Lighten Up!!

(Scriptures:
Genesis 24:34-67 Song of Solomon 2:8-13
Romans 7:15-25a Matthew 11:16-19,25-30)

Jesus’ words near the end of our Gospel reading are among the most comforting in Scripture. Jesus invites all who labor and are heavy laden, all those weighed down by the cares of life, to come to him. Jesus promises that his yoke is easy, and his burden lighter than the burdens we impose on ourselves.

This message of Jesus runs counter to the message of our society, and counter to our own attempts to manage our heavy loads. In our culture, we draw much of our identity from our work. If I meet someone for the first time, I may ask them, “well, where do you work?” or just “what do you do?” Since the Industrial Revolution, our society has used machinery to reduce the need for brute force, and more recently computer technology has reduced the need for mundane, repetitive mental labor. The hope has always been that this technology would introduce an age of leisure, with machines and robots tending to our every need. The outcome, however, has not been a reduction of work, but rather a change in the nature of work. While there is indeed less need for physical strength or certain forms of mental drudgery in the work place – it’s been a long time since I’ve had to add up long columns of numbers by hand - the work force seems divided between those who have difficulty finding work, because of limited demand for their skills, and those who are employed and are working longer and longer hours to keep up with the demands of management, or working two and three low-pay, no-benefits part-time jobs – want fries with that? - to keep up with the bills. We have not, thank goodness, yet reached the point of Japan, where the cultural expectation to work weekends and overtime has led to the Japanese national phenomenon of karoshi, death by overwork. But our culture’s overemphasis on work leads to strain on families, lack of sleep, and, for many, an ongoing sense of feeling drained, spent, used up.

In the church, we may find expectations that may be different, but just as daunting. A sense of obligation can lead us to take on more and more responsibility at church – as if everything depends on us, and the entire place will fall apart if we don’t show up, if we don’t stand and deliver. Guilt and shame – whether over specific failings or a general sense of failure – may block out the light of God’s love and joy from our lives. Our attempts to deny and hide from our sins and limitations can make it hard to be honest with those around us. If we carry a false image of a God who is angry, endlessly demanding, vengeful, we can tie ourselves up in knots trying to appease the wrath of the great Taskmaster in the sky.

In our reading from Romans, Paul gives us a vivid description of his struggles with sin and his thanksgiving for God’s grace. As Saul, trying to please God apart from the saving work of Jesus, he tied himself up in knots and tore himself to shreds. Remember that when, as Saul, he persecuted the church, he did it precisely because he thought it was what God wanted. After his Damascus road encounter with the Risen Christ, he learned that those he thought were detestable sinners were instead God’s beloved, that his best, most fervent attempts to please God were instead sin, were instead precisely an offense to God. The law declares God’s will, and Paul wants to do God’s will, but because of the power of sin finds himself instead doing what he detests. Like an addict, the compulsion of sin drives Paul to do what makes him sick at heart. For Paul, the law acts as a mirror, and gazing into that mirror, Paul is horrified by what he sees. He feels himself locked away from light of God’s grace, staggering under his burden of guilt. “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Paul asks. And then Paul answers his own anguished question with words of gratitude and praise – “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

We may find ourselves described in Paul’s words. We affirm that, in baptism, our sinful nature has been put to death, and we rise out of the water in the new life of Christ. These are God’s promises – but the fulfillment of these promises comes over the course of our lives. The power of sin, though ultimately broken, still stubbornly hangs on. The new life in Christ, begun in baptism, is only fully realized in the life to come. Our future is with God, but the past, represented by sin working through our flesh, is still very much with us. But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, for despite our stumbles in this life, by God’s grace, we are assured that the new life begun in baptism will become eternal life with God. For now, Paul says in Colossians 3:3, our lives are hidden in Christ – the true selves that God would have us be, the true selves that in the future we will be, for now are hidden in Christ. When we feel weighed down with guilt, we can have faith that sin and death do not have the last word. Though life in the present may be a very mixed bag, our true selves, the selves we are destined to become, are hidden in Christ. And we can rest in that. Every week we confess our sin, and every week we affirm that, in Christ, our sins are forgiven. This isn’t to say that God is indifferent to sin – indeed, human sin led Jesus Christ, God the Son, to the cross - but rather to affirm that the power of sin in our lives is broken, not by our own efforts, but by the saving work of Jesus Christ. Having been freed by Christ from sin, we are now freed to love and serve God and neighbor. Having broken the heavy yoke of sin under which we staggered, we are fitted with the easy yoke – the Greek calls it a good yoke or a kind yoke - offered by Christ.

What burdens are you carrying? Are these the easy burden of Christ, or the heavy yokes we lay on ourselves and each other. It is not Jesus who bids us to work ourselves to an early grave – remember that God commanded us to observe the Sabbath – that is, to rest – and in the Deuteronomy version of the 10 Commandments, God explicitly links the command of Sabbath rest to God’s liberation of Israel from the heavy servitude of Egyptian bondage, where there was no rest. Characteristically, the religious establishment of Jesus’ day turned the Sabbath itself into yet another burden, but it was Jesus who liberated the Sabbath, saying that the Sabbath was made for us, not us for the Sabbath. It is not Jesus who bids us to spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like. It’s not Jesus who leads us to envy the lives of others. It’s not Jesus who calls us to pretend to be something we’re not, to project a false image of ourselves.

Indeed, the power of sin tries to project a false image of God – tries to depict our gracious God , our God of love, as a vicious, vengeful God, as a puritanical God who wants to stamp out every bit of pleasure in our lives. But in Scripture, God’s love and grace come through. Our Old Testament readings depict this experience of God’s love. After last week’s harrowing reading from Genesis, in which God narrowly averted Abraham from offering Isaac as a sacrifice, we have today’s somewhat long, but utterly lovely story of the coming together of Isaac and his wife, Rebekah. Human love, human caring, human tenderness, are gifts from God, gifts to be embraced, not shunned. This comes through even more strongly in our reading from the Song of Solomon, a collection of ancient love songs, one of the few such readings in the lectionary. If you think of Scripture as dry and didactic, a collection of “thou shalt nots”, if you haven’t read the Song of Solomon for a while, I’d encourage you to give it a look. It’s sensuous, it’s erotic – and it’s in the Bible. Later interpreters saw these songs as an image of God’s love for humankind – and if this is the case, God’s love is passionate, tender, God wooing and God pursuing humankind in love.

And finally, in our reading from Matthew, Jesus responds to criticisms that he hangs out with the wrong kind of people. He’s seen as a party guy, hanging out and even eating with sinners. In Jesus’ time, the banquet table was seen as an image of the kingdom of God – if you invited someone to a banquet, you were in effect also saying that you’d like to sit at table with this person in the kingdom of God – and Jesus kept inviting the wrong people to the banquet. Again, God pursuing sinners, not dragging them off to a public flogging, but inviting them to a banquet.

In a few moments, we will gather to be refreshed at the Lord’s table, to share bread and wine, to remember Christ’s offering of his body and blood, in the assurance that in this act of eating and drinking together, Christ is truly present with us. So come to the table, not because you must, but because you may. Come to the table, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and Christ will give you rest. Amen.