3-10-19 - “The Right Tempo”

3-10-19 Sermon - “The Right Tempo”

   I think we all have times when we feel, as Jesus describes in this passage, that we are “weary and carrying heavy burdens.” Sometimes that comes from being busy and just having a lot of things to do or to deal with in a certain space of time, and other times it comes more from the nature of what we have to do, the heaviness of our task, more than the quantity of tasks. This week, coming off of renewal leave, was a busy week in the sense that there were many calls to make, several people to visit, lots of things on my desk to catch up on, a few appointments, and two worship services and messages to prepare. So there was a quantity of things to be done, but nothing that I would call “heavy” or “burdensome.” 

   Now, had someone died this week, within our church family or among my family or friends, had there been some kind of tragedy that occurred like a disaster, a terror attack, a car that drove through our church building, that likely would have made this week “heavy.” Something like that not only brings with it worry, pain, and grief, it comes bearing an added weight, a heaviness that is simply laid over the top of everything else that is already going on. We feel that weight in our bodies, in our minds, and in our souls. And we need support, we need help to bear that kind of burden, or it can break us.

   In the passages leading up to our reading today, Matthew is attempting to help us understand Jesus within the larger Wisdom tradition of Judaism. And God’s Wisdom, in scripture, is almost always referred to as feminine, her or she - to which the women present knowingly nod, thinking, well of course she is. 

In fact, the words Jesus speaks in our reading is taken from the Wisdom Writings of Sirach, that we find, not in our Hebrew Bible or Old Testament texts, but in the section called the Apocrypha, which most Protestant Bibles don’t include unless it’s a study bible. In Sirach 51:26, also sometimes called Ecclesiasticus, not to be confused with the Old Testament book Ecclesiastes, the writer says,

 “Put your neck under her (Wisdom’s) yoke, and let your souls receive instruction; it is to be found close by.”

   So Jesus is speaking to his listeners here, quoting from a Wisdom tradition that is largely lost on modern readers, while using an agricultural metaphor that, in this age of industrialized farming with multi-million dollar equipment harvesting more in a day than a farmer in Jesus’ time would have reaped in their entire life, is also largely lost on us. It’s easy for us to gloss over this passage as so many nice thoughts, or to respond cynically, “yeah, right!” and move on.

   But before we write this passage off as another pretty little saying to embroider onto a throw pillow or wall hanging, let’s explore what Jesus is trying to tell us here. And to do that it helps to understand exactly what the purpose of a yoke is. We often think of a yoke as something that confines us, a tool for labor that restricts us in our movement, our direction. But the purpose of the yoke was actually to train, to teach an inexperienced animal how to do the work of the farm by pairing it, yoking it, to a more experienced beast. By teaming the inexperienced, neophyte beast of burden with the more seasoned partner, the younger could learn how best to bear the weight of the plow together rather than trying to do the work alone - they would bear the burden alongside one another.

   Now, let’s make one thing clear in this image - the use of the word “easy” is a mistranslation. The passage talks about burdens, and by definition burdens are not “easy.” The better translation of that word here, as corrected in various commentaries, is “kind,” “good,” “useful,” or “well-fitting.” As Karoline Lewis offers,

   “To believe in Jesus is not escapism from burdens or struggles or the events in our lives that cause the kind of weariness that might strip us of our very souls. To be a disciple is to be yoked to Jesus.

   “We are yoked to Jesus, whose yoke is kind, good, useful [or well-fitting]. Yes, it is still a symbol of burden, oppression, and hardship. 

But we can’t forget who is pulling the burden with us, with his head through the other oxbow.With that truth in mind, I think this text says more than: you are not alone in your suffering. Although that is also true about this passage, nevertheless I think there is a promise that the load really will feel lighter. True, you are not alone. And therefore whatever burden you bear, you do not bear it alone. There’s the difference. There’s the good news -- realistic, good news we might actually experience."

 (Karoline Lewis, workingpreacher.org)

   So as we consider this passage in our Busy series, we find that each of us has a tempo that fits well for us, that energizes us, and other tempos that are burdensome. We want to explore what tempo gives us life and energy? What tempo feels toxic to us? And what is the cost of not living at a healthy, energizing, and life-giving tempo?

   When Matthew has Jesus quoting Sirach about being yoked to God’s Wisdom, he is yoking the ancient Judaic Wisdom tradition to Matthew’s concept of the Kingdom of Heaven; being in the Kingdom of Heaven is living in, yoking ourselves to the Wisdom of God, which we see in the person of Jesus. The Gospel writer John attempts the same thing but comes at it from a different angle, when he writes, 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” And later, “The Word became flesh.”

   To John, the Word, the logos of God, is the Wisdom of God yoked to, as Richard Rohr translates it, the “blueprint” of God - God’s “plan,” if you will. 

Matthew approaches this from the perspective of traditional Judaism while John’s approach is from what would later become known as a “trinitarian” point of view. Either way, I think we can see that they are suggesting the same idea.

   As followers of Jesus, we willingly “yoke” ourselves to Jesus as Wisdom, as God’s incarnate/enfleshed blueprint for the world - the Kingdom of Heaven, as Matthew refers to it. So what does that mean? It’s not a yoke of simple mental agreement with ideas or doctrines “about” Jesus - it’s not THAT easy. It’s a yoke of cohabitation, if you will. It’s a yoke of partnership, of going in the same direction or the same way, doing the things Jesus explicitly instructs because that’s where the “more experienced” one with which we are yoked in the team is leading us. 

   Theologian Lois Malcolm puts it this way,

“As we take on Jesus’ yoke, we not only become more fully united with Jesus, God’s tangible Wisdom in and for our lives; we also enter more fully in to the intimacy Jesus had with the one he called Father. In this way, Jesus truly is God’s Wisdom for all of us, whose yoke embodies a new way of being in the world, not as a set of standards [or rules] we need to live up to, [or a new set of ideals], but rather as God’s incarnate… presence within our lives.”   (FOTG - Matthew I, page 300)

   In the season of Lent we often think of “giving up” something that we enjoy - chocolate, desserts or the like - in order to “deny ourselves” and somehow let that denial move us closer to God. And that’s not a bad thing, IF that giving up us does in fact, bring us closer to or more in alignment with God, or helps us live life at a more life-giving tempo. Sometimes, as counter-intuitive as it might seem - in order to get the right tempo, we have to take on something that was missing in our life. Not in order to add more busyness, not so as to burden ourselves in a heavy and cumbersome kind of way, but so that we might share the yoke of that burden with the one who knows our life, who knows our pain, and who willingly comes alongside to bear our burdens with us.

   Shelley Best reminds us that,

“Jesus knows our yoke. Through him, we learn how to do our own work - and of the rest that comes when we work with him. Through faith, we are partnered with Jesus and taught how to balance and maneuver what is at hand, with the help of one who is more seasoned in the tasks associated with living. At first, the appeal to take on something more (like spending time in prayer or Bible study or other spiritual disciplines) in order to walk closer to Jesus seems impossible - or at least a step in the wrong direction. Jesus promises that by walking closer to him, our encumbrances will be lessened and we will find repose in the midst of what would otherwise be an onerous and lonely journey.”

   So perhaps the most restful, the most life-giving and burden-sharing thing we can do is to yoke ourselves more closely with Jesus. That is the invitation of this series, that is the hope of spending time daily in our “prayer chair.” 

That is the relief offered by physically writing down the things we can no longer control -   the things that bring us stress, and anger, and pain, and literally handing them over to God by placing them in your own “God box.” 

   In this brief passage that we explored today, “Jesus pairs ‘yoke’ and ‘rest’  - one conjures an image of oxen bound for work and the other invites us into a state of peace for one’s soul. Perhaps we are being challenged to consider that the most fruitful and productive of all labors is precisely that which brings our souls closest to God.” (Erick Olsen, FOTG, page 300)

“Come to me all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest,” Jesus invites. “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 [well-fitting,] and my burden is light.”  Amen.