Readings: Psalm 145:
8-14, Zechariah 9:9-12, Matthew 11:
16-19, 25-30
Let us pray: O God, by your Holy Spirit open our minds and
hearts, and lead us in your truth we pray.
Amen.
‘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.’[1]
Jesus says: Are you tired? Worn out?
Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your
life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with
me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything
heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live
freely and lightly." [2]
Two renditions of Verses 28 – 30 from the Matthew
reading for today, the last from the Message.
Whenever I encounter familiar words of
scripture, when I struggle to find a way in to a text, I find it helpful to
read other Bible versions, translations that might put it in a slightly
different way; that might hopefully open up some new meaning.
We are all probably familiar with the
words ‘Come to me all that are weary and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest... my yoke is easy and my burden is
light’
Yet we might, at first look, be troubled
by the use of words like yoke and burden, seeing them as loss of freedom, being
under someone else’s capricious control, as awkward and heavy and burdensome. In fact if we had expanded our Hebrew
Scripture reading from last week to the verses before and after the debate
between Hananiah and Jeremiah – we would have heard talk of the heavy yoke of conquering
Babylonians, with Jeremiah wearing a yoke to the debate to make his point – a
yoke that, in response to his call for peaceful action, Hananiah shattered off
his back. Alternatively the imagery can
be incredibly welcoming – come to me and I will give you rest. It is easy to understand these verses as a
place of refuge, an inn that you might stop at for a rest in the midst of a long
and weary patch of your life journey – before you move on. So it can be hard to
get beyond that imagery of a well known passage, whatever it might mean to you
which is again why other translations can encourage new eyes for the text.
So when I read this particular passage in
the Message Bible, it seemed somehow more hopeful, less onerous and more
challenging.
Why more hopeful? Well there is the sense that the welcome of
Christ is not something temporary, something we have to seek when we have run
out of puff. ‘I will give you rest’ opens
up to ‘I will show you how to recover your life – to rest in a way that
sustains and nurtures and give a peace that this world does not understand and
that will be with you in all your journeying.
There was one line in particular that really jumped out at me – and that
was ‘Learn the unforced rhythms of grace’.
Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace...’
What might that mean? In an interesting way it sits alongside some
of the discussion we had at our first Wednesday Worship service – where we talked
about how to nourish a strong spiritual fitness (almost) so that the things we
do and the decisions we make are anchored in our understanding of God and the
way of Christ. We talked about regular
prayer and reading and conversation in community feeding our souls and growing
our faith – not for its own sake but to help us discern where the choices we
make and the behaviour we exhibit are contrary to the way of Jesus, the way of
love and mercy and justice. That when
anger arises it does not turn in to violence, when we want something, we can
figure out if we need or others need or our need is fueling injustice to
others.
Why less onerous? ‘Walk with me and work with me....keep
company with me’ The welcome of Jesus,
the ‘come unto me...’ is an invitation for us to enter into a way of life that
is in the company of Christ, not left to do it alone. He and we look to live out a life that is focussed
and obedient to the way of love and mercy and justice – not a yoke of
disempowerment or a burden of complex and indecipherable law but rather that
‘unforced rhythm of grace’ that is just who we are, that enables us to discern
with almost a childlike simplicity the path of Christ in each and every facet
of our lives. Jesus is kind of warning
us in this passage that it doesn’t do to get all tied up in trying to figure
out how to behave by using our wisdom to create and interpret human or even
biblical law – we just get deeper and deeper into a pit of increasingly
contradictory rules where to follow one
is to break another or compromise both. We
as a country (and I am sure many others) seem to think that the best way to
deal with injustice is to add more words to the laws! Unfair perhaps but an inkling of truth. Jesus says instead – actually it is quite
simple – love and care for your neighbour, and walk with me – I will show you
how.
And more challenging? ...watch how I do it. Learn the unforced
rhythms of grace, learn to live freely and lightly.
Christians do not have the monopoly on trying
to live their lives in love and compassion.
Other faiths seek the same right living from their followers and those
who choose to call themselves non-believers can live guided by conscience
(usually firmly based on the tenets of faith), and teachings for social good. But for us who follow Christ, there is a
particular challenge for there is no sense that we have ever arrived, that we
have got it all together and, through our wisdom or our laws, are sufficiently
mature enough to go it alone. We need
the welcome of Jesus, the unforced rhythm of his grace in our lives in the way
that a child constantly needs the love and nurturing of parents to grow and
reach their potential. For there are
ways of love that we struggle to understand on our own. Take the example of the man who penned the
words to the hymn we will sing after the sermon – ‘What a Friend we have in
Jesus’ – Joseph Scriven. I read about
his life and leapt to a conclusion. He
was born in Ireland in 1819 – a reasonably well to do family – and was ready to
settle down when his fiancé died by accidental drowning the night before the
wedding. Full of grief he emigrated to
Canada where he met and was about to marry another woman when she fell ill with
pneumonia and died. He then,
unsurprisingly, decided to go it alone and devoted the rest of his life helping
others even though he himself suffered severe depression – and may have ended
his own life. So, I thought, this hymn
he must have written to get him through a life that no one person should ever
have to live. This is his expression of
hope in God for himself. But no –he wrote
it as a poem for his mother who was very ill back in Ireland – originally called
‘Pray without ceasing’. He lived in the unforced rhythms of grace that was
Christ welcome and home for him, a grace that allowed him rest and assurance in
his very difficult life and a hope that nurtured him on a life’s journey of
service to others and his God.
I will finish with the words of this
passage from the King James version.
“Come unto Me
all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon
you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest
unto your souls.
Margaret Garland
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