Sermon for July 9, 2023, Pentecost 6A, Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR
Matthew 11:28—30
[Jesus said] “Come to me, all you who 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.”
When, according to Matthew, Jesus said, “Come to me…” he was offering an invitation, a call.
What was actually on offer?
He called it “rest.” What did that mean, in his context, and what could that mean for us in our vastly different context?
He specified the people he intended to invite:
“all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens.”
What was making them weary, and what were they burdened by?
Answering Jesus’ invitation included taking his yoke, as an alternative to the yoke that was burdening them and making them weary.
To answer the invitation, people needed not only to take his alternative yoke, they also were called to “learn from” Jesus.
What did that yoke mean, and what did he want them to learn from him, in his context, and what could that mean for us in our vastly different context?
Let’s begin with the rest Jesus was offering to those who answered his invitation.
Let me start with a question. Can God get tired?
In the Ancient world, they thought so. God, or the gods, had a lot of work to do and it made them tired and hungry.
That is one of the reason ancient people sacrificed to the gods: it was the way to feed them. Burning meat turned it into smoke, which the gods ingested by inhaling it.
There is almost a comic scene in the ancient flood story, the Epic of Gilgamesh in which the gods, after going without sacrificial food all during the flood, swarm like flies around the first post-flood sacrifice.
The work of the gods that made them so tired involved keeping chaos under control. As is often the case in ancient mythology, states of being, like chaos or death, were depicted as characters.
Chaos was depicted as the chaos monster that lived in the watery depths under the earth, always threatening to burst out and ruin everything.
Chaos is when civilization is in a mess, people are being oppressed, justice is not being done, and evil triumphs.
But when everything was working as it should, when adequate sacrifices fed the gods and the work of subduing chaos was accomplished, then the gods got what they most desired: rest.
Picking up on this idea, the ancient people who gave us our Biblical creation story made the seventh day the climax. On the Sabbath, the seventh day, God rested. Creation was complete.
It had started as a disordered place, but God’s Spirit or breath hovered over the chaotic depths and brought forth light and life, symmetry and beauty, fish, animals and people, peace, and harmony, justice and abundance for everyone.
The principle of Sabbath rest was then built into the structure of life for the Israelites. The perfect world was not only when God was resting with chaos under control, but the humans that God had made in God’s image also participated in Sabbath rest. How? In multiple rhythms of rest.
Every seven days, on the Sabbath, there was literal rest from all labor. It was to be a day of rest for everyone — men, and women, slave or free.
Every seven years, on the Sabbath year, all debts were forgiven and thus, the cause of debt slavery was reversed.
Every fiftieth year, after seven Sabbath years, was the Year of Jubilee, on which all land was returned to its original owner and all debt slaves were released.
The land was also given a year of rest from agricultural production.
This Sabbath-based redistribution system is what we mean by the term “distributive justice.”
Well, no one knows when, if ever, this Sabbath-rest system was ever implemented. But that is the vision of how it should be.
However, by the time of King Solomon, the story is that all this was scuttled. The people were put under a heavy taxation system to build up the king’s palaces and temples and to supply his court with lavish opulence.
It was so bad for the people that when Solomon’s son took the throne, the people came to him begging for relief.
They said,
“Your father made our yoke heavy. Now, therefore, lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke that he placed on us, and we will serve you.”
1Kings 12:4
Notice they called the oppressive system a yoke. He did not, however, heed their pleas, and so they seceded. The nation was split in two, never to unite again.
The biblical story of the monarchy is told as one long spiral into disaster.
Prophets periodically inveighed against corruption and injustice, but with limited if any success. The once-proud nation was eventually swallowed up by the Babylonian empirical regime, and Israel’s monarchy was brought to a devastating end.
Viewing the smoldering ruins of the temple in Jerusalem, with his compatriots — at least the survivors — in exile, Jeremiah described their plight in prayer, saying,
“With a yoke on our necks we are hard driven; we are weary, we are given no rest.” .
(Lam. 5:5)
A yoke of Babylonian oppression was hard, making them weary, and giving them no rest.
Now we are in a position to understand what Jesus was talking about.
To the desperately poor people in Galilee, under the oppression of both the Roman Empire and the Herodian dynasty’s complicit corruption, Jesus was saying in effect: I see the yoke you are carrying. I see how heavy it is. I know that you are weary. This is not the “rest” of distributive justice that God wills for you. This is a condition of oppression.
So, Jesus extended an invitation: “Come to me…take my yoke, learn from me.” What was he offering?
Jesus was offering an alternative vision of life, an alternative vision of God, and an alternative vision of humanity.
The alternative vision of life was that the earth is the Lord’s. God is king. Let God’s “will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
What is God’s will? It is not a mystery. As Jesus learned from the prophets:
“He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” .
(Micah 6:8)
“Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” .
(Amos 5:24)
God’s will is a sabbath rest from the burden of oppression and injustice. That is a new vision of life.
Jesus also wanted people to learn from him a new vision of God who could be addressed without a priest, a temple, or a sacrifice. A God who was a loving heavenly father/mother who wanted his children to live together as neighbors, as a beloved community of inclusion around a common table.
It was that God who was for them, not against them. It was that God who heard the cries of the blessed poor, the meek, and the least of these.
This vision of God produced a new vision of humanity; not a world of pure and impure people, not a world that excluded the women and children, the sick and disabled, not a world in which it made a difference if you were Samaritan, Roman, Canaanite or Jewish, but a united humanity of sharing and abundance.
What does this mean for us today? We too are invited by the same offer: “Come,” Jesus says. Come, embrace this vision of life in the kingdom of God. Come embrace this vision of the loving God of distributive justice. Come learn from Jesus that humanity can begin to know each other as “neighbors,” and that there is enough for all of us.
Today, the sources of injustice and oppression are not the Romans nor the Herodian aristocracy. But they are nonetheless real and cause suffering. Many today are weary and carrying burdens, desperately in need of rest.
We do not live in a society of distributive justice. Nor do we live in a society that has learned much from Jesus. Plenty give lip service, but have learned virtually nothing of his alternative vision of distributive justice.
But the call is still, “Come…learn.” The call is to join Jesus by taking up his yoke, his cause on behalf of the weary and burdened people of our day.
The call is to join Jesus in solidarity with the marginalized in our context.
The call is to join Jesus in non-violent resistance to systems of injustice and discrimination.
The call is to learn from Jesus’ teaching and lifestyle which will empower us to resist the gross distortions of Christianity being marketed today.
The call is to keep answering that invitation until there is the sabbath rest of justice for all.
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