25 At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; 26 yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. 28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
This morning our gospel reading is short. Just 6 verses, and only two main ideas- that the truth of God’s kingdom is hidden from the wise in this world and only revealed by those who the Father chooses- and that Jesus gives not more work and challenge to his people, but a lighter yoke and rest. The simplicity of the reading is appropriate to help reinforce the simplicity of the message. Following Jesus is not an exhausting enterprise, but a nurturing and a life giving process.
To the wise and understanding of this world following Jesus is not desired or understood. Those who are so high on themselves and their wisdom cannot see Jesus and the way he offers. They can only see the way they set for themselves, and they have little desire to repent of their chosen way.
For those of us who are able and willing to repent of our sins, we can see Jesus, we can know the path he sets out for those who desire life and salvation from him. And with this right understanding in our hearts of what it means to follow Jesus we can see that it is an easy burden to carry.
Of course, we try and make things harder, we try and make things in our life more difficult than they really are. We want to prove ourselves and make a name for ourselves with hard work. We want to earn our salvation. And we know this is not quite what the scripture teaches us, but it is just so hard to resist earning your place in life, that we move forward. And soon we are exhausted by our efforts.
One way this plays out is in trying to avoid sinning and covering up our sin. We hide our sins from one another, so that when we come to church on Sunday morning, we do not confess our sins to one another. We lie and cover up our sin- we believe that if people knew about our sins they would no longer want to talk to us. Soon our Christian life can become just as much about keeping up with appearances and concealing our sinful nature as it is about abiding in the Word and abiding in Jesus.
This hard work of keeping up appearances has a cost. It perpetuates the lie that being Christian is all about being a good person- it obscures the gospel that Jesus died for us and calls us as his own regardless of how good or bad we are.
When Jesus talks about how his yoke is easy you can’t help but think about the opposite heavy yoke that Jesus describes of the Pharisees. The Yoke of the Pharisees is to add extra laws and regulations to God’s law, to essentially prove that you really mean it in following God’s law. Because this takes so much work and effort to keep up extra regulations, it keeps a person from living according to God’s design and brings a person instead to become preoccupied with man made regulations. These man made regulations are a heavy yoke because they do not point to Jesus, they do not point to the gift of salvation to us in Jesus. Rather they point to man’s works and a self righteousness that professes that we can stop sinning and that tries to show off to the world that we are more devoted to God than others.
Our Epistle reading for today Romans chapter 7 shares about the futility of trying to be without sin: For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.
This is an amazing section of scripture because St. Paul is sharing the complete truth about our fallen human nature and how we will fail to live without sin. If the scripture was selectively edited like some cynical unbelievers would wishfully believe, this is the type of passage that would be worth editing out. Why tell people that they will fail?
What if a high school English teacher told students on the first day of class- you are just high school students, you know so little about literature and Shakespeare and the other classics, that whatever you think you know about literature is probably wrong or at best partially wrong. How hard would the students work? Would some just give up and let artificial intelligence write their papers for them?
The scripture shares this failure of our human nature to keep God’s law not to discourage us from trying to follow God’s law- but to point us to Jesus as the only way we can keep God’s law.
God’s law is good and there is certainly good in following the teaching in scripture in how we are to live our lives. We are not to just throw out what the scripture teaches in how to live a righteous life. Even though we cannot live up to the full extent of God’s laws. Instead we are to keep the law through the power of Christ and the power of Christ alone.
28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
When we see that Jesus is the one who can bring us to keep God’s law, then we experience the rest for our souls that Jesus promises.
The rest for our souls is in recognizing what we cannot do for ourselves. When you stop trying to hold everything together with your own effort, life can get much easier. This is the freedom Jesus brings, that you can be who you are as God’s child, you can confess your sins and your failures and you can look to Jesus for your strength and your belonging.
Instead of looking to prove yourself, you just look to Jesus as the one who is pulling the ox yoke and taking you along for the ride.
And what does this look like for your life? What does this look like for Christ Lutheran Church if we see that Jesus carries the weight of the yoke? How can we truly learn from Jesus and stop trying to carry ourselves?
It starts with our understanding the full gift of forgiveness we have in Jesus. Since he has carried all of our sorrows and sins on the cross we know that we have a very light load in life indeed. If we find we are carrying too heavy of a load we have to ask if we are carrying a load more for issues of pride than for the joy of God’s kingdom
Knowing the gift we have in Jesus is the light load that we are called to carry. If we have a heavier load to carry in our participation in the church, we can only carry it with Jesus as our help. On our own we will fall exhausted.
Our hymn of the day put it well: “I heard the voice of Jesus say “Come unto me and rest; lay down thou weary one, lay down my head upon my breast.” I came to Jesus as I was, so weary worn and sad; I found in him a resting place, And he has made me glad.
I heard the voice of Jesus say, “Behold I freely give the living water thirsty one, Stoop down and drink and live.” I came to Jesus and I drank of that life giving stream; my thirst was quenched my soul revived, and now I live in Him.
I heard the voice of Jesus say: “I am this dark world’s light. Look unto Me, thy morn shall rise And all thy day be bright.” I looked to Jesus and I found In Him my star my sun; And in the light of life I’ll walk Till traveling days are done.