[1] Matthew 11:29-30
[2] Psalm 145:9
[3] Romans 8:6
[4] Romans 8:1-2
July 3, 2005; Proper 9, Year A
The Rev. Harold "Skip" Comer, Rector
A little boy was sitting in church one Sunday and when he heard our Gospel reading for today, the part that says, “Take my yoke upon you,” all he could do was picture Jesus throwing eggs at him.
I believe that we are all aware that a yoke is a device that is placed around the neck of an ox or other animal so that it can pull something. A yoke that is fitted properly will not hurt the animal and allow it to pull heavy loads. But a yoke that is not properly fitted will irritate the neck and shoulders of an animal, thereby hurting it. A yoke also used to control the animal so that it can be steered in the direction that the owner wants it to go.
By the time of Jesus a yoke also had a different connotation. The Jewish rabbis spoke of the yoke of the law. We need to remember that the Jewish Law was more than the Ten Commandments. There were some 600 or so laws in existence at the time of Jesus that governed how Jews were suppose to live. This book, The Mishnah, contains those laws, plus others that were compiled within a hundred years of Jesus’ death. These Laws were intended to steer the people in the right direction; to live and behave as God’s chosen people. If you were good, obeying the laws, your relationship with God was good and he would bless you. If you violated the law, then you jeopardized your relationship with God and could be the recipient of his wrath.
Can you imagine a relationship based upon laws or rules? Take a marital relationship. Rather than love being the determining force, the relationship would be based upon a set of rules that had been established by someone else. The strength of the relationship and love would be substantiated by how well we followed the rules. Along with the rules came penalties or punishment for not behaving. It doesn’t sound to inviting to me.
The yoke had come to symbolize not only control, but the burden that the Jewish people were living under in trying to follow the Law.
“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.”[1]
Notice that Jesus doesn’t say that there is no “yoke.” He is not saying that the law should be thrown out. What he offers is the “spirit of the Law;” love God, love your neighbor. Jesus taught that our relationship with God is based upon love – God’s love for us, and our response – to love God.
While we can earn someone’s respect by doing what they want or excelling in something, you cannot earn someone’s love. That is the difference between what was taught by the Jewish religious leaders and Jesus. The Pharisees, Sadducees, and Priest taught that God only loved those who earned his respect by obeying the Law. Jesus taught that God loves us unconditionally and is awaiting our response.
It sounds so inviting – all we have to do is love God. But what does love entail? I turn to Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, where in the thirteenth chapter, he gives some of the characteristics of love: patient, kind, does not insist on its own way, rejoices in the truth, bears all things, endures all things, it never ends. These along with what love is not, is a good beginning to understanding love.
When we are drawn to someone there is a desire to express that affection. Hugs and kisses are one way to express that love, but if it ends there it is probably more of a physical attraction than true love. True love seeks a deeper level of bonding and intimacy than the physical expression of it.
But even love is not without its demands on us. Love requires a focusing on the one loved, placing ourselves, the “me,” in second place. In all that we do, consideration must be given as to how it will affect the other person, the relationship. This can be seen as a yoke, as it does constrain us from doing what ever “we” want. But this type of yoke is easier than the yoke of law because it is assumed voluntarily. The demands do not seem as great because of the relationship that we have.
I believe that this is what Jesus was trying to get at. The yoke of the Law did not draw the people into a relationship with God. Laws cannot draw us into relationships, into love. Laws only dictate what should and should not be done. Laws are only effective when there is a system of reward and punishment.
While love may seek the reward, it is not the reason that we love, or that God loves us. Love seeks to be expressed, it is a part of God’s nature, it is a part of our nature. There is always the hope that the love will be returned, but it is not a condition of loving. And love does not seek to punish or abuse.
This is what we find in Jesus Christ, the gift of love to humanity. Jesus is God’s expression of his love for us with the hope that in coming to know and accept Jesus we will want to enter into a love relationship with God. As we know from the Gospels, Jesus did not come to punish, but to invite, just a love invites.
Hundreds of years before Jesus the Psalmist wrote “The Lord is loving to everyone, and his compassion is over all his works.”[2] That love and compassion were to find fullest expression in Jesus Christ who provides rest for our souls in the assurance that when we turn to him we will receive the Spirit of God which is life and peace[3] to all of us.
May we praise God for the outpouring of his love upon us
in Jesus Christ, who has set us free, as