Today's Gospel lesson comes from Matthew 11:25-30 -------- At that time Jesus said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, 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.’

Opening Prayer:

The Lord be With You

Risen Lord, you are here with us this morning. We thank you for our time together, and I thank you for this opportunity to preach.  Dear God, over rule my words and make them your own so that they may be a blessing to your sons and daughters gathered here.  Dear God, overrule my words and make them your own, because if I do this by myself, I’m going to screw it up.  Amen.

Before I say anything, I want you all to hear this from me: I love you very much, more than you or I will ever really know while we’re on this planet, wearing these earth suits God has knitted together for us.  I’m incredibly thankful and humbled that all of you are here to listen to me talk about Jesus and what He and I have been getting ourselves into lately, and what we’ve got planned for this next year.  I want you all to hear this from me: the Christ in me longs for and is in love with each of you, and to make things even better, the Christ in all of you loves me back.  This sermon I’m about to give is mostly about how tired I am from the past year’s work, but I didn’t want to leave here this morning without having conveyed to you all how much you mean to me.  Too often we go through our lives without telling people how we feel about them, so if there’s nothing else we ever learn from each other, whether this morning or as we go our separate ways for lunch after church and throughout next week, know that I’m grateful that you’re here, and I hope what I have to say is helpful to you somehow.  So, before we begin, know that I love all of you very much because at the center of each of us is Christ Jesus, who above all else is doing the work of Love in the world.  So, again, I love you, and thanks for coming.

That may sound a little weird since I don’t know all of you all that well, or maybe even at all, but it’s true.  I love you.  I make no apologies, and there’s really nothing you can do about it. That said, we might as well try and get to know each other.  My name is Daniel Strandlund, and this fall I’m going to be living and working at an orphanage outside the capital of Uganda.  (We’ll talk more about that in between services.)  I’m here this morning to talk to you about who I know Jesus to be, to tell you about our upcoming adventure together, and yes, to take as many of your hugs and as much of your money as you will give me to help fund this upcoming mission adventure.

To tell you a little more about myself, I grew up going to church here back when the building faced the other way and we had old blue carpet and low, white spackled ceilings.  I graduated from Cullman High School in 2002, and attended Birmingham-Southern College where I majored in English and Creative Writing, and where for a while I planned on starting an entirely snobby, entirely lucrative, and generally self-indulgent career as both the author of the Great American Novel, and a Professor of Literature.  As the Spirit would have it, that didn’t exactly pan out, so my first year out of college I had a slew of jobs ranging from full-time nanny to fulltime waiter and bartender, from part-time nursery worker in a church to the archivist for a Birmingham-based non-profit organization, until finally accepting a position at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Mountain Brook as a full-time youth minister.  I’ve been at St. Luke’s full time since May 1^st of 2007, and will be there full time until the 31^st of this month, at which point I’ll take the entire month of August off to rest and pack for my upcoming stay in Uganda.  After I get back to the United States at Christmas time, I plan on starting the discernment process for the Episcopal priesthood with my spiritual director in Birmingham, but other than that my calendar is open, so if you know of any job openings in Birmingham or would like to grab a cup of coffee, I’m free as of January 2009.

In general, though, I guess the biggest part of who I am is that I get really, really excited about who this Jesus person is, and even more excited about what following Him is like.  I know that I’m called to be with and to serve God in the world, and now it’s just a matter of how to do that the best.  Part of it is being here with you this morning.  Part of it has been serving as youth minister at a wealthy church in Mountain Brook, and part of it is going to serve kids in Uganda.  The important thing I’m learning is that however and whenever God calls to you, when God says anything to you, the best response is always “Here I am.”  Like Levi leaving his tax collector’s booth, like Zaccheus coming down from the tree, like Peter and the other guys dropping their fishing nets and taking off with Jesus, when God wants us for something, it’s best to just say, “Here I am.”  What we have to remember is that God isn’t mean.  God likes us, and wants to be with us all the time.  This means that God is always calling to us, not just when there’s a lot of work to be done.  

Jesus says, “Come to me all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  These verses from our Gospel this morning are probably the Bible verses I’ve known the longest.  Our Episcopal Book of Common Prayer has them picked out for use in an Order for Compline, a prayer service designed specifically to be the last thing done at the end of one’s day.  If any of you have ever been a part of summer camp at Camp McDowell, whether as a camper or staff member, you’ll know that the last thing everybody at camp does together before bed time is gather in the old stone chapel, and say Compline.  I was on program staff at Camp McDowell this past June, making this my fifteenth summer of saying Compline every night before bed.  I’ve got to tell you, though, of all the times I’ve heard these Gospel verses, God’s call to me through them has never been more apparent than this past week, working on this sermon.

I am humbled and amazed again at how good our God is.  God put the idea in Bob’s and my heads that it’d be a good idea for me to preach here in Cullman on a Sunday on which the Gospel reading is about being weary and heavy-laden.  Christ says to us, “Come to me, and you will find rest for your souls.”  Now, if God offers us something, it goes without saying that it’s a good idea for us to take it, and this rest for my soul Jesus is offering is on my mind more than anything else these days, more than paying rent or cutting my hair or even going to Uganda. As I said earlier, I’ve spent the past year in full-time, vocational youth ministry, and believe me when I say that I am exhausted.  I’m more tired than I’ve ever been before, a tiredness that is beyond just needing sleep or a nap or a day off.  It’s the kind of exhaustion Jesus is telling us about in the Gospel, the kind in which we need “rest for our souls.”  I knew I’d experience it eventually, which is why I scheduled this entire upcoming month of August to be free of any responsibility other than packing and wrapping up all the last minute details of going to Uganda.  I feel like I think Forest Gump must have when he finally decided to stop running: “I’m pretty tired.  I think I’ll go home now.”

I’d been working at St. Luke’s only a few weeks when I told Rich, my rector, that I would be leaving for East Africa some time in the fall of 2008.  I knew coming into this youth ministry position that I was only going to be there for a year.  Needless to say, I’ve made sure to empty my cup entirely in my work at St. Luke’s.  When I leave at the end of this month, there won’t be anything left to give.  From weeks and weeks of retreats, camp sessions and mission trips this summer, to an entire school year of having anywhere from four to six parish youth events every week, to visiting our kids in hospitals, to the time I stood with one of my high school EYC’ers and watched as his house burned to the ground, it’s been a long, hard, glorious year.  And since I knew I was only going to be around at St. Luke’s for this one year, I haven’t been too good about taking time off for myself.

I’ve spread myself more and more thin as the year has gone on.  Whether it’s helping out with extra diocesan youth events or running programs at Camp McDowell or agreeing to stay after work three days a week and tutor one of my high schoolers in English.  (By the way, we were able to pull his grade up from a 49 to an 81 in under two months.)  Whenever God has said anything to me, I’ve said “Here I am” as often and as enthusiastically as I’ve been able to, and now, as I approach the end of my time at St. Luke’s and draw closer to a much needed rest in August, I can hear God calling to me through this gospel, “I know you’re weary.  Come to me, and I will give you rest,” and by God, everything about me is saying, “Yes Lord, Yes Lord, Here I am!”  God has called and continues to call each of us in myriad ways every day, but it’s really a blessing to hear God saying to me for once, “you’ve done good work.  Now, I command you, go to your parents’ house in Cullman County; turn off your cell phone; lay down on the carpet and take a nap with the Labrador.  This is my commandment to you, get some rest.  Sleep in, take naps, recreate.  Keep the Sabbath.  Get some rest, Daniel, because on September first, we’re going to Uganda.”  Amen.