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As I was writing this sermon I couldn’t help but think back to when I decided to pursue my calling. I had struggled with it and fought it for a long time. I tried to come up with my own plan. As I first started college it was with the intention of becoming a teacher. Eventually I changed directions and decided to major in communications and pursue a career in the wonderful world of public relations. I did a public relations internship and did pretty good. But I couldn’t help but feel like The Lord was guiding me in a different direction. So finally I decided to just go where I felt The Lord was leading me. As illogical as it might have seemed at the time I decided to pursue a life in the ministry. Now over the last year that idea has begun to seem a lot more realistic and a lot less far-fetched, but at the time it just seemed to not make any sense. In order to grasp this idea of pursuing a life in the ministry I really have to put my trust in The Lord and just force myself to understand that He knows what is best. I had to force my self to do what we are all called to do in today’s Gospel text, I had to come to Him and let Him give me rest.
Verses 28 and 29 of today’s Gospel text almost seem to contradict themselves. Verse 28 tells us to come to Jesus and He will give us rest but verse 29 tells us to take Jesus’ yoke. He acknowledges that we are tired and weary and instead of offering us a bed or even a chair He offers us His yoke. A yoke, for those who don’t know this refers to the tool that farmers would use to hold two animals together. It usually consisted of a pole and two u-shaped pieces that would go around the animal’s necks and attach to the pole. Then, while yoked together the two animals would plow the soil. Through the use of the yoke these animals would carry the burden of the workload for the farmer.
Jesus uses this term to describe being a disciple. But despite the fact that Jesus might seem to be trying to add to our burdens what He actually promises in today’s text is rest for our souls. What I think Jesus is basically saying with today’s text is “Doing my will isn’t always going to be easy, it will sometimes be a very tough and uphill road but it will be a good life. Your body and mind might get tired but your soul will be refreshed.”
In Luke 11: 46 Jesus say’s “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.” Here Jesus makes a clear distinction between what the burden of the religious leaders of His day offered to His people and what His burden offered to His people. He made the choice really simple; continuous heavy burdens or rest for the soul.
And that choice continues today. Think about it, every other religious belief system, outside of Christianity, is based on some sort of works system or condition. With Jesus, it’s easy we can never do enough work to be worthy. Now, that in itself is the heaviest burden to bear. But Jesus has already bore the burden for us.
Now this is not to say that receiving this rest doesn’t require any effort on our part. Psalm 55:22 says “Cast your cares on The Lord, and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous fall.” Jesus does not promise to release us from all our difficulties. It takes effort to refuse to be weighed down by earthly burdens. We must let Jesus take control of our lives. This requires humility but not a passive resignation. We must allow ourselves to be humbled through an active cooperation with The Holy Spirit. God will seek those who seek Him but we do have to meet Him halfway. Actually He probably requires that we go a lot less than halfway but it does require an effort on our part.
But we need not get bogged down in worrying about what we are required to do. Once we have cast all of our fears and anxieties upon The Lord we can live in the comfort of knowing that God keeps His promises. The Psalms passage I made reference to earlier tells us that once we do this God will never let us fall. A good example of this is Joseph. He had many difficulties in his life but he had a strong faith and was sustained through the good times and the bad.
1st Peter 5: 6,7 says “God’s mighty hand will lift you up in due time; He cares for you.” When this speaks of the mighty hands it is reminiscent of the time when God freed His people from slavery in Egypt. This is the same power that we have at our hands today. Peter explains here that not only is God in control of all that happens, He can be trusted to exercise His control in a way that will benefit His people. Certain other faiths require people to perform ceremonies and rituals that will make God love them. But Christianity begins from that point. He cares for us from square one. And because He cares for us He will carry our burdens.
But the greatest burden that Jesus takes care of is our burden of sin. There is no amount of worrying, concern or guilt that can do anything about this burden. The only way we can do anything about this burden is to allow Jesus to take over our lives. So as I mentioned earlier, the choice remains the same we can have continuous heavy burdens or rest for our soul.
As I was writing this sermon I took a brief break to spend some time with my son Kyle. I sat with him in my lap and played with him tickled him and tried to get him to smile and laugh which really isn’t that hard. As I looked into his eyes I couldn’t help but feel the incredible love that I have for him. His big blue eyes looked up at me and I just want to protect him from all the dangers of the world. Then it dawned on me that this is how The Lord looks at me and that’s how He looks at all of us here and that’s how He looks at everybody. The way we all love our children is the same way The Lord loves us, except He loves us even more. Our children are totally dependent on us and The Lord wants us to be totally dependent on him.
Today’s Gospel lesson speaks of this when it tells us that those who are little children can come to Him and find rest. He tells us that it’s not the wise and learned that receive His grace but rather little children. Now of course He is not talking literally about age or education levels. He’s not saying that if you haven’t received His grace by the time you turn 18 then you’ve missed your window of opportunity or that if you have anything beyond a high school education then you can’t be saved.
In his commentaries Don Carson explains what Jesus is referring to in this way. “The contrast is between those who are self-sufficient and deem themselves wise and those who are dependent and love to be taught.” Those who think they don’t need God aren’t going to receive any help from Him unless they realize that they do need His help. This includes of course the Pharisees of Jesus' time. These guys could recite the Old Testament backwards and forwards. But when it came to Jesus they dropped the ball. They didn’t see Jesus as the magnificent savior that He is. They saw Him as a troublemaker. They thought they didn’t need Him. How wrong they were.
Those who don’t think they need Jesus include some pretty smart people. Though a growing number of college professors are coming to the realization that they need to trust in Christ, secular college campuses remain a very hostile environment for Christianity. Many students, including myself can affirm that from their experience.
In the political arena there is Geoff Feiger, the Democratic candidate for Governor of the state of Michigan, a very smart and accomplished man who referred to Jesus as “some goof ball who got himself killed.” Even in religious circles we have the scholars of the Jesus seminar who claim that Jesus never rose from the dead and did not say 80% of what is attributed to Him in the New Testament.
But I don’t want to make it sound like all those who don’t acknowledge their need for God’s grace do so out of arrogance. One of my best friends in the world regrettably is a non-believer. He has bought into the worldly theory that if you’re a good person then good things will happen to you. I have witnessed to him and he always responds with something like “I’m glad you’re religion works for you but it’s not for me.” I try to explain to him that no matter how good a person one might try to be they will never be good enough to earn their way to salvation.
But he is not an arrogant person, he has just never felt the grace of God in his life. He grew up in a non-Christian home where Christianity or any religion for that matter was not looked down upon, it was just thought of as something that they chose not to partake in. It was almost as if they thought of it as just a hobby for people. He is just blind to the truth. It really hurts me because I know that if He would allow himself to be humbled by The Holy Spirit and feel the love of God he would be a wonderful disciple. Deep down in my heart, I feel that one day he will acknowledge his need for The Lord but it’s not going to happen until he is willing to take the first step. It doesn’t have to be a big step but it does require a step and therefore it does require effort.
On the other hand there are the “little children” that today’s lesson refers to. These are the ones who are “dependent and love to be taught” as Don Carson says. They include people of every age and I.Q. One of these people is C.S. Lewis, the brilliant Oxford professor who realized that although he may have known more than most other people he knew very, very little about life as a whole and did not know all that he needed to know. But once Lewis acknowledged his need for the love of God then God opened his eyes and he was eager to learn the truth.
This group would also include people of “average” intelligence such as St. Louis Rams quarterback Kurt Warner who makes a point to give glory to God in all that he does. In fact after his team won the Super Bowl he was interviewed on national television by sports journalist Greg Gumbel. Gumbel asked him a question about a pass that he made near the end of the game. Warner’s response, to a national audience was “First things first I want to give all honor and glory to my Lord and savior Jesus Christ.”
The clearest example of this type of person that I have ever met is somebody that I knew through my job. I work at a group home for developmentally disabled adults. The residents of this home to be honest are pretty severely disabled. Some are completely non-verbal and the ones that are verbal have conversational skills that are pretty much limited to hello, goodbye and a few expressions.
One of the residents with minimal verbal skills recently passed away but there is no doubt in my mind that she is now with The Lord in heaven. Her name was Denise and although she did have minimal verbal skills one thing that she was able to say was that Jesus loved her and that she was going to heaven. Her biblical knowledge may have been extremely limited but her faith was as strong a faith as I have ever seen. With those two expressions she gave just as powerful a witness as any preacher or missionary.
These are all people who God reveals the truth to. These are all people who Jesus has chosen to reveal the will of His Father to the world. These are all people who long for the salvation that Christ brings.
We all need to look at ourselves and discern if we have truly come to the Lord and found rest. We need to figure out if we are one of the wise and learned who live with the delusion that they don’t need God; or if we are one of the child-like who realize their dependence on God and who are eager to be taught by The Lord and experience His grace and experience the rest that He promises.
We live in a society that embraces freedom but the only way to receive true freedom is to do what we are called to do in today’s Gospel lesson, take the yoke of Jesus. The yoke of Christ is the yoke that calls us through our baptism. Through baptism we are called children of God and in that we have freedom, rest and peace. Amen