The Easy Yoke
Matthew 11:16-29, 25-30
July 30, 2023
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lvcx75FkSc
When I look at Emmanuel, I see a congregation whose spirit of generosity and compassion is as strong as it was when I arrived thirteen years ago. I see a church that has endured a difficult season, but is rallying with the courage and creativity that I have come to associate with you. I do not see a dying church, but I do see an uncertain one. I see evidence of widespread weariness and the lack of a clear vision mixed with some grief and fear. I see a church and a pastor who might be ready to internalize these words of Jesus as we never have before.
Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Jesus is weary and frustrated because the same leaders who rejected John the Baptist for being too uptight and demanding are rejecting Jesus for being too easy-going. They just can’t seem to understand the deep peace he wants to impart. There’s no way to win with these folks and it is exhausting.
What might be wearing us out right now?
· Big worries – like the heating up of the planet or the possibility of another worldwide pandemic
· Close, personal concerns about a family member’s health or navigating a life crisis
· A bank balance that will not cover this month’s bills.
· Having to avoid the danger zones every time we have a simple conversation with friends or family members because of the deep rifts over every social and political issue
What might be wearing us out as Emmanuel Baptist Church?
· Wondering when the next major building crisis will hit and how we will manage it
· Investing energy and time into planning programs or activities which are not well attended or appreciated.
· Feeling like we’re always letting someone down – whether it is the lonely older adults isolated by health concerns or the younger generation who seem more anxious and less supported than many in recent history
· Continuing to do church tasks for which we have lost the passion, because if we don’t, who will?
Those are some of my thoughts about why we are weary as individuals and as a congregation. You probably have others. The list itself can be overwhelming.
I often remind myself about being good tired vs bad tired. That’s something I learned from the folksinger Harry Chapin. Chapin’s grandfather was a painter. He died at age 88, after illustrating Robert Frost’s first two books of poetry.
One day, toward the end of his life, he said to his grandson, “Harry, there’s two kinds of tired. There’s good tired and there’s bad tired.” He said, “Ironically enough, bad tired can be a day that you won. But you won other people’s battles; you lived other people’s days, other people’s agendas, other people’s dreams. And when it’s all over, there was very little you in there. And when you hit the hay at night, somehow you toss and turn; you don’t settle easy.
. . .good tired, ironically enough, can be a day that you lost, but you fought your battles, you chased your dreams, you lived your days and when you hit the hay at night, you settle easy, you sleep the sleep of the just and you say ‘take me away’”. He said, “Harry, all my life I wanted to be a painter and I painted; God, I would have loved to have been more successful, but I painted and I painted and I’m good tired and they can take me away.”[1]
I wonder if we are bad tired because we are living other people’s dreams, measuring ourselves against a previous generation’s definitions of success. I wonder if we are so weary because 150 years ago, having a large, beautiful building was an essential part of being church in this community, but now, the building feels like a heavy burden. I wonder if we are weary because we keep trying to sustain all the programs that were started by other people to meet other people’s needs when we were three times our current size. I wonder if we are bone tired because we have started acting as though we are indispensable to God’s work, when deep down we know we are merely one of countless participants invited to join the work that God is doing
Two weeks ago, I spoke with the Rev. Kara Root. She is the pastor of Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church near Minneapolis. That is the church which practices Sabbath together every other Sunday. That is where I got some of the ideas for the proposal which you will consider in the meeting following worship today.
Kara was very generous in sharing her time and her church’s story with me. This week, I read her book[2] and came to understand even more of it. When they called Kara as pastor in 2008, no one new had joined the church in seven years. There were no children. On a good Sunday, maybe 30 people worshipped in a sanctuary that used to hold 300. And they thought their endowment might last 2 years, if they were very frugal.[3] They were prepared to die, but they said “if we are dying, we’re going to go down swinging. And if we’re not dying, we’re going to discover what we’re meant to do and be now.”
That was 15 years ago. They’re still alive. They have received many new members. Their largest constituency is now families with young children. They don’t have much endowment left, but they have enough money to pay the bills and they give away at least 10% of their pledges and loose offering to support other expressions of God’s ministry in the world. I share all of that because those are the typical ways that we measure vitality.
But what I find more remarkable about this congregation are the internal theological shifts that they have made. By facing their prospective death, they came to the deep conviction that the church is God’s, not theirs. They understand “this is not our church to maintain, our ministry to build, our project to do, or our legacy to pass on. This is God’s ministry. . . . Live or die, we belong to God. So we are free to be whom God has called us to be and leave the survival question to God.” [4]
What if that is really true? What if we are free to be whomever or whatever God calls us to be, and we don’t have to worry about whether Emmanuel lives or dies. Friends, doesn’t that sound like an easier yoke? It does to me. It also sounds unrealistic and hard to sustain.
Two years after that church made a major change in their worship life as a way of being who God called them to be, they went on retreat. They asked themselves “What is keeping us from noticing what God is doing and joining it without hesitation? What unspoken fears or beliefs are still holding us back?”
They agreed on four big underlying assumptions.
1. Our glory days are in the past.
2. We are too small, too old, and we don’t have enough money.
3. If you volunteer for something, you’ll be stuck for life. (At the time, they actually realized a pattern that some people had to quit the church in order to quit the church job that they held.)
4. A few people do all the work.
But then, they asked themselves, what is the opposite of each of these statements? And they came up with
1. God is doing something here and now that incorporates the past and leads us into the future.
2. We are exactly the right size and makeup and have the resources we need, for what God wants to do in and through us.
3. Every person participates from their particularities and passions.
4. We all share the ministry of the church.
They came home from the retreat and put up that second list in their fellowship hall with the title Our Guiding Convictions. They didn’t believe them at first, but it was a way to remind themselves to keep living out trust instead of fear. And it worked. A few years ago, someone who had recently joined the church said, “I love looking at those; they describe us so well.” [5]
It didn’t happen right away of course. They had to deal with the things they had learned about themselves, including that people felt stuck in their church jobs. Now, at the annual meeting every year, the newly installed leaders make a pledge. Those taking on new responsibilities promise “I will serve out of joy and only as long as it gives me joy.”
Well now, that sounds like a much easier yoke.
But what happens when the moderator resigns because they can no longer serve with joy? What if there are not enough people willing to joyfully teach Sunday School? What often happens is that the church gets anxious and pressures the Nominating Committee to fill the empty slots. And then, some people wearily agree to serve out of obligation or duty.
But what if we promised God and each other to only serve from a place of joy and meant it. Wouldn’t that be a real exercise of trust, a way to act out our belief that the ministry belongs to God and that God will provide what is needed for the ministry that God wants? That’s what Lake Nokomis did. They once went 18 months without a moderator until someone stepped forward who sincerely felt called and ready to serve with joy.
Jesus came with good news of abundance. He shared the presence of a Creator who has blessed the world with good gifts, beauty and wonder and grace– enough for all, if we share. But there’s a competing story that swirls around us. It’s a story of scarcity, the fear that we aren’t enough, that we won’t get enough, that we might die somehow outside the presence and love of God. When we attend to that story, we scramble to do whatever it takes to keep the fear at bay. And we get weary.
But Jesus invites us into a life of trust, a life yoked with Jesus, moving as Jesus moves at God’s direction. We are called to share the good news of abundance with others. That’s not particular to us. That’s the calling of everyone who accepts Jesus’ yoke. What is specific to us are the ways we share, the people we share with, the particularities and passions that make us who we are, and the ways that assortment of gifts and people combine to be the unique expression of the Body of Christ in this place.
Friends, you have been asked to consider a major change – a change in ministry priorities which will change our worship life. I believe that God is calling us to share the good news with people we haven’t met, in ways that seek to put their needs before our own. I believe you have heard that call as well, although you might disagree with the particular methods I suggest in the proposal. I remain open to your decision. But as we discuss and discern our way forward, my hope is that we will act from a place of trust and courage. I hope that we will remember that Emmanuel Baptist Church belongs to God first and always.
I pray that we will accept Jesus’ invitation into a yoked life which relies on God’s abundance and not our fears of scarcity. This is not a call to abandon our posts and eat bon-bons on the beach. There is a yoke and there is work to do. But I think that if we submit to this yoke, if we can learn to practice deep trust together, to leave the questions of survival to God, then we will become our most authentic selves, and at the end, we will be good tired, and they can take us away.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbpoUWO3kA8
[2] I highly recommend Kara’s book The Deepest Belonging: A Story about Discovering Where God Meets Us
[3] https://faithandleadership.com/minneapolis-congregation-finds-new-life-through-the-ancient-practice-keeping-sabbath
[4] Kara K. Root, The Deepest Belonging: A Story About Discovering Where God Meets Us (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2021), p. 134
[5] Kara Root, The Deepest Belonging, p 147-149