Rev Vic's sermon 

C050726 Christ the King Sermon
Matthew 11: 25 - 30
 
I sometimes think life is a bit like when you are at the airport and you confidently pick up your suitcase from the baggage carousel… only to discover, after dragging it halfway across the terminal, that it isn't yours.
We spend so much of life carrying things we were never meant to carry: worries about tomorrow, regrets from yesterday, expectations we place upon ourselves, and burdens we quietly assume no one else could possibly understand.
It's perhaps no surprise, then, that when Jesus says, ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest,’ those words still stop us in our tracks.
These words of Jesus are among the most gentle and reassuring in all Scripture, and they have been heard by Christian people across the centuries as an invitation not just to believe certain things about God, but to come into a living relationship with Jesus himself.
And those words speak directly to human experience - when they were first heard and, in every generation, since.
Because few of us walk through life without experiencing weariness and burden.
 
Then, almost immediately after this amazing invitation to rest in Jesus, he adds something that is perhaps a bit unexpected: ‘Take my yoke upon you.’
Jesus has told us to rest in him, lovely, relaxing, rest. And then he tells us to pick up a yoke and get working! Which do we do?
The transition from rest to yoke can seem almost paradoxical, as though we were being invited to lay down a burden only to have another placed upon our shoulders.
It's like arriving at a relaxing stay with friends after a few months of busyness, only to be given a paintbrush on arrival...
And yet, as so often in Jesus' teaching, that contradiction is precisely the place where deeper truth is revealed.
 
In the world of the first century, a yoke was a familiar and practical object.
It was a carefully shaped wooden beam designed to rest across the shoulders of a pair of oxen, binding them together so that they shared the work of pulling a plough or a cart.
Often one was younger, the other older, and the younger learned from the older what to do.
And the quality of a yoke made a significant difference to the life of the animal.
If it was poorly made, it would chafe and rub, causing pain and exhaustion; but if it was skilfully fashioned, it would distribute weight evenly and allow the animal to work steadily without injury or stress.
So when Jesus speaks of a yoke that is ‘easy,’ the word he uses does not mean effortless in the modern sense, but rather something more like ‘well-fitting,’ ‘kind,’ or ‘suited to its purpose.’
His point is not that discipleship involves no demands, but that it parallels to the truth of who we are made to be.
 
And there is a long-standing thought that, as Jesus himself, before the beginning of his public ministry, worked as a carpenter, it could be likely that he fashioned yokes for local farmers.
So perhaps, when Jesus talks of yokes and how they should be made, he knows precisely what he is talking about.
Whether or not that is historically precise, it does convey something theologically true, because if anyone understands what it is for something to be properly made and rightly fitted, it is the person who made them.
And if anyone understand life and how it should be lived, it is the One through whom all things were created.
The life Christ offers is not random or externally imposed, but our lives are created by God and for God.
 
The image of the yoke, however, does something even more profound, for a yoke is never designed for a single animal.
Its whole purpose is to bind two together, so that they may walk in step and share the burden between them.
When we think of that, I think that the words of Jesus start to take on a different meaning.
Jesus isn't standing at a distance issuing instructions about how life should be lived, and he isn’t placing a burden upon human shoulders and leaving them to bear it alone.
Rather, he speaks of a life in which he himself is joined to those who follow him, so that they are not carrying the weight of discipleship in isolation, but in communion with him.
 
And St Paul helps us understand how that communion becomes a living reality.
In today's reading from Romans, we are reminded that those who belong to Christ are indwelt by his Spirit.
We do not simply try to copy Jesus from a distance; Jesus himself dwells within us by the Holy Spirit, enabling us to walk with him and to share his life.
It is for this reason that Jesus can speak of himself as ‘gentle and humble in heart,’ a rare and revealing glimpse into how Jesus describes himself.
He isn't harsh with those who struggle, or impatient with those who are unsure.
Jesus doesn't drive from behind like a taskmaster, but he accompanies from beside, sharing the journey of those who come to him.
The Christian life, in this sense, is not a lonely effort to reach God by strength of will, but a shared life with Christ, in which even obedience becomes participation in his own life.
The yoke of Christ is light not because we become stronger by ourselves, but because the very life of the risen Christ is at work within us.
 
And yet there is something still deeper that must be said if we are to understand why this yoke is truly light.
For there is one burden that Christ never invites us to carry alongside him, and that is the burden of our sin.
When the road turns towards Jerusalem and the shadow of the Cross falls across his path, he does not distribute that weight among his disciples.
He carries it alone.
The wood laid upon his shoulders on Calvary is not shared, nor is the weight of human sin divided among many hands.
It is borne by him in full, so that what separates humanity from God might be taken away once and for all.
It's only because he has already carried the heaviest burden that he can now invite us to take his yoke upon us, because the yoke he gives is light - not because nothing is asked of us, but because everything needed for our salvation has already been accomplished by him.
 
And at this point, Jesus adds a promise that would have resonated deeply with those who knew the Scriptures: ‘You will find rest for your souls.’
These words echo directly the prophet Jeremiah, who speaks in Jeremiah chapter 6, verse 16: ‘Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.’
For Jeremiah's original hearers, this was a call back to faithfulness, to rediscover the way of life shaped by God's covenant.
Yet in Jeremiah, the verse ends with a tragic refusal: ‘But they said, 'We will not walk in it.’’
The offer of rest is given, but not received.
In Jesus, however, that ancient promise is taken up and fulfilled in a new and startling way.
He does not only point to the path; he identifies himself with it.
The rest for which Jeremiah called is no longer an abstract destination or moral direction, but is found in a person: in Jesus himself.
To come to him is to enter into the rest of God, not as something postponed to the end of life, but as a reality already beginning in the present, wherever Christ is known and followed.
 
And this is why the Gospel reading today so naturally leads us towards the altar.
For in the Eucharist the words of Jesus, ‘Come to me,’ become not only an invitation heard but a reality enacted.
We come with the burdens we have carried through the week, some visible and some known only to God, and we don’t come because we have succeeded in carrying them well, but because we are invited to lay them before him.
And here the One who once carried the Cross places into our hands not another burden, but himself.
In the sacrament of his Body and Blood, he strengthens us for the journey, reminding us that the Christian life is sustained not by our own strength alone, but by communion with him who bears us as we walk with him.
 
And it is here that Paul's words come into focus once again.
We are debtors, he says, not to the flesh but to the Spirit.
The Christian life is not sustained by gritted teeth or sheer determination, - perhaps in carrying the wrong suitcase around - but by the Spirit who gives us strength to put to death all that draws us away from God and to grow more fully into the likeness of Christ.
The yoke that once seemed a burden becomes, by the Spirit's power, the very means by which we learn to walk in freedom.
The rest that he promises is therefore not the absence of all labour, nor the removal of every difficulty, but the deep and abiding peace of belonging to God.
It is the foretaste of that eternal Sabbath towards which all creation moves, when every burden will finally be laid down and God will be all in all.
Until that day, the invitation remains as fresh and urgent as ever: ‘Come to me.’
And in coming to him, again and again, the weary find rest for their souls.
Amen.