What We Are Getting Ourselves Into

What We Are Getting Ourselves Into--January 9, 2018

[Jesus said:] "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." [Matthew 11:28-30]

I would like to make a proposal, a hypothesis of sorts, about these well-known words of Jesus.  And I'll ask your bearing with me to hear me out here.  I would suggest--and here's me, going out on a limb with this--that when Jesus spoke these words of invitation and of calling, he actually meant something by them.

Yes, I'd like to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Jesus seriously intended to call people--of the first century, of the twenty-first century, and of every other time as well--into a particular way of life.  I dare say Jesus actually meant something by these words.

That is, Jesus wasn't just waxing poetic or rambling with an extended metaphor.  He wasn't just riffing on a half-formed image or analogy about yokes and burdens--he was calling anyone who would listen to share in a way of seeing the world, seeing God, and seeing oneself.  I want to suggest that when Jesus said he would give us rest, he wasn't just sentimental and saccharin.  He actually intended to be offering us a different way of living that would change the way we carried the burdens of life.

I feel this is an important point to make because to be honest, I think that religious professionals (preachers like me) have often so romanticized and sentimentalized passages like this as to make them empty schmaltz.  Unless Jesus is actually giving us a viable alternative to the ways we have been living our lives, all this talk of "Jesus carrying our burdens" will be meaningless.  And I say that as someone who, more recently than I care to admit, was in the company of preachers and heard a message that went something like this: "When life is tough and we are weary from anxiety, grief, sadness, or discouragement, you just need to trust Jesus more and it will all get better." 

Just wave the name of Jesus over your troubles, and watch them vanish!  Just mutter the two syllables of the Savior's name while you are thinking about the friend who has cancer and you'll be able to make it through the day with a smile on your face.  Just believe harder in Jesus, and you won't feel so bad about the crippling debts you don't want to deal with.  Honestly, it was like hearing that Jesus was an all-curing elixir like snake-oil that would fix just about anything, if only you would just stop what you were doing and "just trust Jesus more."

And to be clear, I'm all for trusting Jesus....

But I am of the conviction that trusting a person usually involves some concrete, specific action or direction.  Like the old story about the tightrope walker with the wheelbarrow, it's easy to stand on solid ground from a distance and say, "I believe YOU can cross the tightrope while pushing this across," but it doesn't really mean anything until you are willing to get into the wheelbarrow yourself, and let him carry you across the highwire. Just saying "I trust Jesus more" doesn't make my car payment go away, and it doesn't make a heavenly beam of light illuminate a nook in the couch cushions to find a long-lost roll of hundred dollar bills to pay it, either.  Jesus hasn't come to get us to recite a mantra about him, or treat his name like a magic incantation that gives us the power to sail past the troubles of daily life. No, I am convinced, as I say, that when Jesus called people to come and take his yoke upon them, he was calling us to a particular way of life, a set of priorities, a way of being in the world.  When Jesus calls us to take his yoke, he is summoning us to abandon our old loves and wish-lists and to take his loves, his priorities, and his way of engaging the world as our own.  

There's a line from the classic Alan Moore graphic novel (and later movie) V for Vendetta, in which the main character says that "fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words--they are perspectives."  That's an important reminder.  Just muttering that you care about fairness or justice or freedom doesn't make it so--these words represent ideas and a particular set of values.  And in a similar way, Jesus offers his yoke as a change of perspective--from our old ones to his.  Being a follower of Jesus isn't simply learning how to speak in Christian jargon or how to parrot religious sounding words.  It is a matter of actually going where Jesus goes, doing what Jesus does, and learning to carry what Jesus carries--nothing more and nothing less.

Unless we hear that in Jesus' words here, we will only ever hear this passage as saying, "Just trust more!" without it ever telling us what that would mean or look like.  But once we realize that Jesus is actually saying something of substance, then things start to make sense.  Jesus is calling us to take up his way of seeing the world, his way of living in the world, and his choices of what matters, and what doesn't. Some sources believe that rabbis of the first century referred to their teaching--their interpretation of the Torah, the Law--as their "yoke," and that therefore Jesus is making the invitation to people to live by his understanding of the Torah, rather than the burdensome interpretations of the Pharisees. Others think that this "yoke" language is more generally a shorthand for living by God's commandments rather than the demands of the world or the decrees of the Romans.  But either way, the force of Jesus' choice of words is about the same: he is calling people, not simply to say his name like a lucky charm, but to set down an old way of life in the world and to take up a new one that he sets forth.  And once we are clear that this is the invitation, his words here have a certain force to them.  Jesus really is convinced that the life of loving enemies, of generosity without tooting your own horn, welcoming the stranger, the life of practicing forgiveness, the life of trust in a God who provides daily bread, that this whole kind of life is freeing and more joyful than a life lived by the conventional wisdom of the day--the life marked by attacking enemies, closing oneself off from "the other," hating the stranger, proud bragging about your greatness and giving, and holding grudges.  Jesus is actually calling us to something, a way of life that can be practiced and grown into.  Jesus' "yoke" is a perspective, not just a sentimental analogy.

As long as I am still trying to play the world's games--to get ahead with more stuff and bigger piles of money, to win people's approval and get them to notice and applaud me, to make myself look tough by lashing out at my enemies and bitterly nursing hatred for the people I don't like or think have wronged me--I will always feel like I am carrying an extra hundred pounds of dead weight behind me wherever I go.  Even if you, for a brief moment, actually succeed on the world's terms and get a big pile of possessions or have lashed out at all the people you think have wronged you, you still will feel burdened and worn out, Jesus says.  It's inevitable--because the problem isn't that it's hard to win at the games the world teaches us to play. The problem is that even when you look like you are "winning" at them, you are still left carrying the baggage and the weight of the world's way of doing things, and you are still left feeling empty inside. 

Jesus calls us away from the losing game that is the conventional wisdom about how to live life, and into his way of living in the world.  And when that happens, the dead weight can be left behind, and we find our muscles can carry the load Jesus gives.  There is no choice to carry nothing--you can't not have a pattern for living in this life.  The question, though, is whether we will kill ourselves from exhaustion trying to carry all the garbage the world and the powers of the day want to pile on us, or whether we will dare to trust that Jesus' way of living and seeing the world can lighten the load.

Jesus is actually calling us into something... and out of something old.  He is calling us to abandon the old way of ordering our lives, and to let his way become ours.  And he is convinced it is worth it.

Dare we let go of our old perspectives, no matter how popular they are or what other loud obnoxious voices in our culture espouse them, and trust Jesus to give us a new perspective?

Let's try it... and let's be clear as we do just what we are getting ourselves into.

Lord Jesus, Rabbi, help pull us out of our old habits and practices and perspectives, and suit us up in your way of living in the world.