely ignored. He went on to speak about how some people were ignoring his message too, before praying for the people who had gathered.

It’s then that he gives the invitation that in more traditional translations begins, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. [29] Take my yoke upon you… (Matthew 11:28-29 NLT).

In Jesus culture he was considered to be a rabbi (Hebrew “master” or “teacher”). Like every Rabbi of his day, Jesus will have had two things:

Firstly, he had disciples (‘apprentices ‘is a better word). To be an apprentice of Jesus (and any other rabbi) meant you organised life around three things

  • Be with Jesus
  • Become like Jesus
  • Do what he would do if he were you.

Wow! More than anything else Jesus wants us to be with him, to spend time in his presence, to do what he does and become like him. I guess that’s why I started this journey of simplifying my relationship with him from all the “heavy, ill-fitting” burdens that cultural Christianity can lay on you!

Secondly, every rabbi had a yoke (not a literal one, he’s not a farmer! This is an agricultural reference to the way young oxen are yoked together with an older, more experienced one, so they learn how to pull the plough properly. In the first century a yoke was how people described the way each rabbi read and interpreted the Torah, or Law of Moses. But it was more than that…it was his set of teachings on how to be fully human. His way to bear the burden of the sometimes-crippling weight of life…marriage, divorce, prayer, money, sex, conflict, government…everything.

So, rabbi Jesus had the same things as other rabbis…he had apprentices, and he had a yoke BUT what was different about Jesus was that his yoke was an easy yoke that gives its wearers “rest”.

What is this rest that Jesus offers?

The people in Jesus day would have understood it like this: rest was life at its best and fullest, it was “spiritual rest” …having peace of mind and heart because of having peace with God.

So, the rest Jesus offers has to do with having a close relationship with God. It comes from knowing that we don’t have to be constantly trying to earn God’s approval. Because of Jesus we can be sure of God’s love and friendship and experience his peace.

It doesn’t mean inactivity, an absence of work and busy-ness, like leisure time or a holiday It’s about finding rest in our work, because every part of our being has found that rest in God, which spreads into every part of our lives.

It means that whatever we are doing, whatever our circumstances in life, our heart and mind can still be at rest, peaceful, because we know God’s presence and care…God is our faithful friend.

If that isn’t the way to live freely and lightly, I don’t know what is!

PS I’m really grateful to John Mark Comer for his explanation of Jesus as a rabbi in his book “Practicing the Way” (which was a development of his teaching in “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry”)

Simply a walk-on part…

Posted by David Ward on 27/08/2018
Posted in: Bible, Books/Articles, Personal thoughts, Spirituality. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

Walking into sunset banner

[24] Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.

Genesis 5:24 (NIV)

 

[5] By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: “He could not be found, because God had taken him away.” For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. [6] And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Hebrews 11:5 (NIV)

A walk-on part…there are two ways of looking at that, and Enoch could be said to encapsulate both views.

If you’re an actor with a walk-on part you at least get to be on stage. You have no lines to speak; you have an opportunity to be memorable simply through your presence and how convincing or unforgettable any action you take is.

Enoch is like that. He appears in the post-Fall and pre-Flood narrative in the Bible. We know he was someone’s son, someone’s father and how long he lived. We are given no back story and he has no lines to deliver in the Genesis epic.

But there is, as I said earlier, a second-way to understand Enoch’s walk-on part…all his life he walked on with God as his constant companion, and apparently that was enough, “he was commended as one who pleased God” (Hebrews 11: 5).

Just a few chapters back in the book we hear how God enjoyed walking with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. Then it all went drastically wrong, our Biblical forebears were kicked out of paradise, and the relationship with God became a bit distant.

But, if the story here means anything at all, it must mean that although the location for the walk has changed a bit, God’s desire for a close relationship with anyone who really wants to walk with him has clearly not changed.

And God went on walking with people just like you and me, until he walked himself right out of heaven and spent time walking across the Holy Land with a rag-tag bunch of followers, showing them that he really is Emmanuel, God with us.

Apparently, the ingredients for a close relationship with God are as simple as believing he exists and wants us to become his walking companions, and having found that out to join in the walk.

And we followers of Jesus sometimes make it all sound so complicated!

In her book “Faith in the Making” (where credit for the inspiration for this post lies), Lyndall Bywater tells a lovely story to explain the verse from Hebrews 5 quoted above.

A little girl was recounting to her parents he things she’d learned about Enoch in her Sunday school session. When it came to explaining how he’d left his mortal life, she scratched her head and thought for a bit, before declaring, ‘What happened was that he kept going for walks with God, and one day he walked such a long way that God said it would be too far to go back to Enoch’s house, so they might as well go to God’s place instead.’

This is the bit that really moved me…what a wonderful way to picture death.

To discover that there is a God who wants to share his life with us in the walk of life, to join up with his walking group and to walk with him through the many adventures of life until one day we walk right out of our world and into his…that’s truly amazing.

And it is enough.

We don’t need to strive to be famous, to do great things, to write books, to make a name for ourselves…although we may be blessed with any and all of those things…we simply need to walk with God, as step-by-step and day-by-day he transforms us into the image of Jesus.

One of the Old Testament prophets summed it all up so well when he said:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6:8 (NIV)

 

Conversations 4: “The Long Goodbye…”

Posted by David Ward on 22/04/2013
Posted in: Monastic spirituality, Personal thoughts, Relationships. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

“Abba Evagrius said, ‘Sit in your cell, collecting your thoughts. Remember the day of your death'”

Benedicta Ward, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, p 63: 1

“Day by day remind yourself that you are going to die.”

Rule of St Benedict, 4: 47 (Ed. Timothy Fry OSB)

We were nearing the end of a Home group session where we’d been thinking and talking about Patience, part of the fruit of the Spirit-filled life. As she summed up and focussed our thoughts towards prayer, our leader had a question for each of us: “Is there a particular area of your life that’s requiring a lot of patience on your part at the present time?”

Two of us in the room are in our 60s. He spoke about adjusting work/life balance and finding a way to ‘retire’ from work as a self-employed person.

I suggested that at my stage in life there were lots of areas where I was needing to be more patient with others and with myself. I talked about beginning to make planned adjustments and trying to think in advance about some of the implications of the aging process. I also mentioned that I was doing a lot more thinking about what is one of our culture’s major taboos, my inevitable death.

This subject is guaranteed to be a show-stopper…the home group leader was thankful for my reflective nature.

Even for a believer, death can be unsettling and final…not in terms of how we die (although that may well be a cause for worry) but in terms of the break with the life we’ve lived in this world (assuming that we won’t consider the end of life on planet Earth to be a blessed relief).

I had recently come across this beautiful piece in the writings of Paula Huston, and American Benedictine oblate also in her early 60s, in her book A Season of Mystery ( Loyola Press, Chicago 2012). Much as I’d like to reproduce it all, I’m sharing just a small extract of the writing which begins the final chapter of the book…go out and get your own copy, it is worth it (and I’m not on commission)!

“Meanwhile, we begin our long good-bye to what we have loved most. And this is never easy. It shouldn’t be, for what we have loved here on earth is precious beyond compare. The parents who adored us. The stout-hearted partner or best friend who has seen us at our weakest and our worst, yet still cherishes our existence. The siblings or childhood companions who have known us since we were downy-cheeked grade-school kids, arguing in the sandbox…

…We are bidding farewell to our blue and beautiful planet, with its vast seas and green forests and towering masses of light-rimmed clouds. We are saying goodbye to mountains, redwoods, rivers, herds of caribou and pods of whales. We are letting go of the night sky and the great white lamp of the moon, the fields and fields of poppies in the spring…

…Life, with all its sins and sorrows, has truely been a wondrous gift. As we begin to see the end approach, it’s no wonder we become pensive.”