Sunday, July 6, 2008
The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
Zechariah 9:9-12 + Romans 7:15-25a + Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest… For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Sounds nice doesn’t it? Pretty good news, right? Well, let me complicate it a bit for you, as it has been for me.
On June 22nd we heard Jesus say, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
On June 15th he said, “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly I tell you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.”
A couple of weeks before that we heard, “Jesus said. "Not everyone who says to me, `Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven…”
And in the epistle lesson appointed for today we didn’t hear, we have even the great Apostle Paul burdened. “For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
Does that sound like we would be wearing an easy yoke or carrying a light burden by following Jesus? Not on first hearing, not on second reading, or third… So let’s think about this for a minute to see if we can find that nugget of Gospel Truth, that Good News that Jesus says is “hidden from the wise and the intelligent and been revealed to infants.
After some serious pondering this week, where I have come to is this: This world we live in, you and I, is a tough place.
It can be physically dangerous. Some of us live in places in this valley where it is dangerous to be out and walking the streets at night. Our friends in Kajo Keji live, even today, with the constant threat of the violence of war invading their lives. In too many places and in too many lives physical danger is a daily fact of life.
Life can also be emotionally and relationally dangerous. Earning ones daily bread, providing for one’s family, is for many a boring or repetitious or incredibly stressful or dauntingly demanding or stultifying or seemingly endlessly taxing task. Never having quite enough.
Life seems to be getting too real, too earnest, too hard these days. Gas, heating oil, mortgages. Electricity rates are about to go through the roof. They will double or triple. The cost of living for so many people is rising from worrisome to burdensome levels. Life is hard and getting harder.
We learned this week that we are supposed to have 125% more income in our retirement than when we were working. For 99% of the people, good luck with that!
If getting to the top, or winning the prize in one’s chosen field is your goal, if grabbing the ring, if you are looking for that great payoff, that great payday, that golden retirement, that land of plenty that is just over the hill, just around the corner, this one or certainly the next or the next… if succeeding is one’s life’s goal… we know all too well that there can be huge costs involved.
These are burdens to be borne in the heat of the day. For those of us fortunate enough to be employed there are sacrifices that we will make, either intentionally or blindly. Often we will sacrifice our family at the same time as we try to provide the best we can for them. We deprive them of our very selves, their mother or father, husband or wife, our presence, our support, our care, our love. We are just not home. The kids bear the burden of growing up without us. They are taught by our drive to drive hard themselves to compete and to succeed.
Life is like that. Just ask the kids. How stressed are they? What burdens do they bear as they struggle to learn, to understand, to grow, to become competent, to fit in, to excel, to succeed? I think their burdens either meet or exceed that of their elders.
Are our elected leaders the right ones to lead us? It’s almost time for us in this nation of ours to take on the role of “The Decider.” Will new leaders take us into the Promised Land, or will they lead us deeper into conflict and contention with other powers and forces in the world, even more war, or deeper into economic difficulties? Will they work to preserve and protect and keep safe this generation’s young and the next and the next? To what yoke will they bind us as a nation?
On this 232nd birthday weekend of our country I turned to the counsel of our first president, George Washington, wrote in his Farewell Address, wondering as I read if our new leaders will hear it and attend to it. He wrote,
“Observe good faith and justice towards all … cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.”
Or will the new leaders continue the current policies that go in another way. Making these choices is no light matter. The burden of democracy, too, must be borne by those who prize its freedom. But bear it we must. Choose we must. And we better be right.
So, dear friends, it does not seem to me that it is the burden of Christ that is heavy and hard. Rather, it is life, itself, that can be burdensome, heavy, and hard, and complicated by our own human nature and our shortcomings.
It is Christ who can be the way and the truth and the light as we go through this life. It is by following him that we have the best chance to not only survive, but to thrive, living lives of purpose, possibility and peace, for one and for all. The yoke of Christ is the better, lighter, easier burden to seek and to willingly, even eagerly place upon ourselves.
A good priest named Dylan put it this way. “… we can say that Jesus' burden is easy and his yoke is light because it is. That I can opt out of the burdens my culture wants to place on me raises my hope that I might be able to opt in to something better, and the Good News is that the best option -- abundant, joyful life, freedom from anxiety, and real, deep, big-enough-for-the-world love is available to us in Christ Jesus.
“We bear (the yoke,) the Cross not as one person alone, but with the whole Body of Christ, and Christ's presence with us brings strength, courage, and peace. When we confess Jesus as Lord… even as we bear the Cross, (we are) restored and freed for eternal and abundant life in service and community with all whom God loves.”
And we can say with Paul, the Apostle “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
These new Christians, being baptized here today with their parents, friends, sponsors and Godparents have, themselves, discovered that way and decided to lead live in that same way.
How else will we make it through? We must take on willingly, even eagerly, that yoke, that cross, that love, and that Way of Christ.
Amen.
