Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Jesus spoke to the crowd saying: “But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”
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 you 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.”
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight O Lord, our strength & our redeemer (Psalm 19:14)
INTRO
In our Gospel lesson, Jesus says, “Come to me, all you 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.”
It has been a wearying time to be the church lately. The grief over the loss of so many lives to the coronavirus is a hard weight to bear in our families, in our communities, in our nation, in our world, in our churches.
The loss of jobs and livelihoods is devastating. The inability to meet face to face, to congregate, to embrace, to comfort, and to console in person is nothing but a loss—a deep, aching loss. The shutting down of so much and the staying inside so long has felt like a long slog with heavy packs.
Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest…For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
The leadership at GSLC has been extraordinary. They’ve done amazing work getting worship online, recording devotions and other readings, checking in with people via telephone, leading online Bible studies, and attending zillions of zoom meetings. And yet, we also hear how wearying all this has been. Learning new technologies is frustrating. We spend hours upon hours recording and uploading ministry moments and worship services and wonder how can this be. Online meeting formats can be frustrating when the technology doesn’t work, leaving us depleted.
Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest…For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
The pandemic has exposed truths about ourselves that are hard to face.
- Inequalities in health care.
- Disparities in educational opportunities.
- The persistent and pervasive racism in our society.
It has also exposed truths about the church that are hard to face. The pressures on the church in late modern society have been a dull ache that we could ignore in better times.
The pandemic has laid bare the ways churches have been boxed in, squeezed out, and pushed around by late modern society.
We scramble to respond, but so often, despite our best intentions, we end up speaking in the terms and acting according to the rules that society sets for us, rather than in accordance with the life and truth that we know in Christ, in the Church, in the Gospel, in our traditions, in our faith, and in our practices.
It is wearying to confront these truths. It is a burden to feel the need to constantly justify ourselves according to the rules of a game we did not choose. It’s hard enough to live out the vision of the kingdom that our Lord gives to us. Blessed are the poor … blessed are the meek … blessed are those who mourn … Now we are expected to show how this way of life is also reasonable, useful, inoffensive. It’s tiring playing by somebody else’s rules. Especially when we seem to know better and can’t help ourselves.
Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest…For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
TEXT
I can’t help but think of people who, in response to protests that involve a limited number of people rioting and damaging property, remark: “Why can’t you peacefully protest?” But people who peacefully protest are told to shut up or are ignored. Either way, the response to both peaceful and destructive demands for addressing systemic wrongs are met with inaction. In other words, in response to our modern prophets who return us to the words and imagery that Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Amos and the rest used to denounce injustice, we neither dance nor mourn with those who call out for us to hear them and respond.
And yet, we do not, cannot—and must not—take the weight of the world on our shoulders. We are not called to solve the problems of the world. We are called to faithful obedience to the one who has overcome the world.
To those who are carrying heavy burdens that weigh them down, Jesus tells them to put down those burdens and carry them no longer (Matthew 11:28).
But then to everyone—those who have been carrying heavy burdens and those who have been standing on the sidelines, not working at all—Jesus calls us to take up his yoke (Matthew 11:29). Now, a yoke is a farming implement that a beast of burden wears to pull a plow. The plow breaks up the ground to prepare it for growth and productivity. Rabbis used the term “yoke” to signify the commandments and teachings that they would place on their disciples and expect them to live out and teach their own disciples, in turn. When Jesus spoke of his yoke, he meant his understanding of how to obey his commandments and live life in a way that would allow for the growth of good fruits for the kingdom of heaven.
LIFE
One burden the late modern world lays upon us is to treat religion as a commodity. We know better. We worship the Lord who is the source of all truth and value. We reject the commodification of all things. You can’t put a price tag on truth, goodness, and beauty; on life, relationships, and love; on forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace; on all the things that make life worth living.
And yet, the pandemic has exposed how often we treat religion as a commodity. We offer user-friendly versions of Christian faith to help seekers round out their journeys to self-fulfillment. Because we could not gather for worship in our church buildings, we fretted about how to provide worship, deliver sermons, and offer pastoral care remotely.
Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest…For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
A second way late modern society boxes us in is by saying religion must be a purely private matter. As long as we keep our faith to ourselves, we will be tolerated. Cross the line and dare to speak about matters of public concern and we get labeled as fanatics, or at least as unintentional accomplices to fanatics.
Some Christians have complied with this stricture. The so-called father of modern theology, Friedrich Schleiermacher, said that Christian faith was not a matter of knowing or doing. Rather, Christian faith was, at heart, a feeling: a sense and taste for the infinite; a feeling of absolute dependence.
We know this cannot be true. The Gospels don’t give us much insight into the interior lives and feelings of Jesus and the disciples, but we do witness a lot of doing. Jesus moves and acts in public space, healing, teaching, feeding, proclaiming, forgiving, loving. He was turned over to the Roman authorities, publicly executed, and rose again on the third day. The kingdom of God is announced, enacted, and embodied in public. The Gospel is not about the private life of Jesus, but the politics of Jesus.
Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest…For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
A third way late modern society squeezes the church’s ministry is the reduction of pastoral care to a form of therapy. Therapy is more concerned with the techniques of treatment than with the goals of human life.
We know pastoral care is more than therapy. It is the cure of souls. Of course, priests and pastors will learn from therapists. Pastoral care givers need to be competent. Many therapists are gifted professionals.
Yet, we also know that much of the pain in modern life is not only caused by people hitting roadblocks on the way to achieving their self-appointed goals, but also because people don’t know the goods they should seek, the values they should cherish, the vices they should abhor, and the virtues they should practice.
Late modern life is chaotic. Our suffering is not just emotional, but also cognitive. There are ways that are life-giving and there are ways that are death-dealing. Surely pastoral care is not helping people become more well-adjusted to the ways of denial, degradation, destruction, death.
We know better. We know that true healing only comes from the God who promised a new heaven and a new earth, a time when the veil that separates the nations will be pulled back, when all peoples will share in the abundance of God’s creation, when all tears will be wiped away, when pain and mourning and death will be no more.
We know this and we remember it as we are called upon to help communities and people through this hard and confusing time. In our pastoral care, we try to point to this vision of healing and hope, and yet we fear we may also be co-opted by forces and powers we don’t fully understand, to apply a little spiritual salve to our collective wounds so that we can be sent out again into the churning void. It is wearying.
Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest…For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
CONCLUSION
This is a wearying time for the church. Our Gospel lesson offers genuine comfort to those of us who are weary and carrying heavy burdens. Yet we must guard against turning Jesus into someone or something he is not.
- He is not a commodity that we distribute to consumers.
- He is not a professor of political theory.
- He is not a modern therapist.
- He is the One whom we meet in Matthew’s Gospel: the personification of Wisdom, the Son of God, Israel’s Messiah, the Crucified and Risen Lord, the founder of the Messianic Kingdom, the One who promises true rest, sabbath rest, foretold in creation, made flesh and blood in his person.
It is his yoke that is easy. It is his burden that is light. It is in him that we will find rest for our weary souls.