Resting in Jesus

It is an Advent hymn that comes to mind today.  Following the close watch my friend David and I kept with others for his mother as she lay in hospice and the sad news of the passing of former parishioner and vestry member Dick Hodgetts, just days after hearing from Ellen Warren about the passing of her little brother Jim.

Come, Thou long-expected Jesus

Born to set Thy people free

From our fears and sins release us

Let us find our rest in Thee

So many in this community have been keeping watch and the news is only a little comfort.  We mourn with Pat and family. And Ellen. And David. And we thank God for their release and rest now it has come.

Our need to meet Jesus never diminishes, never ends.  Back when I was writing about the difference between Sunday and Sabbath I perhaps focused too much on the church and our activity in it as a sociological reality.  I don't remember identifying "being with Jesus" as a "sabbath rest."  

But that is exactly what the hymn expresses and it is echoed in the Collect for Saturdays in Morning Prayer:

Almighty God, who after the creation of the world rested from all your works and sanctified a day of rest for all your creatures: Grant that we, putting away all earthly anxieties, may be duly prepared for the service of your sanctuary, and that our rest here upon earth may be a preparation for the eternal rest promised to your people in heaven; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Christian version of Sabbath is not just absence from labor, stress, struggle, or pain.  It is to be caught up in the abiding presence of Jesus.  We understand that rest as provided or gifted to us and not as something we've earned or gained.  

Yes there are things we do to move ourselves into place, much like all our sacramental "regulars."  Dimmed lights, reduced noise, comfortable seating, empty schedules, rise to the level of liturgy.  They are our first part in what is finally fulfilled by God's blessing, God's effecting the very shalom/peace in which and for which God created us.  

Sabbath is encountered by God's grace not accomplished.  A grace that God knows and has experienced in the very first Sabbath.  Dick and Martha and before them Jim are in that grace -- a gift of Sabbath from God in the presence of their "long-expected Jesus."