Unburdened for Mission Pastor Mark Havel

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

[Jesus said,] “But to what shall I compare this generation? They are like children in the market places, calling, ‘We played he flute for you and you would not dance. We wailed and you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking and they said, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard. A friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ Yet, wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”

At that time, Jesus said, “I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and you have revealed them to children, for such was your gracious will. All things, in heaven and on earth, have been handed over to me by my Father. For no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

“Come to me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Can you think of a time recently when a burden was lifted for you? Or when your load was lightened in some way – literally or figuratively? Maybe it was a worldly, practical kind of lifting… or maybe it was a deeper, more spiritual sort of unloading you needed…

I’m getting ready to leave for the summer trip with the High School Youth tomorrow morning. We’re heading to Ohio, stopping by Capital University for a tour of my favorite Lutheran college campus, we’ll spend a couple of days working, learning, and unplugging on a farm, north of there, then we’ll have a day at Cedar Point before coming home. Pastor Cogan did the initial, heavy-lifting of setting the itinerary, renting the van, reserving the rooms, and what-not before taking off for his paternity leave. And I’ve been grateful for that as the trip has gotten closer.

Dianne Kaucher has agreed to be here on Wednesday to make sure things are ready when the kids show up for our Summer Reading Program, since I can’t be here. And on Friday, Donna Kuffner said she’d take care of getting the snacks for that day, knowing I had a lot on my plate getting ready to be gone.

Many of you’ve heard that our annual Camp @ Church program canceled on us and I’ve been grateful for those of you who’ve offered to step up and help me make that program happen, anyway.

And I’m grateful for every e-mail and decision Lance Oxley deals with where the building project is concerned, and every time I see Kent Kuffner mowing the labyrinth, or Steve Beebe digging a ditch, or Gayle gathering the troops for our 25th Anniversary festival, or any number of you cleaning the building. The list goes on. You get the idea.

It’s nice, isn’t it, when something gets removed from your litany of things to do? It’s a gift to move something from your full plate onto someone else’s. It’s a relief to be unburdened, to have someone help carry the weight of a task at hand or to remove a worry from you list. Which is what I hear in Jesus’ words from this morning’s Gospel. And, he’s talking about more, of course, than what’s on our everyday lists of things to do.

The passage seems disconnected, you might think, with all that talk about children in the marketplaces who play the flute but no one dances, or who wail but no one mourns. And when he talks about John the Baptist who was thought to be possessed by demons, because he didn’t eat and drink like so many others. But that when Jesus did the opposite – ate and drank like the rest of the world, with tax collectors and sinner, even – they called him a glutton and a drunk.

Jesus is comparing the people of his generation to little children, playing games with their faith. People didn’t like John because he didn’t eat and drink like the rest of them. And they didn’t like Jesus because he did. In other words, the people of his time were fickle and played around with notions of what God was, with who the Messiah might be, with what salvation was supposed to look like or who heaven could include.

And there’s nothing new under the sun, sadly. Christians and people of faith do the same, still. We add up sins – our own and those of others. We judge – ourselves and one another. We compare. We choose sides. We pick winners and we declare losers. We can be a fickle, faithless, lot of God’s children.

And just like even Jesus experienced, we realize, too often, that we don’t live up to the world’s standards and expectations. And we may have a hard time living up to the unrealistic expectations we’ve laid out for ourselves, a lot of the time, too.

So, heavier than anything on our “To Do Lists,” we bear these expectations like yokes – those heavy wooden bars laid across the shoulders of oxen and asses and other beasts of burden who plowed the fields in the days of Jesus. And we bear them, not just over our shoulders or across our backs, but in our hearts and in our minds and in every part of our lives:

Yokes of breaking or broken relationships…

Burdens of guilt or shame or sin…

Yokes of addiction…

Burdens of illness and disease…

Yokes of injustice, burdens of inadequacy, yokes of fear and worry…

And this way of living is tedious and overbearing. It’s tiresome and overwhelming. It’s impossible, really. And it’s enough to wear a person out, to wipe out a person’s spirit, to dry up a person’s soul.

And what we long for – whether we know it or not, or whether we’re slow to admit it – is for someone to call or stop by and to say, “Hey, let me get that for you?” “Why are you trying to do my job?” “I told you I would help, so why aren’t you letting me?” And along comes this Jesus.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Jesus knew we would try too hard, for too long, for too many of the things that would continue to leave us hungry and thirsty and without answers, without comfort, without satisfaction and without any kind of meaning or peace in this life.

Most of all, Jesus understood how tiring and weary and burdensome it could be for us to try to save us from ourselves, so he promises to do that for us. Jesus calls us to rest in the arms of God’s grace and to quit trying to win in the eyes of the world. And he shows us we can do that best when we know and believe and trust that we’ve already been won by the love of God, the Lord of heaven and earth.

But that’s not all. It doesn’t end there.

Because Pastor Cogan did so much of the planning for the High School trip… Because Donna picked up those snacks… Because Dianne will be here Wednesday… Because so many of you are committed to this new Camp @ Church mission… my plans, my agenda, my To-Do List? – it didn’t go away – it just changed, for the better.

I could finish a sermon, sooner than expected this week. I could take communion to someone at home. I could prepare devotions for the Youth Trip. I could begin planning new stuff for Camp. And I even found time for a break. And finished a book, too. I’m not gonna lie.

When someone lifts a burden for or from you, it frees you to do something else. Even if it’s just a matter of hours in your day, you’re all of a sudden freed up to accomplish something else in its place. And the freedom we have through God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ is no different.

Jesus calls us to trust that the burden of our sin and shame is lifted, as far as our Creator is concerned, so that we’ll be free to get about the business of living differently as a result. We are unburdened. We are un-yoked. We are un-tethered from whatever weighed us down. And we are let loose on the world – set free – changed by God’s grace – and allowed to transform the world with acts of mercy, generosity, grace, gratitude, and the love of God, in return.

Amen