Eliminating Hurry

Scripture and introduction

Matthew 11:25–30 NIV

At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do. “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Pray.

I hate being late. Meetings are not my favorite, but I hate meetings that start late. My calendar is color-coded almost down to the minute. (show calendar) I walk faster than anyone I know. Not because I am late but because I am always in a hurry. People that block the fast lane on the highway.... oh my.

Intro the Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: Show Picture

Part of my job today is to introduce us to the disease that might slowly killing many/most of us and that is busy.

History of hurry

We have not always been this rushed, this efficient, this connected. Most historians point to the beginning of this in 1370 as the West’s turning point in relationship to time. That was the year that the first public clock tower was constructed in Cologne, Germany. Before that, time was natural. Everything was in relationship to the seasons of the year and the sun’s rotation. There was a rythmn to the day and the year. The clock changed that and created artificial time.

Ok fast-forward to 1879 and the Edison light bulb came along. Given us the ability to work and function after the sun was long gone. Do you know how many hours the average person slept per day before the light bulb.... any guesses? 11 hours.

I am often struck by great men and women of the faith throughout history, like John Wesley who would get up at 4 am to pray for hours before setting out on his day. But do you know what time he went to sleep..... 7pm.

Then you add in technological advances in the last century. Mircrowave, programmable coffee machines, dishwashers, smartphones with the internet in our front pocket.

What happened with all the time we were supposed to save?!?! We spent it all and we worked more, or we just found more distraction.

A century from now we will look back at 2007 as a great inflection point in our culture. Do you know what happened then? Steve Jobs released the first iphone. A few months later and facebook goes to anyone with an email address. Twitter. The cloud and app store. Wifi access everywhere.

Want to know how you can find a dividing line between older millenials and younger generations? Play the sound of AOL connecting to the internet dial up.

From Nicholas Carr’s Pulitzer Prize- nominated book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, a seminal work on the evolution of our lives in this age, he writes:

What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of worlds. Now I zip along the surface life a guy on a Jet Ski.

Here is where I find the state of my mind and heart and life with all of this:

I have an inability to rest. To get my mind to stop

I do not know how to take a day off for play anymore

Memorization and creativity is gone

I am addicted to noise and anxious in silence

And worse I have a difficult time grasping the presence of the divine.

Is this you? Comer gives us a check list to measure the state we find ourselves in....

"Hurry is a form of Violence on the soul:

Irritability - Mad, frustrated, or just annoyed way too easily. People have to tiptoe around your ongoing negativity. Look at those closest to you

Hypersensitivity - Minor comment hurts your feelings, grumpy email sets you off. This can be expressed in anger, anxiety, depression

Restlessness - When you do try to slow down, you cannot relax. Watch TV and get on your phone. Sabbath stinks, reading scripture is short-lived

Workaholism - Your drugs of choice are accomplishment and accumulation. You get home from work and you gave work everything, your family gets nothing

Emotional Numbness - You do not have capacity to feel another’s pain

Out-of-order priorities - Disconnected from purpose…you do not have time for the “most important things in life.”

Lack of care for your body - Live off the four horseman: caffeine, sugar, processed carbs, and alcohol

Escapist behaviors - overeating, drinking, binge netflix. Get notifications once a week about your social media intake.

Slippage of spiritual disciplines - non existent

Isolation - disconnected from God, others and your own soul.

ok so what do we do? That is where our text comes in....

Jesus, our rest

When COVID first began, we were all forced to quarantine in our homes. Work from home, only leave for groceries. Marriages, families, individuals were challenged. I remember when it first started to open up again asking people what their spiritual life was like. What were their daily routines like....

One of two sides of the spectrum:

1. Some said it was quite positive and that they found an opportunity to slow down and spend more time with themselves and their family and with their spiritual practices.

2. Then there were others that felt like this was a nightmare. Spiritual practices had been largely dependent on the church to provide form and content. Meaning outside of church programming this group didnt know what to do or where to start. And still more telling, this person was riddled with anxiety and pressure and restlessness.

It became a glaring indicator that our churches had largely produced consumers and not practitioners, followers of Jesus. Consumers struggle to exist without consumption.

Jesus says...

Matthew 11:28–30 NIV

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

I want you to notice a few things here:

“Come to me...” is the qualification for rest

It is going to take some of us coming to the realization that we are sick with hurry and tired. The temptation for many of us will be to listen to what we talk about in this series and write me off (or write off Comer) as disconnected, unrealistic, or ideological.

Jesus says Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.

Do you see the qualification here is not that Jesus will give everyone who is tired rest. But he will give everyone who comes to him rest.

This is the connection to children in the preceding context.

The hurried life is exhausting and empty

Ok, let’s talk about the context of Jesus statement here for a moment. Jesus is not talking in ancient Isreal to a bunch of cracked out career oriented smartphone users is he? No it was a different hurry then.

In this time he was talking to Jewish persons, particularly in Matthew’s gospel, that were burdened by the expectation of the law and obedience to their religion. Other extrabiblical and ancient Jewish wisdom talked about being yoked to the law in obedience. The Pharisees and the religious teachers of the day presented 800 or more commands and ritual practices and a striving to be a good Jew by adhering to all of these things.

Bar Mitzvah

in the second and third century, Jews began to celebrate a ceremony called a Bar Mitzvah. At the age of 13 your were yoked, taking on responsibility for your life and obedience to the law.

I dont think we have the same burden in our experience. I think what has plagued us now is not a shallow religiousity. We actually do not feel the urgency to fake that anymore. Today our burden is being too distracted, too spread thin, too given over to everything around us. And it is exhausting.

Come and learn from me....

Jesus says come and learn from me. Walk with me and see what this looks like. Friends, what you will see in the coming weeks is a Jesus who maybe does not have to worry about what people are saying about him on twitter, but someone that has no shortage of demands and expectations upon him. I mean the gospels are him beginning a mission that is supposed to save all humanity…an aggressive start-up business to say the least. But what you will see is patience, freedom, identity, and discipline that actually helped him to live in the fullness of who he was.

The next 4 weeks will be about just 4 of the practices that Jesus lived and we are called to. And we desperately need:

Silence and Solitude

Sabbath

Simplicity

Slowing Down

My yoke is easy. What does this mean?

Finally, Jesus says my yoke is easy. What does this mean?

In some circles a quick swing at this might say this means Jesus is easy street. This is where blessing and favor happens. This is prosperity gospel and it is false.

No. Jesus is clear this will be hard. Even in this gospel

Matthew 16:24 NIV

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

and John 15:18

John 15:18 NIV

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.

Jesus is clear that this road will be difficult. But how can he say to leave this other yoke and take on his yoke?

Well he says this because being yoked to Christ is being yoked to the one who actually bares the load.

Closing:

The main thing I want you to hear today as we begin this series: Hurry is not Christian. It is anti-Christ. It is antithetical.

What has the highest value in Christ’s kingdom? Love. Jesus makes that crystal clear when he says the greatest command is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength.... and love your neighbor as yourself. (this is in many ways the yoke that Jesus is talking about.

Hurry and love are incompatible.

Comer points this out and I can’t help but agree.... “all my worst moments as a father, husband, and a pastor, even human being, are when I’m in a hurry—late for an appointment, behind on my unrealistic to-do list, trying to cram too much in my day.”

This is why Paul defines love this way....

1 Corinthians 13:4 NIV

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

First word. Patient.

Love, joy, and peace is what Jesus wants to give you, and all are incompatible with hurry.

John Ortberg: “For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them.” -John Ortberg

Friends getting in a home group.

You have homework this week