The Yoke's on You

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I heard about somebody who had a postcard taped to their refrigerator, which said, “Please don’t tell me to relax; it’s only my tension that’s holding me together.”  There’s a lot of truth in that statement for many of us: sometimes it’s our tension that’s holding us together.  But the other part of the statement is not so true, because you can tell me at any time to relax.  I love to relax.  I love to get away from it all.  I’m always eager to exercise what I consider to be one of my primary spiritual gifts:  vacation. 

 

And I suspect that I’m not alone in this.  Who among us doesn’t enjoy a good vacation?  On this beautiful July Sunday, let me ask you a question: what’s your ideal vacation? If you could write your own ticket for ten days away, and go where you wanted to go and do whatever you wanted to do, where would you go and what would you do? Now take 30 seconds and share your answer to that question with the person next to you…

 

Well, what did you hear? What’s your ideal vacation? For some of us it’s a trip to an exotic, faraway destination, to a place we’ve never been before, jetting off to the Mayan Riviera in Mexico or enjoying tapas in Barcelona, Spain, or taking in grandeur of the Canadian Rockies out in Alberta. Our son John Wesley recently travelled to Japan, where he is visited with a good friend and saw the sights and sounds and tastes of the Land of the Rising Sun. For others of us, our ideal vacation is a trip to a place that’s familiar -- to a cottage, to a particular campsite, to a place up in Algonquin Park or the Kawarthas or Prince Edward County -- a place that has become precious in our memories and our experience, and going there is like putting on old, comfortable pair of slippers. Or perhaps your more of a ‘staycation’ kind of person, and you enjoy spending time this summer right here in Toronto and making day trips to local attractions. Taste of the Danforth, anyone?

 

Somebody has re-written Psalm 23 with the summer holidays in mind:

 

Vacation is my shepherd, I shall not stay at home.

It maketh me to lie down in a sleeping bag;

It leadeth me down the 401;

It restoreth my suntan;

It leadeth me to the Holiday Inn for comfort’s sake.

Even though I stray on the Lord’s Day

I will fear no reprimand, for I am relaxed.

My rod and reel, they comfort me.

I anoint my skin with oil.

My gas tank runneth dry.

Surely my trailer shall follow me at the weekends of the summer

And I shall return to the House of the Lord in the Fall.

 

When you live life like so many of us do, at a fast and furious, tension-filled pace, there comes a point when you just want to stop, when you need to rest and relax.  As the word vacation implies, to “vacate” means to get away from it all.

 

 

Have you ever noticed, though, that all too often, when that long-awaited vacation finally rolls around, that a problem can develop?  I mean, have you ever thought you were getting away from it all, only to discover that “it” got up and came with you?  It’s as if we packed our worries and troubles and pressures and our personality quirks right along in the same suitcase with our toothbrush.  Have you every noticed that on vacation you can sometimes end up feeling more frazzled than when you started?  Have you ever felt like you needed a vacation you’re your vacation?  Often the problem with a vacation is we wish we had just a little bit more… 

 

But friends, even if we had all the vacation time in the world, it still wouldn’t be enough.  Because the real problem with vacation, you see, is that it doesn’t automatically provide the true rest we really need.

 

 

Don’t get me wrong:  vacations can be a good thing.  It breaks up the routine.  It gets us off the treadmill.   But a vacation, in and of itself, is not enough.  Because it’s not enough just to get away from it all.  The more important issue is, What are we getting away to?

 

Seventeen hundred years ago, one of Christianity’s greatest theologians, Augustine, put it like this.  In his classic work The Confessions, he wrote: “Our hearts are restless until they can find rest in you, O Lord.”  Augustine didn’t say, “O Lord, our hearts are restless until we go on two weeks’ vacation.”  He said, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” In God.

 

And here now is Jesus, saying: “Come to Me, and I will give you rest.”  He didn’t say, “Go on a Mediterranean cruise.”  He didn’t say, “Do the Bahamas.”  Jesus said, “Come to Me.”

 

Now let me make one theological aside here, and I hope it doesn’t take us off track from the main theme of our messge. But did you notice that Jesus doesn’t say here for us to “come to God” and receive these promises. No, he says “come to me.”

 

You see, here in this chapter and throughout Matthew’s gospel, Jesus presents himself as the fully authorized representative of God. Contrast this with the great philosopher Socrates, who in one of his great dialogues Phaedo (91B) says: “If you will take my advice, you will think very little of Socrates and much more of the the truth.” But for the New Testament, Jesus is truth in person! As Dale Brunner puts it: 

 

Without any mitigating explanation, Jesus invites all troubled persons to himself: “Come here to me, all of you who are struggling…” In Jesus, God gets a face. Jesus invites us to himself, and we feel quite naturally that we are invited to God. The naturalness of this – that Jesus so easily has us think of God when he talks of himself – can only be explained, finally, [by the truth affirmed throughout the New Testament and embraced by the early church’s confession] that Jesus is God. [Bruner, The Christbook, 537.]

 

So it is Jesus, the Lord, inviting us to himself for rest.

 

Dear friends, do you see then that rest is ultimately a spiritual matter?  No doubt we may be physically exhausted, but so often it’s deeper than that.  In his words of promise, Jesus gets to the heart of the matter when he says, “I will give you rest for your souls.”  We need more than two or three weeks off for that.  What we need is rest for our souls, rest in our innermost being, because we’re spiritually wiped out.  Our souls are weary.

 

 

“I will give you rest for your souls.”  It’s likely that Jesus’ words would have had a familiar ring to his listeners, because they echo the well-known affirmation in Psalm 23 (the real Psalm 23); “He restores my soul.”  These words are linked to a phrase found elsewhere in the Psalms:  “My soul is cast down.”  When a soul is cast down, it needs to be restored… renovated… revived.  What does this mean?

 

Well, remember that Psalm 23, the one that begins “The Lord is my Shepherd,” is written from a sheep’s perspective.  God is like a Shepherd who restores the sheep, because the sheep is cast down.  “Cast down” is a kind of technical term in sheepdom.  It happens when a sheep falls down, and instead of landing on all fours, the sheep lands on its back.  And evidently it is not uncommon for a sheep that lands belly-up, particularly when its wool has grown in and it is round and fluffy, to be unable to right itself.  This is true… you can check it out on YouTube! The sheep is helplessly stuck until the shepherd comes along to restore it, to right it.

 

And  friends, so often this is precisely our human predicament, is it not?  We are cast down.  Life is hard, we fall down, we land flat on our backs, sometimes quite literally.  We land flat on our backs physically, emotionally, spiritually.  Our souls are cast down.  We’ve lost our balance, we’re spiritually belly up, flailing, crying out, helpless to right ourselves, unable to restore our souls.

 

But the shepherd comes along, even today, and spiritually get us on our feet again.  Jesus says, “I will give you rest – for your souls.”

 

 

But can he really do that for us?  When Jesus says, “I will give you rest for your souls” – who is this “you” he is talking about?  Who was Jesus addressing when he said, “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened”? Who are the all?

 

Some commentators think that Jesus was inviting those who had found the Law, as it was taught by the Scribes and Pharisees, too difficult to keep.  In other words, Jesus was inviting sincere, diligent Bible believers who’d become discouraged and burdened by a legalistic interpretation of the Law.  Jesus was inviting the religiously-minded people, church people, for whom religion had become a real grind.

 

But other interpreters take a wider, more inclusive view, including the great-great granddaddy of Presbyterianism, John Calvin.  These commentators believe that when Jesus said “all” he literally meant all, not least of all those who were having a hard time in life.  Not least of all those who were worn out from carrying too much.  Not least of all, us!  Jesus gives all who come to him what we need most: real rest that is rooted in a relationship with Him.

 

 

Perhaps the biggest surprise though, in this little passage is that when Jesus offers us rest, he doesn’t offer an escape.   Did you notice that?  Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you.”  Do you know what a yoke is? A yoke is a wooden crosspiece that is fastened over the necks of two animals and attached to a plow or a cart that these animals are to pull. It’s a piece of farm equipment to get a pair of horses or oxen or mules or donkeys to do its part in working the farm.

 

Now friends, isn’t that a bit ironic?  -- that Jesus offers already tired people another piece of equipment!  Not a vacation.  Not even a short nap on a Sealy Posturepedic.  Christ comes alongside of us and offers a yoke! ……  But it’s a yoke that fits.  Because Jesus knows that “the most restful gift he can give the weary is a new way of carrying the load of life, a new way of bearing our responsibilities.”  [Dale Bruner, The Christbook,p. 538]

 

You see, real rest isn’t a workless, burdenless, stress-free environment. No, real rest is a Christ-filled environment.  “Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy.”  Rest, then, is plowing and plodding through life side-by-side with Jesus.  Rest is shouldering the loads of life, not alone, but in tandem with the Lord.

 

So the yoke’s on you!  Not to restrict you.  Not to cramp your style.  Not to weigh you down.  But to refresh and renew you – to set you free!

 

 

Jesus wants us to be yoked to him, to be connected with himself.  Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  But how does that happen?  Jesus tells us in this passage.  The way that we are most intimately connected to Christ is through his word.  Jesus says: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from Me.”  When we are yoked to Christ, he becomes our personal teacher, our tutor, our companion, our mentor.  Christ teaches us, speaks to us, is present to us, is alive to us, through the Word of God, the Bible. And we learn from Him every time we study Scripture, or listen to a sermon, or celebrate the sacraments.

 

So when we take Christ seriously, when we study him, when we let him patiently teach us by his word, then, we will experience rest and renewal and refreshment deep down in our lives.

 

A wise Christian once put it like this. In the final analysis “there are no techniques for the renewal of individual Christians or congregations; there is simply taking Jesus seriously in his word.”  Learning from Him is restful, renewing.  [Bruner, 439]

 

 

You want rest?  You want personal renewal?  Timothy Eaton Church, do you want renewal as a congregation? I assure you there are no techniques.  There is only the Word.

 

That certainly was a major theme in the 16th – Century renewal of the church we call the Reformation. Within a decade after Marin Luther had nailed his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg castle church door, he preached a sermon and explained his perception of his own role in the events of the Reformation.  Luther, the father of the Reformation if there ever was one, explained his role this way:  “I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s word; otherwise I did nothing.  And then, while I slept, or drank beer with my [friends], the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that never a prince or emperor did such damage to it.  “I did nothing,” said Luther. “The Word did it all.”  [Quoted by Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, 53]

 

The Reformation, if it was anything, was a back–to-the-Bible movement.  When it came to the 16th-Century renewal of the church, “the Word did it all,” which means that the Word is not just informative.  The Word of God has the power to do what it says.  It is transformative.  The Bible isn’t there not just to give us facts and beliefs about God but to make us more like God, to change us from the inside out, so that the grace and love and communion of the triune God becomes a lived reality within us and through us to others. As we seek renewal in our lives and in the church today, this is what we need to remember:  the Word still does it all – in my life, in your life, in the church’s life.  The essential ingredient of renewal is to be yoked to Christ, and to learn from him though his word!

 

The key question today, then, is this:  Are you yoked to Jesus, are you connected to Christ?  Are you learning from Him?  Are you involved in Bible study? I pray that as a congregation, both individually and in your small groups and Bible studies, you will become increasingly intentional about extending Jesus’ invitation to come to him, to learn from him.

 

 

Jesus said:“Come to Me.”

 

• Come to me every time the bone-deep weariness settles in.

• Come to me when the biopsy report comes back, and it’s bad news.

• Come to me when you’re enduring this new season of your life without your beloved partner.

• Come to me when your kid’s – or your parent’s - behaviour is about to send you over the edge.

• Come to me when you’re working twelve hours a day, seven days a week and you still can’t manage to get on top of the pile, or put money in the bank, much less bread on the table.

• Come to me every time you get fed up with your life.

• Come to me when you’re ready to bag the church because it’s filled with a bunch of hypocrites.

• Come to me every time you wonder if the grass is greener elsewhere, because Jesus’ invitation still stands:  “Come to Me.”  And as the Psalmist said of the Good Shepherd, “He makes me lie down in green pastures,” which means the grass is greenest of all in just one place:  in the Lord’s presence.

 

So, whether we’re on vacation or buried beneath the weight of a ton of demands and worries, remember: rest is not a place; it’s a relationship with the living person Jesus Christ.  No matter where we are geographically or emotionally, Christ is present with us through his Word, through his Spirit, and through each other.

 

 

 

Let’s pray… 

 

Lord, there are surely some people here this morning who are feeling overwhelmed and weighed down. Some folks who are carrying a heavy load. Lord Jesus, would you come alongside them right now and assure them of your presence, and help them to carry their burdens?

 

And there are others of us who have begun to imagine that we don’t need You all that much, that Your yoke chafes, that there must be a better way, or an easier way. Don’t let us get away with that, Lord.  Keep us connected with You.  

 

Help all of us to come to You and continue to learn from You. In the name of Christ we pray. Amen.