July 6, 2008
Pentecost 8, Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
During this season running up to the presidential election, it’s interesting to see how inconsistent our expectations for the candidates can be. John McCain is too old, too ingrained in the system while Barack Obama is too young and inexperienced. Depending on your viewpoint, McCain is either too conservative, or not conservative enough. Obama’s hopefulness is either inspiring or naive. Hillary Clinton’s tear after the early primaries was either a display of weakness or a brilliant and calculated political ploy. Even the spouses come into the fray. Cindy McCain looks too cold, too perfect. But what was Michelle Obama thinking wearing that too casual purple sleeveless dress and no pantyhose to her husband’s acceptance speech?
Sometimes you just can’t win.
Jesus would totally relate. In our gospel this morning, Jesus is exposing the multitudes’ inconsistent standards. When John the Baptist came, preaching repentance, wearing camel hair, eating locusts and abstaining from society, the people thought he was too fastidious, too reclusive, too rigidly holy. But when Jesus came, preaching about love and forgiveness, being right there in the midst of the sinners and the parties, he was too lax, too much in the world, not holy enough. No matter what package the message about God came in, they wanted a different one.
After exposing their fickleness, Jesus told his listeners that “Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” With their wildly opposite styles, both John the Baptist and Jesus pointed the way to God. Whether the people got the message could be determined by whether they turned to God. In other words, Jesus told the multitudes, look past the characterizations, past the judgments that might be made about him. Get over your expectations for Jesus -- how you might want him to appear or what message you would be most comfortable hearing -- and concentrate on the substance of what he offers. Good advice in both faith and politics.
For me, the substance -- the heart of the gospel for this morning -- is the invitation to a relationship with God: “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.”
These are beautiful and comforting lines. After all, who among us does not feel weary and burdened? Who doesn’t feel overwhelmed by something -- whether it’s a loved one, a job, finances, health, or some kind of regret. But as much as I’d love to read this passage as a promise that if we turn to God all our cares will go away, that hasn’t been my experience. Loving God doesn’t seem to mean that all our prayers will be answered in the way we’d like, or that our lives will be care-free and uncomplicated.
So what is this yoke that Jesus talks about? Originally, the yoke was a simple device that was used to join work animals (like oxen) to each other and also to a mechanism of production (like a cart or a plow). The yoke served the practical and mechanical purpose of controlling the animals. But it came to be seen as a symbol of control and ownership, and even oppression. An emblem of the master-slave relationship. However, both Hebrew and early Christian scripture use the yoke as a literary device. God laid God’s yoke upon the people and they either bore the yoke or broke it off. The yoke was seen as the outward sign of the people’s inward relationship with God, and bearing the yoke of God was not meant to imply hardship or reproach, but joy, honor and privilege.
Maybe it could be compared to something like parenting. It isn’t easy or neat. It is a crazy responsibility that you’re never rid of. But somehow it is so life-giving that even the parts that are terribly hard you wouldn’t give up for anything. If we’re lucky, we might have marriages or friendships that fit that description also. Maybe that’s the kind of yoke Jesus was talking about. Not light and carefree as in “nothing’s expected from you, just do whatever you want”. But something we want to take on regardless.
By the time Jesus appeared on the scene, the Law had become burdensome and misdirected under the religious leaders of the time. Like a yoke at its worst and ugliest – a vehicle of oppression and injustice. But Jesus upends all that. Just before the passage we read this morning, Jesus defies the careful, nitpicky practices of the Pharisees by picking grain and healing on the Sabbath. It isn’t that Jesus is lax about the Law; Jesus shows us the heart of it. The yoke at its best and most noble. One of the collects in our prayer book talks about a life lived for God “in whom service is perfect freedom.” I think that’s exactly what Jesus means when he offers us his yoke. It is something that binds us to God and to each other. Something that enables us to live a fuller life. Something that has the power to redeem even the heaviest, weariest moments of our lives.
This week I went to the funeral of a good friend’s mother-in-law. My friend had never gotten along with her mother-in-law. They fought about everything, from how she was raising her children, to when and how long their visits ought to be. And this mother-in-law had been a frequent and sometimes overwhelming source of friction in her marriage. So when she died suddenly, my friend was racked with guilt. They’d recently had a horrible argument, so she was remorseful about that. Plus now her husband was left an orphan – no siblings or close relatives left. She worried that he wouldn’t see her as a support in his grief since she had been so outspoken about his mother. Her husband was so shocked and upset by his mother’s death, that my friend ended up taking over the details. She made plans for the funeral and lunch afterward. She informed the papers and contacted the woman’s friends. She began to close up the house. Then she and her husband went to meet with the pastor who would be doing the funeral. The pastor hadn’t known the deceased at all, and so he asked them to tell him about her. Again, my friend’s husband was too upset to say anything and so my friend took the lead. She told the pastor everything she knew about this woman’s life -- about her grief over the death of her first husband; about her intense love for her only son, and her doting, active visits with her cherished grandchildren; about her passion for traveling and line-dancing. At the funeral, my friend said that the pastor’s eulogy was taken exactly from what she’d shared with him. And hearing all that – hearing her words about her mother-in-law coming from his mouth – and knowing that she had really meant them, suddenly she felt a sense of peace. She said she could almost physically feel the weight of her guilt and the bitterness of all those ugly interactions she’d had through the years lifted.
Jesus says that if we come to him, if we take his yoke, he will give us rest. That doesn’t mean everything will be easy or that nothing will get broken, but hopefully it means that everything can be transformed, redeemed.
In the old version of our prayer book, these words came right after the confession and absolution, and just before the peace. So they helped to knit together God’s forgiveness of our sins with our action of sharing peace with one another. God’s love and forgiveness isn’t a permissive wave of the hand implying that what we do doesn’t matter, but a gift that releases us to live in a new way.
In just a minute we’re going to be baptizing little Cadence Castellano into the household of God. It is a joyous time as St. Aidan’s joins all the company of heaven in the party that welcomes Cadence into the fold. It is a day for a cascading white baptismal gown, laughter at the foibles of a baby who may not like getting sprinkled with water, and the warm fuzzy feeling of a special sacrament. But it is also a day for promises. Promises by proxy for Cadence, made by her parents and godparents. Promises to shape, and guide, and teach little Cadence to know and love God. And a promise by the rest of the congregation as well; a promise that we will do all in our power to support Cadence in her life in Christ. And then we’ll all go on together to reaffirm our baptismal covenants – to promise once again to continue our life in Christ together, to resist evil and return to the Lord when we sin, to proclaim Christ in word and example, to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to strive for justice and peace for all. Those are some hefty promises. Promises that I’m afraid we are all doomed to break at one point or another.
And the image of a yoke helps there too. We are yoked not only to God but to one another. We are all in this together. In baptism we lighten the loads of the family and the baptized person when we promise to be part of what carries them through. And each time we renew these promises we remember this common yoke that unites us and strengthens us in our attempts to live faithfully.
Recently I joined the Sunday School trip to the National Cathedral. We got to chip away at limestone, color in stained glass windows, and create our own gargoyles. But my favorite part was putting together a gothic arch. There was this set of stones, all shaped just so and numbered so that you could make an arch out of them. It was the kind of arch with a keystone at the top and flying buttresses at the sides. And for some reason, I just couldn’t believe that the stones would really hold up. I’m sure the physics of it make perfect sense, but I just couldn’t trust that the stones at the top could really stay up there over nothing. But then we put it together. We followed the instructions, made sure the arrows lined up right, fit the buttresses snugly around the arch, and sure enough, when we put that keystone at the top, it stayed there. Intuitively, it seems like the weight of that top stone might topple the ones below, but it actually made them stronger.
That’s us, I think, the household of God. With God’s help, we are the stones that come together to support each other and make this sturdy, incredibly beautiful structure. And somehow God makes it so that the burdens we are carrying can actually be turned into the very things that strengthen us and enable us to stand tall. Thanks be to God!
Amen.
Elizabeth Rees