FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME A

[cappie]

For most of the last few weeks, Jesus has been talking about the cost of discipleship – the certainty of persecution, conflict, suffering and painful division for those who choose to follow him.   

Today his tone changes, promising rest and comfort, light burdens, and easy yokes. This is more like it. But Jesus’ words are a little more complex than they seem.

First of all, the primary thrust of what Jesus is saying here is  directed toward people who are on a religious quest – those who are seeking God, and a relationship with God. He is calling to himself those who, have tried all of the usual ways of finding some peace with the divine and have achieved only frustration.

The real clue to this is the fact that a yoke was the common symbol for the Law of Moses, especially for the details of the law and the minute, ever-expanding demands of the legalism of the Pharisees. In fact, this is the main way the rabbis used the word “yoke” allegorically.

The yoke of the Pharisees, their demands that you have to do this and this and this exactly right in order to matter to God, in order to be a decent person, in order to be loved or counted significant – that yoke Jesus rejects, even though it was the yoke of the wise and intelligent.

That yoke, the yoke of seeking God by keeping the rules, by doing what somebody or anybody or everybody else says is the thing to do, by trying to get it right all the time and so living constantly in fear of getting it wrong, that yoke leads those who wear it to “labour and be heavy laden.”  It leads to a religion and a life of fearful obedience to a multitude of petty dictates where the spirit is deadened, and where some measure of success is more likely to lead you into self-righteousness than into the heart of God.

To teach that God says this is not only terrible theology, it can also be devastating. Yet the yoke of the Law, at its worst, did just that.  To go scurrying about with the notion that if we could only figure out the right thing to do  then we would be all right, is to skate on the edge of magic, as if we could conjure up God’s acceptance. It will only ensure frustration. God’s presence with us and God’s love for us are never the results of our actions. He is in charge; we are not.

In response to all of this, Jesus says, “Come to me.” Not to a new law, not to a new teaching,  but “to me.” Come to Jesus himself. In essence, Jesus is saying, “If you seek God; if you seek his love;  a life that makes some sense; if you want to be who you are created to be – if you want this, then come to me.”

It is a call to relationship – to relationship with Jesus and to relationship with the community that continues Jesus’ life and ministry.

The alternatives, then and now, will fail. He will not. Remember today is collect, in which we are reminded that God has taught us that all the commandments are kept by loving God and our neighbour. Such is the yoke of Christ. And since this yoke has to do with these commandments to love, the folks who seriously take that yoke upon themselves usually find that it is shaped very much like a cross.

Jesus calls his yoke “easy.”  The point is that it fits, it is the right size, so it works – it leads to God, and it brings with it wholeness and a peace that can be found nowhere else. We are called to this new yoke, not to a law, or to a set of rules, but to a person and a community built around that person. And in this the religious quest – the greatest journey of human existence – can find its richest fulfillment, and its deepest satisfaction. To come to him is to discover that what can seem a frantic and desperate task – life with God – is, in fact, not an earned reward, but a free gift.
Jesus said, “Come to me if you seek God, if you seek life, I will give you rest.”

To come to him is to discover, as Paul discovered, that “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” To come to him is to discover that the task of getting it all correct is replaced by the absolute gift of God’s grace, and our grateful response to that gift.