Are you tired? A sort of tiredness that goes deeper than your bones, a constant lacking, of health of vitality of interest. So that whenever anyone asks anything of you your lethargy leaps up and stops you? We think of tiredness as physical tiredness but in realist there are many types?
✔ Physical tiredness
✔ Mental tiredness (cognitive fatigue)
✔ Emotional tiredness (emotional exhaustion)
✔ Spiritual tiredness (spiritual fatigue / desolation)
Recognised in pastoral care, counselling, and spiritual direction.
feeling far from God
feeling “dry” inside
losing motivation to pray or reflect
feeling like life has no deeper meaning
carrying guilt, pressure, or burdens alone
feeling spiritually judged or spiritually numb
knowing what you should do but feeling unable to do it
feeling disconnected from your values or purpose
✔ Social tiredness (social fatigue)
Recognised in psychology, especially in introversion/extroversion research.
✔ Sensory tiredness (sensory overload / sensory fatigue)
Recognised in neuroscience and occupational therapy.
✔ Burnout tiredness (occupational burnout)
Formally recognised by the World Health Organization as a workplace phenomenon.
These aren’t random labels. They’re real, recognised patterns of human fatigue that show up in clinical work, counselling, and everyday life.
When you in life get any or a combination of these you will find they dominate your daily existence, influence who you are and how you interact with others, and they are contagious and even your closest relationships may become too much for you.
So when Jesus talks about “‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ He is referring to a game 1st century children played in the marketplace where one would play a flute and the other kids danced . But here the adults just have lost that, energy. He’s saying we gave you John, and no reaction, we gave you me, but the same again, but you carried on the same, not focussed on God, nothing will revive you, you are too far gone. Your lethargy and tiredness is too complete.
I have just become semi-retired and it feels wonderful, my job was dragging me down, everything seemed a burden everything seemed an effort, I felt anxious and angry all the time. I am not alone.
You can see it in the world, all these tired anxious people with the neuroses that prolonged exposure to a a thing that drags you down a job that kills you, a parent that demeans you, a boss you hate, the family member that just is a mobile rain cloud.
I remember when my mum passed away my dad said you have to get away from this house? I am going to drag you down, what he meant was I am a naturally optimistic person just a sort of good energy when I’m at my best and he felt his dark cloud was going to swamp my little happy island. I didn’t go of course but my dad’s emotional intelligence was high. We came through it but not quite the same, I never got back to that point of unaware happiness?
Like I had bitten into the apple and the innocence had gone.
Look around at all the cynicism and anger especially online. The world has bitten into the apple, and we can never be happy as children anymore. Once lost you can never be unaware happy, a blissfully ignorant happy, happy without the knowledge that the dark exists.
Full without knowing such a thing as empty exists? Because the world makes us need more and more, every advert tells you your life is lacking the object they sell and the next thing your doom scrolling will show you will be the thing that fills the big empty space, and you go out and you get it. This constant reminding we are lacking something psychologically undermines us and makes us feel less of less valued than the person with the smart logo , the trendy top.
Jesus refers to himself as the bread of life repeatedly in the bible “I am the bread of life , or the living bread.
Being filled with this negates and takes away the tiredness in us, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, its like you go back to the person that was unaware, like you never experienced the effect, never bitten into the apple the innocence had never gone. The tiredness , and the searching for all the things to fill the hole had gone. The effect of that Is that you slowly heal from the inside.
It happens in stages quite often you find him, you pray more , you join a church are all things that bring him closer. You pray more when bad things happen , when the world goes mad. Then over time your prayer becomes more disciplined. All these things bring you into contact with him and his rejuvenating presence.
This sermon is quite personal for me so im sort of assuming im not alone that at least some of this is resonating with you.
Once you discover what this is , this being in his company, the joy of turning back the internal clock of decay , of atrophy, and wll the knock on effects that has. This end of searching, the end of emptiness , the end of the aching void this world creates , by being told we are lacking something , that in some way we aren’t enough , our our difference excludes us , or how we are made by him is wrong. for me at least it became my mission to help people find it. Because I am convinced it’s the place where the world heals.
And when that kind of emptiness reaches the top, when it is given money, attention, authority, and power, it does not stay private. It spreads. The tiredness becomes contagious. The insecurity becomes policy. The hunger to be loved becomes a demand to be worshipped. The wound becomes a system, and whole nations can be made to live inside one person’s unhealed soul. We all become casualties.
Look around , lifting it up from me you can see it in people with BIG houses some times and fancy cars and if you get to know them you find there lives are a train wreck. Its why a lot of the time I feel really sorry for Donald trump , hes turning the white house into a garish gold nightmare, hes just built a new air force one , hes made himself enormously rich and yet you can see he wants to be loved by everyone, but you can also see in some place he knows he doesn’t consider himself worthy yo be loved , and so any slight word of criticism cuts deep because he believes it right in his secret places, Hitler just wanted his painting loved, so many evil people have been told they are worthless , and so they retaliate against a world that doesn’t love them.
I probably haven’t explained this very well, but hes saying today, I sent you lots of doctors for your sickness
So jesus doesn’t leave us in this dark place where a lot of this sermon has been.
He is saying I have you john, the prophets , god made you his people and its not enough for you? Your still hurt and angry and your in this vicious cycle now,
He does what the goal of my life is to help people see that all you have to do is “go to him, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and he will 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.”
It’s the only way of alleviate this chronic tiredness we all suffer from, the debilitating lethargy, the lack of care for ourselves and others, the mental , spiritual physical fatige the world has, where you go to sleep tired and wake up even more tired.
Go to him and he will give you rest and you will come back to being the happy child you once were, and then you can be the source of the spring that helps this world heal. You can make his kingdom come
if we can do that in this restless old world then to quote my favourite poet ralph waldo emerson
“To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived — this is to have succeeded.”
Succeeded in my opinion to do the work that jesus laid on us and gave us the holy spirit to help us succeed, and grace for the days where we revert.
where he says thy kingdom come in our prayer later, just remember that’s on us!
we do that by bringing the tired to him, by letting him share how much they are loved, how nothing in this world can affect how much God loves you , in fact read if you read todays readings in romans 7 and carry on to romans 8 after this sermon because it says all this much better than me, 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
if I can do that once, help people know that I will consider my life has had a reason for being , I think in essence that’s why we are all here, that’s what makes his kingdom come and his will be done.
Amen
Christian Pathway 
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