Third Sunday after Pentecost
(Lectionary 14A)
Zechariah 9:9-12
Psalm 145:8-14
Romans 7:15-25a
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."
As we celebrate our nation’s values this Independence Day weekend, one of the ones that rises to the top is our value of “hard work.” We believe an “American Dream” that says we can accomplish anything we want, be anything we want, and do anything we set our minds to...if we can just work hard enough. If someone is in need, hard work is the solution. They’ve got to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”, we say. But what about when such lives have so few resources left they hardly have any straps left to pull on? Or, when someone asks for help, we often say “no” while adding, “we only help those who help themselves,” even crediting the Bible for that saying, even though that line never appears anywhere in Scripture. Yes, this country’s economic capacity, its ingenuity and its resiliency are grounded on the value of hard work. But this value can come at the high cost of leaving behind the poor and disabled. Hard work can lead to a “workaholism” that severely threatens the health of our families and our communities.
It’s no wonder then that we find such relief in one of Jesus’ most well-known sayings: “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.” (11:28-30) Rest. An easy yoke. A light burden. What Jesus promises sounds so appealing to our overworked lives, but can it be true?
Lutherans have been taught that it’s not our own good works that save us, but rather God’s grace. Can it be true that we don’t have to work so hard--that Jesus’ promised rest can free us from that burden? We may believe that we are “justified by grace through faith apart from works” (Paul). But our lives reflect that we believe our justification before God actually depends on us. Something keeps telling us that to justify ourselves, we have to do more, be more, try harder and prove ourselves worthy to earn God’s love. The hard thing is that that hunger has a way of never, ever ending.
As we dance this tension between grace and works, Episcopal preacher Barbara Brown Taylor notes that we still “labor under the illusion that our yokes [need to be carried] alone, that the only way to please God is to load ourselves down with heavy requirements--good deeds, pure thoughts, blameless lives, pure obedience--all those rules we make and break and make and break, while all the time Jesus is standing right there in front of us.” (Seeds of Heaven) Jesus stands there right in front of us this day--as we ponder offering again our sacrifices to the American altar of “hard work.” Jesus offers us something else: that all God requires of us is to belong to God through him. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
When Jesus says this, he has just sent the disciples out on their mission to spread the gospel. One could look at him and say, he’s just sent them out to do hard work to earn their keep. But the disciples know, just as we know, that the work Jesus equips his disciples for comes with a promise. The disciples go to share the good news they've been given. They are not alone. He walks with them. No matter what the outcome, they will always belong to him. Jesus doesn’t leave his disciples without a yoke—without any purpose. They have a role to play in his ministry. Jesus’ yoke is a light one. It flows from his grace--grace that he does not come break our backs with the weight of heavy expectations. He comes with grace to sustain our lives with his life, so that we might have life in his name.
There may be some who are more familiar with farming equipment like yokes than I am. But I learned something new this week about yokes from Ms. Taylor. There are one person yokes, where a contraption is put over an oxen’s back, so that it can pull the yoke behind it and plow the rows in the soil for planting seeds. The person guides the yoke so as to keep the animal from veering too far one way or the other. But then there is also the two-person yoke, which looks very similar, but that also has room for two animals or two people to hold it and guide it. The thing about two-person yokes, however, is that one person does not have to do all the work. The weight of the yoke can be shared as the work is done.
When Jesus says “take my yoke upon you”, I believe he is talking about a two-person yoke. He’s telling us we don’t have to do it all. It’s not about who can carry the heaviest load, but who is willing to share their load with him. Are we willing this day to lay down what weighs on us, and to share it with Jesus? When Jesus asks us to take his yoke upon us, he’s not asking to add another piece of weight to squelch our already guilt-ridden souls. He’s saying, “There is a place on my yoke for you. Join me. Bear this yoke of grace with me. For this load is as light as a feather when it is shared. Join me in giving gospel life to the world. Though we will be tired, we will not be exhausted. For I will share it with you.”
Jesus invites us to walk the co-yoked daily walk of faith. This is a walk that opens up pathways of our lives like plowed rows of soil, ready to be sprinkled with the seeds of God’s manifold mercy. We do not have to do the heavy lifting. Jesus reminds us that he has already done the heavy lifting of the heaviest yoke of all for us on the yoke of the cross.
In Africa there is a proverb: “We can run much faster by ourselves, but we can walk much further together.” In walking the way of faith that runs the course of our lives, we could try to get much more accomplished on our own. But we can walk the way of faith with Jesus by doing it together with him, and with one another. We can stop to check in with another member of the church we don’t know (even when we don’t feel like it); we can avoid the temptation to do our spiritual practices like reading Scripture, praying and serving others all on our own; we can admit the weight on our lives because of a burden we carry is too heavy, and find new life by no longer carrying it all alone.
In walking the co-yoked walk of Jesus’ way, we will find that his is not a way of guilt, shame or fear. It is a walk that has nothing to do with earning anything by “hard work”, or “doing it on our own.” We will find his is a co-yoked walk that is full of all the love and power we need to sustain our lives, to sustain one another and to sustain the life of the world. It is that “light” purpose to which we as his disciples have been called and to which we are now sent, together. Amen.
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