God Meets Us in Rest

Homily for Sunday
June 22, 2025
Second Sunday of Pentecost
‍1 Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a
Luke 8:26-39

“Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep”

Please be seated.

In our reading of 1 Kings today, we hear Elijah running, escaping, really from the threat of Jezebel, the queen of Israel at the time who held Elijah’s life in her hands. Yet I don’t think that is what ultimately drove Elijah a day’s journey into the wilderness. See he didn’t go to the next town over, or to distant relatives, he traveled out of his way, about 80 miles south, without supplies and isolated himself. And I wonder if this seclusion was purposeful; because he was ashamed, he was fearful and he was exhausted, deep in depression.

At one time, Elijah’s prophetic voice was powerful enough to stop the rain for three and a half years, and to call down fire from heaven. But now, his words are barely a whisper: “I’m afraid. I can’t do this any longer.” His plea is drenched in desperation—a cry of complete hopelessness. These are not just words of exhaustion, but of overwhelming fear, unworthiness, and depression.

Elijah’s work had left him empty. Isolated, perhaps he began to wonder what he had done wrong—what failure, what flaw might have gotten him here. But sometimes… there is no reason. Sometimes depression just happens. Sometimes is no single cause we can pinpoint, no clear trigger we can neutralize. And depression doesn't mean we’ve failed.  

From his hiding place, Elijah speaks honestly to God. “I’m unworthy, undeserving of being a prophet or even dare I say beloved child.” His cry suggests a renunciation of his calling, as if he no longer believes in what God is doing through him.

As Erik Varden writes in Shattering of Loneliness: “The image of the scars, though, was etched on my mind. It was as if the world’s pain had entered, by them, into my protected universe, which remained disrupted. I felt vulnerable of a sudden, and exposed.”

Elijah, too, was exposed—vulnerable inspirit and body before his enemies. But even more deeply, Elijah was exposed to his very own soul. He internalized his despair as a sign that he no longer belonged. His depression became, in his mind, a disqualification. It’s what drove him into the wilderness, and away from community—away from those whom God had called him to love and serve.

Elijah’s shame drove him into the wilderness. Centuries later in our Gospel reading this morning, we meet another man driven to the margins—not by threats, but by society’s uncomfortableness.The man we encounter is never given a name. He is not introduced through family bloodline, just through how he is living. “For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs.”

He knows the people of his town fear him, and they put him at arm’s length-distancing themselves unwilling to see beyond the label. Rather than being known, he is entombed by the weight of mental illness. It isolates him; keeps this man from encountering the love of his neighbors.

We might be quick to rationale the town’s treatment of this man in this biblical landscape, but this kind of marginalization still exists today. Take a walk downtown and see the avoided looks and conversations with those who are unhoused, sitting on street corners and curbs. Visit one of the psychiatric wards of our hospitals and see the number of people without family or friends to support them there.

But that isn’t God’s response to us,to the demon processed man or even to Elijah. Going back to Elijah, he is guided him into an encounter with the life-giving God. Standing on the mountain, God speaks as if to say, “hang in there, I am coming,” God sends down a mighty wind, an earthquake, a fire and finally silence. And out of the silence, the still small voice of God emerges joining Elijah in the murky mess.

Sometimes the most spiritual thing a person can do is get enough rest and nap. Because rest is holy. And depression, and other mental illnesses or just pure exhaustion of life are real. Physically speaking, Elijah needed replenishment. Even God rested on the 7^th day of creation. Friends rest is holy when we remember the necessity of work and of rest. God did not demand an immediate recovery from Elijah. Rather, God’s gentle response was in four parts.

God let Elijah sleep in the shade under the tree.

God told him to eat.

God provided the food and water.

God let Elijah sleep again.

These are the basic needs of human survival.

God simply tells Elijah to rest, eat, and sleep. That’s it. No pressure, no demands for productivity or heroic faith.Just rest. In doing so, we are reminded of the God who comes alongside us,the God who understands our limitations wherever they may be, and meets us in there inviting us to receive care.

Even the world’s greatest artists have needed this kind of care. This week I visited the Vincent van Gogh exhibit at the MFA, where I learned the famous The Starry Night, the painting so many of us recognize, well he painted it from memory while he was in a mental hospital, seeking help for his depression. In one of his darkest periods, he allowed himself to rest in a place where healing became possible.He sought help and was joined by a wonderful friend, and by his paintbrush. Perhaps that was God working in God’s mysterious ways. Even the greatest artists need help sometimes.

And it was the same with Elijah. God knew what the depressed and discouraged Elijah needed. He offered Elijah an encounter with the loving, life-giving God. And this was not because there was something wrong with Elijah’s theology but because as a human Elijah had to attend to his whole self-body, mind and spirit.

As I was reflecting on these readings, I found myself back in the patient rooms of McLean Hospital where I did my CPE unit, as some of you remember from my sermon a few weeks back. I found myself remembering this very story, which I shared with a particular patient. And as I recounted 1 Kings in my own way, I found the freedom God gives us to just be, not to be anything. For you see, this patient as amazing as she was, she needed to rest, to sit under the shade of the tree and focus on getting better rather than trying to be what everyone around her saw her as. With the permission to just be, tears welled up in her eyes, touched by this story. A story that reached the shame and pressure and offered up permission to accept help from her treatment team.

And for me? Well, the story was on my heart enough that when I needed to share it, there was an ease to do so with simplicity and compassion. I knew the story not because I studied our Scriptures enough to memorize it. I knew the story because I lived my own version of it. Elijah’s feelings and God’s response in their own way was imprinted in my heart and sent me out to the one sin the most need of its message.

I think all of us here today at Trinity Church have an opportunity to do this as well. We all in our own ways can carry this message that bridges rest and healing. Church can become a place of healing and a place of rest for God’s people. In fact, it should. As followers of the Jesus Movement we should be a place that welcomes all, welcomes those to come in with their exhaustion,depression and mental illness without explanation. We should embrace the very holiness of rest-the sleeping and eating, the survival moments. And we should be a community that walks alongside each other in the journey, offering space to simple be.

This work is not easy, but it is simple. It’s the way of love, the very love Jesus offers to us and sends us out with.

This I believe is part of the work of remembering. Erik Varden goes on to say “church became for me an inspirer of remembrance. It permitted me to read my trite life into a narrative of redemption that not only reaches back to time's beginning but remembers forwards.” And we at Trinity Church remember,too. We remember who we are when life overwhelms us. We remember that our worth is not in our productivity, or in our strength, or even in how well we cope. Our worth is in being God’s beloved.

We rest in the promise that we don’t have to have it all together. We rest under the shade of the juniper tree. And there, in the silence, in the stillness, God meets us there never asking us to be more than we already are.

Amen.