3rd Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 9A

Proper 9A
July 3, 2011
There’s a portion of today’s gospel reading from Matthew that is a part of our DNA as Episcopalians and Anglicans. This scripture is actually printed somewhere in our Book of Common Prayer. Who knows where it is? “Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.”    Matthew 11:28 It’s in our Rite One Eucharist on page 332 in between the confession of sin and absolution and the peace. What do you think that might be saying about the Anglican/Episcopal understanding of who God is? We believe that God doesn’t want us to feel badly about ourselves or our relationship with God. We believe that after we confess our sins and receive the assurance of God’s pardon, then we are invited by God to lay down the burdens that we might be carrying and to greet one another in peace and in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is offering an invitation about how to deepen our relationship with him and thus with God, and he is offering us a new way of being in the world, a new way of being his disciples. Jesus is offering us a way to be healthier, more whole, more fully who God has created us to be.
Let’s look at this image of the yoke; for most of us, it is an image out of the past to which we have little reason to relate. A yoke is a wooden beam that links two animals (oxen, mules, horses, water buffalo) together so that they may pull together on a load while working in pairs. It has connotations of subservience. In some ancient cultures, the defeated army was forced to walk under a yoke created by the spears and swords of the victor; so it can by a symbol of something oppressive or burdensome, or it can also be a symbol for people who are working together, like in a marriage or partnership. (Did any of you military folk walk under the arch of swords at your wedding? That’s actually a practice that combines both of these historical understandings of the yoke—the conquering army piece and the yoking through marriage.)
A yoke can be something that can potentially make a really heavy load bearable by sharing the weight and the work between two workers.
In today’s passage from Matthew, Jesus is inviting his followers (us) to willingly take his yoke upon us. If we do this, he promises us a contradiction. His yoke, he says, does not mean back-breaking labor. His yoke, he says is easy and the burden is light and by sharing it with him, he promises us that we will find rest for our souls. Doesn’t that sound just lovely?! So why on earth do we still feel so restless, so burdened, so anxious, so stressed, so very heart-broken?
There are two questions I’m going to ask you this morning, that I think will help us understand the gap between Jesus’s life-giving offer to us this morning and the way that we experience the world and our lives truly to be. The first question I ask you is “to what and to whom are you really and truly yoked?” To what and to whom are you really and truly yoked?
What are you attaching yourself to these days? We all know that we always bind ourselves, however subtly, to something: people, places, habits, possessions, beliefs, ways of being in the world, groups, resentments, old hurts, ideas, schedules, expectations…Some of these yokings can be healthy and life-giving for us, but some of them can be toxic, poisonous, burdens that are just too heavy for us to bear. As you sit there in your pew this morning, take a minute and ask yourself: “to whom and to what am I yoked right now? (significant pause)
“Have you sought these connections or do you allow them to be placed upon you by others? Do these connections deepen or deaden you? Do they draw you closer to Christ or farther away from him? Do they connect you with the power, freedom, and choice that God gives you, or do they diminish your power, freedom, and choice?” (Jan Richardson The Painted Prayerbook).
What am I attaching myself to these days? It’s a question worth revisiting again and again over the course of our lives.
Here’s my second question for you this morning. When you do accept Jesus’s invitation to take up his yoke and walk with him, what do you really think, believe, understand about the nature of your yoke-mate?
A former spiritual director of mine used to tell me all the time, “Pray to the God you long for, not the God you have received.” Think for a minute which one of these is the Jesus that you really find yourself yoked with?
Often times the God that we have received demands that each of us individuals be good enough, do more, be more loving to every person, be more righteous and working toward perfection. Often the God that we have received demands that we never rest (from anything, especially doing the work of Christ), that we live up to others expectations for us, that we be successful—whatever that means. And sometimes the God that we have received inhabits the primary position of judge.
I don’t know about you, but that is most certainly not the God that I long for in my deepest heart! The God that I long for tells me that I am already enough, no matter what I may do or become. The God I long for whispers to me that I don’t have to do anything more for God to love me more than I can ask or imagine. The God I long for loves me, forgives me, invites me to find my rest in gentle Jesus and offers to me (and all of God’s people) the gift of God’s peace. The God I long for is a God who is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Psalm 103:8).
Which one of these Gods do you pray to? The God you have received or the God you long for? Which one of these Gods do you find yourself yoked to? And how might that affect not only your relationship with God but also how you experience God’s creation—the world and the people in it?
This morning, we are all invited to come forward to God’s table, to lay down all of our burdens at the foot of the cross of the Resurrected Christ, and to be fed and loved by the God for whom each of us desperately longs. And then we will go out into the world to love and serve and walk with the Lord.