The Tie That Binds: Common Calling

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

July 19, 2020

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

A recording of the service in which this sermon was preached may be accessed here: https://youtu.be/8A4V0JhAAyQ

For the last few years, I’ve been part of a clergy Bible study that meets on Tuesday mornings. Now we meet via Zoom. Recently, one of the pastors talked about a church leadership retreat she attended many years ago. There was a point in the retreat where each person was invited to share something about their sense of call. People took turns around the circle. One described his passion for working with children. Another mentioned church finances and keeping the books. Several talked about the vocal choir or the bell choir. All of that was in line with what was expected. What made this memorable was the next person who spoke. She said, “Right now, I am being called to deep rest.” It seemed that no one else in the room had considered that that might be a true calling. Then, of course, some wished that they had thought of it first.

There is always work to be done and it seems like churches usually need more hands than those that are raised. We can’t really all be called to rest, can we? Or can we?

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” An easy yoke . . . a light burden . . . what Jesus seems to be offering sounds so good. I wish I accepted this more. I’m more familiar with the long list of tasks that churches set out to do. I’m more acquainted with the earnest, faithful followers of Jesus who never feel that they’re doing enough or that they’re getting it right. I am more familiar with the Jesus who says “take up your cross and follow me.” Or the one who talks about the narrow gate and the hard road that lead to life. If we’re following that Jesus, we can’t really all be called to deep rest, can we?

We picked up reading in Matthew just after a preaching mission to major cities in Galilee. And apparently, it had not gone well. Jesus had gone to the cities to recruit learners, to engage people willing to hear how God was working in their midst. But those cities rejected his message. Not necessarily every person in those cities, but the leaders of the cities rejected him. The ones for whom the status quo was working, the insiders, those who were wise in their own eyes and self-sufficient.

Jesus seems a little exasperated. He mentions the children in the marketplace. Flutes and dancing were associated with weddings, while wailing was an essential part of funerals. It is as if John the Baptist came and played funeral. He preached fire and brimstone and warned them about the imminence of death and destruction. Some listened to him, but most thought he was too weird, surviving on locusts and honey, dressing like a wild man, and all that gloom and doom talk. They didn’t want to play funeral.

And then Jesus came along. He turned water into wine to make a wedding party last longer. He told hilarious stories and welcomed children and shared meals with all kinds of people. Some of them followed him, but many of the leaders said that he was too accepting, too joyful and frivolous, not nearly serious enough. They didn’t want to play wedding.

It feels like people are never satisfied. No matter what tack God takes to reach us, we will not enter the game. We will not play. Jesus is speaking to his own people, reflecting on struggles going on within Israel.

This might require some stretching of your imagination, but see if you can envision people who are part of the same faith who cannot agree on what might be described as the basics. People of the same faith who disagree about heaven and hell, who get into fights about how and when to do the important rituals, like, say, baptism and communion. Within the same faith, there are those who hold up salvation of souls as the key command of God, while others vigorously defend seeking justice and loving mercy as God’s primary requirement.

I know it’s a stretch, but imagine if you can, people who are citizens of the same country who are at odds about which practices are best for the country’s well-being. They argue about if and when and how to wash hands, about if and when and how to cover their faces. Some are doing all they can to restore the nation’s former glory and others are plotting its downfall.

If you can imagine a society like that, then you have a sense of first century Palestine under Roman occupation. There were a lot of movements or groups, some large and powerful, some on the fringes. Some seeking reform; some enacting resistance, some in violent rebellion.

In the midst of all that, I expect that people were weary. They were tired and anxious and afraid, just waiting to see what tomorrow’s news would bring and how bad the next crisis would be. To these people, Jesus says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

What a profound relief to receive that invitation. Jesus thanks God for the weak and the poor and the spiritual babies who recognize this as good news, those who accept this call to join Jesus’ small group. In a landscape of varied political and religious and economic movements, they recognize the Wisdom of God found in Jesus.

In Jesus’ call to rest, they hear echoes of long-ago. They remember the Exodus, when Moses led their ancestors out from domination under Pharaoh.

The next part of the invitation says “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.” In Jesus’ day, the yoke was a common farm implement. Yokes are not something most of us use on a regular basis.

Preacher Barbara Brown Taylor is helpful to me here. She describes the difference between single yokes and shared yokes. A single yoke fits across a person’s shoulders with buckets hung from poles on each side. Taylor says, that with a single yoke, “. . .human beings can carry almost as much as donkeys. They will tire easily and have to sit down to rest, and their shoulders will ache all the time . . . but still it is possible to move great loads from one place to another using a single creature under a single yoke.”[1]

She says that a shared yoke works very differently. A well matched pair of creatures can all work all day because one can rest a little while the other pulls. “They can take turns bearing the brunt of the load; they can cover for each other without every laying down their burden because their yoke is a shared one.” At the end of the day, they are tired, but not exhausted.

Taylor suggests that some of us are weary because we are trying to wear single yokes, trying to do all the things and carry all the weight alone, while Jesus is calling us to a shared yoke.

To accept Jesus’ yoke is to join his movement for life and liberation. To accept Jesus’ yoke is to resist the cruel and exploitative yoke of empire and to work alongside Jesus as God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

Some years ago, my family went to Mackinac Island in Michigan. There are no cars there, but a lot of horses. Many of those horses pull carriages for tourists. Pairs of horses, always the same pair, are connected to each other. All day long, together, they transport people all over the island. Someone told us where to find the off-duty horses, the ones that were on their own in the paddock after hours. So we did, and what we saw was that the horses who had been yoked together all day, chose to stay together in their off time. The one that was always harnessed on the left stayed on the left, the one harnessed on the right stayed on the right, even without the harness. And the two horses walked together, in matched step, in their off-hours just as they did when working. The yoke has a power to create relationship, to establish strong connections even when the yoke is no longer physically present.

The tie that binds us is the yoked life with God, the call to a way of life intent on Shalom, the restful well-being and peace which God desires for all creation. It is work, but work shared with Jesus and with each other. We may get tired, but not exhausted, because we move with Jesus in Sabbath rhythm.

“Come to me,” Jesus says.

“All you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens,

come to me.

All you who are tired of

trying to figure it out all by yourself, come to me.

All you who are worn out

from trying to keep life under your control.

All you who think the world is growing scarier day by day. All you who are confused and scared, grieving and exhausted, lost and lonely, come to me.”[2]

Come to me, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light, and you will be find rest. Amen.

[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Open Yoke” in The Seeds of Heaven: Sermons o the Gospel of Matthew (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2004), p. 21.

[2] This beautiful phrasing is the work of the Rev. Shannon J. Kershner in her sermon, Burdens, http://fourthchurch.org/sermons/2014/070614.html