July 6, 2013 – Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
A Light Yoke? Really?
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost [Lectionary 14] – July 6, 2014
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Rest.
Now there’s a good word. There is a welcome word.
Many of you have asked me lately how I’m doing,
and I have been honest in saying that I feel weary.
Wearied, truly, by many things.
We all know that work is wearisome.
Maybe it’s no accident that both words start with a ‘w’. I don’t know.
We look forward to summer in this part of the world for so long –
and part of it is that we equate this beautiful summer weather with rest and recreation and
recharging run-down batteries.
And then we start to panic when we realize how short the summer really is and
how soon the busy-ness of fall will soon be upon us.
Except I’m still super busy.
And so are many of you.
And so we hear Jesus say that good word this morning, “Come and rest” and we respond,
“Yes! Please! I want some of that.”
And then we start thinking.
And when we start thinking, we being to think that
a lot of the reason we are weary is because of our very commitment to Jesus!
For many of us, it is true, the experience of church provides us with rest, and encouragement,
and support.
But for better or worse, we also have to deal with Jesus, whom we meet at church.
And Jesus can be pretty demanding.
We know this.
He’s already run through his exhausting-to-listen-to Sermon on the Mount several chapters ago.
What he outlined there is what life looks like when
you’re living within and under God’s reign of mercy and grace.
But that way of life sounds almost impossibly demanding to us – maybe even impossible.
It sounds – and I hate to say this, Jesus – it sounds like a very heavy yoke indeed:
Turn the other cheek! Forgive your enemies! Pray for them! Go the second mile!
Leave your homes! Heal the sick! Feed the hungry! Forgive the sinner!
Share everything!
Nothing too light sounding about that yoke.
Hmmm. How can we understand this?
Well, let’s start with Jesus himself, always not a bad place to start.
When we see Jesus at the start of this passage today,
he’s already been working hard for the last few chapters.
I mean for the last several chapters in Matthew he’s been working his butt off!!!
Healing people and feeding people and forgiving people and raising dead people to life.
He, now, today, is the weary one! He, now, is the one needing rest!
And then he sort of starts to complain, right?
He compares what he and John have been doing to a children’s game where they
invite one another to play, but no one joins in.
He says, “I invited all of you to join me in the dance of the reign of God come near!
I came inviting you to a wedding celebration!
I came inviting you to dance while I piped the merry tune of
God’s kingdom coming near in healing and feeding and forgiving.
But no one is responding. No one is coming to dance with me.”
I imagine that to be wearying work.
Working and working and working and inviting people to a new way of living and being,
a way of compassion and mercy founded in a great grace and a great love –
and not seeing a lot of response.
That sounds wearying and frustrating and exhausting.
I think part of the Good News in this passage is that when you are feeling weary by
all the work God is calling you to – in your homes, in your relationships, at work,
in the communities you live in, here at First Lutheran Church – part of the
Good News this morning is that Jesus knows just what that is like.
Sometimes it seems as if you are working your butt off – and not seeing a lot of response or
a lot of good come of your efforts.
It’s hard being a disciple of Jesus and living the Christian way in all these spheres –
and Jesus knows what that is like.
But I think there’s more here.
Jesus promises something more than just the helpfulness of knowing we’re not alone.
Jesus promises the burdens we bear on his behalf will become somehow lighter to us.
That the burdens we bear in the work and way of life he calls us to will become, well,
bearable.
Sometimes this is hard for us to contemplate, right?
And so we contemplate chucking the whole thing.
But Jesus makes a big promise this morning.
The yoke he lays on us, the work he lays on us for helping bring in God’s reign of
mercy-giving and manna-sharing,
the work we are given by Jesus in participating with God in
God’s loving mission to love bless and heal this world and every person in it:
this work will somehow be made lighter to us.
But how?
A teacher I had in seminary told us of being a young man and feeling weighed down by
life and by all the heavy burdens he was carrying with him.
In his weariness he decided to go to a monastery he’d heard about for a retreat.
At the door the head of the monastery welcomed him, looked at him compassionately, and said,
“My son, you are carrying many burdens.”
My teacher brightened and said, “Yes! Yes I am!”
The head of the monastery just turned and said brightly, “Just leave ‘em here at the door.
you can pick ‘em up on your way out. They’ll feel lighter then.”
It’s not the response my teacher was going for.
He wanted to be unburdened once and for all.
But that’s not what Jesus promises, is it?
He just promises that the burden of work will be made lighter.
But how?
I grew up in Regina very close to the RCMP training depot there and
on the property there they built a very nice museum dedicated to the RCMP.
It was a nice place to ride your bike to in the summer and take a break from the heat because
it was air-conditioned and it was free.
In one of the historical displays they had some oxen or some such yoked together hauling a plow.
The yoke looked very heavy to me – large and strong and made of wood.
I couldn’t contemplate the weight of it.
But here’s the thing: it was made for two. It was made for two.
I imagine very little has changed in thousands of years of farming.
I imagine that yoke was very similar the yokes they had in the ancient middle east in Jesus’s day.
I imagine that when Jesus is telling us that his yoke is light,
it’s because he’s telling us that we in our work will be yoked to him.
And that will make all the difference.
That will make it lighter.
The Good News this morning is not just that Jesus knows what it’s like to be weary from
all the sometimes frustrating work God calls us to.
The full Good News this morning – the Full Gospel, if you like – is that
Jesus is bearing these burdens with us.
We are not alone in bearing these burdens.
When we take up Jesus’ invitation to dance, he does a lot of the work.
And it becomes a joy, after the hard work of learning the steps and getting over the awkwardness
and becoming familiar with the music.
The response from the head of the monastery was not what my teacher wanted to hear.
Being christian is demanding – Jesus is very demanding.
But when we simply rest in our relationship with him,
when we rest for a time in his total and complete acceptance of us just as we are,
when we rest in his love for us and take the time to receive his grace:
we discover that we are in relationship with one who works with us.
We discover we are not bearing our burdens alone: Jesus has given us the rest of his body,
the gift of the church, the gift of one another, to bear the burden with.
Having been gathered together here, having been fed by him and
being joined in communion with one another, we discover the burdens are lighter when
we pick them up at the door on our way out of this building.
In John’s Gospel Jesus says, “My Father is working, and I too, am always working.”
Working with us, that is.
Working burdensome work, but work that is so meaningful.
The yoke is for plowing: it’s work for feeding, it’s work for sustaining,
it’s work for the common good of all people.
It’s work for life.
Jesus is not telling you to just bear any old burden for the sake of bearing a burden.
Jesus is not telling you just to put up with burdens because it’s good for you.
Jesus is inviting you take up the burdens he bears, burdens that are worth it, the burden of love.
Jesus is inviting you to give your life and your work and your weariness to
something that is worthy of you and the wonder that you are.
Because that is work that Jesus shares in.
That is work Jesus will bear with you – and make it lighter, and even, finally, make it joyful.
“You who are weary will find rest – here, yoked with Jesus.
You who feel accused – whether by yourself or others – will find forgiveness.
You who feel abandoned will find fellowship.
You who feel disappointed will find relief.
You who feel hurting will find healing.
And you who feel misunderstood will be known, loved, and accepted for whom you are.”
(http://www.davidlose.net/2014/06/pentecost-4-a/)
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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