7th Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 9
Matthew 11:25-30
"Come to Me"
25 ¶ At that time Jesus declared, "I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes;
26 yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will.
27 All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior, Jesus who is the Christ. Amen
This morning I would like to call your attention to the last two verses of our gospel lesson where Jesus says,
28 "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls .
29* Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
30* For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." "RSV
In a "Peanuts" column, Lucy is running after Charlie Brown. shouting: "I’ll get you, Charlie Brown! I’ll get you. I’ll knock your block off ! I’ll.....
Suddenly Charlie Brown stops dead in his tracks, turns around and confronts her, and says: "Wait a minute!! Hold everything! We can’t carry on like this, We have no right to act this way. The world is filled with problems, people hurting other people. Now if we, as children, can’t solve our relatively, minor problems, how can we ever expect to......
and at that moment WHOP!! Lucy give him one, and he goes head over breakfast and flat on the ground. She turns to her girlfriend and says’: "I had to do that, because he was getting to my conscience."
A story told by the late Pastor Valbracht.
"Years ago, when our older son was 6 years old, my wife, Lois, found him standing on a stool looking at himself in the bathroom mirror. There were great tears rolling down his cheeks She, of course, alarmed, asked,"What’s wrong?" What’s the matter? Why are you crying?"
And he sobbingly cried: "I just don’t like the way I turned out. "
Those two stories, I just told you, help to underscore the point of our gospel lesson this morning. That point being, no matter who we are, how we view ourselves, or whether we are like Lucy, full of anger, Jesus wants us to come to him.
The key phrase of our lesson says: "Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle an lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
In this day and age when it seems all of us have some sort of burden to bear, some sort of troubles and problems to carry with us, this text brings us some assurance that we are not alone with these burdens. There are many of us who face the burden of bodies that don’t do exactly what we want them to do. Others face the prospect of living life alone after the death of a loved one, the burden of coping with this world all alone can be a very large one to bear. Still others have the burden of broken relationships with either their children, their spouses or their relatives. Still others face the burden of making choices in this world. Wondering what they will do with their lives, wondering when they do make a decision if it is the right one. There are other kinds of burdens we face, burdens of sin, or temptation, burdens of guilt, burdens of conflicting loyalties, burdens of providing for our families, this life is filled with stress, with cares, with worries, with situations that call for us to make choices that sometimes are not pleasant to make.
Jesus is saying in our language, come to me all who who are struggling with life in any way and those of you who have burdens that you cannot carry alone, and I will help you with your struggles. Jesus knew that all people have a difficult path to follow in life. Life is not easy because we live in a world that is filled with sin. Sin makes life difficult for us because it has put into our world all those things that God would have kept from us because he knew these things would make life difficult. But we want to be like God, to know what he knows, so now we have to know all the ways in which life will make us carry burdens, will load us down with problems, with guilt, with broken relationships, with not so perfect bodies, and a whole host of other things.
Jesus uses in our text an illustration from his day and age to explain his helping carrying loads. He says that the yoke that is used on the oxen is similar. He puts the heavy part of the yoke on the stronger oxen, and the lighter part on the oxen that is not quite as strong.
In a like manner, his yoke is made after the same pattern, the heavy end is upon his shoulder, and the lighter one is upon ours. Our Lord bears the most weight of our problems. Our Lord in heaven bears most of the weights of our burdens, our cares, our struggles.
Jesus tells us loud and clear this morning, we don’t have to live life alone, we don’t have to life with all of our failures, with all of frustrations, with all of our burdens, but we must bring them to him. And then he will shoulder them with us, in fact, he will take most of the weight of our burdens upon himself. He will carry our burdens, he will lighten our loads.
But we must turn and trust Jesus with our burdens.
Whenever I mail a letter, it’s an exercise of trust. Let me explain what I mean. When I write to a distant friend, it’s impossible to deliver the letter myself. I need the help of the postal service. But for them to do their part, I have to drop my letter in the mailbox first. I can’t hang on to it. I have to place it in the mail slot and let go. Then I must trust the postal service to take over until my letter is delivered to my friend’s home. Although I can’t see what happens to it, my faith in the postal service assures me that my letter is as good as there!
Likewise, whenever we’re faced with a problem, our faith is challenged. Knowing that it’s impossible to resolve the difficulty ourselves, we recognize our need of God’s help. First, though, we must go to Him in prayer. Until that moment, we’re still holding on to our problem. We know the situation won’t get resolved until we let go and commit it into God’s hands. Once we let go, we then must trust God to take over until the problem is resolved in His way. Although we can’t see what He’s doing, our faith is the assurance that His work is as good as done! 1
Have you exercised trust in Him today?
But because we live in a sinful world, we will have burdens.
And sometimes those burdens are difficult to handle. We ask why? Why this burden now? But life says why not.
There’s a story about an old grandfather clock that had stood for three generations in the same corner of a room, faithfully ticking off the minutes and hours, day after day. In the clock was a heavy weight that was pulled to the top each night to keep it running.
Then one day the clock was sold, and the new owner noticed the heavy weight. "Too bad," he said, "that such an old clock should have to bear so great a load." So he took the weight off the chain. At once the clock stopped ticking.
"Why did you do that?" asked the clock.
"I wanted to lighten your burden," said the man.
"Please put it back," said the clock. "That’s what keeps me going!"
Sometimes these burdens propel us forward. But as we go forward with our burdens, we need to remember to allow Jesus to help us carry them. We are not to be lone rangers, but buddies with Jesus.
Jesus wants us to come, to place our burdens on him and we will be free to live life, to enjoy life, to take risks for others, to share Jesus life with others.
Everyone in this room needs someone to share something with. And as people who have shared with Jesus, we can be willing to listen to the life stories of others, to shares with them their brokenness, to walk besides them in their journey and share something of ourselves and share something of Christ with them to make their burdens lighter. We are called together as the body of Christ, not as an isolated islands, but as a living working body which shares with each other, the hurts, the heartaches, the problems of life.
There is an old story which tells how a man came upon a little boy carrying a still smaller boy who was lame upon his back. "That ’ s a heavy burden for you to carry , said the man. ’"That’s no burden," came the answer. "That’s my wee brother."
Jesus takes our heavy burdens of brokenness from us, and replaces them with the burden of caring for someone out of love and the amazing thing is that a burden carried out of love will seem much lighter than one that is carried because of all the brokenness of this world. Jesus helps us carry our burdens, so that we can be an instrument of love to others, to help others carry their burdens, to share with others their life story as we have shares our live stories with Jesus.
A closing peom says:
Give me a stout heart to bear my own burdens.
Give me a willing heart to bear the burdens of others.
Give me a believing heart to cast all burdens upon Thee, O Lord.
John Baillie
Jesus says,
"Come to be, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your should. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
You will heed his invitation????
Amen
Written by Pastor Tim Zingale June 27, 2005
1 Our Daily Bread
