The Burden of Love

I'm tired. Even without having a single massage client this week, an intentional break that I established for myself due to some physical issues, I am still tired. It has been too hot...with heat indexes regularly above 100-degrees all week. It seems I can't consume enough water to keep my energy replenished. 

So, the Gospel really spoke to me on a physical level.

I'm also mentally tired. In providing pastoral care, I am hearing more and more the same thing from people that I am feeling, personally. I am tired of the attacks on people, especially the most vulnerable people. I'm tired of the tearing down of the institutions, and the norms of how to behave with those whom we don't see eye to eye on issues. 

So today's Gospel really spoke to me on the psychological and spiritual level as well.

What does this passage from Matthew say to you? Maybe what I have said meets you where you are, too.

Text: Matthew 11: 16-19, 25-30 and a little bit of Romans 7:15-25a

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“Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.” 

I’m not much of a gambler…but I am willing to put money on the table that just about everyone in this room this morning heard those words and felt a sense of relief.

All of us have some burden we’re carrying…some more than others.

To hear Jesus say, “Come to me you worn-out person and I will give you rest” could and should be met with a sigh of “Thank you!”

This particular passage from Matthew is one the few that has stayed with me for most of my life. I remembered it as the words shared right before the passing of the peace when I was a child growing up in the Episcopal Church. My church used Holy Eucharist Rite I from our current Book of Common Prayer… a way to comfortably transition from the 1928 Prayer Book with its penitential language and use of “thee’s and thous”.

There’ve been times when these words have brought tears to my eyes for no special reason other than that relief that they have in the ears.

They call these the “comfortable words” of Jesus.

And they are “comfortable”…especially if we look at them in light of everything else Jesus’ has been saying up to this point.

He’s warned his disciples then…and us now… that people are going to be hostile…they aren’t going to be welcoming…and they aren’t going to won’t listen.

Heck…in some cases back in the days of ancient Palestine… professing Jesus as the Messiah would get dragged into court…or even killed.

In this country…professing Christianity won’t get us killed.

But living out our faith in a real way… in the way Jesus teaches… in that way of true loving and caring for the people who need it most and seeking to mend the wounds inflicted by people and systems… has become harder and harder to be a Christian.

It’s made it almost impossible to call one’s self a Christian when people associate “Christian” with a particularly cruel and petty practice of the faith.

It’s that kind of burdensome practice of religion…that is at the center of Jesus’ petition to “Come to me all that are weary and carrying heavy burdens I will give you rest.”

Because what Jesus was naming were a couple of things: First, there were those who were the self-righteous religious grumblers and hypocrites…and then there were those who the grumblers and hypocrites were wearing down.

One of those being worn down was John the Baptist.

We didn’t hear this part today…but at this point in the Gospel story…John is in prison having called out Herod Antipas for divorcing his first wife and marrying his brother’s ex-wife.

The Jewish historian Josephus adds a wrinkle to that story,

Josephus reports that Herod feared John the Baptist because John had gained a following out there by the Jordan River.

Herod…who was in league with the Roman Empire… worried about any person who might pose a threat to the power structure… and John…with his camel hair shirts and diet of locusts and wild honey…wasn’t afraid of challenging even the most  powerful people, and saying “You ain’t right by the law!”

Now…sitting in jail…John is in crisis.

He’s remembering his excitement that there was one coming after him that would have a baptism of fire and the Holy Spirit…one so much more powerful than himself that he wasn’t worthy to carry his successor’s sandals.

Sitting in jail…he thinks, “Maybe I made a mistake.

Nothing has changed.

Rome is still in charge.

The bullies seem to be winning.”

So John sends word to Jesus by his disciples…wondering…”Are you really the one who is going to make the crooked paths of this corrupt world straight for us? Or is there somebody else?”

I think we can all relate to John.

It can be hard when we see injustices in the world around us…and nothing seems to be changing.

The powerful pick on the powerless.

Those with means get their way.

When society seems unfair… when it feels as if we’re always getting pushed aside…that’s when doubt creeps in.

The longer the injustice persists…the doubt begins to chip away at our faith.

We stop trusting…our hearts grow harder…and we become resentful and angry…and no different from the bullies and tyrants we don’t want to be like.

To steal a line from Paul’s Letter to the Romans, we do the thing we do not want to do. We begin to close ourselves off and become governed by fear not faith.

Jesus…ever the patient one…implores John’s disciples to go back and tell him to stop looking only in those dark corners of doubt in his heart. Look and see that healing is happening… people are getting fed.

“You weren’t wrong, John.”

John…like us… is weary and heavy-burdened. Jesus is ready to give him and us rest.

But first…Jesus has some words for those then and now… who have burdened the Johns of the world.

He looks around at the crowd… some of whom are the powerful ones… the self-righteous…the very religious.

And basically… he tells them… “You wouldn’t know God if God came up and bit you on the nose!”

For they didn’t like John’s religion…with his baptism of repentance in the Jordan River. They called him a drunkard…even though he was stone-cold sober.

And they sure don’t like Jesus’ reinterpretation of the Law and pointing it back toward Love and Inclusion. They call Jesus a glutton…a slob who hangs out with “those people” from the wrong part of Palestine.

We still have that today, don’t we?

 

The smug and self-righteous are still among us in society.

The people who use their religious beliefs to justify withholding God’s love to those who need to hear it the most.

And yet Jesus calls us to stretch ourselves…being wise as serpents and innocent as doves…to not shrink from the call to follow in his path…being a force of love.

This is what it means to take on the “yoke” of Jesus.

To be “yoked” to Jesus is to learn from him.

We must allow Jesus to help us carry on the work of love in the world…work that will not be easy if we attempt it on our own.

Because there are things in this world that will break our hearts.

But our broken hearts are the pathway to understanding and being capable of connecting to people who want to know the God who eats meals with tax collectors…and touches and heals the untouchables.

That’s what Jesus wanted poor John to hear as he sat in the hell of a prison cell.

That’s what he wants us to hear as we contend with whatever burdens we’re carrying on this day.

His call to us is to live.

To live and learn from his life and ministry….and stay with him on the path of love…and engage in whatever way we can to make God’s love known to another struggling in this world.

Not through fear, but through love.

A love committed to repairing the breaches in society…and lightening the burdens we all bear.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.