Year A

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

An Easy Yoke

What curious texts we have today on the day after the Fourth of July as we celebrate the 244 birthday of our nation. Certainly Paul and Jesus’ words today are not exactly words of celebration for a faithful nation. Jesus knew that his celebration of the Kingdom of God was incurring the righteous indignation and even the condemnation, of the respectable and religious. The people of his day had some perverse ways of living and thinking, attitudes which even had permeated their religious life. To Jesus there was nothing to compare the people of his time who were hardened, confused, sinful people. When he went to their cities, they had refused to believe the “deeds of power” he had performed and he pointed out that the people refused both John and himself.  Therefore, he is not only addressing the failure of individuals to respond, but of the society as a whole, indeed the entire generation, a people who somehow fail to respond as they might to a song played on a flute that is utterly clear. Inappropriate behavior seemed to be the order of the day in Jesus’ view.

Years ago, there was a Peanuts cartoon where Lucy was explaining to her brother Linus about the division in the human heart. She drew a picture of a heart, put a line down the middle, and said, “One side is filled with hate and the other side is filled with love. These are two forces which are constantly at war with each other.” Linus says, “I think I know just what you mean. I can feel them fighting.” So Lucy has him tip to one side, so the good part could drain into the evil part. If only it was that easy! Paul describes this constant war going on within himself today in his letter to the Romans. He tries to do the right thing, but it doesn’t always work out that way. He knows he has been claimed by Jesus Christ, called to live as God’s apostle, and filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. He knows this; yet it is one thing to know it, it is another to live it day to day. He says, “I detect another force at work in my life.” Even his best efforts can be corrupted. Such is the power of sin.

We are at war with ourselves. Why do we do some of the things we do? Jesus reports that in his day the people of Israel had complained about John the Baptist for living an almost monastic like life, and then gossiped about Jesus for eating and drinking and even eating with sinners. “Yet, he says wisdom is vindicated by her deeds…” Divine wisdom is proved right by its results. You and I need to be made aware of the sin, the war fighting in ourselves if we are ever fully to give our lives to Jesus who has a special relationship with God that he can share with us. This is what Jesus was trying to help the people that day to understand. Only when we know how sinful we are will we appreciate grace, God’s forgiving love, and our need for it. In one of her books, Kathleen Norris writes about what some of the ancient Christians called “good old sin; sin as a persistent and troublesome force in our lives.”

She writes: These days, when someone commits an atrocity, we tend to sigh and say, “That’s human nature.” But our attitude would seem wrong-headed to the desert monks, who understand human beings to be part of the creation that God called good, special in that they are made in the image of God. Sin is an aberration, not natural for us at all. This is why Gregory of Nyssa, one of the early Church Fathers, speaks so often of “returning to the grace of that image what was established in you from the beginning.” Gregory saw it as our lifelong task to find out what part of the divine image God has chosen to reveal in us…We can best do this by realistically determining how God has made us—what our primary faults and temptations are, as well as our gifts—not that we might better “know ourselves”, or in today’s language, “feel good about ourselves,” but in order, he says, that we might become instruments of divine grace for other people, and eventually return to God.”            

The early Christian mystics understood both the perils and possibilities of the human heart. The great danger is rooted in the ever-present power of sin, that frequently fatal tendency to turn in on ourselves and turn away from God. But in the power of God through Jesus Christ the great possibilities come. In Christ, God has come right into our tangled messes to rescue and restore. Jesus came to us, and our sin was so pervasive that we killed him. But God raised him up. And Jesus keeps after us, rescuing and restoring us until the day comes when he turns his kingdom over to the Father, washed, renewed, and redeemed. That is our Christian hope. On the cross, Jesus takes away the sin of the world and offers forgiveness for every trespass. In the power of his resurrection he remains with those whom he has claimed and who have claimed him offering guidance and help in time of need.

This is certainly good news because when we become burdens to ourselves, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German theologian in a sermon on this text today, says, we need a person we can fully trust without preservation, a person who understands, hears, and bears all things. And 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.” A yoke is attached to two animals as they pull, say, a plough. It is heavy. However, in comparison to the many challenges of living, Jesus promises a light and easy yoke that can provide rest. You and I need a savior, someone to make the burdens we are encountering right now a little lighter.

We need someone who makes God known to us, and in a way that invites us to be his disciples and take up a yoke that is easy. For, only when we turn to Jesus can we really know God’s forgiving love. What comfort and hope this brings for all generations.  Bonhoeffer, in his 1525 sermon on this text put it this way. “Therefore every Christian, if he has accepted the gospel, may well rejoice that he is in the hands of this Christ and need not be troubled by his sins, if he has accepted the gospel, for Christ, under whom he lives, will carry on from there.” Jesus makes all the burdens you and I have feel so light. It is like we sing in the old hymn; “What a friend we have in Jesus. All our sins and griefs to bear! Do your friends despise, forsake you?…In his arms he’ll take and shield you; you will find solace there.”  Not only does Christ take away our sin and help us carry heavy burdens, but he does this by giving us God’s Holy Spirit to give rest, guidance for our souls and a purpose to our lives.

Wisdom is proved by our deeds and so the easy yoke means having something to do: a purpose that demands all and asks for our best. It means work that is motivated by a passionate desire to see God’s kingdom realized. Jesus invites us today to take his yoke, accept God’s grace and love, and make God’s saving love known to a world that is weary and carrying heavy burdens. He makes it possible for those who come to him to experience the freedom and rest of knowing that their lives are in the hands of God. And he is the living proof of how taking his yoke works out for us. Through our baptism we drown sin and death and are brought into the fullness of life with God. Faith discerns that such a yoke is easy to take, to be sure, which is a cause for celebration!