Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest...

“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” (Matthew 11:28-30).

Weary…that’s a good word for what I’m feeling right now—how about you? Weary. Weary from the COVID-19 fight: weary from its social isolation, weary from the loneliness of not spending time with friends and family, weary from the worry and uncertainty and unpredictability of the spread of the disease, weary of the day-by-day grind. Weary, too, of the ever-escalating rhetoric on both sides of the political spectrum: weary of the yelling and the violence and the threats, weary by our inability to find common ground and common purpose in our lives together in community. Just…weary. 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus invites us, and all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, to come to him and find rest. Jesus offers us his yoke, which, he says, is easy. His burden, he says, is light. What could that possibly mean? 

Could it mean that following Jesus is easy? After all, Jesus has more or less flaunted the difficult rules of Jewish religious law over and over again, saying things to the Pharisees like “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). No, it can’t be that—in Matthew 5 Jesus says not one dot will fall from the law, and whoever breaks the least commandment will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven. In our Gospel just three weeks ago from chapter 10, Jesus told his disciples to expect persecution and hatred, and enmity even between family members…So…it’s kind of like in the Princess Bride: when Jesus says “easy,” I don’t think that word means what we think it means.

 

The Prophet Jeremiah mourned for the destruction of the Children of Israel and enslavement by Babylon, saying, “For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?” (Jer 8:21-22). For me, that kind of lament hits home. There’s the kind of achy but somehow good tired I feel after a day of really hard, successful physical labor—and there’s the kind of bone-crushing weariness I feel when I can’t see hope, when there is no balm for my exhausted muscles and my drained psyche…When I have a sin-sick soul. This burden, I contend, is the burden Jesus asks us to lay down, and he invites us to pick up a different burden, to take on his easy burden.

Soul-sick weariness is not the inevitable consequence of all hard work: it’s the consequence of work to which we are ill suited, of work motivated by fear, of work done by forced labor, of work performed in the face of futility. The spiritual we just sang was created by slaves laboring under all those conditions. Through those horrors, they created this song as an expression of hope for freedom, with a belief in a certain future in which God’s Kingdom come on earth will come to pass. 

I’ve mentioned Anglican theologian and Bishop N.T. Wright before. His little book Surprised by Hope is a summary of his key thoughts, and that title really says it all-- As Christians, we must find ourselves, ultimately, surprised by the startling hope of the simple message of the Gospel: Jesus has conquered death and sin; his victory is the turning point in the battle and victory is assured; every bit of work we do to prepare for his return is worthwhile, and none of it—none of it—is in vain. Work under the yoke of Jesus is easy, because under that yoke, nothing is futile.

What does it really mean to accept Jesus’ yoke? And will it really relieve our weariness? I’ve been thinking and praying quite a lot about that these last few weeks, searching for tangible ways to start healing our wounds and binding up our fractured society. I’ve just finished a book by Lee Camp, a conservative Evangelical who’s a Bible professor at a college in Nashville. In Scandalous Witness, Camp says:

We must…come anew to the conviction that Christianity is not a religion. It is a politic. Tragically few people—including the majority of Christians, whether liberal or conservative—recognize Christianity as a politic. I am not suggesting the more palatable notion merely that Christianity has political implications. I am suggesting that it is itself a politic, which has an all-encompassing vision of human history…By politic I mean an all-encompassing manner of communal life that grapples with all the questions the classical art of politics has always asked: How do we live together? How do we deal with offenses? How do we deal with money? How do we deal with enemies and violence? How do we arrange marriage and families and social structures? How is authority mediated, employed, ordered? How do we rightfully order passions and appetites? And much more besides, but most especially add these: Where is human history headed? What does it mean to be human? And what does it look like to live in a rightly ordered human community that engenders flourishing, justice, and the peace of God?...Jesus was not crucified because he was spiritual. He was crucified because he incarnated a new way of being king and a new way of being human, a new way that terrifies even the most spiritual of kings and presidents and prime ministers to this day.

Camp is adamant that Christianity is neither liberal nor conservative, cannot be liberal or conservative, and that no nation, not ours and not any, should be, or ever could be, called a “Christian” nation. Scripture tells us to pray for our leaders and to work for the peace of welfare of the nation we live in, but it also tell us that our primary citizenship is in God’s Kingdom. We are ambassadors for Christ here, as though God were pleading through us, Paul tells the Corinthians (2 Cor 5:20).

On this Fourth of July Weekend, I am convinced that part of our current weariness is because we have yoked ourselves, mistakenly, to a vision of our nation as savior, rather than yoking ourselves to Jesus, and a savior has to be perfect. Any earthly kingdom—every earthly kingdom—is  contingent, its power used both to liberate and to dominate, its resources used for building up and in creating pollution and waste, its justice system always open to reform, its history both noble and triumphant and savage and brutal, its stories always glorifying some and ignoring others, its systems always benefitting some and disregarding others. Surely we have much to celebrate and be proud of, but we must also know that each of us sees through a glass, dimly, and only in part (1 Cor 13:12). Treating our nation as if it were our savior is idolatrous and it’s futile, and striving for what is futile makes us soul-sick and weary.

As Christians, we must proclaim that the only shining city is the New Jerusalem, the only savior is Jesus Christ, and the only ultimate truth is that we are all sinners, forgiven and loved by God. If we yoke ourselves to that truth, we no longer need be wearied by the need to take sides in the current bitter political climate. That is, we’re all on the same side—Jesus’ side that was pierced for our sins. Jesus is gentle and humble in heart, and we are yoked to his way of being, too. I pray you will take up Jesus’ yoke, take up humility and hope and full citizenship in the Kingdom of God that is so near. I pray that by living more fully as a citizen in God’s Kingdom you will find you can live more fully, and more fearlessly, and with more forgiveness, and with more hope, in this earthly one. Instead of hopeless exhaustion from bearing burdens you’re not made for, I pray you’ll know sore muscles from our true labor, from being ambassadors in God’s ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:19). That weariness, those sore muscles, will be soothed, because there is a balm in Gilead—Jesus, the Prince of Peace, and the Great Physician.