“Come to me, all who are weary and whose load is heavy, and I will give you rest.” Verse 28 of our Gospel reading this morning. Jesus has been speaking of the relationship between him and the Father. Things hidden from the learned and wise are, he says, revealed to the simple. Here as elsewhere in the Gospels we see that though Jesus presents the message of the kingdom to all the people, the message is revealed to only some of them. Why should this be? Because revelation requires a commitment decision that begins a new relationship of trust; only then can we truly hear and receive and believe.
This commitment decision involves repentance. We hear Jesus say, “The Kingdom has come close to you. Repent and believe.” For many who went to hear Jesus speak it was just another day out, a flurry of excitement at the latest teacher to hit the road. But some of those who heard him were drawn to take a good long look at themselves, and to realise their need for change, for repentance, for the burdens they carried to be lifted. They were tired of the old life, they wanted to make a new start. It was to them that Jesus said, “Come to me.”
What was it that he was revealing about God? The heart of his message is God’s Fatherly love for us; this is a love that graciously seeks us and accepts us, a love to lift burdens and re-create us. With mind and spirit renewed we can know God in a new way, not as a distant and wrathful God, but as the Father who loves us, who saves and redeems us by the gift of his Son. In him we find eternal life. To recognise and admit our sinfulness, to become aware of the God-shaped gap in ourselves, is the necessary beginning of this process. It’s no surprise, then, that Jesus was heard gladly by people who were very aware of how their sin, how the deficiencies of their lifestyles, had excluded them from the community of faith; he was heard less gladly by the insiders, by those who already believed themselves to be righteous people.
So Jesus speaks of a revelation not given to the wise and the learned, but received and understood by the simple. And it’s to just these people that he offers his invitation: “Come to me.” Come to me, you who are weak and weary; come to me, you who know your spiritual need. The learned religious teachers of the day didn’t think they had any spiritual needs, so they couldn’t hear him. Jesus calls those who are both weary and burdened: wearied by their sin and failure, by the old life they long to be free of; and burdened by those who had put them down and rejected them, excluded and belittled them, used them and discarded them.
And he calls them with a promise. He says, “Come to me, and I will give you rest” - rest for the soul that lightens the burdens of our daily lives. To come to Jesus is to find the forgiveness and salvation that only he can give: to believe in him then not just as a teacher (of whom there were plenty), but as the distinct and special voice of God’s anointed one, God’s promised Messiah. And to come to him means to begin a complete reorientation of life. The hallmarks of this new life will be grace and love; there’s no longer anything to run after and strive for, but a new faith in which we learn from Jesus, seek to be like him, “take his yoke upon us.”
The study and observation of the Jewish Law was referred to as “taking the yoke of the law.” To say that the Lord is God, with no other god beside him, was to “take the yoke of the kingdom;” to live a life of obedience to the Law of Moses was to “take the yoke of the commandments.” So when Jesus spoke of “taking my yoke upon you” people will have understood that he was speaking of a faith response of that nature. In fact, he was offering an exchange of yokes: take my yoke, he says, in place of the yoke of authority and Law placed upon you by scribes and Pharisees. And know that my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
So to accept the yoke of Jesus was to turn away from the current religious leaders, the Pharisees and scribes, whose yoke was so heavy and burdensome. Their piety had made for a heavy yoke that excluded those who were seen as not matching up to the high standards of obvious piety the Pharisees themselves practised. We read elsewhere about how they prayed on the street corners, about how careful they were to keep every last bit of the Law. Theirs was a contractual approach to religion: if you can’t keep a contract, then you’re out, you’re excluded. But now Jesus offers an easy yoke (in other words, appropriate, well-suited). This isn’t an easy life in the sense of sitting back and doing nothing: to take any yoke is to be ready for serious work. But a good and easy yoke is one tailor-made to ensure the oxen who wore it could work well. And like that, Jesus offers a yoke that will fit well, that will suit the needs and abilities of his people.
A farmer setting out to train a young ox would yoke it alongside an older, experienced animal. Which of the two animals would be working the harder? The older one of course; and that’s just what Jesus offers here, when he says “Yoke yourself to me.” Come to me, lean on me, learn from me. To accept Christ is to be lifted and carried by him, but also to learn from him and to be strengthened by him in a way that enables us to share in the work he does.
Side by side in this passage we find the authority and the humility of Jesus. Jesus speaks with all the authority and power of the Father: he says that, “No-one knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Yet this one true divine voice of authority is revealed in what is gentle and humble, the “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” of the children’s hymn. In him authority and humility belong together: the majesty of the God who is love is revealed in the form of a servant.
Here is an urgent call to faith for the whole world. To people everywhere Jesus says, “Come to me, find rest for your weary souls.” In an age where religion so often is strident, power hungry, intolerant, exclusive, we so much need to hear this. Only Jesus can truly bring rest and wellbeing to the troubled soul, and the promise he offers is a forever one, in which we rediscover God the Servant: God who lets go of his godness to enter our world, God who at the cross reveals his endless, limitless love, God who calls us now to share the yoke of service and sacrifice and love he freely takes upon himself. Empty yourselves of all but love, he tells us, and come. Come with me, go for me as I reach out to all the world. I am all you need: learn from me, rest in me, and learn my ways.
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