Working on Resting

There is a certain discomfort that accompanies the choice of accepting love we don’t think we deserve. If you are like me, the decision to allow someone to help me comes at great emotional costs, for their acts of service render me powerless to prove that I am somebody. In accepting their love, help, or gifts, I am forced to accept that perhaps I am loved for reasons other than what I do or produce. This impulse to avoid mutuality and interdependence is one that has become far too common in the spaces we regularly inhabit as Christians, whether that be the church, the academy, the nonprofit sector, or the home. For a people marked by their faith in the abundance and unconditionality of God’s grace, we sure do seem intent on trying to work ourselves into an assurance we’ve earned God’s favor.

Much like Peter, we are often interested in Jesus only to the extent that we can prove we are worthy of his love. In John 13, we find the uncomfortable scene of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. As Jesus approaches Peter to wash his feet, Peter responds in verse eight saying, “You will never wash my feet.” Of course, this, indeed, sounds like a rational response to having God wash your feet. Peter doesn’t feel worthy to accept the service of someone whom he is supposed to be serving. In accepting the rules of social hierarchies, it seems logical that Peter would be so resistant to the free gifts of God, and perhaps unsurprisingly, these are the same rules that dictate the rhythms of our lives as well. We, too, like to make assumptions about God as if God were just another employer or some loan officer, demanding the wages of our labor in return for the grace and love we have received. Consequently, we live our lives as if God’s opinion of us could sour the very moment God senses we’ve slacked off our vocational calls, ministerial duties, and acts of charity and justice. We assume God sees us as nothing unless we exhaust all our effort and resources trying to prove we are not.

But Jesus has no patience for such an assumption. He tells Peter, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Jesus seems more interested in companionship and fellowship than he does in tireless obedience. Jesus doesn’t seem flattered that Peter’s feet are dirty and calloused from his labor as a disciple. Rather, Jesus hopes to clean the dirt from Peter’s heart that has prevented him from seeing who God really is: the relational Creator, who rested on the seventh day to enjoy fellowship with creation.  

Trying to earn the love of this Creator is perhaps indicative of just how shallow our roots are in the soil of God’s grace. Living without a deep anchor in the security of God’s love, we are left defenseless against the demands of our circumstances, being jerked back and forth by our checklists, grades, evaluations, and obligations. I won’t speak for you, but such a hectic and busy life seems far off from the easy yoke and abundant life of which Jesus has invited us to share.

Yet in our burnout and exhaustion, confession remains to remind us that healing and rest are possible. Peter tells Jesus, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” There is a sense that Peter experiences a conversion here, one where he is now not only willing to give the Lord the fruit of his labor but also the joy of his rest and play. Peter was already God’s beloved, but he couldn’t live this truth until he released his need to clean up the world and allowed himself to be cleaned. The irony is that until we make room in our lives for rest, that holy time where Christ washes our feet and cleans our wounds in his love, we will continue to walk the path of Martha, growing resentful at our long list of chores and blaming God and others for the loneliness that burdens our efforts at faithful discipleship.  

But we aren’t alone, and we aren’t alone in believing that God can only be satisfied in our endless striving to prove to God just how faithful and good and worthy we are. However, this striving was never our calling. Our callings are to be carried down the path of Mary, who “has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her” (Lk. 10:42). Our callings are to mutuality, dependence, and community. God has graced us with weaknesses and limits, not so they can be transcended and diminished but so they may be received as gifts to remind us that we are never alone and always in need of each other. It is hard work learning how to welcome the vulnerability which would allow others to wash our feet, those dirtied and wounded parts of ourselves we hoped no one would ever see, much less touch, but it is holy work. It is holy work learning how to love God in our rest and in our play. It is holy resistance to practice sabbath and solitude in a world that demands we sacrifice our bodies at the altar of capitalist production. God doesn’t need our grades, performances, or acts of service as prerequisites for folding us into the eternal and unconditional love of the Trinity. God just needs our cooperation, our active willingness to do nothing but be loved by God.

Surely, to be human is to co-labor with God in the work of cultivating and harvesting the fruits of creation, but it is also to experience a life of resting and playing with God, loving and being loved by others, and enjoying and admiring the beauty of creation. Friends, New Creation does not wait on the other side of busier feet and blistered hands. It waits for us in this very moment, hoping we will live as if God’s love is the only reality we’ve ever known.