Matthew 11:16-30
“Easy Yoke”
July 5, 2020 – Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
“I’m bored!” Those are words every parent hates, but you may have heard them a lot lately, maybe said them yourself. Nice weather and some restrictions lifted have changed it a little, but families still have to deal with little people more confined than they would like. You say, “Go outside and swing. Play with your brother. Color a picture. Build something with Legos,” or even, “Clean your room.” And every idea you come up with meets with indifference and more whining, “Noooo, I don’t want to do thaaat.”
Children were not any different in the first century. In a little parable in verses 16 and 17, Jesus compared people’s lack of satisfaction with Him and John the Baptist to children being called to play a game in the streets. As Jesus pictures it, one group of children is trying to get another group to join a game. But their playmates refuse every option.
The games are make-believe grown-up activities. “Let’s play ‘wedding!’” they say. “Let’s play the flute and dance like adults do when people get married.” Those may have been boys, because it was men who danced at weddings. No takers for that idea. “So then, let’s play ‘funeral.’ We’ll sing slow, sad songs and pretend to weep and wail like you do when someone has died.” That might have been girls, since women were the ones who wept and wailed for the dead. But neither option appeals. They are jaded and bored.
It is exactly the same spirit, says Jesus in verse 18, which infected those who met John the Baptist and then Jesus. That mournful funeral game is a good image of the dour John. He was a hermit in the desert, fasting from food, abstaining from wine, and preaching a downbeat message of repentance. So they regarded him as a maniac, or as they put it in those days, someone possessed with a demon. No one wanted to join John’s sad game of being sorry for their sins and spiritual discipline.
Then along came Jesus who was at home in towns and cities, who evidently liked to go to parties and feasts, and who enjoyed the food and drink being served. And, yes, Jesus did go to weddings. Scripture doesn’t say, but He may have even liked to dance. Yet grown-up bored children didn’t want to play His game either. They declared Him a glutton and a drunkard. They disapproved of His lack of discrimination in choosing friends, people like “tax collectors and sinners.” In their eyes, Jesus was a disgusting, party animal, a bore.
Boredom like Jesus describes is one of the great hazards of spiritual life. In his book, Either/Or, Soren Kierkegaard writes that, “Boredom is the root of all evil.” He meant boredom generates all sorts of ugly and wrong activity which is supposed to entertain or divert us but only makes things worse. I’d guess that deep boredom is at the root of young and old people carelessly going to parties or rallies and getting infected with coronavirus.
Jesus knew that much of our boredom, especially our boredom with spiritual things, is really a lack of wisdom. At the end of verse 19, He quoted a proverb: “Wisdom is proved right by her actions.” Some manuscripts say, “by her children,” keeping the image of the parable going. The children of wisdom are not bored. They want to play the good and holy games to which God invites them.
John and Jesus demonstrated wisdom in what they did. Their different forms of spiritual life are two poles of a balanced wisdom. Strong spirituality combines humble repentance and disciplined sacrifice like John’s and grateful celebration of God’s blessings like Jesus enjoyed. Yet both of them played the other’s game too. John rejoiced when he met Jesus and said, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Jesus called for repentance and made His own great sacrifice. Wisdom is both, not either/or.
You and I wise up and find our own balance as we learn to both live sacrificially and celebrate joyfully. That kind of spiritual balance is the cure for boredom. Lean too much in one direction or the other and we will find ourselves defeated, depressed, and yes, bored.
Wise balance comes from Jesus. In our reading from Romans 7, we hear Paul almost despairing as he talks about how we keep sinning, keep doing what we do not want to do. But then when he asks who will deliver him from that captivity, he concludes, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
By ourselves, we always go to one extreme or the other. We either work too hard or play too much, or like children we become so discontented that we end up doing neither. That’s especially possible staying at home. We become numb, mindlessly surfing social media or zoning out to music playing in our ears, with none of it making us happy, none of it bringing any real peace. Without Christ balancing us out, we can’t find the way to wisdom. That’s why Jesus is so harsh in the next few verses.
Verse 20 moves from a parable about bored children to a fiery condemnation of specific towns. Korazin and Bethsaida were quiet rural villages. Bethsaida was the home of Peter, Andrew and Philip. Jesus did “deeds of power,” miracles, there, but people weren’t interested. So He compared them with two Phoenician cities on the coast. Tyre and Sidon had reputations like Las Vegas or Amsterdam. They were “sin cities.” But those pagan towns would be better off on judgment day than little villages in the heartland of Galilee. If the seaside resorts had seen Jesus’ miracles they would have repented. Bethsaida and Korazin were worse because they saw what Jesus did and ignored it.
Jesus reserved His harshest denunciation for the place He lived, Capernaum. Verse 23 compares it to Babylon in Isaiah 14, imagining itself “exalted to heaven.” Instead, like Babylon, it will be brought down to Hades. Even ancient Sodom, says Jesus, would have responded better. Sodom would have repented if Jesus had gone there and done His miracles. Capernaum paid no attention to the fact that God was walking in its streets.
Boredom and apathy are a great failure of wisdom. To encounter Jesus and pay little attention is worse than never meeting Him at all. Jesus healed the sick, cast out demons, and even raised the dead. Yet Capernaum was untouched. Business as usual. They thought they were wise, but didn’t care about the glory right before their eyes.
In verse 25, Jesus turned from condemning those who failed to notice Him to praising the Father for those who did receive Him. In a paradox that both the Bible and philosophy teach us, those who think they are wise often are not. So God let the truth about Jesus be hidden from those upright, “wise” towns of Galilee, but revealed it to those who are like little children. That, Jesus said in verse 26, was what pleased His Father, to make wisdom a gift given to those who delighted in it like infants, like babies. God gives the gift of wisdom to those willing to come along and play the game Jesus is playing.
Jesus then explained in verse 27 that His game, everything He does, comes from God His Father: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father.” Jesus is showing us how to play. It all starts by receiving what God gives.
Then we hear more about how the game is played. “and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son.” It’s a back and forth that has been there from the beginning. God the Father knows and loves His Son and God the Son knows and loves His Father. The ultimate reality of the universe is like a spiritual game of catch, with love as the ball being tossed in between. Love is given and love is received and love is given back. We will explore this in weeks to come as we take up love as the third and last theological virtue.
In the meantime, the great good news for us here is that game of love is not closed between Father and Son, nor even between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the three persons of God. Jesus came to call out to us in the street that we are invited to come and play with Him, to join in the game. So He said, “no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and” (it is a glorious and wonderful “and,”) “and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
Jesus has chosen to reveal the Father and all the divine wisdom to anyone who will hear and receive a gracious, gentle invitation to come and join the game. Jesus invites us to quit being bored with both mundane sadness and ordinary joy found in this world. Instead, enter into the grand game of His love. Verse 28 is one of the sweetest invitations in the Bible: “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.” The Son of God says, “Come.” He reveals His Father to anyone who is willing. His wisdom is not exclusive, but welcomes whoever who will come and accept it.
Verse 29 explains the rest that Jesus offers. It’s not just another dreary option, like when you tell a bored child who doesn’t want to do anything else, “Well then just go take a nap.” The rest, the wisdom, of Jesus is not lying down. It’s not doing nothing. It’s a beautiful balance of gift and practice, of celebration and sacrifice. Jesus isn’t offering a couch to flake out on, but a yoke to carry. Through the gift of knowing God in Christ, we are invited into the discipline of serving God in Christ.
The idea of a yoke can be frightening. Our nation is currently wrestling with the painful fact that human beings in this land were yoked into slavery for at least a couple hundred years. Unjust systems and structures still put heavy burdens on people, keeping them impoverished, poorly educated and fearful for their lives. So how can Jesus’ invitation to “take my yoke upon you,” be good news? Doesn’t everyone just want to be free?
Jesus tells us here that He is gentle and humble in heart. He’s deliberately identifying with the messiah king promised in our reading today from Zechariah 9, who comes humbly riding in on a donkey. But how can we trust that? Lord knows that Christians have a reputation for making things hard on others and even on themselves. Try to join the game and all of a sudden there are all these rules and new burdens to carry.
In answer to that worry about Jesus’ yoke, George MacDonald wrote that a friend taught him what it means. Jesus is not asking us to take upon our necks a yoke which is merely like His. He asks us to take His yoke, the very same one He is carrying. He’s saying, “Take the other end of my yoke, doing as I do, being as I am.”[1] This is a two-animal yoke, a yoke for a team. Jesus is carrying and pulling one side of it. Christ the Lord does not lay upon us any burden which He Himself is not also, at the very same time, lifting with us.
The Christian is not just carrying a yoke. We are in yoke with Jesus, He at one end and you at the other, walking along the way of life together. Every burden, every struggle, every hard road that you encounter is being carried and met and walked by Jesus right beside you. We find our rest, our easy exercise, through a Savior so gentle and humble in heart that He willingly carries our burdens with us.
Jesus’ yoke is partly easy for Him because He enjoys all the natural gifts of being God’s Son. Yet that need not make us jealous or envious, like some of us might be when we see those born with advantages like wealth or natural ability. Jesus came to share with us the very same gifts of God’s grace and wisdom which He enjoys. Then He comes right alongside us to help us use those gifts in loving sacrifice.
Celebration and sacrifice. That is balanced wisdom which can only be found in and through a relationship with Jesus Christ. His own life was the perfect expression of that wisdom. He celebrated. He ate and drank good food and wine, enjoying the gifts of God. He went to weddings and parties and synagogue services, rejoicing in the grace of life. And He sacrificed. He gave Himself up in service to others, healing them, feeding them, and finally dying for them. That’s His balance. That’s His wisdom which brings rest for the soul. That’s His yoke. He invites you and I to carry it with Him as He carries it with us.
If you are restless today, then I invite you into the yoke of Jesus. Get back into the harness, return to that restful rhythm of celebration and sacrifice in Christ. Or perhaps you’ve never really been there before, never really felt what it’s like when Jesus carries one end of the load. In either case, I welcome you for the first time into that restful discipline, into that joy. MacDonald says, “Bearing the same yoke with Jesus [we learn] to walk step for step with Him… drawing the cart laden with the will of the Father…, and rejoicing with the joy of Jesus.”[2]
On a backpacking trip with the Scouts I learned an old backpacker’s trick which helps me understand how we rest while stepping with Jesus. We were climbing over a pass, up from beautiful Jenny Lake in the northern Sierras. It was a steep, hot climb in the sun and seemed to go on and on. Our packs just seemed to get heavier. Some of us felt like quitting.
As we took a break our leader said, “Let me show you something.” He called it the “rest step.” As you climb a steep grade, with each step you completely straighten out the leg in back and let your weight rest on it for a moment before you transfer your weight to the front leg. That straightening allows a space when all the weight is held by bone, not by tired muscles. It may not seem like much, but that tiny bit of rest for your muscles lets you keep going yet a while longer.
We tried the rest step. It didn’t make the packs lighter or the trail shorter or the pass any lower. But that little space of muscle relaxation helped us keep going on over the top. I can’t really speak to the physiology or genuineness of what a rest step offers, but I do know that Jesus offers us true rest like that, rest while still on the way, relaxation in the midst of labor which allows us to keep on. He offers rest to us out of His own strength, bending His back under the very same loads which we carry.
There is more, of course. We Scouts came finally to the end of the trail, took those heavy packs off, and sat down to share an ice chest full of soda pop. In the end, the gift of Jesus Christ is a complete rest, the removal of every burden, and a seat at the table in His Father’s house. We will eat and drink together in the kingdom of God.
For today though, we walk with the rest step and we share this trail snack we call the Lord’s Table, a meal on the way, a refreshment for the journey. May you find in Jesus rest for your soul and at this table find strength to continue on with Him, carrying His easy yoke and finding His burden light. He said, “Come” to everyone who will. So come. Then go. Go and repent and rejoice. Go to live for another week in yoke with Jesus, sacrificing yourself alongside His sacrifice for you. Rejoice in His grace and serve in His strength. Celebration and sacrifice. It’s the real rhythm of life. It’s wisdom. It’s rest.
Amen.
Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2020 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
[1] Life Essential, edited by Rolland Hein (Wheaton, Illinois, Harold Shaw Publishers: 1974), p. 73.
[2] Ibid.