Good News for Pack Mules - Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost July 9, 2023 by Rev. Holly Huff, Associate Priest

Jesus comes to deliver us from the tyranny of our efforts to earn God’s love. Jesus is the image of the invisible God, God incarnate, fully human and fully divine. and through his life, his birth ministry teaching healing his table fellowship with all those scruffy outcasts, and through his death, his betrayal, his suffering, his crucifixion, burial and descent into hell and his resurrection and ascension, he reveals the Father to us. He is the image of the invisible God and in his face we see that God is not waiting to be appeased by evermore-desperate acts of sacrifice on our part (as we so long suspected) but God is constantly pouring out mercy upon us without condition, a sure foundation of loving-kindness that sets us free from that hard labor and servitude to finally receive God’s love as trusting children.

In today’s gospel we hear Jesus address us as ones who are weary. Ones whose shoulders ache from the weight of the burdens we thought we had to take up, and the weight of the burdens others have placed there. Into our pack mule existence Jesus speaks: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” These comforting words speak into the reality of our heavy-laden lives.

What are the burdens laid across your back this morning? What are the heavy burdens you are carrying? What would it look like to let Jesus give you rest? To let Jesus pull the pack off your back, and take the wood off Isaac’s shoulders. “Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me: for I am gentle and humble in heart.” Jesus wants to show us a different way, a gentle, humble, low-to-the-ground narrow way. All that luggage just won’t fit. As I was traveling last week, I took the train from the JFK airport in New York to my friends’ wedding in Connecticut, and so I had the heavy-laden experience of fumbling a MetroCard while trying to hoist a suitcase through a subway turnstile as its arm swung around to dig into my oversized backpack behind me. There has got to be an easier way, I thought.

Jesus is inviting us to an easier way, a life where we have no need to strap on all our good deeds or spiritual achievements or moral reputations as we approach God. These fear-driven attempts to justify ourselves are heavy, they make us weary, and they’re simply not necessary: no one can earn what God has already given freely. Mercy without condition, loving-kindness spread out as a firm foundation, love offered not because we’ve earned it or proved we deserve it but simple because God is love: overflowing, boundary-crossing love is God’s very nature. Water is wet; God is love that you can’t earn and can’t lose. Grace: this is Jesus’s easy yoke. It’s all been done for us. Divine love and mercy without condition; milk and honey without price. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

Does it sound too easy? It’s really very hard to accept unconditional love. Maybe for other people, sure, but unconditional love for me? you? In a hundred ways our personal histories and unique life situations fit us out with oversized, Dr. Seussian burdens, precariously stacked high. And surely this discomfort with free grace is itself disqualifying? No, that too is held. “You will find rest for your souls. My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Learning to let God love us can be the gracious work of a lifetime. Sometimes we have to wear ourselves out, thrashing around working hard, sacrificing, until we are tired enough to be quieted on Jesus’ breast. Sometimes we have to exhaust our own efforts to be able to open up to the reality of grace given before anything we can do.

So we backslide into self-righteousness. Backslide into self-reliance. Backslide into self-improvement. Important to watch for that telltale grasping whisper of the attempt to do it for ourselves by ourselves, asserting itself again and again. Paul, recovering self-reliant do-it-yourselfer-in-chief jokes in the Letter to the Romans that “I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.” He’s joking yet utterly serious. When Paul wanted to do what was good—when Saul wanted to prove he was good—he pushed himself to make sure he was keeping every bit of the law, and where did he end up under that burden of self-driven effort? Enslaved to self-righteous violence, and rounding up Christians to be killed. So when he feels himself returning to that murderous perfectionism in the name of God, no less,—when he wants to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. Yep.

The problem isn’t with the law itself or with doing what’s good, Paul says. It’s that we can’t actually rely on our own deeds to save us. On our own we do not do what we want but we do the very thing we hate. We end up in the same patterns over and over. That’s the yoke of bondage. That’s the overburdened weariness of trying to earn a love that is already freely given. Paul’s life in the Spirit means trusting God in faith, not trying to do what is good by ourselves but letting God love us, letting Jesus feed us and wash us and care for us, letting the Holy Spirit live in us and through us. A lively faith like that always bears fruit—works of mercy and justice and peace will flow through us naturally—though we won’t be able to take credit for them anymore. Prayer too goes from being something that we think we’re doing to something flowing up in us in the Spirit. Prayer is God’s gentle and humble work in us, not our own righteous accomplishment. There’s nothing to do, no sacrifice to make except a heart cracked open to receive God’s mercy. Mercy, not sacrifice. Abraham, Abraham, put down the knife!

Jesus comes to give us rest. We find it like the beloved disciple leaning against his breast. Through all the difficulties of life—which do not go away much as we might wish—we are held in loving-kindness and mercy. Our work, our work which is really rest, is to come to Jesus and learn from him. Learn from him about trusting God as a child trusts a reliable, loving parent. Depending on God is an easy yoke: you will find rest for your souls. That’s the grace that is hidden for those who think they are wise but revealed to infants. That’s the faith that is on display when we can receive everything as it is and respond accordingly, dancing when the flute plays, and wailing along with the mourners. There is incredible ease to be found in letting everything be exactly as it is, trusting that God is in it and shaping it for our good. When it’s time to dance, there comes a point where it actually takes more effort not to dance. When it’s time to mourn, it’s harder to refuse to cry than to simply let the tears fall. Resisting the reality of what is being given in each moment, be it mourning or dancing, weighs us down, it’s a heavy burden, and thanks be to God we don’t have to carry it any longer. Learning from Jesus, we can offer others the same rest we have found, as we develop the capacity to meet people where they are, not fixing up or toning down or trying to tame what we think is too much. This is the blessed capacity to rest, to let everything be as it is, to rest in everything just as it is, and find that God is at the center of it and working out into the world through every limber limb. bodied out into the world, in our own flesh, miraculously you and me.

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Amen.