Sermon for July 6 at Emmanuel Episcopal Church

"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."

Beautiful words of the Gospel this morning,

welcome words, words of great comfort.

How we long to hear these words spoken by Jesus,

            how good they are to hear,

especially with five funerals in the last month,

                        that have left many of us with heavy hearts.

Come to me, all you that are weary,

and I will give you rest.

But let’s look at these beautiful workds 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.

In other words, 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 come 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,

a collaborator with an oppressive foreign regime,

to be one of his disciples,

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 lay leaders

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 in tune with their practice of faith

were taking affront with what was going on

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, this that was coming to be before you."

So we could say that it's not 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,

                                    - we could say -

            popping out 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 in this new way of seeing the world.

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.

This is how the Son reveals the Father to us.

"Come to me, all the ones laboring and having been burdened,

            - those spent with labor, exhausted -

and I will give you rest.

            - I will cause you to pause, to rest, to come to a stop.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me;

for I am meek and humble in heart,                        What? Meek!  Jesus meek?

In Greek the word meek means unassuming, gentle, kind, forgiving, humane

                        and so totally absorbed in Divine Presence

that there is no violence at all within him -

And - humble, lowly,

meaning that there is no pride or focus on self in Jesus,

and so he opens the way, give accessibility to the Father -

and you will find rest for your souls.

            - in the Greek literally it is a place of rest

            where? in Jesus' heart, where there is open access to him -

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 strange way to get rest:

"Take my yoke upon you…"

            Take up a yoke, instrument for bearing more work and burden.

Take my yoke … and learn from me…"

            maqete - learn, disciple,

                                    enter into discipleship with me.

This is how the Son reveals the Father to us.

Through the learning process of a yoke, our submission.

            Oooh, a hard word for us to hear,

                        yet with much truth to be revealed in submission.

By submitting to a yoke of obedience,

one will have the Kingdom of God open into your awareness.

But this yoke is not a yoke of work or effort, of striving and exhaustion,

           

So the rest Jesus offers

            is in a yoke of obedience and with a burden to carry;

            it is in discipleship

                        which, he says, will lead to rest and refreshment

Why do we make it such work then?

We don't get it about discipleship;

            we make it a heavy load.

The Gospel passage for today is about the heart of discipleship,

            and the point is that it's not hard,

            and it's actually refreshing and restful.

Submission and discipleship is actually 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 on this vale of tears that we live in.

We all can to some degree or another identify with

St. Paul’s classic description of the human predicament

described in the Epistle lesson 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.”

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.”