Matthew 11:25-30

At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have

hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 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. “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.”

That last line from the Scriptures is an invitation and a promise:  “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavily laden and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; you will find rest for yourself for my yoke is easy and my burden light.”  The more precise translation is not so much easy, which implies being a Christian is easy.  Following Christ is not easy.  A better translation is “good  and kind.”  The cost of discipleship is very much. Here Jesus makes plenty of references in the Scriptures to the cost of discipleship.  It isn’t easy, but that yoke is good to bear and it leads to life, a paradox really, that by giving our burden to Christ we actually take on another: Christ’s call to lighten our load by carrying the burden of others.

There are a few different ways to look at this idea of yoke in today’s Scripture.  Because Jesus and all the people listening to him would have known and memorized the Hebrew Scriptures, Jesus used references from the Old Testament, Hebrew Scriptures, so in the Hebrew Scriptures “yoke” meant the imperial rule, the Roman Empire, and so Jesus is specifically contrasting this kingdom of God to the Roman rule, to imperial rule.  But Jesus is a compassionate, meek king, that God’s kingdom is life-giving, unlike the time and place in which they found themselves where they were oppressed by the government.

A second way Jesus is using this image of the yoke is that of the law of Moses, which some believe had become so obsessed with the legalism of the Pharisees, the minute details of the law, and they had become distracted from the service of the law to the words of the law in which “oppressive” literally means an unreasonable or burdensome worry.  But Jesus calls us to this new yoke, not to a law or a set of rules or secret hidden interpretations, not to a book, not to a list but to a person and a community.  The community part will come in later.

What’s radical is that Jesus is inviting us into a relationship, as I spoke last week about the table and community and how we are invited into that table.  God says that all of the commandments are kept by loving God and our neighbor.  The yoke of Christ is a call to love and to forgive, to be merciful and to help others.  Another way of looking at yoke and bringing it more into today’s world is the yoke as the beam that binds the animal to the plow.  We think of beasts of burden, bearing a load, a duty or a responsibility, something oppressive or worrisome.  So when I think of burden I think of a heavy weight on my shoulders and in fact most of what I do in yoga is trying to get out of this position, to stretch: the weight I carry on my shoulders and the stress it causes me.

So on social media I put out this question:  What is a burden you carry and something that symbolizes that burden?