Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, July 9, 2023

Zechariah 9:9-12+Psalm 145:8-15+Romans 7:15-25a+Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

As a priest and pastor, I am privy to conversations and confessions that reveal a level of trust and intimacy not many people get to hear, except maybe therapists or defense attorneys. It is one of the great privileges of ministry, a sacred ministry of presence and listening. These conversations usually come when things are not going so well for whatever reason, and in the course of these conversations, the person will invariably say something like, “I haven’t been very good about going to church” or “I really should do more to help out at church” or “I just don’t pray enough.” Now, none of these is a bad thing. Going to church and taking part in the life and ministry of the church and praying are all very good things, indeed. But the subtext of these is often more along the lines of “I’m not a very good Christian and whatever this bad thing that is happening in my life is because I don’t spend enough time to churchy things or reading the bible or praying.”

When Jesus says, “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light,” this is not what he is talking about. Beating ourselves up because we are not perfectly pious Christians is not an easy yoke.

In the 7th chapter of his letter to the church in Rome, Paul laments this very inability to do the right thing.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. 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 that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (7:21-25)

If we look at faith as a checklist of things we have to do, we are right there in that boat with Paul, unable to do the things we know to be good and true, and consequently beating ourselves up for our failures.

But “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light,” Jesus says.

That raises a question. What does Jesus think is easy about being sent out with nothing but the clothes on your back to take the good news into the towns and villages? Or being sent out like sheep among wolves? What is so easy about his saying that he came bringing not peace, but a sword, or that families will be pitted against each other? All of these are statements of Jesus that we have read over the past few weeks. How is any of that a light burden?

It is helpful, I think, to remember who Jesus is talking to - and about - in this 11th chapter of Matthew. A couple of chapters ago after Jesus called Matthew to follow him, the religious leaders began to challenge him for eating with tax collectors and sinners (9:11), and ever since, they have been like a Greek chorus, watching, critiquing, claiming that his healings are because he is aligned with the devil (9:34). All of chapter 10 is about Jesus sending the disciples out, and now, in chapter 11, some of John’s followers have showed up to ask if Jesus is really the one. Jesus commends John, the one about whom the prophets wrote, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,” (Mal. 3:1, Is. 57:14, Mt. 11:10). All of this is said to the crowds following Jesus.

But then there is a shift. When Jesus asks, “To what shall I compare this generation?” he is not talking to those who are already all in for him. No, these are those people eavesdropping on the edge of the crowd, the ones trying to trip him up, the ones keeping an eye on him. John was too much of an ascetic for them, and Jesus is too much of a libertine.

“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!” (11:18-19).

There’s a part left out of our lectionary selection today, verses 20-24, when he calls down curses on some cities, but then he returns his attention to the crowds following him. They are living under the burden of occupation by Rome, and all those standing on the fringes are just waiting for Jesus to make a wrong step, this Jesus who is the first sign of hope they have seen in a very long time, if ever. And it is to them, the crowds who are following him, seeking healing and wholeness, to whom he says, “Come to me all you that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you…find rest. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (11:28-30).

The only other time Matthew uses that word “burden” is in his denunciations of the scribes and pharisees in chapter 23 when Jesus says, “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them” (23:4). Just before this, the religious leaders had a lawyer pose the question about the greatest commandment, to which Jesus responds,

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’ (22:37-40)

Jewish law included 613 total commandments, and the scribes and pharisees knew every one of them. To them, fulfilling the law meant not messing up on any of these 613. Jesus isn’t dismissing all of these, he’s just saying that as long as you love God and love your neighbor, you have kept the rest. So whether you eat with tax collectors and sinners or heal on the sabbath, you are loving God and loving neighbor, and you are following the law.

Paul’s long exposition on sin and our human inability to follow the law will say much the same thing. We will never keep the law perfectly, but Jesus is still going to come to dinner and offer his love and compassion.

And here’s the thing about a yoke. A yoke is intended to lighten the load, to share the burden, and to keep those under the yoke together. If we share that yoke with Jesus, even if we go off on our own direction, he’s coming with us, along for the ride when we get ourselves into all kinds of mischief and trouble. Then he tugs on his side of that yoke and gets us headed back on his path, on the way of love.

Sure, we can try to do it our own way, or we can take on that easy yoke. I am here to tell you that whenever I have tried to do it my way, it has…not always gone so well. So, give me that yoke, Jesus. Where you go, I’m coming, too.