Matthew 11:28-30
Bethel/KUMC
Rev. Marc Sherrod, ThD
How many times have we longed to hear this Sabbath voice, as uttered by Jesus and preserved by the Gospel according to Saint Matthew? “Come unto me, all who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest. . .”
It is the call to come when we’re tired and troubled, to come especially if the turbulent waters of life seems poised to suck us under, to come in those moments when we just need some breathing room from all the toil and burdens and hardships of the day. Jesus says “come . . . come to me.”
. . maybe it is all too true that we’ve been influenced in a negative way by stereotypical images of the revivalist’s tent and sawdust trail, put off by the sweaty altar calls and the staged theatrics of guilt and repentance associated with “Just as I am,” so much so that the language of “coming to Jesus” seems now void of meaning to our post-modernist ears, the vestige of a by-gone era of unsophisticated Protestantism and the TV preacher’s manipulative methods and misplaced ethics.
Next to the Bible itself, and maybe even at times surpassing the Bible, it is the hymnbook from which we get much of our theology and views about what it means to follow Christ and what it means to be the Church. Hymns, and often even more the feelings they evoke than the words sung, have the power to almost mystically unite us with certain seasons and passages of life. How many times, for instance, have I felt the words of “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind” come welling up within me in times of exhaustion or scarcity:
Drop thy still dews of quietness, till all our strivings cease; take
from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess
the beauty of thy peace. . . . let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; speak
through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still, small voice of calm.
Somehow, the Quaker John Greenleaf Whittier’s poetic words in that hymn and those of Jesus in Matthew have always seemed to dovetail and circle beneath me when the path of life seemed obscure and difficult, or when, in the words of another song from my adolescence with deep power, I have searched for “a bridge over troubled waters.” On and on we cold go with lyrics and tunes that have sheltered and secured us when the way has been filled with tears and trouble. And perhaps what is true for me has also been true for you.
Jesus speaks with many voices in scripture – there’s the call to practice justice and mercy, the commandment to love one’s neighbor, the costly demand to surrender self and possessions, the summons to imitate his sacrifice by taking up the cross and following, but this call in Matthew 11 is like none other – have you heard him invite you to find Sabbath rest in him, to let go whatever feelings of being forsaken or betrayed or abandoned that threaten to keep you from knowing the gladness and full purpose God has in store for you and for your life?
I think it was the early church father, Irenaus, who once wrote, “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.” Who among us has not, at some moment, felt nailed to the cross of crisis, perplexity, disappointment, self-pity, grief?
But, and this is the paradox, the secret at the center of what it means to be religious, to be a person of faith, that experience of weariness and the weight of those burdens can actually be an opportunity to feel fully alive and to bring glory to God!
To the extent we can come to Jesus, the incarnation of that Eternal One, the soul animating the heart of all things, when we can place our loads at the feet of the one who knows the fullness of the human experience as no one else has ever known it, when we can let go of our propensity to fix and manage and control all life’s problems and worries and cares, then, then, the way can be made clear to respond in faith to crisis, to behold truth amid perplexity, to overcome the temptation to wallow in self-pity. Moreover then, and perhaps even only then, we can receive the grace of walking along the road that leads to hope and new life -- the kind of life promised by God for all humanity even before time itself began – the glory of God is the human creation fully alive, feeling, experiencing, tasting everything and knowing that somehow, mysteriously, even mystically, it all is good, even very good.
Jesus gives us, here, then, in Matthew 11, not an altar call, but a call to an alternative existence. . . a call to be human, to be fully alive.
The biblical scholar Walter Bruggemann attributes much of our worried exhaustion to the fact that we trust in ourselves, instead of God, forgetting and denying the abundance which God has ordained into the very order of creation and, instead, arrogantly relying on our own efforts and resources.
“Pain is the matrix of newness,” he writes, and the painful act of truth-telling about the ways we choose pride instead of vulnerability, self-reliance instead of existential trust, is the kind of truth that can truly set us free. Bruggemann has this paragraph I’d like to share, which comes from his sermon first delivered to a national Sabbatical gathering of clergy several years ago. He says this to a roomful of ministers:
We always stand, as did Jesus, before the governor who notoriously asked, “What is truth?” The truth withheld from the wise and given to babes is that pain is the matrix of newness. Tell the truth without pious protectiveness, without ideological reductionism, stay close to the text, tell the truth and you will find the weariness easing as you come clean to the one who is the truth, and the way and the life, a way of pain, a life of vulnerability. Imagine a Sabbath church filled with truth-tellers that are neither red nor blue. But stay close to the one of whom we say, “And him crucified.” (Mandate to Difference, “An Invitation to the Contemporary Church,” 44)
Truth is, our lives are full of all sorts of voices calling us in all sorts of directions and to all sorts of tasks. And this means that the world is full of exhausted, hurting people who’ve listened to the wrong voice, choosing gods like salary and status over spiritual practices like vulnerability and truth-telling. But if we can but hear the voice of Jesus and come to him, we can really and finally only come with our humanness fully displayed, our souls bared, with muck on our shoes – footsore and travel-stained with the dust of our lives upon us, our failures, our deceits, our hypocrisies.
“Come to me all who are weary or carrying heavy burdens . . .”
There is nothing moralistic or sentimental about the truth of this invitation. It means simply that we must be careful with our lives, for Christ’s sake, because, truth is, they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously.
One of the clichés of our time has people saying, with that peculiar voice that seems to be peculiarly American, “I’m not religious, I’m spiritual.” That line alone, deserves more pulpit time at some future date, but suffice it to say that the invitation from Jesus to come to him should not be confused with the latest fashion of trying to make religion appear as solely an individual endeavor, to appear less religious by stripping it of all its demands so that everyone can feel good about himself or herself, or by building churches that look like shopping malls or by turning the confession of sin into a non-judgmental occasion to practice the self-centered pursuit of happiness ever after.
The invitation from Jesus that we come to him, while a grace stirring inside the heart of individuals, is nonetheless something not without a communal context and a theological and ecclesiastical history of pious practices, truth-telling and disciplined inquiry. In other words, the burdens and troubles, the exhaustion and sorrow we bear and that mark us as fully human are spiritual realities and experiences writ large upon the life of the whole community of the faithful. And so they have been, since day one.
The writer and Presbyterian minister, Frederic Beuchner puts it this way:
I receive maybe three or four hundred letters a year from strangers who
tell me that the books I have spent the better part of my life writing
have one way or another saved their lives, in some case literally. I am
deeply embarrassed by such letters. I think, if they only knew that I am
a person more often than not just as lost in the woods as they are, just
as full of darkness, in just as desperate need. I think, if I only knew how
to save my own life. They write to me as if I am a saint, and I wonder
how I can make clear to them how wrong they are.
But what I am beginning to discover is that, in spite of all that, there is
a sense in which they are also right. In my books, and sometimes even
in real life, I have it in me at my best to be a saint to other people, and
by saint I mean life-giver, someone who is able to bear to others
something of the Holy Spirit, whom the creeds describe as the Lord and
Giver of Life. Sometimes, by the grace of God, I have it in me to be
Christ to other people. And so, of course, have we all – the life-giving,
life-saving, and healing power to be saints, to be Christs, maybe at
rare moments even to ourselves. (“The Longing for Home”)
We can let the pain and the weariness and the heavy load take us down, define us, make us feel as if we have no place to be but in that downward spiral into anxiety and self-pity, but in those moments of life’s deep suffering and questioning, we hear the voice of the one who calls us to embrace the fullness of our humanity. And we say “yes” to his voice, “Come unto me, all you who are weary or 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.”
So let it be. Amen.
Comments upon the close of Pat’s service to Bethel as our Parish Associate
The Reverend Patricia Harvey joined the staff of Bethel as parish associate early in 2007, and June 30 of this year marked the end of her time of service in this particular capacity as she stepped in during my time of being on disability and steps out as I return to pastoral ministry on a full-time basis.
In a moment, Elder Steve Jacks will speak words of appreciation on behalf of the Bethel congregation, but permit me to speak deep words of gratitude to Pat, who has honored her ordination vows, in many ways certainly, but especially from my point of view, in that vow we and all ministers and elders in the Presbyterian Church promise and say “yes” to: “Will you be a friend among your colleagues in ministry?” There are others equally valid and appropriate to celebrate, vows about serving the people with energy or loving one’s neighbor or furthering the peace of the Church, but for me, the one that has stood out is the one about befriending those who are also servant-leaders and honoring the call with which we all have been called by God in Christ.
My cancer, when it was finally discovered in September 2006, had no regard for the kind of havoc it would play upon, not just me and my family, but others in my world of work who depended on pastoral leadership. Thankfully, Pat and the Rev. Bill Shenk were both willing to make adjustments in their schedules and lives, and responded to the call to be in ministry, particularly in my absence, but even continuing into my presence back on a part-time, now back on a full-time basis. Many of our Methodist friends have likewise come to know and love Pat for her energy and enthusiasm and dedication, for which we all express our sincere and heartfelt gratitude. For her, there will be some well-deserved time off to travel, be a grandmother, and explore her own creative talents and interests that have largely been placed on hold, so I am sure we all will continue to have occasion to partner in ministry and service as the years unfold.
And now, I’ve asked Steve to share a few words as well...
