Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 July 6, 2014 CALLING ALL WHO ARE WEARY AND HEAVY-LADEN At this time of year, many of us can t help but think about vacations. If you re employed, perhaps you re on vacation now, or you re looking forward to going on vacation in the coming weeks. And if you re retired, maybe you re thinking about other people on their vacations and how they drive around our community causing traffic jams and crowding the stores and restaurants that we patronize year-round. Like the bumper sticker says: It s Tourist Season. Does That Mean I Can Shoot Them? Vacations are good things. I recommend them to everyone. To relax. Get away from it all. Let your hair down. Stop and smell the roses. Recharge the batteries. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Whoops! That last statement it was Jesus who said it. And it sounds as though Jesus was an advocate of vacations. Well, maybe. After all, Jesus himself was known to take time to get away from it all and head up into the mountains, away from the pressing crowds who were always seeking him out, and vacate his busy ministry to be alone with God. But our Lord never promoted vacations in the sense that we understand them. Jesus never said that being a Christian is like going on a life-long vacation, or that it was going to be a day at the beach. He never encouraged us to take time off, lounge by the pool and sip on a Margareta as we follow him. And yet, even so, Jesus promised us rest. What kind of rest did Jesus think we needed? It s hard to say exactly, of course, but a poet named John Greenleaf Whittier may have been close to the mark when he wrote: O Sabbath rest by Galilee! O calm of hills above; Drop thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease; 2 Take from our souls the strain and stress And let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace. The prophet Isaiah may also have been on to something when he wrote, Thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. (Isaiah 30:15) Come to me, all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Can t you just feel a part of you deep within the part of you that yearns for quietness and assurance and peace; the part that yearns for true recreation drinking in that invitation of Jesus? Of course, the main reason we willingly drink it in is because it s Jesus who is saying it. And we know that Jesus, the One whom many, many people call Lord and accept as their Savior, has excellent credentials. So we listen closely and take note when he says, Come to me, and I will give you rest. That sounds so good, so inviting to our weary minds and bodies, doesn t it? Maybe it sounds too good to be true. And we might be wondering, Okay, what s the catch? What s the fine print in Jesus invitation? Well, in fact, there is a bit of a catch, some fine print, if you will. And it s found in the very next thing Jesus said: Take my yoke upon you. A yoke. Not the kind of yoke you see when you crack open an egg. No, Jesus was referring to a wooden frame that was placed over the necks of oxen and other farm animals in order to keep them together while they pulled a plow or a cart or whatever it was they were pulling. Our next thought may be, That doesn t sound like a vacation at all. In fact, it sounds an awful lot like hard, back-breaking work to me! Who needs that? Lord knows there are enough things I ve gotten yoked into in this life of mine. I don t need any more. I already have so many duties, obligations and expectations that are tying me down, I sometimes wish I could buy a one way ticket on the next plane to Australia! But we need to take a closer look at what Jesus was really saying, and the lesson he was trying to teach us, when he talked about taking his yoke upon us. I did a little research on how yokes were used on farms in the days before gas-powered tractors and rototillers became the norm. I learned that when two beasts of burden, whether they were oxen or horses or mules, were yoked together, one of them was always the lead animal, and the commands
were always directed at it. When it was time to break in a new animal and train it how to work as a team while yoked to another animal, it was always hitched up with an old veteran. Once it was in the harness, it didn t take long before the anxious newcomer settled down and learned what had to be done with its partner. Pulling together, the two animals could accomplish what would have been impossible for one of them to do alone. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, Jesus said. Now we get it. Jesus is offering to be our lead yoke fellow. He s the one who knows what needs to be done. He s the one who takes the orders from God, and then guides us as we plow the fields of our life. And we can rely on Jesus strength, Jesus wisdom and Jesus direction to get the work done that God wants done. When we pull with Christ, the load is a lot easier and the burden is much more manageable. And as a result, Jesus final words on the subject are fulfilled: For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Some Bible scholars have written about and commented on these particular verses of Scripture and suggested that what Jesus meant was, his yoke was easy and his burden was light compared to the many legal demands that the religious leaders in his day placed on people s shoulders. And it s true. There were religious laws for just about every conceivable activity: hundreds of regulations about eating and drinking and cleansing oneself, about working and resting, about the correct and appropriate ways to worship God and treat your spouse and your neighbors, and on and on I could go. So, maybe those Bible scholars are correct. Maybe, when Jesus declared that his yoke was easy and his burden was light, he was comparing his demands with the demands of the Scribes and Pharisees. But I can t help feeling that there was more to it than that. The people Jesus encountered and came to know: the women and men he listened to, ate meals with, taught and told parables to, and touched and healed, were no different than you and me. And it wasn t just religious rules and regulations that were weighing them down, it was life itself. Just as we often do, they also longed for rest, for assurance, for peace. What made them heavy-laden was the futility of it all, the feeling that there wasn t any meaning to their lives, that nobody genuinely cared about them or the troubles and misfortunes they were going through, and their existence didn t really count for much. It was to those kinds of burdens that Jesus said, I have rest to offer you. But the only way you will receive it is to wear my yoke and learn from me. \ 3
Now, here s a thought to consider. I think what Jesus was saying when he talked about yokes and rest from burdens was that the yoke he called us to wear is the same yoke he himself wore. Take my yoke upon you, were his words. And the yoke Jesus wore was the yoke of love. His yoke was his heart of caring and compassion that tuned him in to the world s pain and brokenness. Jesus was distressed when he saw people held captive by poverty, hunger, illness, injustice and grief, and by their own fears and prejudices. And it was the yoke of Jesus love that that caused him to reach out to such people, to those who were suffering in body, mind and soul. It was his yoke of love that led Jesus from the safety and obscurity of a carpenter s shop out into the wider world, where he encountered and interacted with the poor, the blind and the maimed, the despised people of Samaria and people outside the Jewish faith. And finally, it was Christ s yoke of love that ultimately led him to Golgotha, and his sacrificial death on the cross. Love was Jesus yoke; and that s the yoke Jesus invites us to take and wear. The yoke of love. First was love for God, because love for God is the catalyst for any and all of the other kinds of love that are expressed. Then, love for ourselves, because we were created in God s image. Love for ourselves in spite of the sinning we ve done against ourselves and others, because God forgives sinners, and because God s amazing grace saves souls like you and me. And then, last but certainly not least, love for other people. Love for those who care about us and those who don t care about us. Love for those who look like us, think like us and act like us, and love for the many other individuals who think differently than we do, don t look anything like us at all, and do things almost exactly the opposite way we do them. Bearing Jesus yoke of love isn t a trouble-free way of life, my friends at least not in the eyes of the world. But looked at another way, through the eyes of our faith, it s the easiest thing we can ever do, because Jesus, our yoke-fellow, bears the burden with us. And the rest that Christ offers is the only rest really worth having a rest that the world isn t able to offer us, and the world can never take away from us. It s the rest that comes with knowing that, when we wear the yoke of Jesus love, our lives mean something, and we realize that the God whom we perhaps haven t been very close to in a while is actually a lot nearer to us than we ever thought possible, because wherever love is, God is there, too. Why? Because God is love! 4
So, listen again to Jesus standing invitation to us: Come, all who labor and are heavy-laden. Take my yoke of love upon you and learn from me. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. And I will be right there beside you, linked to your life so that I can guide you, encourage you, and enable you to accomplish the work that you would never be able to accomplish by yourself. Come to me, Jesus says to us; and even in the midst of all the world s turmoil and trouble, its brokenness and despair, I will give you rest. Thanks be to the Lord! Amen. 5