Proper 9 A – July 5, 2020 (Independence Day)
Psalm 145:8-15Romans 7:15-25aMatthew 11:16-19, 25-30
“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.”
When I read this verse earlier this week, letting these words from Jesus wash over me were like taking a deep drink of cold water. I don’t know about you all…. But I’m feeling a little weary these days. Somewhat burdened as well.
Maybe I shouldn’t feel that way. I mean, I don’t want to complain. Summer is here! I just got back from a vacation at the beach. My family is healthy, thanks be to God. Marcel and I both have our jobs. The weather has been good overall. And have you see those beautiful sunrises and sunsets we’ve gotten the last week or so, thanks to the Sahara Dust Storm? Life is Good. I’m hoping Life is Good for most of you, too.
But I also know that we have people in our community who are battling cancer, mourning the death of a loved one, feeling insecure financially, or dealing with other challenging issues. They may be feeling especially weighed down or wearied by those challenges. Our prayers continue for you.
Life is always going to have its ups and downs, its joys and sadness, its triumphs and challenges. But am I alone in just feeling extra weary right now?
I think a large part of it is the ongoing effects of the Coronavirus and the unknowns about the future. In the last few weeks there’s been another upturn in new cases of COVID-19, and in some places in the country hospitals are filling up. We are not even at the predicted “second wave” stage… we haven’t managed to get through the first wave yet.
Businesses are opening up… St. Michael’s will soon be offering opportunities for regathering. But life if far from “back to normal.” Funeral and wedding plans have been put on hold or greatly altered. Vacation plans for many have been cancelled, and what next fall’s School Year will look like is uncertain. Most of us thought we’d be done with this virus by now. We’re tired of wearing masks and not hugging. We also are burdened by the worry or anxiety of possibly getting the virus. If I got it, would it be a mild case like it is for so many? Or could I end up really sick, or even in the hospital? I think the wide variability of how the virus affects people contributes to the overall malaise we feel.
Besides the weariness of dealing with COVID, the last five weeks have brought turmoil to our country and our world over issues of racial justice and police brutality. There is sin and brokenness in our world, and it has been on grand display the last few weeks…. There’s Sin and brokenness on all sides. Racism and police brutality; violence and destruction. Anger and hate. Denial and blame. There’s sin and brokenness in our world, and sin and brokenness living inside each one of us, too.
Paul writes, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. … I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me…. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin.”
What Paul is saying here is that sin is often not a conscious intentional act. Yes, it includes doing wrong things… but it also includes not doing right things. “Things done and left undone” as our confession says.
One definition of the Greek word for sin “hamartia” is “missing the mark.” I think we often miss the mark by taking shortcuts, or by trying to avoid a hard tasks or discussion. We often want the path of least resistance and fall into that especially when we are feeling tired or burdened.
Do you really want to take the time to figure out how much you got in tips or side jobs to declare on your taxes, or just take the easy way out and make a low-ball estimate, or leave it off your tax return completely? Is it really worth the hassle to make your kids read a book or do their chores when they are perfectly happy doing their computer games? Certainly its not a sin to be a bit lazy here and again…unless you become neglectful.
Maybe some of us are missing the mark by not taking the COVID virus seriously… wearing our masks out in public and limiting our close contact. Maybe some of us are leaving undone the God’s important call to be reconciled one to the other, especially in understanding and working toward racial equality and justice in our society. It can feel wearying and burdensome.
What’s the answer? We have it in scripture: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Jesus has forgiven us already of our sins, sins known and unknown.”
Jesus says, “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 seems a funny to have this juxtaposition from Jesus of him wanting us to release our burdens on him, with the image of putting on the burden of a yoke.
A yoke is something we don’t see everyday, but was very common in rural, first century Palestine where Jesus taught. It is a wooden frame for joining two draft animals, usually oxen. A wooden bar lays across the neck and shoulders of the animals and is held in place by leather straps around their necks. The oxen were hooked to a plow or cart. The yoke was used to direct and control them and kept them working together to harness their combined strength pulling in the same direction.
David Henderson, a pastor in Colorado, writes this about the symbolic meaning of the yoke: “…in Jesus’ day, the word yoke was also a synonym for obligations, the sum of all of the duties that someone had to shoulder to fulfill a commitment in a certain area. So, for example, monthly principal and interest payments would be the yoke of the person who takes out a mortgage.
So rest and yoke are nearly opposites.” The yoke seems the opposite of freedom, especially as we think about this independence day holiday.
“The unexpected twist is that Jesus brings these two words together to describe what happens when we follow Him. When we take on His yoke, He says, we experience the unexpected: rest.” And in that rest, we find true freedom.
So if we rephrasing Jesus’ words, we might come up with something like this: “Come to Me, all you who are worn out and weighed down by scrambling to meet the demands of others, and I will bring quiet to your spirits. Come to me all you who are feeling bound up and burdened, captive to the world’s narrative, and I will give you my truth. Walk beside me, stay tethered to me, make me your daily companion in conversation, learn from my ways. Use my strength as you engage your work in the world. I will stop the clamoring in your souls. I will bring you peace. I will give you freedom.”
Taking on Jesus’ yoke means that we are keeping in step with Jesus… Not lagging behind, not trying to get out in front, but relying on Jesus’ strength, walking with him, side-by-side, going where he goes, turning where he turns.
And while wearing the Yoke of Christ still instills a sense of obligation and work for the Gospel, it is also meant to free us from those burdens we are not meant to be carrying around.
In Jesus’ day, the burden that so many people were carrying was the burden of keeping all the laws of the Jewish tradition, the 613 laws in the old testament and all the rituals. It is overwhelming. Jesus reminded them of the great commandment to Love the Lord your God with all your Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength, and Love your neighbor as yourself.
In order to Love God, Love our Neighbors, and Love ourselves, we need to let go of the burdens of Guilt and Shame. We need to stop placing the burden of Blame on others. We need to rest in the truth that we are each beloved children of God, beloved by God, and it is God’s Spirit that will keep us through this time of pandemic and time of social upheaval.
We need to take on the yoke of Christ, to “Clothe ourselves in Christ” as it says elsewhere in the bible. When we can do that, when we can rest in Jesus’ presence we gain so much. We can know our essential worth and value to God and the world. We can see others with Christ’s eyes, even those who are different from us. We can hold the the difficulties of this world in the larger picture of God’s unfolding kingdom.
When we are yoked with Christ, Christ bears us up, directs us, and leads us. We know that, with Christ, our efforts in this world can bear fruit. We are not in this alone. We have God, We have Jesus, We have each other.
Amen.