St George's Cathedral, Cape Town

A Sermon preached by The Reverend Bruce W. B. Jenneker in the Cathedral Church of St George the Martyr in the City and Diocese of Cape Town at the Cathedral Eucharist on the Fourteenth Sunday of the Year, 6 July 2008

One of the great challenges of the life of faith for us in our time is that we do not read Scripture. Most of us hear the Scriptures in Church – and that is a good thing. However, in the liturgy we only ever hear snippets, a little bit here and another little bit there. We never get the whole story, not in Church at least. Unless we take the time to read each of the Gospels all the way through, we miss the opportunity to discover Jesus, sit at his feet, discern his intentions that shaped the events around him, and follow him through the events in which he reached out to save us and our world..

The Gospel set for today, the Fourteenth Sunday of the Year is 6 short verses which come at the end of the 11^th chapter of St Matthew's Gospel. Well known, often quoted and dearly loved these verses are:

At that time Jesus said, 'Come to me, all you that are weary and are 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.'

I wonder why those – much wiser than I – who formulate the lectionary chose to omit the preceding verses of this chapter. In these weeks after Pentecost we are reading the Gospel of Matthew in course. Today the lectionary writers would have us dash headlong to the comfortable words at the end of the chapter, 'Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.'

Why ever did Jesus utter these words? And what about the enigmatic words Jesus says right before them, that God has hidden the mysteries of the universe from the wise and the intelligent and has revealed them instead to infants.

Let me recall for you briefly what happens in preceding the verses. First the disciples of John the Baptist come to speak to Jesus. John has sent them to ask Jesus in words of one syllable whether he is in fact the One who is to come, the Messiah. John, you remember him, the one wearing camel's hair and eating locusts and wild honey, the one who baptized Jesus in the Jordan. Why has John lost his confidence? What has happened to undermine John's conviction that Jesus is the powerful one, the Messiah? Jesus was breaking every type taboo: consorting with fishermen, sinners and tax collectors, healing lepers and demoniacs, challenging accepted religious practice, eating and drinking with the rabble. This was not how the Messiah was expected o behave, these ways undermined righteousness and cast side the law.

As John's disciples depart, Jesus is moved to wonder about the way people think and act. John fasts and lives a life of radical abstinence – and the people say he is mad, possessed by a demon. Jesus eats and drinks, behaving like a bridegroom at the wedding banquet – and they call him a drunkard and a glutton.

The next verses are poignant, redolent with a deep tenderness and shot through with a sorrow deeper than the words. Woe to you, Chorazin, Jesus says, and to you Bethsaida, and to you Capernaum. If John doesn't know who I am, and you don't, who will glimpse the glory of the kingdom I have come to proclaim. Chorazin was the little town on the Sea of Galilee where Jesus often taught and worked many miracles. Bethsaida was another town on the lakeshore, near Jordan, also the scene of Jesus' ministry. And Capernaum was a city of the north shore of the lake, where Jesus had made his home. Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum – all within a few miles of one another, his home territory, the place where he was seen, heard and known, yet neither they, nor even his cousin John the Baptist, could recognize Jesus as the true Messiah he was. Were there tears in our Lord's eyes, I wonder, as he spoke these sad words of reproach. Tears of frustration at not being recognized, tears of disappointment at being misunderstood, tears of distress that the joy of living in God's grace was being rejected for a rigid and burdensome righteousness that was a paralysing affliction.

It is then that our Lord speaks the words of our Gospel today, and they are all the more significant because of what has gone before. You are looking, Jesus seems to say, for complicated answers to legalistic questions, and you refuse to hear the offer of abundant life, freely and richly given. You choose to see life as burdensome and full of toil, carrying all its onerous weight of it on your own shoulders, blind to the new way life that I am inaugurating. You are mired in the enormity of living, shouldering all its weight, bearing all its crushing burden, trying to save yourself yet losing yourself in the wretchedness of a life without grace.

Jesus does not promise a life without burdens or weariness. He offers a way of overcoming them. His is not an easy way out of problems but rather a liberating way into solutions. This is the wisdom that is hidden from the intelligent and the wise, but which is obvious to infants. Trust as children trust, Jesus says. Let a loving parent take you hand, Jesus says. Shelter on a mother's breast; be carried on a father's shoulders. Have confidence in a parent's promise. Live as though your needs are noticed, respected, provided. Underneath are the everlasting arms.

'Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens,' Jesus says, 'and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.' We are so good at bearing heavy burdens, aren't we? Have you noticed how we compete with one another for the prize of being the busiest, of working the longest hours, of being the most exhausted, of having the most complicated schedules and the most demanding tasks? Have you taken stock of how often you pat yourself on the back for having achieved it all on your own, without the help of anyone, and indeed in spite of the hindering obstructions they throw in your way? Our burdens are heavy and our labours are wearying.

'Swap these,' Jesus says, 'my burden is light and my yoke is easy.' There is something very compelling about the Greek word which has been translated as 'easy.' The Greek word for 'light' to describe burdens carries much the same meaning as the English word. But the Greek word which describes the yoke as 'easy' has a richer connotation. It means, good, gentle, benevolent, benign, pleasant, in fact. 'Come, you weary ones,' Jesus is saying, 'turn in your heavy burdens and wearisome yokes that lock you into despair and shackle you to anxiety. Live life my way, with burdens that are light and yokes that are gentle and, in fact, pleasant.

Can it be, just perhaps, that we prefer our heavy burdens because like blinkers and blinders they keep our vision narrow and selfish? Can it be, just perhaps, that the way of life that Jesus proclaims, with its light burdens and pleasant yokes liberates us from self-pity and self-indulgence? Those whose burdens are light and whose yokes are pleasant have time, energy and inclination to look up at the world around us, and then to have a care for those who are powerless and downtrodden, the stranger in our midst and the neighbour across our borders. Those whose burdens are light and whose yoke is pleasant have the vigour to be patient with those they love, kind to those who walk alongside them and generous to those they must forgive. Those whose burdens are light and whose yoke is pleasant have space in their hearts to listen to those who are different and who live different lifestyles, and in the listening learn from them.

May God give us the grace to let our Saviour free us from burdens that weigh us down and the yokes that oppress us, and in their place shape our lives with a vocation that is light and pleasant, freeing us to do the work of the love of Christ.

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