One of the most well-known and popular pieces of music ever written, is Handel’s Messiah. And perhaps one of the most beautiful pieces in Messiah is the aria, He shall feed his flock. The words of the alto part of the aria are taken from the prophet Isaiah and the words of the soprano part, whilst they’re changed from the first to the third person, him instead of me and he instead of I, are taken from the Gospel reading we heard this morning:
“Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
The beauty of the music that Handel set these words to, mirrors the beauty of the words themselves because, I think, these are some of the most beautiful words we find in the Gospels. But having said that, I think these words, and in particular the last sentence (which Handel actually sets to a different tune as a chorus), can cause us something of a problem.
Jesus says that his yoke is easy, and his burden is light, and yet we know that being a Christian can be far from easy and it can, at times be quite a heavy burden to bear, partly because of the way we can be treated on account of our faith, and partly because of the pain it can cause us to see the world ignoring the teaching and example of Jesus and carrying on in its own, often very far from sweet way. We can be ridiculed for our faith. We can be abused for our faith. Our beliefs and values can be ignored and trampled on by people who don’t share them. And despite the fact that these days anyone and everyone seems to be able to stop anything being said or done that they find offensive, it seems that we Christians, have to simply put up with being offended repeatedly, without being able to do anything about it. We can, and do, suffer all these things for taking on Christ’s yoke. And in some places still, those who take on Christ’s yoke are violently persecuted, sometimes to the extent of taking their lives in their hands simply by going to church. So where is the ease and the rest that Jesus promises to those who come to him?
Just before the words we read this morning, Jesus had been speaking about those who rejected both John the Baptist and were now rejecting him. He also warned the unrepentant about what was in store for them;
“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgement for Tyre and Sidon than for you.”
We know that Jesus used similar language when he spoke about the hypocrisy and spiritual blindness of the scribes and Pharisees because we read it later in St Matthew’s Gospel. There Jesus begins by telling the people to do what the scribes and Pharisees teach, but not to do what they do. And he uses these words:
“For they preach, but do not practise. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.”
So in this morning’s Gospel, when Jesus thanked God that he had,
“…hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children…”
the ‘wise and understanding’ he’s speaking about are almost certainly the scribes and Pharisees. And so, if we take Jesus’ words in the context of his overall teaching, what he appears to be doing here is contrasting his way with the way of the scribes and Pharisees. What Jesus appears to be saying is that his way is easier than that of the scribes and Pharisees because he won’t place impossible demands on people. He won’t impose heavy burdens on others by compelling them to obey the minutiae of religious regulations. He’ll teach them to understand the spirit of the law and keep that, as he himself did. And how much easier is that than the way that some in the Church have tried to make people follow over the years? How many people over the years have been put off the Church, or have even turned away from the Church because of the rigid rules and regulations some people in the Church have tried to impose on them? ‘You can’t do this; you must do that.’ How many people have come to see the Church as an organisation whose purpose is to stop people enjoying themselves, because of this kind of rigid authoritarian teaching, not to mention the often quite obvious hypocrisy of those who teach it? But if that’s what Jesus meant by easy and light, what about finding rest?
We know that Jesus didn’t promise his disciples an easy life, quite the contrary in fact, Jesus’ tells us that we will make enemies because of our faithfulness to him. He tells us we’ll have trouble and be persecuted on his account. So what does Jesus mean when he says that those who come to him will find rest?
In his famous work, Confessions, St Augustine of Hippo says this to God:
‘You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.’
And we find a similar understanding in the Psalms too, the idea that our hearts, our souls, all that we are in the very depth of our being is constantly searching for God. The idea that, in the very depth our being, we know that we’re in need of something to bring us peace and fulfilment. And we can’t rest from this searching until we find what it is we’re looking for. St Augustine understood that what we’re looking for is God because only God can give us what it is that we really need. And this is what the Scriptures are saying too.
The Psalms are amongst the books of the Bible that are known as wisdom literature. Another is the Book of Ecclesiasticus, and the words Jesus used in this morning’s Gospel are very similar to something we read in Ecclesiasticus;
‘Draw near to me, you who lack education, and stay in my school. Why are you still lacking in these things; why does your soul thirst for this?
I opened my mouth and said,
“Acquire Wisdom for yourselves without money. Place your neck under her yoke, and let your soul receive instruction. It is found close at hand.”
See for yourselves that I have laboured a little, and I have found much rest for myself.’
As we know, Wisdom is a deep knowledge and understanding of God’s ways. To have Wisdom is to know what the righteous thing to do in any situation is. Once we have Wisdom, we shouldn’t really need the written law to instruct us about what to do. The law will be part of who and what we are and so we’ll know what to do without having to consult and follow rules and regulations.
Wisdom is equated with the Holy Spirit but ultimately Wisdom, like all things, comes from God the Father.
But in this morning’s Gospel Jesus says,
“My Father has handed all things over to me. No one knows the Son except the Father. And nobody knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wants to reveal him.”
So Wisdom also comes through Jesus, the Son of God. And Jesus will give Wisdom to whoever he chooses. What Jesus is saying in this morning’s Gospel then is ‘Come to me and I will give you what your hearts and souls are searching for. I’ll teach you how to obey God’s law but not by imposing rules and regulations on you, like other teachers have done, I’ll teach you how to obey God’s law by teaching you and giving you Wisdom, the Wisdom that comes from God . I’ll give you Wisdom so that you’ll know how to do the righteous thing without having to make sure that you’ve crossed every ‘t’ and dotted every ‘i’ of every one of the hundreds of written rules and regulations in the law. I’ll show you how to find rest because what I teach you and give you will mean that you don’t have to keep searching and striving to find God and to know what to do to be in a right relationship with God. I’ll give you all this if you come to me and follow me. And I can give you all of this because what I will teach and give you isn’t mediated through a human teacher who may put their own interpretation on God’s law, what I will give you comes directly from God the Father himself.
I said towards the beginning of my sermon that I think these words of Jesus are among the most beautiful in the Gospels. I didn’t say that because they offer us the kind of things we normally associate with something easy and light and restful, because they don’t do that. They don’t offer us the kind of ‘I’m alright Jack’, ‘eat drink and be merry’, ‘put your feet up and relax’ kind of life we usually think of when we talk about things being easy and restful, because Christian discipleship isn’t like that. We still have to take up our cross each and every day and follow Jesus; we have to take his yoke upon us, and sometimes that’s hard to do and it isn’t restful in the normal sense of that word. But these words of Jesus are beautiful nevertheless, because the ease and rest for heart and soul that he promises to those who do come to him and follow him, is a promise to free us from the ‘can’t do this’, ‘must do that’, merchants and hypocrites who can make our lives so much more difficult than they need to be. Who can make our lives so restless because we’re constantly having to think about what to do and wonder whether what we do is the right or the wrong thing to do. And these words are beautiful too because this promise of Jesus isn’t just a promise for the next life when the difficulty and restlessness of this life is over, it’s something that we can have now, despite the difficulty and restlessness of this life. And given how hard and restless life can be, who doesn’t want to have that kind of ease and rest in their lives? And isn’t the promise of this kind of ease and rest a beautiful thing?
Amen.
Propers for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Trinity 5) 9th July 2023
Entrance Antiphon
Within your temple, we ponder your loving kindness, O God.
As your name, so also your praise reaches to the end of the earth;
your right hand is filled with justice.
The Collect
Almighty and everlasting God,
by whose Spirit the whole body of the Church is governed and sanctified:
hear our prayer which we offer for all your faithful people,
that in their vocation and ministry,
they may serve you in holiness and truth,
to the glory of your name;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)
Zechariah 9:9-10
Psalm 145:1-2, 8-11, 13-14
Romans 8:9, 11-13
Matthew 11:25-30
RCL (St Gabriel’s)
Zechariah 9:9-12
Psalm 145:8-15
Romans 7:15-25
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 