Heavy Burdens

Matthew 11:16-30

Jesus must be pretty angry.

“What can I say about this generation?!” he says. “These people are like a bunch of children, arguing and complaining, ‘why won’t you play the way I want to play?!’ ”

"All these places where I have been hard at work," he goes on, "teaching and healing and revealing miracles and wonders – and you just sit there, you won’t recognize what I’m telling you about the kingdom of heaven,

you don’t want to change and grow and take God seriously!"

Yes, Jesus is angry, and probably frustrated. 

And that’s what pretty much everyone in my Facebook feed has been saying this week, too:

What’s wrong with you people?   Jesus wouldn’t do that! You can’t really be Christian – you just want to have it all your own way!!

Of course the people in my Facebook feed aren’t talking about Chorazin and Bethsaida and Capernaum – the places that got Jesus so riled up.  They’re talking about Hobby Lobby, and the US Supreme Court – and their friends, family and neighbors. I’ve been witness to a number of vivid and fairly personal online arguments about what’s Christian and godly this past week.

The issues are actually pretty similar, though – the ones in Bethsaida and Capernaum and Chorazin, and the ones among my Facebook friends. Jesus is on to something when he comments on how much the attitudes on display make us look like children who are whining because they want to play different games and no one will play according to my rules and whims.

Hobby Lobby wants to change the current rules of employment economics that our country has agreed to play by – for now at least.  I respect the reasons why they want to change those rules – but it’s true that they want to play by the rules that favor them – just like the cities that got Jesus steamed up. 

Many of my online and local friends have spent the past week offering their own sets of preferred rules, and complaining about the rules others play by.

And the Supreme Court is busy bending rules into pretzels to suit their appointed notions of how the game is supposed to be “officially” played.

So nobody – not the self-appointed defenders of “Christian” principle, not the official deciders of the rules, and not the people arguing with one another about it all – me included! – none of us are listening to Jesus point out that none of us get to make the rules of the game. 

And that, in fact, when we get so wound up in trying to choose the rules, we’re missing the game – we’re missing real and abundant life – entirely.

No wonder Jesus thanks God for giving wisdom to infants – not the sophisticates and scholars (and lawyers)! No wonder he makes a point of praying publicly in thanksgiving for relationship – the familial, intimate, trusting relationship between himself and God the Father.  And no wonder he’s trying to offer that trusting, intimate relationship to all the most heavily burdened, those most in need of a rest from the self-interest of the world.

Because self-interest is a heavy burden; it’s an exhausting way to live together, and relationship is what we need most. Relationship with one another, and above all, intimate, trusting relationship with God, our Creator, our Father and Mother.

That’s not “easy” in many senses, since one true thing about relationship is that you can never have it all your own way. But that’s exactly the yoke that Jesus is offering, and calling “easy.”  Relationship is a lighter burden than rules – but it binds us tighter and insists that we stick together and depend on one another when we’d much rather take our toys and go home.

You don’t get into a yoke to go your own way, after all. You get into a yoke because together we’re stronger than we are apart, and in a yoke you let someone else drive, even when it’s inconvenient to  you.

To be in that yoke, in that trusting, intimate, unbreakable relationship with God, with Jesus, is to know – not think, not believe, but know with your gut and heart – that the kingdom of heaven, God’s loving care for the poor, oppressed, and friendless – is more important than any rules we want to live by.

The kingdom of God is not represented by even the best of United States laws or court decisions.

It’s not represented by closing your stores on Sundays, or any particular stand on abortion, birth control, or health insurance.

The kingdom of God is represented by, and made real because of, our individual and community actions to care first for the lost, “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” 

The kingdom of God is made real in our day and time by a sense that God calls us to change, repent, and renew that relationship with God that stands above all others, and to let go of our personal sense of right and proper and normal.

That’s worth remembering this weekend – the weekend we have spent celebrating this nation’s independence; celebrating the promise of lighter yokes that make this country so attractive. 

And it’s especially worth remembering when the news media, major corporations, the agents of government, and thousands of individual self-appointed righteous persons around us get caught up in arguing about the most attractive interpretations of religious liberty and Christian freedom.

It’s worth remembering that laws and rules don’t make us free, or even right.  Even, or especially, the laws and rules that work best for me. 

So it’s especially appropriate this morning that Jesus calls us to remember that his light and binding yoke goes well beyond the best that a nation can do.

Because nations make rules.

And God makes relationships.

And you and I are called to pay more attention to the relationships, any time we’re tempted to get caught up in the rules. 

We’re called to yoke ourselves to God, to God’s vision for the world, and all the self-denial, compassion and abundant joy that relationship demands.

It’s an easy yoke, though, Jesus promises.  Easier in the long run than self-interest.

Because even though that yoke, that relationship, holds us tighter than any rules, and directs us to places we wouldn’t have chosen for ourselves, it is always as light and strong as love.