"Experience For Yourself"
Christ's yoke is light and ours can be as well
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Text: Matthew 11:20-30
It was one of the most humbling and indeed humiliating days of my existence that I can remember. It was about eight or nine years ago, when I was living in Ottawa. I had been invited to say the blessing at a very exceptional meeting of the Canadian Club at the Chateau Laurier Hotel. The speaker was very well known internationally and there was great interest in this individual's speech, so I counted it an honour to have been invited to say the blessing. Having been given the opportunity to have one person as a guest, I invited a friend to attend. He would not sit at the head able, but in the audience, but nevertheless I thought he would be delighted to attend such a prestigious event and to hear me say the blessing.
So, I invited him. To my great dismay, he informed me regretfully that he could not attend, because he had planned to clean out his gutters. Too bad for him, I thought.
It came time for the great day. There was a great procession in with bagpipes, and I led the procession in through to the end of the table, and I said a grace to die for! As I looked down, there he was - my friend! He was not sitting at a table assigned if I had invited him. No! He was sitting next to the then-Minister of Finance and future Prime Minister of Canada (for a short while anyway). As the head table processed out at the end, you can imagine the looks exchanged between my friend and me!
Afterwards in the hallway, a rather awkward and tense moment ensued when I asked my friend if he enjoyed the speech, the lunch and my grace. He informed me that he had, that it was wonderful, but he particularly enjoyed the conversation with the people at his table. We renewed our friendship some months later, but I thought about it in the meanwhile. It wasn't the event that drew my friend, it wasn't the chance to have a good meal or hear a great speaker or a wonderful grace. What thrilled my friend and was most important to him was the one who had issued the invitation. In his mind the one who issued the invitation to which he had responded was far more important than I. Who issues the invitation is often the most important thing, not what the invitation is for.
Last week, you may recall I introduced the idea of the importance of the invitation. We dealt with the encounter between two disciples, Philip and Nathaniel. Philip, who as one of the disciples had already agreed to follow Jesus, decided to say to his friend, Nathaniel, “Come and see for yourself what Jesus is like.” He gave an invitation, in other words, for another person to come and meet Jesus, and that person eventually become a disciple.
In our text this morning, however, we have a different type of invitation. We have a direct invitation by Jesus himself. His words are very simple and very clear: “Come unto me all you who are burdened and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” This was an invitation not just to a specific disciple or to an individual; this was an invitation of immense proportions. Because it came from Jesus himself, as opposed to through a disciple, it carried with it universal application.
This morning, I want to look at the power of the invitation. This time, it is the direct invitation of Jesus to come and experience him for ourselves. What matters first of all, though (and many of the commentaries that give an account of this text I think miss this), is the importance of the one who issues the invitation in the first place. The context in which this text arises tells us that the one who does the inviting is the focus, the important one, in this story. It is within the context of Jesus' authority that we receive this first invitation: “Come unto me.”
If you look at the verses that immediately precede the invitation, Jesus is addressing the whole issue of his authority. He is saying that he has a unique relationship with the Father and that the Father has sent him to reveal who the Father is. Jesus therefore takes on the role of the Great Revealer. He is the one who has an intimate and a unique relationship with the Father, unlike anyone else, so when he issues an invitation, it isn't an invitation from a good man, it isn't an invitation from the ordinary. It is an invitation from the exceptional, the unique, the holy. Jesus wants to make it abundantly clear that it is his authority to represent the Father that constitutes the importance of the invitation: “Come unto me.” What Jesus was really doing, then, is not only saying “Come unto me,” but also saying, “Come to the Father.” He was not only saying, “Come to me because I have a good plan or a good strategy for your life,” he was also saying, “Come unto me and bring your burdens with you, because I can reveal the will of the Father in your life.”
There is a second dimension to his importance, and that is the whole relationship that exists between Jesus and the law. By the law I mean the law of Moses, and not only the law of Moses, but the whole of the Torah, the statute law of the people of Israel. For many people at the time of Jesus, the law was considered to be a burden. Many people lived under this heavy burden of guilt. They believed that they could not fulfill all the requirements of the law, and they were becoming anxious. Many of the teachers of the day, many of the rabbis, were looking at the minutia of the law and asking people to live up to it, and the people - particularly the common, the poor, the sickly, those who were exposed to “unclean” things, or unable to fulfill the laws of the Sabbath because of their work or other requirements - felt that they couldn't do it.
Many people felt that they could not live up to the law and that it was like a yoke, a burden placed upon their shoulders. Now, Jesus does not mention the law here, but it is implicit in everything that he says. At no point in Jesus' teaching does he say that the law is not important. At no point does Jesus in any way dismiss the importance of the law and the faith. What he is saying is that he can take away the yoke, the burden of carrying the weight of the law on your shoulders.
This was demonstrated to me in an illustration I saw many years ago about a glass of water. If you look at the relationship between Jesus and the law, it is like a glass of water containing garbage and sediment. After a while, the garbage and the sediment settle at the bottom of the glass. The water looks good and clear enough to drink, but of course, it is still toxic: The garbage is still in there. However, if you were to take a sterile spoon and stir the water in the glass, then the garbage and the dirt would mix with the water, and you would realize just how polluted that water is - how dirty and filthy it is! What sits at the bottom, the sediment, makes the water unclean. The spoon is like the law - it is sterile, it is good, it is holy, and it is pure. There is nothing wrong with it, but when it enters into the glass, it stirs up the sediment, it stirs up the dirt, and it stirs up the sin. We are like that glass of water. When the law - the spoon - stirs things up, we realize our own sin; we realize our own burdens; we realize our own uncleanliness. But if the water is stirred up by the spoon and then poured through a filter and what come out at the other end it drinkable; what come out at the other end is pure; what comes out at the other end is joyful. Jesus is that filter.
In other words, the law reveals to us our sinfulness, stirs it up, lets us see it for what it is. But Jesus is the filter that cleanses, renews, and wipes clean. It is not as if you don't need the law - you do! But it can be burdensome if all you see is the dirty water of your life; if all you ever see is everything stirred up. Christ is the filter that makes it clean. Jesus is saying to the people of his day and to all of us who feel the burden of our own guilt and sin, our own mortality, our own pain, our own hunger: “Look, the law may stir it up and it might be a burden to you, but I can carry it, and cleanse it, and renew it.”
Lent is a time for the spoon to stir our souls up a little bit, but also a time to be reminded that cleanliness comes from the power of Christ himself. Therefore, the one who gives the invitation is the only one who can make us clean. The one who gives the invitation is the only one with the authority to wipe the decks clear. The one who gives the invitation is all-important.
This raises another question: “Who is invited?” Jesus sets it up very clearly from the beginning. Listen to his words: “Come unto me all you who are heavy burdened,” all of you who are carrying the burdens of your life around with you, and “I will give you rest.”
In other words, it is a universal invitation. “All those who are heavy burdened,” not all those who have the righteousness to fulfill the law, not all those who have their lives nicely organized and categorized, but all those who carry around with them the burdens of life - they are the ones who are invited to come to Christ! It is those who know they are burdened who will turn to him. Lord knows, my friends, as human beings we have our burdens! Whether it is the burden of our grief, the burden of our mortality, the burden of our guilt, the burden of our sorrow, or even the burden of our joys and affluence and our wealth, which if they are twisted and turned can make the water of our glass dirty - even those things can become burdensome. In the midst of this, Christ says, “Come unto me,” no matter what your burden may be.
I confess to you this morning that I am tired. I had a terrible night's sleep. I tossed and turned nearly all night, because I could not get out of my mind the plight of the Christian Peacemakers in Iraq. When I thought of one of them being tortured and killed, I thought of the other three, especially James Loney whom I have met, and I wondered what their fate might be, and what kind of night they were having. My fear for them just overwhelmed me. I can't imagine what they are going through. I can't imagine what members of our Canadian Armed Forces in Afghanistan, are going through. I can't imagine what the residents of Baghdad are going through. I can't imagine the fears and the burdens of our inhumanity and what it is doing us. I can't imagine that burden!
What I kept hearing last night was the response of one of the Peacemakers whose friend had been tortured and killed. He said, “We must always remember to forgive our enemies.” Suddenly I realized that that is the lifting of the burden. Forgiveness will not bring the person back to life, but it will ensure that their death does not produce another burden, that of anger or vengeance. Whatever our burdens might be, however great they might be, however deep-seated in our souls they might be, Jesus says, “Come unto me.” Those who know that they cannot handle those burdens on their own are the blessed ones, for Jesus made it abundantly clear in Chapter Five of Matthew's Gospel that those who mourn, those who seek peace, those who work for righteousness are the people who are blessed. They understand, you see, how Christ can take those burdens and lift them by his power and his grace.
What is also amazing about this text is Jesus says, “Come unto me,” but pay attention to the language: “All of you who are heavy burdened.” “All of you,” without exception. There is universality to what is said here.
I felt that last Sunday night as I watched the Oscars. I enjoyed all those thank-you speeches, thanking every producer that I had never heard of under God's sun! Everybody was thanked, but one star made me sit up and listen when she gave her thank-you speech. It was great! It was Reese Witherspoon. Now, I must admit, I think she's cute! (Maybe that was one of the reasons I liked it!) But she said something that showed she recognizes that she is not the source of her success. She took the time to thank others. I realized I listened to her with greater ease because I have read what she has had to say before, and know that she is a devout Christian.
In an interview not long after the movie in which she played June Cash was released Reese Witherspoon said she felt that the faith of the Cashes did not come out clearly enough in the movie - which is refreshing to hear! She had this to say, and this is inspirational:
My faith is part of my life, definitely. I was raised to go to church every Sunday, and I go to church most Sundays with my kids. For me, where I am in my career, so many people want to put you in a place that you are not real, and treat you like you are not real. For me, it is a great experience and grounding to go to church, and I stand next to people who have nothing and who have everything and we all treat each other the same, because we are all the same. It is just a little weekly reminder that is helpful to me, actually.
Here is someone who understands that when she goes to church that she is sitting, standing and praying beside people who are the same as her.
Jesus understood the sameness of humanity. He understood that there is a commonality to our existence, and that part of that existence is carrying around the burdens of being a child of God, and of being a human being. His invitation, then, is, “Come unto me all of you who are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest.”
But who benefits? If Jesus is the important inviter, if everyone is invited, who are the beneficiaries? The answer is clear: those who have prepared to exchange one yoke for another. Jesus doesn't say, “You will have no yoke.” He does not say, “You will have no burdens.” He says, “You take on my yoke, but my yoke is light.” We are either bound in this life to Christ, or we are bound to our sin. We are bound to our burdens, or we are bound to Christ's grace. We are bound to dirty water in our glass, or we are bound to the one who cleanses it. But, Christ's yoke, unlike the yoke of the world with all its burdens, is light.
To understand that, we need to just stop and rest for a while, for one moment. If Lent is anything, it is a time-out from life in order that we might know and understand the spoon that is stirring us. It is so that we might know and take account of our burdens in order that Christ may lighten them. That is what Lent is about. So often, we are rushing hither and thither and we aren't even aware of the nature of our own existence, and the burdens mount up until they are too heavy and we can't cope, and it is too late - they have won the day! We have forgotten to rest. I love a quote from some dubious background that I'm not sure of, that goes something like this: “I understand that the devil never takes a vacation, and so I don't take a vacation either.” I laughed until it dawned on me that the devil isn't supposed to be my example! We don't take time to rest. We don't take the time to look inwards and to see what is within us. Jesus invites us to do that in order that we might find the rest.
There is one last element. Jesus says, “Come unto me,” and he also says, “Learn from me.” It's not just a matter of having the burdens of your life lifted. It is about learning from Christ and taking the burdens of the world upon your own shoulders out of love and faith and forgiveness.
Last Thursday we had a presentation here at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church on refugees. It was a wonderful presentation, but deeply troubling. The speaker reminded us that we live right now in one of, if not the most affluent moments in history, and yet in this rich world, there are estimated to be 19 million refugees. These are people with no homes, people who have been forced out of their homes, crossing borders, living in camps, floating from country to country. Nineteen million! I couldn't help but think of their burdens. Surely, it seems to me at some point we should think of lifting that burden. The church is here to do that. The church is here to proclaim Christ that people may learn from him, and learning from him, take the burdens of the world upon their shoulders, and take the yoke of the cross and say, “It is mine.”
I will leave you with this image of the church as a cruise ship. If the cruise ship could speak, it would say, “Look at me! I am carrying 200 passengers from place to place.”
But, if the sea could speak, it would say to the ship, “But you, O ship, are sailing on me, and I am underneath you. Without me, you would go nowhere.” The burdens of the world are the passengers; the ship is the church; but the sea is Christ, if only we will experience how he carries us for ourselves. “Come unto me all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” The power of the invitation! Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.