Proper 9 -- Romans 7: 21 – 8: 6; Matthew 11: 25 – 30[1]
A sermon by The Rev. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, IL; Sunday, July 6th, 2008
“Come unto me, all ye who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”[2][3]
This passage, in which we hear Jesus’ offer of rest to all those who come to Him, is a rarity in Matthew’s Gospel.
Week by week, we have heard Matthew prod and urge us to take up the challenges of the Kingdom of heaven. Each page in Matthew presents us with messages that are hard to hear, difficult to read and ponder, and challenging to our understandings of Jesus’ mandate, to follow Him.
But not so today….Today, instead, we get a break from Matthew’s proddings. Today, we hear, “you will find rest for your souls, and “for my yoke is easy, and my burthen is light.”
Jesus’ invitation to become “yoked” to Him stands in sharp contrast to the “heavy burdens” the leaders of first century Judaism, the Pharisees and the Scribes, laid on the shoulders of God’s Chosen People. We read Jesus’ words in Matthew 23, verse four, which says, “They bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with their fingers.”
Jesus’ message, announcing the arrival of the Kingdom of heaven, had largely been rejected by the people who lived in the towns around Galilee. Matthew, chapter eleven, records the rejections that Jesus and His message had encountered. Apparently, the heavy religious burdens were more comfortable and more familiar than the light burden that Jesus offered.
To our sensibilities today, it doesn’t make sense, does it? Aren’t we supposed to take up the heavy challenges of religion? Isn’t life in God hard? Isn’t it tough to try to live the way God wants us to? After all, aren’t we supposed to “deny ourselves, and take up our cross” to follow Jesus, as we heard in our Gospel reading last Sunday?[4]
Reconciling Jesus’ blunt warnings about the difficulties of the Christian life, which we have heard last Sunday and in some of the Sundays before that, with Jesus’ offer of “rest”, and an “easy yoke” isn’t easy.
How might we reconcile the two?
The answer, I believe, lies at the heart of Matthew’s theology. Let’s recall what that theology is:
- Matthew’s focus is on the everyday life of the here-and-now. That is, Matthew emphasizes what Judaism called the (Hebrew: “walk”) of God, walking in God’s path, day-by-day.
- At the same time, Matthew never loses sight of the “big picture”. That is to say, Matthew emphasizes that what we do as Christians in everyday life has eternal consequences. Matthew has his sights firmly set on the “last things” of God (the eschaton, a word which comes from the Greek word for “last”).
- Jesus’ continuing presence is known within the community of believers. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them”.[5] Furthermore, Jesus’ presence will extend with the body of believers, the Church,[6] until the end of time, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”[7]
So Matthew’s focus invites us to come into connection with Jesus through the gathered body of disciples, that is, the Church. In so doing, we walk alongside Jesus, who leads us, in all that we do and say.
Such an awareness leads us to understand Jesus’ image and use of the word “yoke”.
For two oxen that are yoked together (most likely, a very familiar image to Jesus’ listeners in the first century), lighten the burden for each other only when they walk together, evenly distributing the load between them. For one ox to try to do the work alone would not work well. Nor would it work for one of the two to pull more or most of the work, for the stronger one would bind the yoke against the neck of the weaker one.
No, Jesus’ images calls for a partnership.
So, the rest we seek offers us a yoke that is “easy”, not a cessation from the work of the Kingdom….Jesus does not offer us “ease”, only a yoke that is “easy”, and a burden that is “light” because Jesus shares in the work with us, until the end of time.
Thanks be to God! AMEN.
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[1] We are using only the Epistle reading (Romans) and the Gospel reading (Matthew) instead of the customary Old Testament and Psalm readings which are usually used, since we are using the 1662 Book of Common Prayer for today’s special service. This Prayer Book did not provide for Old Testament and Psalm readings for the celebration of Holy Communion.
[2] Matthew 11: 28, KJV (King James Version)
[3] We are using the King James (Authorized) Version in service this Sunday, in keeping with the recreation of an historic service that would have occurred at Christ Church, Philadelphia, following the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776.
[4] Matthew 10: 38
[5] Matthew 18: 20
[6] It’s work noting that Matthew is the only Gospel writer to use the word “church”, Matthew 18: 17.
[7] Matthew 28: 20
