One of the most effective sermons I have ever preached was shared ten years ago when I was just beginning to preach. I didn’t expect it to be good because I was tired when I wrote it and tired when I preached it. In fact, I was afraid I was failing the people that day because I thought the sermon wasn’t much good at all.

In the sermon I shared with the folks why I was so tired, all the things that had happened to me that week. A child had died in City Hospital. The parents had no friends, no family, no one. Their doctor asked me to do the funeral. We sat together quietly in the funeral home, looking at the little lifeless body laid in a cardboard coffin. A member of the congregation I was serving as a summer vicar had suffered a near-fatal heart attack and that had taken a lot of attention. I was working forty hours a week in another job. And to top it all off, my car had blown up. I was tired, I told the people, physically, emotionally, and mentally drained and the only thing holding me together was God. I shared with them how God was sustaining me. I told them that if it had not been for God I would have completely fallen apart.

The sermon came together beautifully because everybody there had been that tired sometime in their lives, most of them that very week. They knew what I was talking about because they, too, one time or another, had collapsed in God’s arms for sustaining care. We came together in our common experience of exhaustion and in our shared experience of God’s help. It was precious.

Being tired is something to which we can all relate. So many demands are constantly made on our time, our energy, our selves, that we regularly feel overwhelmed and worn out. Job, home, kids, marriage, other people, hobbies, telephones that keep ringing all the time: we want to shout, with the commercial, "Calgon, take me away!" People go away for a weekend just to get a little rest. Moms lock themselves up in the bathroom just to have a little peace and quiet. We lie in bed in the morning, knowing it’s time to get up and get going but wishing we could just lie there a little longer. Often it seems as though we are tired most of the time.

Our Lord Jesus got that tired also. The demands that were made on him were far greater than anything that is ever asked of us, and he got very, very tired. Mark tells us that one time our Lord Jesus was so tired that "he went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon" (Mark 7:24). Jesus went into a house there to hide, to get away from everybody. He didn’t want anybody to know where he was. But they found out anyway and he was not allowed to rest. Mark further tells us that Jesus was so busy he couldn’t even eat in peace (Mark 6:31). The Lord was a "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," the One who bore the sicknesses, griefs, and sorrows of the world - the world’s sin - and he was tired.

Today’s Gospel lesson records for us one of those days in our Lord’s life when too much happened in too little time. Our Lord’s day began with a bang and kept on going that way well into the night. It was a sabbath, so Jesus went to the synagogue to worship. His quiet time in that place was shattered by a demon whom he promptly cast out. The people marveled at his power and after the worship they couldn’t stop talking about what had happened. Jesus and his friends went to Peter’s house for lunch. When they got there, they found Peter’s mother-in-law sick with a fever. Giving us all a beautiful example of how to care for mothers-in-law, Jesus healed her. He touched her and took the fever away. News of this healing traveled as quickly as the news of the earlier healing in the synagogue and, combined, they caused all the people of the region to come to Jesus, bringing their sick and those possessed by demons. What was supposed to have been a quiet day of rest for our Lord finally ended when it was dark, and a great number of people, now healed, had been given normal, healthy lives. Then everybody left. It was time to sleep. But not for Jesus. He was too wound up and exhausted, so he went off to a lonely place and prayed.

Our Lord was always tired because the people came to him so much. Leprous, blind, dying, crippled, they all came to him for healing. Remember the story of the man let down through the roof? Jesus was teaching in a house. The crowd was so great already that there was no more room, no way for anybody to get in. So some people peeled back the roof and with ropes lowered their crippled friend right in front of Jesus (John 5:9). Everybody wanted a piece of the Lord. Many came, asking nothing more than to touch the fringe of his garment because those who touched it were made well (Matthew 14:36). Great crowds followed Jesus all the time. He healed them. He fed them. He taught them. He gave them so much of himself that his own family worried about his health. Matthew tells us that the Lord’s mother and brothers once came to take him home, hoping to force him to rest (Matthew 12:46).

The reason the people mobbed Jesus that way was that he was the only One who had ever been able to help them so well. Nobody else ever did the things he did. They knew he was special. Nicodemus spoke the popular opinion when he said, "Teacher, we know that you come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him" (John 3:2). The people knew Jesus was special. He is special because he is God, our only Savior.

When it all got to be too much for Jesus, he went away: Six separate times the Gospels tell us that Jesus went away by himself. He especially liked to go up into the mountains. He went away and prayed. Even on the night before his death, in the closing moments before his arrest, Jesus went to be alone for a while and to pray.

What a beautiful vision of the Lord Jesus this is. He is true God, who has the power to heal all those who were brought to him. And he is true man, who got tired from overwork. He is God with us, able to sympathize with us in our experiences of life.

Like Jesus, we like to get away also when it gets to be too much. It feels good to leave all the pressure behind and go someplace. Unlike Jesus, however, we don’t get as much out of our get-aways as he did because we don’t do with them what he did when he went away. Jesus went away to pray. We just go away.

For our Lord, rest from all the tension of life came through prayer and quiet time with his Father in heaven. Rest came not just from "doing nothing," but from taking all that he had to do and giving it to God. Our rest comes in the same way, when we spend time with God.

Jesus frequently spent all night in prayer. It simply fascinates me that he could give up a whole night’s sleep and still be refreshed in the morning. When I lose a night’s sleep, I am a mess. How did he do it? His rest, his recreation came from God. So often when we are lucky enough to sleep a few extra hours or to have a few extra days off, we are still tired. David learned this fact and prayed, "Return, O my soul, to your rest" (Psalm 116:7).

We need to pray more. The more tired we are the more we need to pray. This means more than just the same old prayers we pray regularly, the mealtime prayers and the prayers we recite from memory. Good as those prayers are we need along with them to pray prayers that open up our lives to God as we give everything to him. Before choosing his disciples, Jesus prayed all night for guidance. Before he asked them, "Who do you say that I am?" he prayed all night. We have been invited by him to pray without ceasing.

Jesus said, "Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). Just as he went to his Father for rest, we will find our rest in him also, in the Father and in our Savior. When we pour out the concerns of our life to him, telling him all that is going on, all that is making us tired, he takes those things away from us and makes the burden his own. Then it doesn’t weigh us down anymore. We need to pray, to "spill out our guts" to God, to share with him our life. When we try to live it alone, without him, all we get is tired.

Jesus prayed. On the cross he prayed. While he was hanging there between heaven and earth, dying to pay for all of our sins and to make us one with God, to open up the way of communication between God and us, he prayed. "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." His last words were a prayer. Jesus gave it all to God and God sustained him. God raised him from the dead and he lives today. He lives in us and calls us to give it all to God also, to pray so that we may finally find rest for our souls also.

And such rest may be found, in Jesus’ name. Amen