July 12, 2026
• Rev. Mindie Moore
Greetings From: Rest
Matthew 11:28-30
July 12, 2026
Open with glad to be back and share a bit about this series (each week will focus on a different place or type of experience and some spiritual lessons I had during those times)
Pray
Today I want to talk to you about Rest. Rest seems like it should have been the most natural outcome of having six weeks away from the responsibilities of ministry, but I have to be honest that it was quite the journey for me to get there. We sort of dove right into the six weeks away by traveling two weekends in a row—this may have been an overcompensation of how often I don’t travel on weekends, but I’ll let you make that assessment.
The first weekend, Zack and I went to Traverse City, MI. It’s one of our favorite places and it was the weekend before our anniversary. It also worked out that the weekend we could go was the Michigan UMC Annual Conference, so that not only let us see our friends (SLIDE) Eric and Meagan (Eric used to be one of the pastors here at St. Luke’s) but also set up a chance for me to meet with a pastor named Tom doing really cool ministry in East Lansing. I’ll tell you about him next week.
The second weekend, we headed to Colombus, Ohio to see family. (SLIDE) My aunt and uncle and two of my cousins and their families all live in Colombus, so we had a fun weekend exploring with them and seeing all of their favorite places. It was amazingly unscheduled and relaxed and just good time together.
It was two amazing weekends. So much fun, such a reminder of how important of a value connecting to my people is. It was an absolutely soul-filling way to kick things off. But was it RESTFUL?
I was having a hard time knowing how to answer that question that kept popping into my brain. Because I was in this weird place of tension in my soul between wanting a deep rest...and feeling a lot of pressure to GET THE VERY MOST SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE POSSIBLE out of my sabbatical.
I almost looked at the leave like a sponge to wring out, like it was up to me to get every single last drop of spiritual enlightenment and growth out of this time away. Like maybe I thought there was a finite, specific amount of God that I had to experience in the confines of these six weeks and if I couldn’t do it THEN, I was going to miss out. I entered this time with all these worries that I was going to waste it and not experience something God might have for me.
So, to counteract this anxiety spiral, I took action (is this sounding like a sabbath to you yet?). I would be SO spiritual! I would rest with SUCH intention!
I started by checking out 5 different Richard Rohr books on Libby (I’m not kidding). I did read one of them, The Universal Christ. And then I realized that trying to find spiritual growth through panic reading probably was not the way, nor be Richard Rohr approved.
I also pulled my summertime praying the hours reader off my shelf. I did that about 4 times, until I finally admitted that praying the hours is very challenging for someone who struggles to keep track of time.
And...if you were here my last Sunday, on Memorial Day...you might remember that I publicly committed to apparently become a completely different person and pick up embroidery. I got as far as texting Laura Bicanic about how she gets started and where she buys supplies, and it was great to learn about her process, but that’s about all I did with that, because even in my most free and spiritually resolved state...I do not, will not, craft. Amen.
As I tried these things, and felt the anxiety keep building within me, at one point I said to Zack, “I don’t know if I am having a sufficient spiritual experience on this sabbatical!”
And this is why sometimes it’s so great to have a spouse or important person in your life who is very different than you. Because he so calmly, and kindly, and patiently looked at me and said, “ok...what if you just rest and don’t try so hard to make it any kind of thing that you think it should be?”
Church, I know for many of you, this is very obvious advice...but it might have been the thing that ended up saving this experience from my frantic self. It opened a door of possibility in me, to consider if I could let myself just BE and be present, instead of trying to manufacture some kind of spiritual whatever during these six weeks (SLIDE: Presence > Manufactured Moments). And beyond the immediate timeframe of my leave, it created space for me to explore how I approach Sabbath in my everyday life. The life where I AM working, the life where there IS a set schedule, the lives that most of us live every day.
How would rest, renewal, reconnection to God...happen during normal life?
Those questions are good ones to bring to Jesus’ words in Matthew that we read today...they’re on the stained glass behind me, and they are such a perfect balm to the anxiety and pressure I was feeling about getting this time right and trying to get the “most” out of this time. I picked the Common English Bible translation for this week, because I love the way it phrases these words of Jesus, and I want to read them to you one more time (SLIDE):
Come to me, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest. Put on my yoke, and learn from me. I’m gentle and humble. And you will find rest for yourselves. My yoke is easy to bear, and my burden is light.
These words are an invitation from Jesus to shift perspective and see our connection to God and their faith in a profoundly different way. That word “yoke” is being used as a metaphor, and in the time that Jesus was preaching, it was commonly used to describe what it was like to live by the words of the Torah, what was known as the Law. And living under the Law certainly doesn’t seem light. There are rules, there are expectations, and so what you have here is Jesus talking to people who might have felt really weighed down by those things. People who might think very rigidly about what faith is SUPPOSED to look like, what they’ve been told they SHOULD do to be faithful people.
And so, as Jesus often does, he presents a different way to see things. He takes what people think they know about how to relate to God and gives a different, truer option for what that could look like. Where there might have been something harsh and restrictive, Jesus says, there’s life here. Where there might have been a fear of judgment or not being good enough, Jesus says there’s a chance to just rest and not strive. There’s a gentleness to this, a humility, a kindness, a grace that Jesus wants people to experience when they follow him.
Now, the idea of Jesus’ yoke being “easy” doesn’t mean that a life spent with Jesus is like a 24/7 vacation! Or, that every season is going to be like a six week sabbatical! That sounds great, but that kind of “ease” doesn’t really hold up in the real world. We have responsibilities, we have heartbreaks, we have a world that needs us to be engaged in justice and repair. Jesus isn’t inviting us to become escapist with our rest.
I think what it’s really about is that walking with Jesus, living in the abundance of God’s love and grace...that’s a life of freedom. A life where we are free to experience how beloved we are and then bring that belovedness to the world. A life where we KNOW that we have access to God, no matter who we are, or what our circumstances look like.
A yoke in that time was literally used by farmers to guide their animals in the direction they needed to go. I like the image of Jesus guiding us in the direction WE need to go. Towards love, towards renewal, towards rhythms of engagement and rest as we live out our faith in this world. There’s nothing frantic when I think about Jesus leading us like that. There’s no pressure or fear of missing anything. Just an invitation to discover a rhythm to carry us through our lives.
I was talking to our new Minister of Care and Contemplation this week. Her name is Rachel and you’ll get to meet her next week here at Midtown. We were talking about this idea of how we approach sabbath and rest, and why it can feel so tricky, and she told me about a book she had read called (SLIDE) Sabbath in the Suburbs. It’s an account of a pastor and her family as they worked to create a regular rhythm of rest in their lives.
This family has three kids, both parents work, they live right outside a big, busy city...and so living this way was pretty counterintuitive from everything going on around them. Their circumstances feel very relatable to me. I wanted to share with you something she said about really integrating the practice of sabbath into whatever we’re doing in our everyday life. She calls it “acting Sabbathly”:
(Read from p.23)
I think this resonates so deeply with me, because one of the things I realized quickly, after Zack asked me if I could just let myself rest...is that we can experience the renewal of God’s love WHENEVER, WHEREVER, HOWEVER. Having six weeks is an exceptional blessing...it’s not a requirement. And God is not stingy with the love and grace and rest that we need. Receiving these things from our creator, living like we need them in order to be healthy and whole...that’s how it’s supposed to work. It’s how God loves us well.
When we were in Ohio, my aunt and uncle watched the kids and we got to go out with my cousin and her husband one night. They live in a small town outside of Colombus, and my cousin told us, “This is going to sound weird, but we’re going to go hang out at the movie theater.” Not to see a movie, but they have, at this little two screen theater a really cool retro bar that feels like it’s straight out of Stranger Things. It was everything I love in a place and we hung out there for a couple of hours.
And while we were there, we started noticing that people were coming in with popcorn buckets, getting them filled...and then leaving. There were movies being shown that night, but they weren’t sticking around for it. Just getting popcorn and heading out.
Of course, Zack looked it up and found out that this theater sells a “yearly popcorn pass.” For $60, you get unlimited popcorn for 12 months. And if you buy the pass on Black Friday, you get 13 months for only $50! Whenever they are open, you can get popcorn! If anyone wants to start this business in Broad Ripple, our family will be your first customers.
Anyway, at some point, I noticed this girl, probably in Middle School, come in and get her bucket filled. And the reason I noticed her...is because she came in multiple times. I’m talking probably FIVE times to fill this large popcorn bucket! Like you know her parent was in the minivan filling a Rubbermaid tub with this free popcorn for movie night at their house!
And this girl...she just walked in, again and again. She didn’t try and disguise herself, she wasn’t ashamed of how many times they filled the bucket...and the people at the theater were totally cool to her. This girl, for whatever reason, needed lots of popcorn, knew she had access to unlimited popcorn, and she was going to receive as much of that popcorn as was necessary.
You all MUST know that I got VERY emotional watching this happen. Because this is it! That kind of eagerness, that kind of trust, that kind of openness...that’s how we can relate to God! To know that those good things we talked about today, things like rest and assurance and just the ability to BE...those are all things that God gives away like free popcorn. And we can receive them like they are free! They’re part of the whole thing of being in relationship with God. It’s all there, with us, for us. What a gift to know God like that, and to live our lives like we know it.
I love that in these words of Jesus, there’s this strong invitation. He says, so clearly, “come to me and I will give this to you.”
He doesn’t say—come to me and tell me why you need it.
He doesn’t say—come to me when you’ve figured out how to do Sabbath the “right” way.
He doesn’t say—come to me and bring me your most recent calendar so I can make sure it’s time for you to rest.
He doesn’t say—come to me and convince me that you’re good enough and you deserve what I have for you.
He just says—come to me. I’ll see you. I’ll take care of you. You’ll be loved and you’ll be ok.
I think receiving communion together every month is one of those “sabbathly” things we do together. Where we just come. There are no prequalifications we need to meet, there is no entry requirement...it’s just Jesus’ generous grace available to us, eager to be received.
Transition into communion...
HAND OUT POPCORN BAGS AS PEOPLE LEAVE