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“Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light”
Mt 11:28–30
“Come to me,” Jesus said. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me …“ Learn what? We might ask. Why, learn “the way of God’s statutes,” to use the words of the poet in Psalm 119. But why Jesus’ yoke and not the yoke of God’s law as understood by its authorized and celebrated interpreters? Why come to Jesus, that out of the mainstream rabbi from out of the way Nazareth of all places? “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (Jn 1:46). Even a truly guileless Israelite, Nathanael, had to wonder. Why shouldn’t we? Why come to Jesus instead of to the teachers of the law whose credentials had been certified in ancient Israel’s synagogues––and in the temple at Jerusalem––for generations.
Of course, Jesus’ uniqueness already had been noted in how he taught God’s word, God’s law, “the way of God’s statutes,” concerning which he said “…. not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished” (Mt 5:18). After what is called his “Sermon on the Mount,” we are told how the crowds “were astounded at his teaching, for he taught … as one having authority, and not as their scribes” (Mt. 7:28). We note as well that in his rebuke of his generation’s unresponsiveness to either John the Baptist’s message regarding the nearness of the Kingdom of God, or his own message having to do with the same subject, Jesus referred to himself as “The Son of Man” (Mt 11:19). “Son of Man” is a messianic title taken from the Book of Daniel where it refers to a representative human figure “to whom universal and everlasting dominion shall be given.”[1]
Then, in climactic fashion, in the verse from Matthew’s gospel immediately preceding our text, Jesus spoke of himself as the unique Son of God in whom the presence of God and the will of God are made known. He said:
All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him .
Mt 11:27
In other words, Jesus came as he said, not to abrogate the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them (Mt 5:17), and to invite you and me––and anyone else with ears to hear—to join him in his fulfillment of them. So there it stands, now as then; and either it is sheer chutzpa, an outrage, blasphemy, as those who sought to do away with Jesus found it (Mt 26:65) or it is an authentic divine invitation happily to be taken up. “Come to me,” Jesus says to us now. Is it an option merely, or a self-authenticating authoritative cancellation of all options save this one? “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart. …”
Jesus said he is “gentle,” the word can be translated, has been translated, as “meek.” “Meek” does not indicate obsequiousness. It indicates that what pleases Jesus is not the pursuit of self-interest. Instead, what pleases him is to do what serves his Father’s good pleasure, whatever the cost. And we know that at last, it cost Jesus himself dearly. Further, Jesus is long-suffering. That he is gentle implies that he is long-suffering as well as meek. So, for example, though Jesus never condones sin, he does forgive it. He bears patiently, urgently, yet patiently with sinners, even the worst, so that women, and men, and children as well, may feel the burden of sin (of rebellion against the way of God’s statutes) lifted. Therefore they are freed more and more to live beyond the debilitations of guilt. Freud, it is claimed, said: “He who controls the world’s guilt controls the world.”
But if sin is forgiven, if humanity’s burden of guilt is lifted, guilt is no longer available as a means of control and humanity goes free. Humanity goes free to aspire to a standard of conduct that in this life, it is unlikely to achieve: withholding anger when provoked, refraining from insult when insulted, holding out hope of reconciliation in the face of what may appear to be irreconcilable differences, seeking the total welfare of those who couldn’t care less for you—who in fact may have “done you dirt”—which is what it means to love your enemies. All this is explicated in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:1ff.) Nineteenth-century poet, Robert Browning, caught the sense of it, “ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp/or what’s a heaven for?”[2] Jesus puts it in the plainest prose, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). There’s an earful! Jesus’ gentleness, his meekness, his long-suffering must not be mistaken for an indulgent affection tolerant of everything that comes its way. Renowned mid-twentieth century preacher, George Arthur Buttrick called it a “hidden fire of wrath”[3] kindled to burn everything that encumbers people as they seek to be taught “the way of God’s statutes, and observe it to the end” (Ps 119:33).
Then Jesus says he is “humble in heart.” Likewise we––who should doubt it?––are instructed to be humble in heart, in will, in intention. We are to take Jesus’ yoke upon ourselves, surrendering willfulness in self-regard as we undertake the life work to which Jesus calls us. Jesus’ humility beautifully is summed up in Philippians where Paul’s epistolary prose trembles on the brink of poetry and song. There the apostle says of Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death–even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, So that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:5–11).
In Eastern Orthodox worship this ancient Christian hymn, held in mind as a single-word phrase, is sung while a liturgical cross is lowered and raised over worshippers in benediction to symbolize Christ’s humiliation and glorification. Thus, through sung praise (and lived experience), Christ’s humiliation and glorification are shared by all who believe in Jesus as the one—the only Son—whom the Father knows and who knows the Father, and who reveals the Father to whomever he chooses. And whom does he not choose?
To take upon oneself the yoke of Christ Jesus, then, is to seize upon Christ’s invitation to become adopted daughters and sons of God, siblings of the only begotten Son of God (e.g. Rom 8:14–17). It is also to be joined to the true humanity of the messianic Son of Man as foretold by the prophet Daniel. Think of it! Our humanity joined to Christ’s divinity through the Son of God’s “entering this life of ours to bear himself the weight of it, forever merciful in his judgment, and just in all his compassion.”[4] So it was put by the late, great Lutheran preacher and homiletician, Paul Scherer, my mentor, colleague and friend. The apostle Paul, in Colossians, startles us with these words: “… you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory” (Col 3:3b-4).
Can you take it in? Yoked to God’s Son, we are not, by his Father—our Father—regarded as the morally compromised, ethically obtuse, spiritually confounded, and guilt-burdened souls we from time to time—no doubt with warrant—may think ourselves to be. To the contrary, we are gentle, meek, long-suffering. We are humble, too, as he was humble, not in self-abnegation, but in self-fulfillment through service to God and neighbor. This staggers the imagination: we, you and I, by God, are counted among the humble, the gentle, the long-suffering, the meek who are to inherit the earth (Mt 5:5) and to possess (as sheer gift) the kingdom of heaven (Mt 5:10). “Do not be afraid, little flock,” Jesus says in Luke’s account of the gospel, “for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Lk 12:32).
Such is the kingdom of God, such is the presence and power of God, that burdened with immeasurable grief, we know God’s solace, that halting in anguish and despair nigh unto death, we know God’s quickening of our spirits through the indwelling in us of his Holy Spirit, that, faulted by conscience or condemned by the verbal assaults of tongues sharpened to speak our shame, we know the unflagging companionship of him of whom it was said—by his enemies, whom he loved: “Look, a glutton and a drunkard [which he was not], a friend of tax collectors and sinners [which he was] (Mt 11:19b). “Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens,” Jesus says, “and you will find rest,” divine refreshment, that is what it means, and the happiness of an eternal sabbath (rest for the soul) in the present moment and in the everlasting future. Saint Thomas á Kempis heard and felt Jesus’ “Come to me, all,” and he cried out in prayer:
Thou art witness unto me, O God, that nothing can comfort me, no creature can give me rest, but Thou only, my God, whom I long to contemplate everlastingly.[5]
“Come to me all …, All come to me,” Jesus says. Christ sets no limit to the blessed all.
And coming, what do we find but that, as Jesus says, “his yoke is easy, and his burden is light.” His yoke does not chafe, for it is shaped to our need of it, which is our need of him. And his burden is light, for it is the burden of his caring for us as for no one else, and it is the burden of his caring for all others as if for us alone. Centuries ago, Bernard of Clairvaux sang of it in a melody and cadence of victory: “O blessed burden that makes all burdens light! O blessed yoke that bears the bearer up.”[6] So also George Frederick Handel in his glorious Messiah made it dance in our hearing, so we may sing:
His yoke is easy
His burthen is light
His burthen, his burthen is light! [7]
This sermon is printed here with permission from Wipf & Stock from the forthcoming volume, Witness to Life: Preaching and Poetry as Theology and Art.
[1] Davis, Gehman, The Westminster Dictionary of the Bible, 572.
[2] Browning, “Andrea Del Sarto”, Selections from The Poetical Works of Robert Browning, 77.
[3] Buttrick, The Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 7, p. 390.
[4] Scherer, in Wallis, ed. Worship Resources for the Christian year, 333.
[5] See Speer, Five Minutes a Day, 276.
[6] See Buttrick, The Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 7, 391.
[7] Handel, The Messiah, 98.
