Rest for Your Souls

Psalm 23:2

    He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,

Dear Friends in Christ,

I’m going to begin my sermon this morning with a little quiz.  See if you can figure out the answer to the following:  It afflicts anywhere from 50-70 million American adults each year.  This condition costs U.S. businesses $150 billion worth of productivity annually.  Teenagers suffer from it.  Studies have shown that 64% of teens blame it for poor performance in school.  Middle agers suffer from it too.  Researchers say the most severe cases occur between the ages of 30 and 40.  Senior citizens are afflicted by it as well.  One study suggests that this condition impacts 50% of the over-65 population.  Treatments involve everything from mouth guards to herbal teas to medication.

Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?  Is it drug abuse?  Depression?  Anxiety disorders?  Cancer?  Long sermons?  No, it’s none of those things, though some of you would like to believe it’s those long sermons.  Instead, the condition I have just described for you is none other than insomnia.  Americans are having trouble sleeping.  And I’m sure many of you would voice a hearty “Amen” to that because you are among them.

Now I have to be honest with you (and my wife will vouch for this) I’ve never really had a problem with insomnia.  Rather, sometimes my problem is just the opposite.  I don’t have trouble falling asleep.  I have problems staying awake, especially when I go to bed at night.  Marilyn and I usually read in bed before turning out the light, but my reading rarely lasts more than a few minutes and a couple of pages before I have blissfully fallen asleep.

There have been extremely rare occasions, however, when I have woken up in the middle of the night with my mind racing so much that I had trouble going back to sleep.  But I’ve also discovered a pretty good cure for that, though I don’t think it would work for any of you.  And that is to simply start going over my sermon for the next Sunday in my head.  Very rarely do I make it through the first paragraph before I have fallen back to sleep again.

So I do have a bit of a feel for those of you who have found yourself battling this common malady known as insomnia.  And I can only imagine the frustration that it produces because there are few things more upsetting than not being able to sleep when you’re supposed to be sleeping or when everyone else is asleep.  And because as many as 70 million Americans suffer from this problem, you know what that means, don’t you?  It means that about 1/4 of our country is dozing off at work or napping through class or falling asleep at the wheel.  In fact, just this past week I did some research and found that according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, drowsy driving is a factor in more than 100,000 crashes, resulting in 1,550 deaths and 40,000 injuries annually in the USA. Some of you even snooze during my sermons, and don’t you think I don’t see you when you do!  According to one study, Americans consume 30 tons of aspirin, sleeping pills, and tranquilizers, not every year, but every day!

And why is that?  Why do we have such trouble sleeping?  Why are we so dog-tired all the time?  Well, let’s see, there is money to be made, degrees to be earned, ladders to climb.  There are television shows to be watched, parties to attend, malls to explore.  There are phone calls and endless texts to be made, computer games to be played, and e-mails to respond to.  You get my point?  Our modern technology, instead of making life simpler and easier for us, has made it more complicated, complex, and just downright busy.  And what’s so sad about all this is that we often pride ourselves on how busy we are.  We idolize guys like Thomas Edison who claimed he could live on 15-minute naps.  And we ignore guys like Albert Einstein who averaged 11 hours of sleep a night.

Then add to our busy and complicated lives the news of the day – the never-ending war on terrorism, North Korea and Iran working at developing nuclear weapons, the ongoing conflict between Jews and Palestinians in Israel, not to mention our own personal problems related to such things as our health, our marriage, our family, our finances, our job.  And is it any wonder why so many of us are in need of rest?

Only one other living creature has as much trouble sleeping as we do.  Care to guess what it might be?  It’s not dogs.  They spend most of their days as well as their nights sleeping.  It’s not bears.  They hibernate all winter long.  It’s not cats.  They invented the idea of the catnap.  It’s not sloths.  They sleep 20 hours a day.  Indeed, most animals know how to rest, with one exception.  These creatures are woolly, simpleminded, and slow.  And no, ladies, I’m not talking about your husbands.  Rather, I’m talking about sheep.

Recently I read that for sheep to sleep, everything must be just right.  There must be no predators nearby, no bugs in the air, no hunger in the belly.  But since sheep can’t protect themselves from predators or spray insecticide to keep the bugs away or find food for themselves, you know what they need, don’t you?  They need help.  They need a shepherd who can help them “lie down in green pastures.”  Without a shepherd, sheep can’t rest.  And I would submit to you today, my friends, that without our Heavenly Shepherd, neither can we.

I love the picture that David paints for us in the 2nd verse of the 23rd Psalm when he says, “He makes me lie down in green pastures.”  Try to envision that for a moment.  A flock of sheep resting peacefully on folded legs, nestled deep in a carpet of soft green grass.  A still pond on one side, the watching shepherd on the other.  “He makes me lie down in green pastures.”

Please note the pronoun preceding the verb there.  He makes me…  Who is the active one here?  Who’s in charge?  The shepherd, right?  The shepherd’s job is to select the trail, to find the pasture, and to lead the sheep to that pasture.  So what’s the sheep’s job?  To simply follow the shepherd, right?  And in order to follow the shepherd, what must the sheep do?  They must watch the shepherd.  They must keep their eyes on the shepherd.  And so must we.  In fact, if we do that, we might actually find the rest for our souls that we’re looking for.  At least that’s what Isaiah tells us in the 26th chapter of his book when he writes: “You will keep in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You.”

But that’s where we run into a problem, isn’t it? … keeping our mind stayed on our Shepherd, keeping our eyes focused on him.  Let me illustrate using our screens.  (Show picture of Jesus the Good Shepherd; then put black dot in the center of it.)  Note how our attention is immediately drawn to the dot.  It takes our eyes off the Shepherd.  It distracts us from the One who should be the center of our attention.  And if I throw some more dots onto the screen, the picture of the Shepherd is really obscured, isn’t it?

Well, those dots represent the distractions of life, the many things with which we clutter our lives day in and day out.  Television, computer games, cell phones, Facebook, needless worries, anger, bitterness, over-committed schedules.  Before long, we’re like Peter whom we heard about before in our Gospel reading when Jesus came walking on the water to him and the other disciples in the midst of the storm.  Remember, Peter asked Jesus if he could come to him on the water, and Jesus said, “Sure!  Come on!”  So Peter got out of the boat and actually walked on the water for a little bit, but then what did he do?  He started to pay more attention to the wind and the waves and took his eyes off Jesus, and he sank like a rock.  And that’s what happens to us when we take our eyes off the Shepherd.

Well, you did so well on that little exercise with the dots that I want to give you another one.  This one has to do with the 10 Commandments.  Of those 10 holy laws that God himself carved onto those 2 tablets of stone given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, which one occupies the most space?  The one on murder?  Adultery?  Stealing?  Certainly each of those is worthy of ample coverage.  But interestingly, God covers those sins with minimal words – 5 English words to condemn adultery, and only 4 to denounce murder and thievery.

But when he came to the topic of rest in the 3rd Commandment, one sentence would not suffice.   And so in Ex. 20:8-11 he says: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

Through the issue of that commandment, God was in essence telling us 2 things.  #1, you need to set aside time in your life to rest.  Your body was not created to go full speed ahead 7 days a week, week in and week out.  And listen, my friends, if the universe didn’t crash when its Creator rested, it won’t crash when you do.  One author reminds us: “The bow cannot always be bent without fear of it breaking.  For a field to bear fruit, it must occasionally lie fallow.  And for you to be healthy, you must rest.  Slow down, and God will heal you.  He will bring rest to your mind, to your body, and most of all to your soul.  He will lead you to green pastures.”

And that leads right in to the 2nd lesson God teaches us in the 3rd Commandment, namely, that you need to set aside time to focus on your Shepherd, to get away from the fast pace and hectic life that so many of us live and to instead graze in those green pastures to which he leads us.  By the way, green pastures were not part of the original terrain of Judea when David wrote this psalm.  The hills around Bethlehem where he tended his father’s flocks were not lush and luxuriant.  Any green pasture in Judea was back then and still is even to this day the work of the shepherd, which means that he has cleared the rough, rocky ground.  He has planted.  He has cultivated.  He has irrigated, all so that his sheep can not just survive in that harsh, less than desirable climate, but also thrive.

And so it is with our Heavenly Shepherd.  He has prepared green pastures for you and me to rest in, to feed in, to be nourished in.  The green pastures of worship.  The green pastures of his Sacrament that we’ll be enjoying later on in this service.  The green pastures of his Word, especially his Gospel which reminds us of how he cleared the rough, rocky, sin-strewn ground that once separated us from him and he did so with nail-pierced hands and feet on an old rugged cross, all so that we could drink deeply of his mercy and grace, his forgiveness and love.

Can you imagine the satisfaction that the shepherd feels when after all that work, his sheep lie down in those green pastures and finally find the rest that has so often eluded them?  May we do the same, my friends.  May we nestle ourselves deeply into those peaceful green pastures until we find ourselves hidden in and buried by the refreshing, invigorating, energizing love of our great Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, and finally find rest for our souls.

Amen.