Bulletin Column: Taking on the Yoke of Christ

This appeared as a column in the parish bulletin for Sunday, July 9, 2023.

Greetings in Christ on the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Some of the most comforting words ever spoken by Jesus can be found in our Gospel today. Who among us is not attracted by the offer from our Lord to "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” (Mt. 11:28-29) We live in a time when it is the norm for people to feel over-extended with their schedules, weary from the daily grind, and have hearts filled with anxiety and restlessness. It is even possible for us to have the sense of being overwhelmed within our own religious experience, with its expectations and duties. In other words, the concept of finding our rest in God sounds wonderful but our personal experience is often the opposite. How are we to make sense of this invitation by Jesus to find our rest in him?

As with all scripture passages, we need to look at the context in which Jesus was speaking and go deeper into his words so that we might gain understanding. We should first consider the religious environment at the time of Jesus. Not unlike the variety of religious expressions in our times, 1st Century Judea, Galilee, and Samaria contained numerous competing sects and strains of Judaism, along with the Samaritan and Gentile influences. While it is true that Jesus’ ministry had a wide reach and touched people from across the spectrum, the Gospels point us to an almost continuous conversation Jesus was having with the Pharisee’s throughout his public ministry. The Pharisees were a very influential group of religious reformers within Judaism who pushed for an extreme adherence to the Law of Moses, that included a significant number of additional teachings based on their interpretation of the Law. They believed that only when their rigorous version of Judaism was widely practiced by the people, would God bless and restore Israel to her past glory. Jesus had many interactions with the Pharisees and its likely they were on his mind in our Gospel reading today. Jesus, in a later chapter in Matthew, describes the Pharisees as those who “tie up heavy burdens, (that are) hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.” (Mt. 23:4) Going further, Jesus declares that they “shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces” and our “blind guides” who “have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness.” (Mt. 23:13,16,23) The heavy burdens that the people were under in today’s Gospel were the common challenges and difficulties of life, made worse by the weight of an exteriorly focused and rigorously demanding religion. What the Pharisees taught to the people was neither life-giving nor had the ability to bring about an interior transformation for its adherents. This is why Jesus, later in his ministry, strongly rebukes them: “Woe to you… Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones...” (Mt. 23:27)

What is Jesus offering in contrast to the burdensome religion of the Pharisees? Nothing less than the kingdom of God itself. A kingdom whereby the people truly encounter the living God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. A place where all men and women can experience mercy, forgiveness, healing, and peace in this life and in the life to come. This is the divine “rest” that Jesus offers anyone who shares a “yoke” with him. A yoke was a wooden brace that was fixed over the necks of two animals for the purpose of pulling a plow or a cart. Jesus uses the yoke as a metaphor to help them to understand that when life’s troubles come our way, we have a choice. We can carry those burdens alone or we can take on his “easy yoke.” We may fear the loss of our freedom when we surrender to the yoke of Christ, and yet it is the only place where he can take the weight of what we carry on his shoulders. Today let us pray: “Lord Jesus, help us to say yes to your invitation to find our rest in you. May we desire to learn from you and to have the humility to receive all that you have for us with joy. Amen.