Genesis 25:19-34 and Psalm 119:105-112 | Isaiah 55:10-13 and Psalm 65:(1-8), 9-13 | Romans 8:1-11 | Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Most interpretations of the end of this reading tend to imply or outright claim that the rest we receive upon coming to Jesus is realized instantaneously. After all, this is how we have been shaped to think all things happen in our economy. Further, many of us have been brought up in faith communities that have taught that the yoke that Christ offers to us is nothing more than salvation from some kind of hell, whether that is experienced here or in eternity. But the whole of Jesus’ invitation in this lesson reveals that the burden of Christ is about much more than an exchange of one eternal status for another.
Taking the whole of the lesson in view, the truth of taking on the yoke of rest begins to reveal itself. The truth is that salvation is just the beginning of it. As it turns out, it is actually quite difficult for us to set our yokes down in favor of a better burden. We have been formed all our lives by the yoke of selfish ambition, upward mobility, and ceaseless progress. While growth is the idea, the way of Jesus is one of growth by becoming like a child who will then be formed by a different logic and wisdom than any the world can offer. Coming to the rest that Jesus offers is actually an exercise in humility, it seems.
Rest, rather than a passive state of being, has, as a prerequisite, at least in our culture, an acknowledgement that we have been formed a certain way, to believe in the supposed good news of maximizing margins and extrapolating value from everything around us within an inch of their lives. Jesus’ invitation is simply to forsake that wisdom in favor of something that would otherwise seem foolish. Of course, the sometimes harsh reality is that any new formation in Christ will take just as much, if not more, intense creation, both within and among us, against what has always seemed to be wise.
I begin to wonder if we might do well if we treated the taking up of Jesus’ yoke like we do the other object that Jesus asks us to pick up: the cross. We are far more likely to talk about picking up our cross daily, and are far more willing to acknowledge the cost of doing so. If the burden that Jesus calls us to is really as captivating as he claims, it should not surprise us that it demands, at the very least, as much from us as picking up the instrument of his death. Anything less would be to say that what we have received from the world is sufficient, that our wisdom is worthwhile, and that we prefer what is visible to that which is hidden. May we all choose the grace of humility, that we might find the goodness of life in the kingdom.
A Sabbath Poem by Wendell Berry
How long does it take to make the woods?
As long as it takes to make the world.
The woods is present as the world is, the presence
of all its past, and of all its time to come.
It is always finished, it is always being made, the act
of its making forever greater than the act of its destruction.
It is a part of eternity, for its end and beginning
belong to the end and beginning of all things,
the beginning lost in the end, the end in the beginning.
What is the way to the woods, how do you go there?
By climbing up through the six days’ field,
kept in all the body’s years, the body’s
sorrow, weariness, and joy. By passing through
the narrow gate on the far side of that field
where the pasture grass of the body’s life gives way
to the high, original standing of the trees.
By coming into the shadow, the shadow
of the grace of the strait way’s ending,
the shadow of the mercy of light.Why must the gate be narrow?
Because you cannot pass beyond it burdened.
To come in among these trees you must leave behind
the six days’ world, all of it, all of its plans and hopes.
You must come without weapon or tool, alone,
expecting nothing, remembering nothing,
into the ease of sight, the brotherhood of eye and leaf.1