The Fourteen Sunday in Ordinary Time July 5, 2020 Gospel: Matthew 11: 25-30
With all the COVID-19 stresses, and feeling like fish out of water, we look for Jesus’ consoling love. And how blessed we are with today’s Gospel, where Jesus offers us in love multiple invitations!
To begin, Jesus KNOWS and HEARS us speak of our burdens: in his humanity He walked more than a mile in our shoes. Jesus IS sympathetic to our sorrows: he knows when we’ve been burdened to the point of tears, and SO weary our bones seem ready to break. Jesus presents himself as our OASIS, our pause, our relief and refreshment in our sorrows: in fact, it is God’s saving plan that Jesus would redeem the whole world: for those who love him, for those who are apathetic toward him, and for those who do NOT love him, or for those who hate him.
But of course, in the Christian life, “relief and rest” is not the end of the invitation Jesus offers. Step Two of this divine process is: Jesus calling us to EXCHANGE our yoke for HIS yoke. What? Right. Everybody’s got burdens and responsibilities: we are not just SITTING around. So what does this mean: “take MY yoke upon your shoulders and learn from me?” To what is it pointing?
Well, for one thing, it could mean that the way I’ve been carrying a burden is what wearies me, and Jesus wants to show me a DIFFERENT way to carry that same burden. It could also mean that we have been carrying a heavy burden all by ourselves, and it may be tiring or killing us. It could ALSO mean we’re carrying a burden Jesus tells us that we’re NOT supposed to be carrying. As we see, Jesus offers us options that NO ONE ELSE is offering us: some different WAYS to re-imagine our burdens.
And what about this yoke EXCHANGE? Jesus invites us to take HIS yoke on our shoulders, and learn from HIM, and JOIN with him, and continue the work of caring for those around us, offering support to all the OTHER weary people, worn out by neglect and indifference. So picture this yoke: that’s YOKE, not like the egg yolk, YOLK. A yoke, YOKE, is a harness, usually made of metal and leather. Yokes are shared by two oxen around necks and heads, allowing them to work together as a team. Let’s be clear: Jesus is NOT handing over all the earth’s burdens to us and then abandoning us: far from it! But Jesus IS asking us to join him in HIS work, to minister with Him, as we say at Mass, at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer: “through him, with him, and in him…..”
Where can we see this principle of partnership at work? In some religious wedding ceremonies, including the Greek Orthodox wedding celebration, the bride and groom are bound together by a cord, and they are led three times around the altar by the presiding cleric and, this is important, at the clergyman’s pace. Learning to walk at someone else’s pace is NOT as easy as it looks: it requires two virtues that Jesus himself had: humility and patience. Jesus invites US to have those same two virtues when we lay down our OWN burdens and instead we CHOOSE to be yoked with Christ: that is, to place ourselves IN TRUST, and under Christ’s care. Jesus’ yoke IS lighter because He is the partner that all of us needs, the one who is with us and on our side, advocating for us, and desiring to lead us TO the light, and away from the darkness.
Back in the 1980’s the Church assembled a book entitled the Order of Christian Funerals. This book, which is still in use for wake services, funerals, memorials, and graveside service, features the Gospel we have just been reflecting on. And we most certainly see its relevance: when God calls our loved ones and other members of the Body of Christ to come home, they are invited to surrender all sorrows, worries, pains and anxieties. But we NOW see clearly that this Gospel is for every one of us, 4 we too are homeward bound in God’s eternal love. Let us NEVER dismiss the assistance Jesus offers us, or the alternatives He proposes: it can literally save our lives.
