"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."
Yes! These are words we like to hear, words of great comfort.
But look at them in their context,
that is, how they fit in with the words that come before them,
and that will show us even more
about what these beautiful words mean.
That is, it’s not just rest, getting some R and R, taking a vacation,
that these words are all about.
No, there is a lot more than meets the eye.
These words, at the end of a whole chapter about controversy
over just who Jesus was, and who John the Baptist was.
Some saw them both as great prophets,
but those with the theological backgrounds had lots of considerations, because, first of all,
John the Baptist was this strange man
coming out of the Judean desert
with bits of grasshopper wings and dribbles of honey
in his untrimmed beard,
preaching sermons full of fire and brimstone and name calling.
Then Jesus comes along,
having called a tax-collector, to be one of his disciples,
a collaborator with an oppressive foreign regime,
Jesus eating and drinking with all sorts of low life.
Jesus certainly did not fit the observance of worship of God
or keeping of Torah, the Law,
as did those highly respected religious leaders,
like the clergy and the theologians
and congregational leaders, that is, the Pharisees,
known for the examples of how they lived upstanding lives.
But nevertheless what Jesus was saying and doing
galvanized many into following him about
to hear him preach and watch him heal.
And lives were being transformed,
people were being healed
and liberated in ways that opened their understanding
to experiencing the Kingdom of God present in their midst,
while at the same time
those who were so much into their practice of religion
were taking affront with this that was going on with Jesus
as irregular, immoral and uncontrolled.
So Jesus says,
"I give thanks to you, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth,
because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent
and have revealed them to infants;
yes, Father, for it was delightful before you, this that was coming to be."
So it's not the head knowledge that the wise and intelligent have,
but what can be called “heart” knowledge,
that is able to comprehend and take in the revelation of God.
“…revealed them to infants…” he said.
The word here is not just implying having child-like faith.
This is the word for new born babies,
those who have just experienced a MAJOR paradigm shift,
emerging from a tight, confined life space
into a whole new world of experiences
for which they do not have any words,
no way to express what it is they are experiencing yet.
Those who followed Jesus around listening to what he said,
to all the outlandish things he was saying in parables,
got jolted into whole new ways of looking at things.
They were shedding all the overlays of enculturation, of sophistication,
of all the commonly held beliefs about how life is supposed to work.
They were going through a MAJOR paradigm shift
about what their religion and faith practice was all about,
all revealed through Jesus. Infants.
So Jesus says,
"All things have been handed over to me by my Father;
and no one knows the Son except the Father,
and no one knows the Father except the Son
and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."
And this is the direct context for the familiar words that follow,
which will tell us how the Son reveals the Father to us.
"Come to me, all those spent with labor and burdened,
those for whom life isn’t working out,
and I will give you rest.
- literally, I will cause you to rest, to come to a stop.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me;
for I am meek and humble in heart,
- meek! Jesus meek?
In Greek the word means unassuming or without ego investment,
gentle, kind, forgiving, humane
and so totally absorbed in Divine Presence
that there is no violence, no aggression at all within him – meek
- and humble, lowly,
meaning that there is no pride or focus on self in Jesus,
and so he opens the way, gives accessibility to the Father -
and you will find rest for your souls.
- in the Greek literally it is a place of rest
where is this place? in Jesus' heart, a place of open access to God -
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
Rest is promised.
We have dreams of Jesus soothing our brow,
taking our hand and patting it, saying,
"There, there. Put your feet up."
Rest is promised, but it’s a strange way to get rest:
"Take my yoke upon you…"
Take up a yoke, an instrument for bearing more work and burden.
Take my yoke … and learn from me…" enter into discipleship with me.
This is how the Son reveals the Father to us.
Through the learning process of a yoke, our submission.
By submitting to a yoke of obedience,
one will have the Kingdom of God open into your awareness.
You don’t like that word submission? Too bad.
There’s truth here. Just be with it.
But this yoke is not a yoke of work or effort, of striving and exhaustion,
The rest Jesus offers is in a yoke of obedience and with a burden to carry;
it is in this discipleship, he says, that you will be led to rest and refreshment.
Why do we make it such work then?
We generally don't get it about discipleship;
we may think it must be a heavy load.
The point being made here is that it's not hard,
and it's actually refreshing and restful.
Submission and discipleship actually are very liberating.
By now it should be apparent
that the access point is the heart, not the head,
because we are speaking paradoxes here, not logical sense.
It has to be revealed to us by the Spirit of Jesus through grace
a whole new perspective to address this confusing, frustrating way
in which we habitually live.
We all can to some degree or another identify with
St. Paul’s classic description of the human predicament
described in the Epistle reading from Romans for today.
To paraphrase, I want to do what is right, but find that I can’t,
because there is such disharmony within me
that one part of me is at war with another part of me.
Paul realizes that it is only through intervention beyond himself
that he is saved out of all that.
“The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free
from the law of sin and of death,” Paul states.
The yoke of the Spirit of life in Jesus has set you free
from the wearisome burden of struggle
to extricate yourself from the deadening and life-draining labor
of living life all on one’s own.
“Come to me, all you that are weary…
…my yoke is easy…”
It comes to me that this is all another way of saying,
“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness,
and all these things shall be added unto you.”
The result is the same – the revealing of God.
The yoke helps us to be guided into harmony, alignment,
so that this reality of the divine comes into focus for us.
The yoke is easy; there is no effort, no striving.
Someone Else is doing the heavy work.
May it not be said of us what Jesus said to the crowd,
“To what will I compare this generation?
It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another,
‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.’”
Why won’t you come play my game with me?
“Come to me,” Jesus says to us, “all you who are weary,
and I’ll bring all your striving to a stop,
and in sitting still, in obedient submission
all the treasures of heaven will be revealed,
the Divine Presence will be in your awareness,
and then you will find rest for your soul.”
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