Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
July 3, 2011

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

It’s happened before, and it has happened again. I give a sermon one week that makes a point the I believe to be valid, then a lectionary reading for the following week seems directly to contradict what I said the week before. It’ll drive you nuts, frankly. I mean, you think you’ve understood something about the Gospel of Jesus Christ then POW! The Gospel slaps you upside the head with something that says “I don’t think so! I think you got that one wrong!” Or at least that’s sure what it sounds like when you first read that next week’s passage. Here’s what it is this time: Last week I gave a sermon the gist of which is that grace is not cheap. Grace makes demands on us. I quoted that last line of the hymn “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” to sum up the point: “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all.” I said that when we truly understand God’s grace we really have no choice but to respond with transformed lives, with lives that more fully reflect God’s grace, God’s love in the world. And I can’t speak for you, but for me that’s not easy. It’s really, really hard. I don’t do it very well, and that failure produces a bit of guilt, sort of like the guilt Paul was expressing in the passage we heard from Romans. The good I will is not what I do. Perhaps that’s an issue in your life too. Still, I don’t deny that the grace of God makes demands on me, that the Gospel of Jesus Christ requires a response; and that response isn’t always easy. Then we get Matthew 11:28-30, and I say Really? Are you really going to contradict what I told them last week so soon? Is that necessary? Really? My yoke is easy, and my burden is light? Really? And I think: That’s sure not what I told them last week. I think: What am I supposed to do with this mess? Well, since I’d decided to preach on this text from Matthew I pretty much had to come up with something to do with it. Here, for what it’s worth, is what I managed to come up with.

First of all, the mere fact that we can get seemingly contradictory messages from scripture shouldn’t surprise us. Fundamentalist Christians to the contrary notwithstanding, the Bible does not contain one, consistent message throughout. It’s different parts were written in different times and cultures and for different purposes, so sometimes the messages can even contradict each other. But beyond that we need to ask: Is there a way in which Jesus’ words “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” do not in fact contradict the truth that God’s grace makes quite extreme demands on us? I think that there is, and that’s what I want to try to explain this morning.

Note first of all that Jesus does not say that he has no yoke and no burden for us. He doesn’t say I am easy, or my way is easy. He says my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. There is a yoke that Jesus expects us to wear. There is a burden that Jesus expects us to bear. It’s not that they don’t exist, it’s that somehow they are easy and light. Now, if, as I believe, the yoke and the burden to which Jesus is referring here are precisely those expectations, those demands on us that God makes on us together with God’s free gift of grace, how can they be easy? How can they be light? After all, “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all,” and that doesn’t exactly sound easy or light.

Here’s how I understand those expectations, those demands of grace as easy and light. They are light precisely because they are Jesus’ expectations, Jesus’ demands. Jesus’ yoke is easy because it is Jesus who puts it on us. Jesus’ burden is light because it is Jesus who loads it onto us. How does that make them light? It makes them light because Jesus doesn’t hook us up in a yoke and then leave us. It makes them light because Jesus’ doesn’t mount burdens on us and then depart. Rather, when Jesus puts his yoke on us, when Jesus loads burdens upon us, he stays right there with us helping us to bear them, helping us to carry them. Jesus is there to lift us up when we stumble. Jesus is there to pick us up when we fall. As our passage this morning says, Jesus is there to give us rest when we are weary.

In our Call to Worship this morning we read a line from Psalm 145 that sums the matter up quite succinctly. That Psalm says “The Lord raises up all who are bowed down.” The Psalm is referring to Yahweh, the God of the Hebrew people, not to Jesus, but the point is the same. God doesn’t abandon us when the yoke becomes too hard. God doesn’t abandon us when the burden is too heavy. Rather God is there to pick us up. God is there to give us rest. God is there to forgive our failures and to give us strength and courage to carry on.

And that’s how Jesus can say my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Jesus knows how seemingly heavy God’s yoke can be. After all, it cost him his life. It has cost many other saints their lives too. Yet even that yoke can be light when we know that God, that Jesus Christ, is bearing it with us. Even that yoke can be light when we know that we are bearing it with God and for God, when we know that it is precisely God’s will that we are doing, God’s will that we are trying to carry out.

So yes, indeed. Jesus’ yoke is easy and his burden is light, but not because Jesus doesn’t make demands on us, doesn’t have high expectations of us. He does, but he doesn’t expect us to bear them alone. God is there bearing them with us. What could possibly make a yoke easier or a burden light than that? Amen.