14 OT A ~ "Yoked to Christ" ~ Mt. 11:25-30 ~ Rev. Richard Eslinger, PhD.

At this point in St. Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus offers a prayer to the Father

giving thanks for revealing all things to the Son. After Jesus completes his fervent

prayer, he turns to the crowd and his disciples and opens his most moving

invitation. “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you

rest.” Those who are worn down with the cares of the world—and even with the

many laws of the Pharisees—are offered relief and rest. There are burdens that we

bump into in life and also those that seem set up against us. We encounter illness

and the erosion of vitality in aging, and we label these as our “burdens.” At

(name) Parish, we remain steadfast in praying for those whose illness and aging

have become heavy burdens. (If the parish has regular services for healing, please

add such liturgies to this list of examples.)

Other heavy burdens seem almost designed to wear us down and keep us silent. We are hounded by online thieves who will try anything to steal our wealth. So-called comedians make fun of our Catholic faith. These days our culture seems to enjoy deriding most any household of faith. The result: We come for Mass (this evening/morning) heavy ladened and burdened. As liturgical scholar Gail Ramshaw recently put it, “you are crushed by overwhelming heartache and can hardly breathe,…” 1 This burdensome weight has its tolls. We try to insulate ourselves and our families from these burdens. But our illnesses and losses pile up. Jesus is speaking directly to us, his family.

After being called by Jesus to come to him with our burdens, our Lord offers

a particular invitation. “Take my yoke upon you,” he invites us. Being yoked with

Jesus is juxtaposed with being relieved of these heavy burdens. Odd, though, that

a huge wooden yoke—the cross-T holding animals together in their labor—becomes the image for relieving the burdens of the world. Odd, until we

dig deeper into the “yokology” of first century Palestine. The large wooden cross

piece was designed to fit upon the shoulders to two animals, mostly oxen. But it

was important to shape the curvature of the yoke to fit comfortably upon the neck of each one. In fact, farmers would bring their oxen to a good carpenter in order that the yoke would easily fit over the animal/s shoulders. One size did not fit all!

Of course, our imagination runs immediately to St. Joseph and his vocation as a

carpenter. Did Jesus in his youth watch, or even help, his father carefully shape

these large yokes to the oxen? At least, Jesus was very familiar with this whole

business of joining two animals together for the easiest and most effective way to

multiply their efforts! And this is precisely what our Lord is offering us on this

day: Be yoked with him. Follow Jesus and you are yoked to him. Follow Jesus

and he takes up your own burdens. You are never alone when yoked to the Lord.

At ordination, a priest or deacon is “yoked” with Christ in the sign of the stole. It

is even carefully shaped so that it will fit easily over the shoulder. Hidden during

sacramental occasions by the chasuble, the priest still wears this yoke-stole

underneath. Still yoked to Christ. And for all of us, our sign of being yoked

together in the Lord is the white baptismal garment that attests to a similar reality: we are never alone in dealing with our burdens. We, too, are yoked to Jesus.

Yoked with Jesus, we also learn from him. In fact, our imitation of Christ is

grounded in this mystery. But learning from our yoke-partner is not simply a

matter of adding other concepts to our general religious knowledge. The Greek

word that is translated “learn,” in this case, has its roots in the word for “disciple.”

It is more than acquiring further truths abut Jesus. In the words of one

commentator, this word “is the adoption of a way of life.” He adds, "And this way of life is expressed in terms of doing and being something in relation to Jesus. Jesus ultimately grounds the invitation in his relationship with his Father. " 2

Through our prayer, our sharing in the sacramental life, in our service to the poor

and the outcast in Christ’s name, and in our own sharing of the Good News with

others, we are being “discipled,” being “formed” as Christ’s yoke-partner. Being

yoked to Jesus means, above all, imitating him in our faith, our words, and our

actions. But notice that these words of Jesus are delivered to us in St. Matthew’s

Gospel. And in Matthew, Jesus comes to us again and again to bestow blessings

upon us. And the opposite side of the same coin is that Jesus turns us toward the

poor and the disposed and the hungry. Looking at that “Being yoked to Jesus”

coin, then, our welcome of Jesus blesses us. We join with Christ in an imitation of

his prayer and communion with the Father. Here the ministries of Word and

Sacrament are shared with the baptized. Some of us find our being yoked to Christ in our ministry of music within the community of faith. For others, the reading of Scripture is our way of being yoked with Jesus. We offer the Gifts of bread and wine, we gather food for the hungry, we offer shelter to the homeless, we teach our children and youth, and we share with each other in the Holy Scriptures. In all these things, we do them yoked to Jesus, in imitation of Christ.

This word from Jesus now moves on to receiving rest. “You will find rest for your souls,” Jesus announces. Yoked to Jesus, we are led to a distinctive notion of being at rest. For others, this restfulness implies an absence of engagement, a

state of not being about any new thing. We chuckle when a family member or

friend speaks of retirement with such a hope. Maybe the dream is like the cartoon

of a solitary soul on a small island, lying there under a palm tree, doing nothing but resting. The joke comes in the second frame. A submarine pops up out of the deep and the crew takes over this “restful” island in the name of some cause or other.

Bye, bye, rest. Welcome back, politics and competition! But the “rest” St.

Matthew brings to us here from Jesus is different than this “rest equals doing

nothing.” Rather, real biblical rest is on behalf of renewal and refreshment in

Christ. And Matthew is very clear that this rest is not a solitary goal, but is a way

of being the church, all of us together. On one hand, rest is promised to us in

contrast to the world’s offer of constant striving and business. We are delivered

from being yoked to the gods of competition and endless self-concern. Being

yoked to Christ changes all that. Maybe the competition remains, but it is

dethroned from its stranglehold on us. And while we do care for ourselves, we are

all in this yoked-to-Jesus journey together, caring for each other in Christ’s name.

So our activity continues, but it is transformed. On the other hand, the vision of

the fulness of time for God’s people in Christ sets aside the desert island notion of

rest and replaces it with the continuing, communal glorifying of Jesus Christ by all

the saints. No wonder those early Christians spoke of the “work of worship” rather

than of its “rest.” We have heard of the deep meaning of the word “liturgy.” In

Greek, it means “the work of the people.” This new vision of “rest” is exactly

what we are about this day in our worship together, in this Mass. So being yoked

to Jesus means that we are never alone. Our Lord has others who are being formed as disciples along with us. And this “rest-in-Christ” will find its fulfillment in our endless worship to the Lamb upon the throne.

St. Chrysostom, the 5 th century saint who is acclaimed as one of the church’s

greatest preachers, put it this way as he spoke about the Lord’s words of invitation

and of promise. The saint put it this way:

…the promise of rest is not given to just “this or that person,”

but all that are in anxiety, in sorrows, in sins.

Come, not that I may call you to account,

but that I may do away with your sins,

not that I want your honor,

but that I want your salvation.

“For I,” Jesus says, “will give you rest.”

He does not say “I will save you,” only;

but what was much more, “I will place you in all security.”

Amen.