MY BURDEN IS LIGHT
Matthew 11:28-30
“Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, 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.”
Let’s not fool ourselves—being a Christian is hard! Turn the other cheek. Forgive seventy times seventy. Take up your cross and follow me. Render to no one evil for evil. Each of these and many others require us to defer and to serve. Such behaviors are at cross purposes to our biological desires to secure our own survival first. The positive injunctions are no better. Love your neighbor as yourself. Do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God. Each of these ideals call us to a life requiring discernment, vulnerability and uncertainty. If you measure yourself by your ability to do such things, get ready for failure. I have often said that if there were such a thing as true, informed consent, I’m not sure the Christian faith would survive. No one wants to know that the journey to God is filled with detours, misdirection and chronic inadequacy.
Most of us are weary and heavy laden. I have met very few people who like to be an ‘adult’. It is tedious to go to work every day. It is tedious to raise children, to be a spouse, to keep a home. No matter how much we love, the responsibilities of adulthood weigh heavily. Some of us ‘do unto others so that they will do unto us’. We turn love into a transaction to ensure that we get a turn. Of course, it doesn’t always work and that creates a morass of disappointment and indignation. Some of us act helpless in the face of chores that ‘belong’ to a partner’s list. Some of us can’t find the meatloaf in the refrigerator without help. (My mother’s frustrated comment was often “If it was a snake, it would have bit you!”) Choosing to be in a relationship is hard and harder still is choosing to love. We find out all too soon that both are about what we are willing to give, not about what we think we are going to get.
On the other side of the coin are those of us who act as if we are impervious to the world. All things are possible with sufficient motivation and hard work. If you can dream it, you can do it. Aging alone will usually challenge that hubris. What used to be simple and commonplace, like remembering names and keeping two ideas in our heads—or getting up off the floor without holding onto something teaches us that we are frail creatures. Lone-ranger toughness is simply not sustainable. Unfortunately, one of the tenets of our faith calls us to persevere in the full knowledge of our limitations and frailties. That life lesson does not come easily. So much for “My burden is light”!
Yet Jesus calls us to his way with the promise of rest for our souls and a lightening of our burdens. What is he talking about? First notice, he does not offer to eliminate our heavy burdens. Instead he offers us a way to manage them better. When we volunteer to yoke ourselves alongside Jesus, who offered himself as a yoke partner, we defer to our partner’s leadership and teaching. Most of us need direction, pace and purpose to live. Jesus provides each.
The discipline of ploughing a field is demanding and I doubt an ox has the remotest clue about the purpose of her labors. But day in and day out, she walks up and down the fields creating furrows for planting. The ox does not have to know why. The ox must tend to the task at hand—as do we. We must trust that work we do has meaning beyond reaching the end of the field yet again. We may not realize that the labor leads to the food that feeds us but we live in the faith that our labors are not in vain. We must trust that kindness, regard and love have meaning beyond our mortal vision. Especially when we are overwhelmed, we must choose to believe that every bit of love matters, no matter how seemingly inconsequential. All we can do is do what we can—and then we must wait and trust.
Yoking ourselves with Jesus also helps us keep our paths straight. Free range oxen might be able to pull a plow but I’m pretty sure the furrows would be uneven, erratic and inefficient. If you want to know how to love, learn from a master. Our lives are better when we have guidance. Choosing to be yoked is choosing to rely on thousands of years of human experience.
Pace is important too. If a well-trained runner goes out five seconds a mile too fast, they will not be able to sustain the pace. If they insist upon running – even ever so slightly beyond their abilities – they will end up running much slower and often cannot even finish the race. We need to stay within ourselves. That is no easy task. In races like the Peachtree Road race, there are people who set the pace. They carry large signs stating the pace. Smart runners stay with the pace setter that best matches them. When we are yoked to someone who cares for us and who knows more than us, we can maximize what we can actually do. This a logical lesson but a hard one to stick with when the adrenaline is flowing. Many of us say yes too often to our own detriment and ultimately the detriment of others when we cannot sustain even our most well intended yes. We are not called to prove ourselves, we are called to be fully who we are created to be. That is the difference between being loved for who we are instead of seeking to be loved for what we do. As hard as it is in real life to trust that we are loved (warts and all), it is harder still to live on the treadmill of earning that love. The gift has already been given. Take the yoke. Accept the grace.
Finally, presence matters. Sharing a load helps. We don’t get hero points for doing life by ourselves. That is a secular goal not a Christian one. It makes all the difference to have someone beside us who has shared every step we take. One woman in FIRL told us that for years she had avoided the deep grief of others because she did not know what to say. Then her husband died and people who loved her showed up. They didn’t know what to say either. That didn’t matter. They showed up. She learned, by receiving, to show up. No one likes deep grief. No one knows what to say. But all of us can share the heartache.
This is the promise of the “Word made flesh.” It is an expensive gift. To offer it is to feel great pain. To receive it often means our pain is sharpened. But in that moment, we are deeply connected. We are loved. That is what it means to have a Messiah. The burdens of plowing and the burdens of hardship and grief remain. But when someone shares our real life, we are enabled and empowered to live life.
That is God’s promise and gift. Let it be so.
