Proper 9, Year A
We talk a lot in church about loving God and loving other people. These are tremendously important themes for our faith. But today we are going to talk about letting ourselves be loved by God, a surprisingly difficult task yet also very important.
It has been a discordant summer for this community, I think. Summer, which brings up images of relaxation, freedom, ease and sunny joy has dished out, instead, to many in this community very heavy hearts. Several are unemployed or struggling with finances, many are facing chronic pain or illness, and many are lonely or suffering pain in relationships. Jesus’ words, “come to me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest” is an invitation desperately needed by many of us.
It is immensely comforting to know that there is a wideness to God’s mercy that lifts up even our own heavy hearts, that there is no place where our sorrows and pains are more heard and felt than in the heart of God. But it is also true that God’s ways are not our own, and as we have heard for the past two weeks that we must give up our life in order to gain it again today we hear that the path to peace and rest for our souls runs counter to what we intuitively expect.
“Be like an infant, needy and vulnerable and yoke yourself up like an oxen submitting to the pull of another” Nope, Jesus’ grand plan would not have gotten him booked for any motivational speaking tours. These aren’t character traits we seek out to increase our happiness or what we would say are the makings of heroes.
Think about heroes for a minute. If you were to describe your heroes they might have a lot of tremendous traits. Self sacrificing, generous, brave, passionate, wise, striving for justice. But, I bet your descriptions didn’t include things like needy, ignorant and untaught, lost on their own…yet that is exactly the definition of the heroes in today’s Gospel. For it is the “little ones” or “infants” that are the ones who are able to receive the word of God – the ones who can perceive God in the world and the ones who can receive the peace of God.
The wise and intelligent in today’s Gospel aren’t able to see God. They see John and perceive a demon. They see Jesus and call him a drunk. The more we are lost in our heads and lean on our own understanding the further we seem to get from being able to find God in the world.
But the infants – they are the ones who see Jesus and know that they are in the presence of God. Why is that? Infants, and the words here can also mean servants, are utterly dependant on another. They are aware of their need and must trust another to provide for them.
Yet we have been trained up on the ideals of the wild west, corporate America, and protestant work ethic where it is every man and woman for themselves, independence is honored, self sufficiency is necessary and rewarded, freedom from control by others is a blissful state of being. We fear illness that will make us unable to care for ourselves, we feel ashamed when we have to ask for help from others, we view our neediness as a weakness. But Jesus is saying here that there is something about our own ideal of self-sufficiency that places walls around our hearts that keep God out. Howard Thurman writes, “My ego is like a fortress. I have built its walls stone by stone to hold out the invasion of the love of God.” Our egos have indeed become like fortresses. We have defended ourselves from our own need, and thus the love of Christ, by placing brick after brick of independence around ourselves.
Yet, Jesus proclaims, it is with an utter abandonment of self-sufficiency, overflowing with our own need and complete trust that allows us to perceive the Holy. Being yoked to Jesus requires this openness of heart.
Jesus uses a farming image here that may not be familiar in our urban context. The first thing to note in this image is that we are all compared to oxen carrying heavy burdens. I might prefer to be compared to a light floating fairy or soaring bird, but I suspect this image is more accurate: we are all of us already yoked to something and carrying extremely heavy loads.
I like the image in the Old Testament reading in which Zechariah calls the people “prisoners of hope”. Is that good or is that bad??? Being a prisoner just seems intuitively bad. Same here with this image of being yoked. But I think the OT text and Jesus’ message here speak to an important truth that we are prisoners either way but we can choose who we are prisoners of. The people to whom Zechariah speaks have been prisoners of exile, likely prisoners of fear and despair. Now their life can be devoted wholly to hope. Jesus would call us to be yoked to him, but if we do not choose him I would submit that we are just as yoked to other things. We are Prisoners of perfectionism, addiction, fear, money and success... The people to whom Jesus speaks in this Gospel story have become yoked to an interpretation of the law that requires hundreds of rules to be followed, a strict legalism in order to be faithful. Jesus offers a gentler way. To us too, Jesus offers a gentler way than the yoke the world has to offer.
In Jesus’ agricultural image an ox would receive a yoke around it’s neck to connect it to another ox. This was done for young, inexperienced oxen who would be paired with other oxen who could help and train them. It was also done with older oxen so that they might be connected with a stronger ox who could share the burden and lighten the load. Perhaps a more accessible image is that of a young mom taking the child’s hands as he toddles along, learning to walk or a daughter who takes the hand of her elderly father who hobbles in his age struggling to walk down the hall. If we reject that hand we fall.
Here Jesus offers us his hand. When the burden of staying upright is hard, when the weight of life would knock us on the ground he offers to help us along the road sharing and lightening the load. When we are fumbling and ignorant, tripping along and longing to see God but cannot, he offers his hand to guide and to gently teach our hearts.
The image of yoking is a bit more difficult than that of taking someone’s hand, though, because it is an image that means being connected to another in a way that requires that we go his way, it is an image of submission and of a complete abandonment of an illusion of control. It is a hard choice. Lose your life to find it.
Taking this yoke means we will go where Jesus leads and that will undoubtedly mean to some unexpected places. Yoked to Jesus we aren’t going to walk down the path that the world would define as success. His path leads to dinner with the tax collector and sinner (where perhaps we will find that we fit in just superbly), it will lead to conversations with the insane seeming demoniac (where we perhaps will see reflections of ourselves) and it will lead to the cross (where in the midst of death we will find life). Not a road map that would be chosen by those looking for the “top seven paths to success” but a way that promises peace, rest and a sure view of the Holy.
But how does one become yoked to Jesus and what does it really look like? I suspect that the answer is broader and deeper than I can articulate. But let me offer a few ideas to begin the process stirring in our hearts as we contemplate surrendering to this call.
CH Spurgeon, a 19th century preacher echoes today’s Gospel saying, “Oh, there is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost there is a balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrow? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead.”
His idea of being yoked is to plunge ourselves into the Godhead’s deepest sea. It takes a tremendous amount of trust to go diving into a wild sea and the result is that you are covered in salty sea water, you are immersed in God. How do we recklessly throw ourselves into contact with the Holy, how do we cover our days and our thoughts with God? Our own spiritual practices will look as varied as the uniqueness of our fingerprints, but it is important that we think about what that practice might be in our own lives.
Finally being yoked means that we must let go, we must surrender ourselves, trusting that we will receive ourselves back again healed, transformed and more true to who we are created to be. For we have a God full of mercy and compassion, rich with unending love who longs to make our hearts a home for the holy. Being yoked, most importantly, then, means trusting Jesus. All we can do is ask. Here is the rest of Thurman’s prayer
“My ego is like a fortress. I have built its walls stone by stone to hold out the invasion of the love of God.
But I have stayed here long enough. There is light over the barriers, O my God. The darkness of my house forgive and overtake my soul. I relax the barriers. I abandon all that I think I am, all that I hope to be, all that I believe I possess. I let go of the past, I withdraw my grasping hand from the future and in the great silence of this moment, I alertly rest my soul. As the sea gull lays in the wind current, so I lay myself into the spirit of God. My dearest human relationships, my most precious dreams, I surrender to His care. All that I have called my own I give back. All my favorite things, which I would withhold in my storehouse from his fearful tyranny, I let go. I give myself unto thee, O my God.
Amen
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