Restless Hearts

About 25 years ago, I took a trip to Syria. Staying in Damascus for a few days. I visited the house of Ananias where St Paul was baptized. I saw the window from which St Paul was lowered in a basket, or at least that was what I was told. Then I went to northern Syria, which in many ways was the cradle of Christianity. The capital of northern Syria was of course, Antioch, and it was in Antioch that the followers of Jesus were first called Christians.

In the first seven centuries of the Christian era, northern Syria was populated by many towns and villages, and some major cities, all Christian. In the ancient world, if you talked about Christendom, this was it….northern Syria. Of course, the combination of earthquakes, the fall and rise of Empire, the emergence of Islam (which was first regarded as a Christian heresy), all this means that many of those cities and towns and villages are now deserted, some no more than a ruin. To travel around northern Syria today is to be aware of a lost civilization. But I also witnessed the liveliness of the churches in Damascus, the vigour and enthusiasm of so many Syrian Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox Christians. And more recently I visited the monasteries of Tur Abdin in south east Turkey, where Syrian monasteries still thrive. 

But there is something else, equally precious, which the church in Syria has left to us. Stories abound about the monks and hermits who inhabited the hills and valleys around throughout those early centuries. My favourite of all these was St Symeon Stylites. St Symeon lived in the fifth century and enjoyed the unusual distinction of spending most of his life living on top of a pillar, which was even taller than this pulpit. During his lifetime, he gained a tremendous reputation for holiness and people would flock from hundreds of miles around to visit St Symeon. To cater for all these pilgrims, a large basilica was constructed. It was founded by the Emperor Justinian himself. Not far from the basilica, they built a baptistery. And pilgrims would journey to Qalaat Samaan to be baptized in the shadow of Symeon’s shrine.

Both the basilica and the baptistery were rather grand constructions, and they were both octagonal in shape. The fact that both buildings had eight sides was deeply significant and this is something imitated in Western architecture. The font at the back of the church, which we are hoping to restore as we mark its 200^th anniversary next year, the font is also octagonal, just like the baptistery in Qalaat Samaan, where people would travel for miles in sometimes arduous and dangerous journeys to be baptised.

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

In these words, we see not only the invitation to which those pilgrims were responding. We also have St Matthew’s theological vision in a nutshell. On the face of it, the message seems quite simple: “Come and find your rest. Cast your burdens aside. Find in Jesus the refreshment and the peace that you will need. Discover in him the freedom to live life to the full.”

But it is worth digging a little deeper. Remember that St Matthew’s gospel is written from a Jewish Christian perspective. One of the main aims of Matthew’s writing is to tell his listeners that in Jesus the promises of the Jewish law are fulfilled. “I came not to abolish the law, but to complete it.” So throughout Matthew’s gospel there are these constant asides, lots of references to the Jewish Law, the Torah. 

And this passage is full of allusions and references to the Law. For instance, the word for “yoke” was often used as a metaphor of obedience, subordination and servitude, and the rabbis often spoke of the yoke of the Torah and the yoke of the commandments. One of the closest parallels to this passage comes in Exodus 33 where God says to Moses, I will give you rest. God says, I will give you rest. And yet the remarkable thing about this passage, is that Jesus will give you rest. The promises of God are fulfilled in the person of Jesus. He is the one in whom we find our rest. 

Of course, this is a theme which comes into its own in the writings of St Augustine of Hippo. In his celebrated Confessions, Augustine prays to God, ‘you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you’. The theme of rest is touched on again and again in his writings. He describes his youthful indiscretions in Carthage as exhausting: ‘How slow I was to find my joy! At that time you said nothing, and I travelled much further away from you into more and more sterile things productive of unhappiness, proud in my self-pity, incapable of rest in my exhaustion’ (Confessions 2.ii.2). As he recounts the story of his conversion, he rejects the posturing of his teachers, those Neoplatonist philosophers, with their “big boots”, designed to make them look and sound more substantial than they are. And he says, ‘they do not hear him who says “Learn of me, that I am meek and humble in heart, and you shall find rest for your souls’ (Confessions 7.ix.14). And this drives him towards the end of his Confessions back to the beginning of the story of creation in the Book of Genesis. As his Confessions begin with rest, so they end with rest, for God rested on the seventh day. Augustine says: ‘This utterance in your book foretells for us that after our works which, because they are your gift to us, are very good, we also may rest in you for the sabbath of eternal life.  There also you will rest in us, just as now you work in us. Your rest will be through us, just as now your works are done through us.’ Augustine’s understanding of rest is underpinned by the idea of Sabbath, a time of rest and refreshment, a time to play, a time of re-creation. And this is a theme which Augustine revisits at the conclusion of one of his other great works, The City of God. There he writes that in the City of God, the Sabbath ‘shall be brought to a close, not by an evening, but by the Lord’s day, an eighth and eternal day, consecrated by the resurrection of Christ.’(City of God xxii.30).

One of the profound tragedies of our culture is the way in which we have lost sight of the notion of Sabbath, and by this I don’t mean to descend into a pious criticism of Sunday trading. I think there is a more profound issue at stake. The world is in a rush, and yet life should not be a race, governed by restless competition and anxious self-defence. The idea of the Sabbath (when God himself rested and simply delighted in the glory of creation), this notion of Sabbath, calls us to think again about the pattern of our lives. It stops us short in our tracks, particularly those of us busy rushing from one thing to the next. 

The Sabbath encourages us to reflect on the fact that rest and refreshment, enjoyment, delight, playfulness – all these things lie in the heart of God. And when we recover these things, like little children, something of the image of God is restored in us.  

“Come to me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

St Matthew reminds us of our need for that Sabbath rest. But at the same time, Augustine reminds us that the early church often spoke of the day of resurrection as the eighth day. In other words, the resurrection of Jesus marks the beginning of a re-creation, of eternal life. The eighth day, the resurrection, is the point when we begin to share in the life of the kingdom. St Paul writes so movingly about this in his letters, particularly 2 Corinthians, when he speaks of the present creation groaning in travail, bringing to birth this new creation.

The seventh day points forward to the eighth day….hence all those octagonal structures in churches and baptisteries. And as we come to celebrate this eucharist, we come to share in the risen life of Christ, the one in whom we find our rest, the one who makes all things new.