You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!
“Mom….Mom…Mom!”
“What?”
“I’m bored!”
Who among us has not heard a child
somewhere, sometime, using the “B” word – and using it in that whiney voice
that children have been perfecting since the very beginning of time?
“Mom!
I’m bored.”
It is summertime, and the livin’ is
easy. School is out, but not many days
have passed before it begins.
“Mom!
I’m bored! There’s nothing to
do.”
“Why don’t you go outside and play?”
“It’s too hot!”
“Then sit by the fan and read a book.” (PAUSE)
“Mom!
I’m bored!”
It is like those fickle boys and girls
that Jesus was talking about, the ones trying to decide on a game as they sat
around in an ancient Capernaum marketplace.
“We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance. We sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.”
However, in this passage that we just
read, Jesus is really not talking about children in a marketplace unable to
choose between pretending to be brides and grooms, pallbearers and
gravediggers. He is talking about his
generation of fellow Jews, all of them awaiting a Messiah that was both big
enough to save them from the imperial domination system of the Roman Empire
that was crushing them economically and socially and yet small enough to neatly
fit into a box that was understandable, manageable, and, above all, satisfying.
And in these verses we just read, Jesus
– in his usual blunt manner - accuses his listeners of not being content with
anyone God might have sent to help them out of the predicament God understood
them to be in. God just could not seem
to get it right – from their perspective, that is.
First, there had been John the
Baptist. Now he was a real loser –
running around like a mad man predicting in his fiery rhetoric the most dire
doomsday imaginable: The end is
near! The end is near! Repent, or every single one of you will be
swept up off the proverbial threshing floor and burned like the leftover chaff
when the wheat is milled.
And the outfit he wore? A tunic made of rough camel hair? Now that was really over the top. I mean, come on, how comfortable can that
be? Besides, John did not even eat like
a normal human being. When he was not
fasting, he was noshing on insects. And
I heard tell that he never once touched a drop of wine. That John was way too stern and serious.
Surely such an oddball freak – not to
mention such a dour, down-in-the-dumps one – surely such an oddball freak could
not be speaking the word of God to them.
After all, they were the chosen people.
“We sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.”
And now there was this itinerant rabbi,
Jesus. He wore a normal dusty, dirty
robe with a splattering of last night’s dinner speckling its front – no camel
hair, at least. And he did not do the
locusts and wild honey diet either, but, really, the people he ate with? Definitely the wrong sort: you know, from the other side of the tracks -
most of them being drunkards and gluttons.
And we all know that birds of a feather
flock together. Dour, down-in-the-dumps John
may have been a teetotaler, but that Jesus? Why, I heard
tell that once he did not have enough wine to drink at a wedding, and so he
made more – six big jugs of it - from purified water, no less. Bet he had a headache the next morning after
that little binge.
And besides, Jesus laughs too
much. He smiles at and actually seems to
enjoy little children. And all he ever does
is tell stories. He makes religion seem like a joyful thing.
Surely such an oddball freak – not to
mention such a gentle and humble at heart one – surely such an oddball freak could
not be speaking the word of God to them.
After all, they were the chosen people.
“We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance.”
You cannot win for losing! That is for sure. “Nothing satisfies this generation,” Jesus declared. “I mean,” he pointed out, “there just seem to
be an awful lot of bystanders and critics sitting around calling out the
shortcomings of anyone God might have sent and all the while awaiting a Messiah
that meets their own narrow and downright silly expectations.”
Open your eyes, O fickle
generation! Open your hearts to embrace
God’s passion for the world! Throw your
narrow and downright silly expectations for the Messiah out the window, and see
that Jesus – this laughing, humble, gentle, wide-eyed lover of life embodies
God’s dream for us. This man Jesus is
all that God hopes we will someday be.
And if God’s dream for the world is to
come true someday (and face it, we are a long way from that particular truth),
then surely we will need to change our tune.
As Lutheran pastor, Joshua Villines, noted, “It means changing the way
we see ourselves, it means changing the way we see other people, and it means
changing the way we live our lives. That’s takes a lot of effort.”
When it comes to change, you see, we all carry
a lot of baggage. When it comes to
change, we are all burdened, and we are all heavy-laden. Just like the final
verses in this passage point out. These are verses that, at first reading, seem
so disconnected from the image of children playing in the marketplace. However, if we read them in their entirety
and if we affirm that as Christians, as followers of Jesus, he challenges us to
walk his way, to embody in our own lives the precious dream of God that he is, then these final
verses are none other than the very foundation of our hope that – somehow,
sometime - we will indeed usher in God’s reign of compassionate love along with
that peace which passes all our understanding.
There
is a little known legend about Jesus in the years before his public ministry,
those decades that our four Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - tell us
nothing about. The legend claims that Jesus was not only a carpenter, but he
was one of the master yoke-makers in the Nazareth area. People came from miles
around for a yoke hand carved and crafted by Joseph’s talented son.
When
customers arrived with their team of oxen, Jesus would spend so much time measuring
the team, their height, the width, the space between them, and the size of
their shoulders. Within a week, the teamster would return with his beasts of
burden, and Jesus would carefully place the newly made yoke over their
shoulders, watching for rough places, smoothing out the edges, and fitting the
yoke perfectly.
It is a lovely legend, I think, because
it directs us to the yoke Jesus invites us to take, the one he speaks of in our
passage. “For my yoke is easy and my
burden is light.
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.”
However, do not be fooled or lulled
into complacency by the word “easy” that so many Bible translations use. You see, the root word in Greek refers to
tailor-made yokes. So – what Jesus is
really saying is this: “My yoke is
well-fitting.”
The yoke Jesus invites us to take, the
yoke that brings rest to our weary souls, is one that is made exactly to our
lives and hearts. The yoke he invites us to wear fits us well, neither does it
rub us nor cause us to develop sore spirits.
Most of all, the yoke is designed for two. And our yoke-partner, of
course, is none other than the Messiah himself.
However, be aware that Jesus is not
letting us off the hook when it comes to the heavy baggage and burdens we
bear. As Methodist pastor, Curtis
Goforth notes, “Jesus is using the language of plowing here, of yoking two
animals together so that they can get some work done. Notice Jesus doesn’t say
to us, ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and
I will give you rest. For my mattress is made of space-age foam and my pillow
is soft and smells like lavender and eucalyptus.’ Jesus doesn’t
promise anything about removing work from those who come to him. But he does
promise rest to them.”
Goforth goes on to say: “When Jesus
says to ‘take my yoke upon you, and learn from me’ he is not simply telling us
to listen to his words because there might be a pop quiz next week. A better
way of translating the Greek here “learn from me” might be something to the
effect of “be my apprentice” or even “be my yoke mate.” Jesus isn’t telling us
to simply listen to his words but to learn from his actions and to work along
side him—the same way an apprentice watches the master and learns how to do his
craft. We are to watch the way Jesus operates so that we might see how to
operate.”
There will always be fields to
plow. There will always be Kingdom work
to be done. And there will always be
times when the fields and the work seem endless, when our lives pull us in too
many mindless or painful directions, when more than anything we just want to
rest, put down our heavy loads.
We all yoke ourselves to something, you
know. It may be to a job that is grinding
us down bit by bit. It may be to loans
and credit cards that are burying us dollar by dollar. It may be to a marriage that is falling apart
day by day. It may be to an
event in the past that we could not control then and the repercussions of which
we cannot control now.
But whatever that yoke is for you, it dominates
you and pulls you to places oh so dark and scary. It carries with it a burden you cannot
possibly carry. And there is no
yoke-mate. You are alone.
But the way of Jesus is different. We are not shouldering the yoke by
ourselves. He is there, beside us,
sharing the baggage we carry, not eliminating it, but simply sharing it, which,
when you think about it, is really enough to manage the fear, the pain, the
sorrow. Take
up his yoke and learn from him. Learn of
the power of prayer. Learn of the need
for friendship and companionship. Learn
of the fact that, as theologian Frederick Buechner wrote, “there can never really be any peace and joy for me until
there is peace and joy finally for you too.”
Open your eyes, O fickle
generation! Open your hearts to embrace
God’s passion for the world! Throw your
narrow and downright silly expectations for the Messiah out the window, and see
that Jesus – this laughing, humble, gentle, wide-eyed lover of life embodies
God’s dream for us. This man, Jesus, can
be our yoke-mate and share our baggage and burdens. We can learn
from him. We should learn from him
because he is all that God hopes that we will someday be ourselves – and be for
one another.
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C.
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