Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Borden, OHC
Proper 13A - July 31, 2011
Genesis 32:22-31
Romans 9:1-5
Matthew 14:13-21
How intriguing it is that today's passage from Matthew seems to have Jesus wanting to be on retreat – he crosses a lake in a boat to get away from the crowd. The crowd follows him anyway. The same thing always seems to happen to Jesus when he tries to get away. Everybody comes along... Yet here we are on retreat – and what crowds are following us?
The story of the feeding the multitude, or the story of the loaves and fishes, is so important that it turns up in every Gospel. Matthew and Mark even tell the story twice... so there are six stories of feeding the multitude – each with their own particular emphasis.
Matthew does some rather abrupt editing in this particular section. In the previous passage Jesus has been in Nazareth and has just learned about the beheading of John the Baptist. When he learns of this, Jesus departs in a boat. For literalists this must present a challenge as there is no lake anywhere near Nazareth... Nonetheless, Jesus withdraws by boat to a deserted place. That's where today's passage begins.
Although we don't read the passages of the beheading of John the Baptist and Jesus feeding the multitude together, they do seem to have some synergy. I think we are meant, in some way, to have Herod in mind as Jesus feeds the multitude.
John the Baptist looses his head, as it were, in the context of a dinner party. Herod entertains lavishly and to outrageous excess. The indulgence is so extreme that the request by his own daughter to have an innocent man executed and the head brought on a platter just enhances the entertainment. That is the context of Herod feeding people.
And Jesus, in this deserted place full of people, has a very different sort of dinner party. No preparations have been made. Food has not been planned. Caterers have not been contracted. The practical-minded disciples want to send the crowd away, not because they are stingy, but because if the people don't get to the town and its market in time, they won't eat.
Jesus calmly calls on the crowd to sit. They take stock – 5 loaves of bread and two fish are on offer. That is one loaf for every 1000 men (women and children apparently eat for free...). This dinner could not be more different that the one a few paragraphs ago at Herod's palace... No violence or decadence... nothing lavish or excessive, not even much food... just people being fed.
The story is about a miracle – no doubt. But what, exactly, is the miracle?
For some, the miracle is the super-natural multiplication of the bread – sort of like Moses' burning bush which was not consumed but remained undiminished: so the bread, though eaten, miraculously is not diminished. In fact there seems to be more by the end of the meal than there was at the start. This certainly one common way to read the story.
Others argue that the story has to do with hoarding and sharing. Everyone in the crowd, no doubt, had something in their pocket – these folks weren't idiots after all. They didn't leave home with nothing. So they all shared from their modest means and the result was abundance. Some criticize this reading because it seems to do away with the miracle... everything is naturally explained. But I think getting people to act in a community-minded way is a miracle. Just look at our politics of today if you think this type of sharing was easily accomplished.
Being a good, post-modern sort of monk, I don't think we have to choose between these interpretations. I think there is truth in both of them. And I think there is still something else of a miracle in the way Matthew tells this particular story.
Jesus gives a simple command to the disciples. When they suggest he send the crowd away, he says no. Jesus says to the disciples: “You feed them”. And, with a little negotiation, the disciples obey. A very important miracle is lurking in this little exchange. The disciples have established quite clearly that they can not possibly feed this crowd – its not a case of doubt, but of reality. Five loaves, even five modern Bread Alone Bakery pound loaves (let alone the smaller flat breads that would have been available then) could not really adequately feed the disciples, let alone the crowd.
You feed them... and in the face of all logic and reason, the disciples obey. Without God's help they can not succeed. Nobody begins to build a tower without estimating the cost... Nobody starts a war until they get a good estimate on the size of the opposing army... The disciples have done their homework. They set out knowing they can not, on their own, succeed.
That is the miracle of discipleship... the miracle of faith... In faith, we, just a handful of middle-aged and older monks, can build the Kingdom of God. We can do it with God's help.
This, for example, is the miracle of the Holy Cross School being built in South Africa even as we speak. Our tiny little school is the educational equivalent of five loaves and two fish in the face of thousands and tens of thousands in need. In a logical world, it can only fail. In a God's world it can only succeed.
Can a dozen or so monks in a quaint monastery in the mid-Hudson valley change the world? We don't have the energy, the money, the influence... And Jesus calmly says “change the world.” We need the miracle of discipleship... the miracle of faith.
We also heard part of the story of Jacob from the book of Genesis. The story of Jacob fascinates me because Jacob is really, as my friends in the city would say, a schmuck. He has lied and cheated his way into power through a terrible conspiracy with his mother. He deceives his father and defrauds his brother. He seems like the last sort of person on earth that God would want to work with...
And yet here he is in the passage we heard, fearfully returning to face his brother Esau. He sends his wives and children on ahead for safety sake and remains by himself. Jacob then spends the night wrestling with a man – an unidentified man. By dawn, neither has prevailed. So the stranger uses some extra bit of force and puts Jacob's hip out of joint. Yet Jacob holds firm to the stranger, demanding a blessing. We never learn the stranger's name, though Jacob says he has seen God face to face in the encounter.
Charles Wesley wrote a most wonderful hymn – Wrestling Jacob, based on this scripture passage. Its familiar first lines are “Come, O Though Traveler Unknown. Whom still I hold but can not see.”
The final stanza didn't make it into our modern hymnody... we don't seem to have space in our lives for hymns with 18 or 20 verses... but here it is: “Lame as I am, I take the prey, Hell, earth, and sin with ease o'ercome, I leap for joy, pursue my way, and as a bounding hart fly home, Thro' all eternity to prove thy nature, and thy name is love.”
In my own way, I'm like Jacob: Weak, sinful, inadequate. Surely God can find a better servant than me. In our own ways, we are like the Disciples: we don't have the resources or the means to get the job done.
And yet Jacob is who God chose to wrestle with. And the Disciples are who Jesus calls on. And, to paraphrase Charles Wesley, lame as we are, we accept the call – our helplessness and weakness answered by God's strength and love.
Amen.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Feast of St Benedict - Jul 10, 2011
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Andrew Colquhoun, OHC
Feast of St Benedict (transferred from July 11) - Sunday, July 10, 2011
The Associates in retreat have been steeped in monasticism this weekend. Following the saints of the Desert… holy ones who, if the truth were told, were a little nuts – not that nuts is necessarily crazy! Who in their right mind would walk away from everything to go live in an empty place with no distractions to do nothing but pray? Not many. Even then, there were not many but they were lovers of God. We’ve got the stories gathered together and they make a sizable collection but they were a small portion of people in the grand scheme of things.
Perhaps what would surprise them more than anything else is that a group of fairly comfortable folk in a yet to be discovered continent two thousand years after them would be gathered to hear their wisdom. They had not the grandiosity to dream like that. Single minded and simple in their longings, they lived their lives out in love with God.
They paved a way that disciples have walked since then and will continue to walk.
Benedict whom we celebrate today was in his own time, such a one who fled… they called it “fuga mundi”- flight from the world.
You probably have heard Benedict’s story. He was a disappointment to his middle class parents, I’m sure. A college dropout who left the greatest known city to go live in a cave in an isolated valley to think and “find himself.” And there he sat, trying to get away from what appeared to him to be an evil and sick world.
He didn’t get away with it! Shepherds came to the holy man… the poor of the area always hunger for what is beyond… they know their need.
And so the people gathered… from the cave, our saint began to live with the seekers and finally left Subiaco, winding up next to the highway at Monte Cassino. His monastery is right by the way to Rome, the center of the (somewhat) civilized world of the day. And there he finally stopped, grew old, and died.
What is wonderful to me is that Benedict didn’t seem to have a five-year plan. He didn’t write a book on the “Seven Habits of Highly Effective Monks”; he wrote a reflection steeped in Scripture of how to live together in a strange and often hostile world so that the Kingdom of heaven would be evident. We call it “The Rule”. I’m not sure what he called it, or if he even gave it a name. But he did lay down so clearly a human journey into the heart of God. And his call has become the norm for monastic life. And even more – a guide for mothers with teenagers, for postmen, for nurses, for teachers and students, for grandparents and in-laws – for anyone who is longing for a closeness with God, a life rooted in Christ.
Benedict calls us away from the spurious security of a life based on standards that don’t really last and gives a glimpse of life together. Life bound up in common prayer, common ownership; life shared and growing.
The Gospel passage for today had me a bit stumped. It always has stumped me in the past. Jesus seems to be calling us to be crafty. The tower, the army are symbols of security. But then he does what he does so well, he shows up that security for the sham it is. “Therefore – and I think he means “but” – if you don’t give up all of that misplaced trust, you won’t follow me. If you want to build towers and gather forces, do it, but if you want to follow me carry the cross. That’s another stumper! What is the cross?
I heard a man once describe his mother-in-law as “just a cross I have to bear!” I’m sure his mother-in-law could have reversed the sentiment. But the saints of the desert, Benedict the saint of Nursia, our James of Haddington, Massachusetts, the Associates of the Holy Cross, the wild men of OHC, and all the odds and sods of history who have walked this way, in cloisters or out of them, know better. The cross is no burden – it’s the treasure buried in the field we sell everything to get, it’s the pearl of great price in our lives. It pulls us into God’s love and sends us back to our true community, the community of the faithful people, the community of God’s hungry and poor, the stranger at the door. The desert fathers and mothers thought they could escape and disappear but they didn’t for here we are, chewing on their wisdom and humor; their wonderful grasp of reality. Benedict thought he would escape but God thought differently. He didn’t die in that cave but in the house by the roadside where travelers and pilgrims were sheltered and fed.
We are no different. This holy place is not a shelter but a way station on the journey for thousands of pilgrims.
Armand Veilleux, a Canadian Trappist* said…
Benedict likes that! Believe me!
Holy Father Benedict, pray for us.
______
* abbot of Notre Dame de Scourmont monastery in Belgium
Br. Andrew Colquhoun, OHC
Feast of St Benedict (transferred from July 11) - Sunday, July 10, 2011
The Associates in retreat have been steeped in monasticism this weekend. Following the saints of the Desert… holy ones who, if the truth were told, were a little nuts – not that nuts is necessarily crazy! Who in their right mind would walk away from everything to go live in an empty place with no distractions to do nothing but pray? Not many. Even then, there were not many but they were lovers of God. We’ve got the stories gathered together and they make a sizable collection but they were a small portion of people in the grand scheme of things.
Perhaps what would surprise them more than anything else is that a group of fairly comfortable folk in a yet to be discovered continent two thousand years after them would be gathered to hear their wisdom. They had not the grandiosity to dream like that. Single minded and simple in their longings, they lived their lives out in love with God.
They paved a way that disciples have walked since then and will continue to walk.
Benedict whom we celebrate today was in his own time, such a one who fled… they called it “fuga mundi”- flight from the world.
You probably have heard Benedict’s story. He was a disappointment to his middle class parents, I’m sure. A college dropout who left the greatest known city to go live in a cave in an isolated valley to think and “find himself.” And there he sat, trying to get away from what appeared to him to be an evil and sick world.
He didn’t get away with it! Shepherds came to the holy man… the poor of the area always hunger for what is beyond… they know their need.
And so the people gathered… from the cave, our saint began to live with the seekers and finally left Subiaco, winding up next to the highway at Monte Cassino. His monastery is right by the way to Rome, the center of the (somewhat) civilized world of the day. And there he finally stopped, grew old, and died.
What is wonderful to me is that Benedict didn’t seem to have a five-year plan. He didn’t write a book on the “Seven Habits of Highly Effective Monks”; he wrote a reflection steeped in Scripture of how to live together in a strange and often hostile world so that the Kingdom of heaven would be evident. We call it “The Rule”. I’m not sure what he called it, or if he even gave it a name. But he did lay down so clearly a human journey into the heart of God. And his call has become the norm for monastic life. And even more – a guide for mothers with teenagers, for postmen, for nurses, for teachers and students, for grandparents and in-laws – for anyone who is longing for a closeness with God, a life rooted in Christ.
Benedict calls us away from the spurious security of a life based on standards that don’t really last and gives a glimpse of life together. Life bound up in common prayer, common ownership; life shared and growing.
The Gospel passage for today had me a bit stumped. It always has stumped me in the past. Jesus seems to be calling us to be crafty. The tower, the army are symbols of security. But then he does what he does so well, he shows up that security for the sham it is. “Therefore – and I think he means “but” – if you don’t give up all of that misplaced trust, you won’t follow me. If you want to build towers and gather forces, do it, but if you want to follow me carry the cross. That’s another stumper! What is the cross?
I heard a man once describe his mother-in-law as “just a cross I have to bear!” I’m sure his mother-in-law could have reversed the sentiment. But the saints of the desert, Benedict the saint of Nursia, our James of Haddington, Massachusetts, the Associates of the Holy Cross, the wild men of OHC, and all the odds and sods of history who have walked this way, in cloisters or out of them, know better. The cross is no burden – it’s the treasure buried in the field we sell everything to get, it’s the pearl of great price in our lives. It pulls us into God’s love and sends us back to our true community, the community of the faithful people, the community of God’s hungry and poor, the stranger at the door. The desert fathers and mothers thought they could escape and disappear but they didn’t for here we are, chewing on their wisdom and humor; their wonderful grasp of reality. Benedict thought he would escape but God thought differently. He didn’t die in that cave but in the house by the roadside where travelers and pilgrims were sheltered and fed.
We are no different. This holy place is not a shelter but a way station on the journey for thousands of pilgrims.
Armand Veilleux, a Canadian Trappist* said…
If someone comes to the monastery because he finds the world is sick and evil and he wants to leave it and find his salvation in the cloister, it would be better to send him back to the world and help him to love this sick word as God loves it.
Benedict likes that! Believe me!
Holy Father Benedict, pray for us.
______
* abbot of Notre Dame de Scourmont monastery in Belgium
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Proper 9A - Jul 3, 2011
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
Proper 9A - July 3, 2011
Zechariah 9:9-12
Romans 7:15-25a
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
I returned earlier this week from a six-day silent directed retreat at the Jesuit Center in Wernersville, PA. I went there rather exhausted after our Order’s Triennial Chapter meetings seeking both rest and direction…rest for my body and my mind and my spirit and direction for the exercise of my ministry and work in the Order. I am happy to report that I got some of both, though I discovered that my needs were perhaps deeper than I had realized and my inner resources thinner than I had imagined.
As is the custom at such retreats, you meet with your director as a group on the first night and he or she then lays out the shape of the week, arranges times for daily private conferences, and offers words of welcome and encouragement. Normally the director also offers you some passages of Scripture to pray with and encourages you to articulate to yourself and to God what it is you desire, what it is you want or hope for or need from the Lord, or in the language of Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, to ask for the graces that you desire. I had already been thinking about what it was that I wanted or needed, so that part came easily. But what struck me were the Scripture passages that my director, Fr. Jack, offered us. In addition to the usual suspects such Psalm 139 and Isaiah 55, there was the passage from today’s Gospel reading:
“Come to me, all you that are weary and 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.”
It is such a familiar passage. We hear it sung regularly at Compline. And when I came into the Anglican tradition some years ago, it was still being recited, at least in part, at every celebration of the Holy Communion. I knew it by heart. And I couldn’t keep my mind or my heart off of it. I kept repeating it:
“Come to me, all you that are weary and 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.”
It became my mantra for the week.
I remembered how often I had told people visiting our guesthouses for a period of retreat: “Take time to rest. You probably don’t realize how tired you are.” And guests often reported how for their first or second day, all they seemed to do is sleep, taking naps, dozing on a bench, staring in the middle distance. Is it prayer, they might ask? I don’t know. But call it what you will, it is certainly “grace,” a gift from God for tired bodies and troubled hearts and restless minds.
Whatever else Jesus is doing in this busy chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel, he is surely calling out to all who are just plain tired…those tired of working so hard trying to make ends meet or to put bread on the table, those tired of looking for health or happiness, those tired of attempting to live lives that are at least a little bit just or patient or loving, those tired of trying to be good or good enough, those trying to be holy, trying to be human. And he certainly calls out to those who are just tired of being tired, inviting them especially to lay it down for a while, and rest in him. He is, in other words, calling out to us, to each one of us here this morning.
He calls out and says, “Take my yoke.” We know that in the world of Jesus, taking the yoke was a technical term, referring to submitting oneself in obedience to a teacher or to a way of life. The Hebrew Bible speaks of the yoke of Torah and the yoke of the Kingdom, not to mention the political yoking or subjugation that was constant in the tumultuous and often violent world of the ancient Near East. Taking the yoke is a way of talking about becoming an obedient follower, a student, a disciple, under the direction and discipline and tutelage of a master.
“And learn from me” he adds, “for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls.” We learn that the rest we seek for our souls is to be found in the imitation of Christ. Do I want rest for my soul? Do you? Then do like Jesus, be like Jesus. Do we want soul rest? Then be gentle and lowly of heart like him. Not pushy or aggressive and proud, but meek and unpretentious and humble. Who knew? But now we know. Lord have mercy!
So he adds: “For my yoke is easy and burden is light.” This too surprises. Jesus is on record in Matthew’s Gospel as criticizing the religious teachers of his day for laying heavy burdens on others, that is, imposing religious or ritual or social obligations that seem impossible or worse, prove soul deadening. Not that we Christians have ever done anything like that in our history or experience, right? Yet note well: Jesus is not promising us a easy time of it, an easy way up and out, an easy life…just an easy yoke, one that makes the inevitable burden bearing that is part of every human life that much more tolerable and efficient.
I think it true to say that we are all yoked. That is, every one of us is connected to each other, to the creation, and to God, sometimes in close and immediate ways, sometimes more distantly. We all bear burdens, and if we are truly human, we share each other’s burdens. But it is also true to say that one can only bear so much. I think of St. Augustine who once said: “Everyone loves. The question is, what is the object of your love? In Scripture we are not urged to stop loving, but instead to choose what we love.” In the same way, we might say: Each of us is yoked, each of us is burdened; that’s part of the human condition. But be careful what you are yoked to and burdened with. Many, it is true, have no little or no choice in this. But how many of us are exhausted because we are carrying the wrong burdens or unnecessary yokes of our own creation or ones that in fact belong to another…and in the process avoid the authentic and unique burdens that are ours alone to bear? How often do we bear what is not really ours to bear because we were taught to do so by parents or teachers or religious authorities and still seek, perhaps unconsciously, their approval…or perhaps we need to feel wanted or useful…or we remain fundamentally un-attuned to and out of touch with our own psyches with their rich and insistent and legitimate demands? How many of us are weary and heavy laden with stuff that is not rightfully ours, wasting energy and creativity and leading us to exhaustion and resentment?
I am reminded of Jesus telling us to take up our cross and follow him. How often have I attempted to carry someone else’s cross—whether they wanted me to or not—or invented whole new crosses not of God’s devising or approval, and refused the saving dynamic of taking up my own unique cross and bearing it with some degree of grace and endurance and even beauty?
There is an extraordinary literature of biblical scholarship on this passage, as there is on all the texts of our Holy Book. It is worth exploring…at least some of it is. But what I found most helpful and moving in my reading was the devotional treatment of this passage by the popular Scottish Biblical scholar of half a century ago, William Barclay. In his commentary on this passage, he tells a story about Jesus, precisely the kind of imaginative engagement that Ignatius of Loyola would encourage for anyone approaching Scripture as a platform to prayer. Barclay says:
“The word easy is in Greek chrestos, which can mean well-fitting. In Palestine, ox-yokes were made of wood; the ox was brought, and the measurements were taken. The yoke was then roughed out, and the ox was brought back to have the yoke tried on. The yoke was carefully adjusted, so that it would fit well, and not chafe the neck of the patient animal. The yoke was tailor made.
“There is a legend that Jesus made the best ox-yokes in all Galilee, and that from all over the country people came to him to buy the best yokes that skill could make. In those days, as now, shops had their signs above the door; and it has been suggested that the sign above the door of the carpenter’s shop in Nazareth may well have been: ‘My yokes fit well.’ It may well be that Jesus is here using a picture from the carpenter’s shop in Nazareth where he worked throughout the silent years.”
Imagine that: Tailor-made yokes. Bespoke. Custom designed and fitted. One crafted just for you, and one created just for me, and another designed specially for the person next to you. And all to be worn as lightly and as comfortably as possible until that day when they are finally removed from our necks and we are put out to pasture.
Well, I’m afraid I’m getting carried away with the metaphor. So why don’t I just end by reading again these “comfortable words” from the marvelous paraphrase of Eugene Peterson’s The Message, though I admit they sound a bit like a late night commercial:
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
May God grant it swiftly. And let us say, Amen.
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
Proper 9A - July 3, 2011
Zechariah 9:9-12
Romans 7:15-25a
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
I returned earlier this week from a six-day silent directed retreat at the Jesuit Center in Wernersville, PA. I went there rather exhausted after our Order’s Triennial Chapter meetings seeking both rest and direction…rest for my body and my mind and my spirit and direction for the exercise of my ministry and work in the Order. I am happy to report that I got some of both, though I discovered that my needs were perhaps deeper than I had realized and my inner resources thinner than I had imagined.
As is the custom at such retreats, you meet with your director as a group on the first night and he or she then lays out the shape of the week, arranges times for daily private conferences, and offers words of welcome and encouragement. Normally the director also offers you some passages of Scripture to pray with and encourages you to articulate to yourself and to God what it is you desire, what it is you want or hope for or need from the Lord, or in the language of Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, to ask for the graces that you desire. I had already been thinking about what it was that I wanted or needed, so that part came easily. But what struck me were the Scripture passages that my director, Fr. Jack, offered us. In addition to the usual suspects such Psalm 139 and Isaiah 55, there was the passage from today’s Gospel reading:
“Come to me, all you that are weary and 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.”
It is such a familiar passage. We hear it sung regularly at Compline. And when I came into the Anglican tradition some years ago, it was still being recited, at least in part, at every celebration of the Holy Communion. I knew it by heart. And I couldn’t keep my mind or my heart off of it. I kept repeating it:
“Come to me, all you that are weary and 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.”
It became my mantra for the week.
I remembered how often I had told people visiting our guesthouses for a period of retreat: “Take time to rest. You probably don’t realize how tired you are.” And guests often reported how for their first or second day, all they seemed to do is sleep, taking naps, dozing on a bench, staring in the middle distance. Is it prayer, they might ask? I don’t know. But call it what you will, it is certainly “grace,” a gift from God for tired bodies and troubled hearts and restless minds.
Whatever else Jesus is doing in this busy chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel, he is surely calling out to all who are just plain tired…those tired of working so hard trying to make ends meet or to put bread on the table, those tired of looking for health or happiness, those tired of attempting to live lives that are at least a little bit just or patient or loving, those tired of trying to be good or good enough, those trying to be holy, trying to be human. And he certainly calls out to those who are just tired of being tired, inviting them especially to lay it down for a while, and rest in him. He is, in other words, calling out to us, to each one of us here this morning.
He calls out and says, “Take my yoke.” We know that in the world of Jesus, taking the yoke was a technical term, referring to submitting oneself in obedience to a teacher or to a way of life. The Hebrew Bible speaks of the yoke of Torah and the yoke of the Kingdom, not to mention the political yoking or subjugation that was constant in the tumultuous and often violent world of the ancient Near East. Taking the yoke is a way of talking about becoming an obedient follower, a student, a disciple, under the direction and discipline and tutelage of a master.
“And learn from me” he adds, “for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls.” We learn that the rest we seek for our souls is to be found in the imitation of Christ. Do I want rest for my soul? Do you? Then do like Jesus, be like Jesus. Do we want soul rest? Then be gentle and lowly of heart like him. Not pushy or aggressive and proud, but meek and unpretentious and humble. Who knew? But now we know. Lord have mercy!
So he adds: “For my yoke is easy and burden is light.” This too surprises. Jesus is on record in Matthew’s Gospel as criticizing the religious teachers of his day for laying heavy burdens on others, that is, imposing religious or ritual or social obligations that seem impossible or worse, prove soul deadening. Not that we Christians have ever done anything like that in our history or experience, right? Yet note well: Jesus is not promising us a easy time of it, an easy way up and out, an easy life…just an easy yoke, one that makes the inevitable burden bearing that is part of every human life that much more tolerable and efficient.
I think it true to say that we are all yoked. That is, every one of us is connected to each other, to the creation, and to God, sometimes in close and immediate ways, sometimes more distantly. We all bear burdens, and if we are truly human, we share each other’s burdens. But it is also true to say that one can only bear so much. I think of St. Augustine who once said: “Everyone loves. The question is, what is the object of your love? In Scripture we are not urged to stop loving, but instead to choose what we love.” In the same way, we might say: Each of us is yoked, each of us is burdened; that’s part of the human condition. But be careful what you are yoked to and burdened with. Many, it is true, have no little or no choice in this. But how many of us are exhausted because we are carrying the wrong burdens or unnecessary yokes of our own creation or ones that in fact belong to another…and in the process avoid the authentic and unique burdens that are ours alone to bear? How often do we bear what is not really ours to bear because we were taught to do so by parents or teachers or religious authorities and still seek, perhaps unconsciously, their approval…or perhaps we need to feel wanted or useful…or we remain fundamentally un-attuned to and out of touch with our own psyches with their rich and insistent and legitimate demands? How many of us are weary and heavy laden with stuff that is not rightfully ours, wasting energy and creativity and leading us to exhaustion and resentment?
I am reminded of Jesus telling us to take up our cross and follow him. How often have I attempted to carry someone else’s cross—whether they wanted me to or not—or invented whole new crosses not of God’s devising or approval, and refused the saving dynamic of taking up my own unique cross and bearing it with some degree of grace and endurance and even beauty?
There is an extraordinary literature of biblical scholarship on this passage, as there is on all the texts of our Holy Book. It is worth exploring…at least some of it is. But what I found most helpful and moving in my reading was the devotional treatment of this passage by the popular Scottish Biblical scholar of half a century ago, William Barclay. In his commentary on this passage, he tells a story about Jesus, precisely the kind of imaginative engagement that Ignatius of Loyola would encourage for anyone approaching Scripture as a platform to prayer. Barclay says:
“The word easy is in Greek chrestos, which can mean well-fitting. In Palestine, ox-yokes were made of wood; the ox was brought, and the measurements were taken. The yoke was then roughed out, and the ox was brought back to have the yoke tried on. The yoke was carefully adjusted, so that it would fit well, and not chafe the neck of the patient animal. The yoke was tailor made.
“There is a legend that Jesus made the best ox-yokes in all Galilee, and that from all over the country people came to him to buy the best yokes that skill could make. In those days, as now, shops had their signs above the door; and it has been suggested that the sign above the door of the carpenter’s shop in Nazareth may well have been: ‘My yokes fit well.’ It may well be that Jesus is here using a picture from the carpenter’s shop in Nazareth where he worked throughout the silent years.”
Imagine that: Tailor-made yokes. Bespoke. Custom designed and fitted. One crafted just for you, and one created just for me, and another designed specially for the person next to you. And all to be worn as lightly and as comfortably as possible until that day when they are finally removed from our necks and we are put out to pasture.
Well, I’m afraid I’m getting carried away with the metaphor. So why don’t I just end by reading again these “comfortable words” from the marvelous paraphrase of Eugene Peterson’s The Message, though I admit they sound a bit like a late night commercial:
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
May God grant it swiftly. And let us say, Amen.
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