My Yolk is Easy

 AUGUST 28TH, 2023

Romans ch. 7

How many times have you heard the tearful public apology - whether it’s a politician or a sports star or even a televangelist - "I let myself down. I didn’t live up to the standards I set myself. It’s just not who I really am!" Well, St Paul ‘fesses up in our passage from the Letter to the Romans this morning, "there’s naughtiness in everyone, but twice as much in me!"

To be fair, Paul isn’t just talking about himself, Saul of Tarshish, I think he is talking in the first person singular about Israel. He has no argument with the goodness of the commandments of the Law of Torah - in fact at this point he is not even talking about the Law, just about the basic challenge of doing good and not evil. His main point seems to be that whenever our religion works like a fence set up between a whole bunch of shoulds and a whole other – way more exciting – bunch of should nots – then we are setting ourselves up to fail.

Paul even ends up in this passage apparently making the biggest ever ‘dog ate my homework’ excuse - "so in that case it’s not me that’s the problem, it’s the sin that lives in me!" (v.20). Um, OK? But it’s true. As human beings we are disfigured by sin, the image of God is distorted in us - we have a constant internal struggle between the leadings of our own best selves and the powerful impulse to look out for number one.

Theologians argue about this passage in Paul. Surely - goes one school of thought - he is talking here about life without Christ? It’s the conundrum faced by the pre-Damascus Paul, surely? Others point out that his language in this section is pretty watertight, not much wriggle-room. And it also rings fairly true for us, even today. Living in the extended in-between time when we and all creation are saved by the death and resurrection of Christ, but it doesn’t quite feel like it yet because, let’s face it, we live in a world that’s still disfigured by greed and inequality and injustice and violence. The promise of the resurrection has already been signed and sealed but is not yet fulfilled.

But, wait because St Paul is still building up his argument. Here, he is describing the problem for human beings who mean well, and who believe the message of life, but are also addicted to and oppressed by sin. He is going to land his argument in the very next chapter with the stunning conclusion that yes! it is all impossible! - except for the unspeakable gift of the Holy Spirit of God who intercedes for us and struggles and prays within us and within the whole of creation. It’s summarised most simply in the Letter to the Colossians but it’s the same argument in Romans chapter eight - all things are drawn together and find their fulfilment and truest identity in Christ (Col 1.17).

But to stay with the current passage for a little. Because this is the situation for many Christians today, and we can lose heart. And the two readings the lectionary gives us for today go hand in hand because Jesus’ comforting words are spoken, in Matthew’s Gospel, in response to the message from John the Baptist who, imprisoned and nearing the end of his own life, is also losing heart. "Is it you who we were to wait for, or someone else?" he asks (Mt 11.3). John’s message and call to repentance has been faithful and uncompromising and hard-edged, but this Jesus seems to be something else. John is all fire and axes at the root of trees and repent or get winnowed like chaff - and then this Jesus comes along and eats with sinners and Roman collaborators. John the Baptist and his disciples fast and wear animal skins in the desert - Jesus allows his disciples to pluck heads of grain and chew on them as they walk through wheat fields on the Sabbath. "Is it really you?" John asks. "Or did I get it all wrong?"

We can get overwhelmed. In a world of sin - our own sin and the deep structural evil enacted daily by the powerful against the weak - we can lose heart. And the response that Jesus makes to John the Baptist - and to us - is powerful and loving and gentle.

Here, Matthew - the writer of the Gospel - is using some earlier material that he got from the mysterious collection of sayings Bible scholars refer to as ‘Q’ - and so he has departed from his usual ways of depicting Jesus as a new Moses come out of Egypt, the anointed Messiah, and instead is describing Jesus using deeply evocative language from one of the oldest strands in the Hebrew Bible that describes divine Wisdom, the divine child of God who is present with God in the act of creation (Prov 8, 9). Woman Wisdom, in the Hebrew Bible, invites human beings into a rich and relational understanding of God which she offers as a feast of fine food and wine, and she says, ‘come, eat of my bread and drink of my wine - and live’ (Pr 9.6).

In this reading from Matthew, Jesus is speaking in the persona of divine Wisdom and contrasts his own ministry with that of John, wondering out loud about ‘this generation’ who don’t even know what they want. ‘The children’ in this little parable seem to be Jesus and John themselves – one beckoning all the other kids to join in a funeral procession and the other trying to get them to play party games. John the Baptist was too gloomy for you, his demands for holiness and repentance were too much for you to swallow, then when I come along telling you about the hospitality of God, eating and drinking as though the good times were already here, the time of waiting was over and the party has already started – and when I tell you that God’s future is already here because God is already actively involved in the world, transforming human hearts and overturning structures of injustice, then you dismiss me as a lightweight. You tell me I should be more serious. "But Wisdom," he comments, is vindicated by her deeds.

In other words - just watch! Just watch what I do, because I’m enacting God’s priorities – to set free the ones who are locked in cages of their own selfishness, to give sight to those who can’t see the wood for the trees, to bring new life to people whose hearts are dead to the beauty and joy of God’s creation. It’s not about doing church the right way, it’s not about having the right doctrines or even believing the right things. It’s about whether we live with hearts that are open, whether we recognise and respond to the God-presence that fills creation, whether we live in a way ‌that brings the compassion of God into the lives of others. Jesus is telling the people to wake up. John the Baptist was on the right track, and Jesus’ own way of hospitality and open invitation is just as urgent and just as stark a choice.

But then, when he’s had his grouch, comes Jesus’ invitation to all of us who are feeling overburdened and overwhelmed. This is one of the all-time favourite images of the Gospels, an image of sacred rest: ‘My yoke is easy, and my burden is light’. This, too, resonates with the figure of Wisdom in the Hebrew Bible, who says to those who seek her, ‘When you walk, your step will not be hampered, and if you run you will not stumble’ (Pr 4.12). It’s an image of grace, and ease.

It’s also a complex metaphor. A yoke is something you put on a beast of burden, a restraint, but something that also serves to spread the load, that makes the task possible. We all wear the yokes of multiple responsibilities and commitments, because human beings can’t live without giving their heart to something. But as St Paul makes clear in today’s reading, compared to the impossibility of living by rules and regulations, the ‘yoke’ that Jesus wants to share with us is sheer freedom – to love God and neighbour, to learn from Jesus how to live the reality that all creation resonates with the beauty and joy of God.

Maybe it sounds naive? Delight in God’s creation, delight in one another. But Jesus knows what’s just up ahead – he knows he’s going to cop the fury of those who take religion so seriously that they miss the point. Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds – and is revealed in miracles of sharing and compassion. Jesus invites us in like Woman Wisdom in Proverbs who calls passers-by in to share her feast. It’s an invitation to rest and refreshment, a call to inclusiveness and lightness of spirit that is the opposite of the sort of religion that interprets scripture as a list of demands and rules.

It’s no accident that the very next story in Matthew’s gospel is about an argument over what you can and can’t do on the Sabbath. Is it OK for Jesus’ disciples to pick heads of wheat and eat them? (Short answer? Yes!) I think that when Jesus says, ‘the Sabbath was made for people, not the other way around’, he’s telling us that the Sabbath is sheer gift, that the Word and Wisdom of God is food for our souls and bodies, that we don’t need to tie ourselves in knots over this. Just take up the easy yolk.