The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Proper 9A
“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.”
Jesus offers us his yoke and promises that his yoke is easy and the burden is light. For us who know the trajectory of Jesus’ earthly life, this feels not quite accurate. What about the cross that lies ahead? Being misunderstood and abandoned by his disciples? The heartache of seeing the world around him continue to not understand the way of the Gospel? How would this be easy, and how would this burden be light?
I struggle with what Jesus says. It feels nice, it feels comfortable – and yet I also know the challenges of actually following Jesus. Jesus says we are called to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. And yet we’re easily distracted and focus our hearts, minds, souls, and strength on lesser things. We pray, we feel good, we feel centered, and then BAM our minds are chewing over the same worries and fears; our hearts start desiring things instead of desiring God, our souls feel like they untether from God and float away, and we feel our strength fading away in the face of all the suffering and confusion of the world. So much for loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.
And then Jesus adds that we’re supposed to love our neighbor as ourselves? To love THAT neighbor? To love that neighbor the same way I love myself? And what if I don’t even really love myself, if I’m my own enemy? How am I supposed to love my neighbor as myself in this day and age?
What makes this easy? What makes this burden light at all?
So some Christians have made it easy and light – by removing the demands of love from the yoke of Christ. The love of God becomes reduced to an easy confidence that “I’m right with God, and I know what God wants, and thus my will is God’s will.” The love of neighbor becomes reduced to a vague and light “If I think they deserve it, I’ll give charity and I’ll feel good… and if they don’t deserve it, I’ll tell them their failures, out of an abundance of Christian love.” Easy and light.
But I’m stuck in the world of St Paul – I feel at war within myself, wanting to do the right thing, not knowing what the right thing is, not knowing if there is even a one, single right thing to do. Over the years as I have explored more and more of my own personality, my habits, and my thoughts, I see layers of thoughts and desires that are deeply engrained that pull me away from the path of following Jesus. And these thoughts and desires are not things I necessarily chose – I am a product of my environment, over the years from even before I was born up until now. I am a product of thousands of years of human evolution, human culture, traumas, pains, injustices, with sparks of hopes and dreams.
None of us arrive in the world a blank slate – the words that are written on us were written with hands not our own, and we struggle to read the text, let alone to change the words to reflect the One in whose image we are made. We are born into families and cultures and histories and ways of thinking and ways of behaving that get presented to us as normal, just the way things are. It is hard to turn around and question all of that, it seems.
So what is easy, what is light about all this? To be made, to be re-made, to be continually remade and remolded to embody the love of God? How is this easy and light?
What is easy about this? It’s easy because it means turning and returning to Jesus, looking into his eyes as they look at us. He is gentle and humble of heart, and in his eyes we see what we are meant to become. We are seen by eyes of love – all that is within me that is not love is revealed the more that I gaze into the eyes of love. Easy to do – it is not some obscure, hidden knowledge or harsh ascetic practice. All of us can do it, at any age, at any time.
The wisdom of God is revealed to children – children know the value of sharing and compassion, the value of honesty and fairness. As we grow we make things more complicated, or at least we claim it’s more complicated. We throw up our hands and say, “it’s complicated, it’s too complicated. It cannot change. I cannot change.” But at any moment we have the opportunity to turn to Jesus and be changed. That part is easy enough, if we would just turn to Jesus.
And what is light about this? We experience the heaviness of life. Our bodies and minds are weighed down with all the past and all the pain of the present. The lightness does not remove all of the pain and the past – we do not become ignorant of the world or ourselves. No, it’s more akin to a hot air balloon – the lightness of Christ lifts us up as we are, we see the world and its interconnectedness, and we see the world from above the small little hole in the ground that we may have been used to. The world is heavy, and the world seems a hard, stone-hearted mess. But the yoke of Jesus continually sets us free, to give us rest, to renew and restore us. It is easy, if we let it. It is light, if we accept it. Amen.