Easy? Really?

Easy? Really?

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

July 9, 2017

Scripture: Matthew 11:28-30

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

We all love the Bible, right? It is the foundational text of our Christian faith. Christianity simply isn’t possible without it. It contains the texts about Jesus Christ that our tradition says are necessary for a full understanding of him and of our faith. It contains divine wisdom of the ages. From it we learn as much as we can know about who God is, who Jesus Christ is, and what God wants from us. In it we find hope and comfort. We also find challenge and confounding paradox that points toward ultimate truth. Christians spend entire lifetimes seeking to understand just small parts of it, and Christians who have never done that nonetheless read it for the truth they find in it, the hope it gives, the comfort it provides in the travails of life. It is the world’s greatest faith document. All of it serves us Christians, and part of it serves Judaism, our mother faith. It is the one book we Christians simply cannot be without.

You love the Bible. I love the Bible, but here’s the thing. Sometimes the Bible can drive us, or at least drive me, nuts. That passage we just heard from the Gospel of Matthew is one of the places where it does. Someone once said that every preacher has one good sermon that she or he gives over and over again. I’d say that each us has a few good sermons not just one, but we do give them over and over again in different guises. One of my good sermons—at least I think it’s good, I can’t speak for you—is about how hard the Christian faith can be. Jesus really speaks to me when he says that to be his disciple we must deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him. I don’t think he meant “take up your cross” as a metaphor even if we do understand it that way. I think in the world of early Christianity being Christian could lead you to the cross, or to some other brutal form of execution by the ruling powers. I think and often preach in one way or another that being Christian is immensely difficult because if we really understand the Christian faith that’s precisely what we must do, take up our cross, understanding the cross here at least as metaphor. Christianity calls for radical transformation of the world starting with a radical transformation of each human heart. At the close of our service this morning we will sing the hymn “The Summons.” It’s one of my favorites. It speaks powerfully of this truth about the faith. Its lyrics have God asking us “Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name,” and “Will you love the ‘you’ you hide,” that is, will you love your true self not the false self that most of us live in most of the time, and saying over and over again “and never be the same.” Those lines are about a radical transformation of our very selves, and they speak to the heart of the Christian faith. Maybe I think Christian faith is hard because mine caused me to undertake a radical transformation of my life that I was too old to do and couldn’t afford when in my 50s I left the private practice of law and went to seminary. Whatever. The truth remains that Jesus calls us to take up our cross, and he knew full well that that isn’t easy.

Then we come to our verses this morning from the same Gospel in which Jesus says deny yourself and take up your cross. In our verses this morning he says: “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’s pretty much the opposite of what he said when he told us to deny ourselves and take up our crosses to follow him, or at least that’s what it looks like at first blush. There Jesus challenges us to risk everything for him. Here he tells us that with him we’ll find rest for our souls because following him is so easy. Of course I’ve known for a very long time that those verses are in our Bible; and, frankly, they’re kind of always in the back of my mind niggling at me when I preach about how hard it can be to follow Jesus. Then for today up pop those verses in the lectionary. When I saw them I think I groaned. Yet I decided to preach on them this morning precisely because I find them so troubling. Because I wrestle with how to reconcile them with “take up your cross and follow me.” So that’s what I’m about to do—attempt to reconcile these two seemingly diametrically opposed sayings.

When we take these two sayings together, when we hear both take up your cross and follow me and my yoke is easy and my burden is light, we, or at least I, want immediately to find a way to make them both true. They are both sayings of Jesus and, frankly, it sounds to me like he probably really said both of them. And actually, that hymn we’re going to sing in a little bit I think gives us the answer to how these sayings can both be true, or at least it points toward an answer to that dilemma. It’s in the last verse, which I suppose is where it belongs, for it speaks an ultimate truth about following Christ. That verse says:

Lord Your summons echoes true

When you but call my name.

Let me turn and follow You

And never be the same.

In Your company I’ll go,

Where Your love and footsteps show.

Thus I’ll move and live and grow in You,

And You in me.

The answer to the dilemma Jesus creates when he says both “take up your cross and follow me” and “my yoke is easy and my burden is light” is solved by just one line in that last verse of The Summons.” It’s the verse that says “In Your company I’ll go.” The answer to how taking up our cross can be an easy yoke and a light burden is that we we never take up our crosses alone. God is always there with us when we take them up. Jesus knew that life isn’t easy. He knew that the radical new way he was calling and teaching his people to live would put them squarely at odds with the religious and political culture of their time. That’s why following him involves taking up your cross. To take up one’s cross is to live into the realm of God while still in the realm of the world, and is far from an easy thing to do. Jesus knew that. God knows that. Jesus called us to do something that’s almost impossible, to overcome the culture that formed us and to live into the culture that is God’s dream for the world. And he knew that we couldn’t possibly do it alone. He knew that without God’s help we wouldn’t even come close. So Jesus never said we had to do it alone. He never gave us a task and said go do it on your own. He said remember that I am with you always to the end of the age. He said God will send you the Holy Spirit to be your aid, your guide, and your comforter. Yes, the life of faith can be challenging, but we never have to do it alone. God is always there to help us do it.

Now, on level we know that God is with us always, but let’s be honest here. Sometimes, maybe much of the time, God’s presence is pretty hard to detect. So just how does God’s presence make what is otherwise a hard yoke easy and a heavy burden light? Well, for God’s presence to do that we have to turn to God for help when the yoke feels too hard and the burden feels too light. When we do, we will find that God is there to give us strength when we feel weak. To give us courage when we are afraid. To give us energy when we feel tired. To buck us up when we feel frustrated and think nothing we do will ever make much of a difference. God is there to strengthen our spirits. God is there to show us the way. God is there to forgive us when we fail and rejoice with us when we succeed. God is there to hold us in everlasting arms of grace when we need to be comforted. There are so many ways in which God’s presence with us makes the yoke easy and the burden light. There are as many ways that God does that as there are problems we face and difficulties we think we can’t overcome.

So, is Christ’s yoke easy and his burden light? From the perspective of the world no. From the perspective of the world the life of faith is more challenging than it is easy. But from the perspective of the spirit yes. From God’s perspective, yes. The yoke is easy and the burden is light because we bear them together with our God. The yoke is easy and the burden is light because nothing we do or fail to do will ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. That’s why Jesus can know full well what challenges the life of faith brings and still say my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Thanks be to God. Amen