Come to Me All You Are Heavy Laden (Mt. 11:28-30)

A Sermon preached by J. Stuart Taylor III

St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church

August 24, 2008

One of the joys of doing a pilgrimage to the Holy Land this past May was the opportunity to go to Galilee and see for myself where Jesus carried out his ministry.  Having been to the Sea of Galilee, it is so much easier for me to imagine the scene in which Jesus spoke the words of our Gospel text.  Picture with me the rolling fields of grass stretched over the hillsides of Galilee much the same today as it was in the time of Christ. Imagine with me the crowds of men, women, and children that were following Jesus around the lakeshore.  For Jesus the crowds were not an abstract, distant reality; the crowds of people who followed Jesus were close up and personal. He could see their faces and look into their eyes. Jesus was a teacher of such great power because he understood the people – they were his own. He understood their longings and their hopes; their deepest needs and dreams. Jesus looked deeply into the eyes of his people saw there the toil of their years, their endless struggle to survive in this world. He looked at the bright faces of the children and rejoiced in their exuberance. He looked into the wrinkled sun-baked faces of the old and saw their world-weariness, their spirits prisoner to care and toil, the glimmer of a child’s eyes in them given way to anxiety. And he wondered to himself and to His Abba-Father, must all of your children grow up to feel that their lives are burdens to be carried on bent backs? His compassion went out to them as he sought to find the word that might release his people from their sorrow. Come to me all you that are weary and heavy laden, 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.

Over the last 2 weeks I have pondered these gracious words of invitation offered to the crowds of people on the road with Jesus. Then and now this invitation is extended to the wayfarer, the pilgrim, any person on a journey who finds themselves weary and heavy laden.  I was reminded of the time I went backpacking with my cousins in the NC Mountains and unbeknownst to me my cousins’ had placed a huge rock in the bottom of my backpack. I was laboring under this extra weight and I am thinking I am really out of shape. When steam was literally pouring out around my head my cousins decided they could take it no more – look in your pack. To this day they still refer to me from time to time as Rocky. In that same mountain range is Cold Mountain made famous in the book by Charles Frazier and of course the film Cold Mountain that starred Nicole Kidman and Jude Law. I thought of that great scene from the novel when the wounded confederate soldier is walking home from the war across the mountains. The only thing that seems to keep him going is the love a woman that he barely knows.  At one point the wayfarer trying to get home is in a state of complete collapse and is near death when he is rescued by an old mountain woman who takes him off to her hut in some remote mountain holler. There she feeds him goat’s milk and good simple fare, and nurses him back to health with various herbs and other mountain remedies.  Have you known moments in your journey where you were that exhausted wayfarer who has lost his way, that pilgrim who can’t take one more step under the burdens she carries?  Could it be that this is where you are right now?  To anyone and to everyone who finds themselves exhausted and discouraged by this journey through life, Jesus says” Come to me all you that are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest”. God’s house is that inn along the road that we are desperately in need of and Jesus is the innkeeper.

Soren Kierkegaard, the gadfly philosopher in the 19^th century Denmark preached on this text at the Cathedral in Copenhagen and had only to point to a statue of Jesus under which were the words, come to me.  Kierkegaard marveled at the amazing breadth of this invitation from Jesus to all those who labor.  I quote: “What diversity is suggested by these words for it is intended not just for the one who labors by the sweat of his brow for his daily bread or only for those who in lowly station bear the burden and heat of the day.  But this invitation is intended for the one who bears sad thoughts and the one who is concerned and anxious for the care of one or the care of many. This invitation is intended not only for the one who visibly carries a heavy burden but also for the one whose burden is not seen, who even labors to hide it.  This invitation is also to the one who labors with doubt, laboring in the sea as a swimmer is said to labor in the waves. This invitation is not only the one who bears the weight of the past but also the one for whom there seems to be no future. But then Kierkegaard asked a very important question.  Who then is the Inviter who extends this invitation that reaches all those who sorrow and are heavy laden?  In whatever sense that it may be said that you are weary and heavy laden the one who invites you to rest, is Christ, the Human one who was acquainted with all sorrow.  The Inviter is the Human one who was tempted as we are yet without sin. The Inviter is the Human One who hungered in the wilderness, who was thirsty at the well. The Inviter is the Human One was acquainted with poverty and had no place to lay his head. The Human One who experienced failure as well, for these words of Jesus were spoken in the thick of his Galilean ministry which by all evidence was not going that well. The inviter is the Human One who was sorrowful unto death, seemingly abandoned by God. The Inviter is Jesus the Human One who understands our sorrows and even more importantly can give us rest.   

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.  This invitation to learn from me is not extended to those with exceptional religious credentials, or educational status, or natural intelligence, but by Christ’s word of promise; for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Take my yoke upon you. Take off the yoke that you are carrying now and put on my yoke which is easy a light burden. Of all the burdens that were being carried by the crowds that surrounded Jesus, the cruel irony was that the heaviest burden was their own religion tradition. Throughout Galilee, Jesus proclaimed Gospel of unconditional love and inclusion, a Gospel that promises release to the captives. Remember that his people were laboring under the countless burdens of the religious laws and regulations they must observe and the taxes that they must pay.  For these crowds that followed Jesus it was a religious burden that weighed them down.  But hear me now. I do not believe that Jesus prophetic critique ends with Judaism and the law. Certainly Jesus challenged the burdensome religious ideologies of his day but His critique springs from the past into the present and I believe is directed not at Judaism but at Christianity.  Christianity today has become for many a religious burden that blocks them from knowing the friendship of Jesus.  The longer I am a pastor the more I see evidence of people who somewhere along the way have been wounded by the church or burdened by religion.  I have friends who to this day are laboring under the yoke of an abusive, fear-inducing, self-hating religious indoctrination.  And to them and to all of us Jesus is saying, not that yoke, take my yoke. In my opinion St. Mark’s is a very healthy community of faith that proclaims in word and life and deed the authentic gospel of Jesus Christ. We have heard the call to discipleship as a call to action, to promote justice, to serve the poor, to be inclusive of those left out, but now are we ready to hear the Gospel, the call to discipleship as an invitation to rest? Perhaps this is what a year of renewal will mean for us. Perhaps this is what our souls most need.

Come to me all you that are weary and heavy laden, 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. Our Rabbi Jesus would have us understand: My yoke will not necessarily be a life of ease. Nor will you always be comfortable. But this yoke that we are offered is a lighter yoke because Jesus is on the other side of the yoke carrying the load. It is the yoke of discipleship. Take this yoke upon you and learn from me. Now a yoke is no longer a familiar reality to modern urban people. But my family has on antique yoke that sits on the porch of our mountain cabin.  That yoke reminded  me of a story I once heard about a city dweller who was traveling through the countryside when he saw a farmer plowing with two oxen, one a huge ox and the other much smaller.  The city dweller laughed that the farmer could be so dim witted as to plow with two unequal partners in the yoke. Calling the farmer over, he said don’t you see that the big ox is carrying the entire load and the small young ox is carrying nothing? The farmer replied: before that young ox call pull any weight he needs to be broken in. All I want that small ox to do right now is to learn the feel of the yoke. Maybe that is what Jesus is saying to us about the yoke of discipleship. Jesus knows we must get a feel for the yoke before we pull any weight.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me.; for I am meek and lowly of heart.  I think of Jesus as a prophet who was strong enough to challenge the powers and principalities. But here he is describing himself as meek. What comes to your mind when I say the word meek? What comes to my mind is that of a passive person, self-effacing; maybe even more negatively a doormat or a wimp. But in biblical vocabulary this is hardly the case. To be meek means to open your life and to be receptive to a meaning that is greater than your life. Being meek means being receptive and dare I say obedient to a power that comes from beyond oneself. Moses the father of all prophets who took on an empire and liberated his people was said to be meek.  And this is the meekness that Jesus models for us. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart.  Humble of heart.  Humility.  Walking Humbly with God.  Maybe the deepest burden we carry is the burden of being a self. How much of our labor in life is spent merely to uphold a sense of self that is so much vanity.  Perhaps it is the weight of this sense of self which is the true burden that we carry, a self that is always laboring to defend its prerogatives, to seek out its advantage, to meet its own needs. We labor under a sense of self that is always working overtime to be reassured that we are the center of the universe.  Wouldn’t it be great to unload this burden?  Would it not be welcome relief to lay down all that separates us from the love of God and lay claim to the new being that Christ offers us here and now?

Brothers and sisters, all who labor and are heavy laden: what is the burden that weighs upon your heart? Is it the sad state of the world or is it much closer to home?  Could it be the dead weight of a religious faith in need of renewal; a faith that no longer speaks to your mind or revives your heart? Paul Tillich the greatest theologian of the last century a refugee from Nazi Germany taught at Union Theological Seminary in NY. In the seminary chapel, Tillich preached to his students and faculty colleagues on this text -Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden.  He said: “When you hear the invitation of Jesus forget all Christian doctrines; forget your own certainties and your own doubts. Forget all Christian morals, your achievements and your failures, when you come to Him. Nothing is demanded of you- no idea of God, and no goodness in yourselves, not your being wise and not your being moral. But what is demanded is only your being open and willing to accept what is given to you, the New Being, the being of love and justice and truth as it is manifest in Him whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light.”

 Affirmation of Faith by Paul Tillich:  “Do not ask in this moment what action will follow from the rest in our souls. Do not ask for you do not ask how the good fruits follow from the goodness of the tree. They follow; actions follows being, and new action and better action, stronger action, follows new being. Better being, stronger being. We and our world would be better, truer, and more just if there were more rest for our souls in our world.”  Quoted from his sermon “The Yoke of Religion” in the collection, The Shaking of the Foundations.