The Man Who Would Not Be King

Text:, Matthew 16:21-28
Other texts: Exodus 3:1-5

Last week we heard Peter name Jesus as the Messiah. “Bless you,” Jesus said to Peter after Peter proclaimed this. Jesus told him that his insight was God-sent. Jesus names him Rocky (from Simon) and tells him that the church of Christ will be built on his stoney shoulders.

What a difference a week makes. Or in the timeline of the story, what a difference a moment makes. For when Jesus gets down to details of what being the Messiah might mean, Peter rebukes him. Jesus talks about the days ahead filled with suffering and fear-driven violence. But Peter cannot stand it. “God forbid it,” he says to Jesus, meaning “I, Peter, wish I could forbid it.” This is not what Peter hoped for for his friend and not what anyone hoped for in a Messiah.

Jesus is tempted lots throughout his short life. First, in the desert, where in some versions of the Gospel the devil offers him food, safety, and power. And at the end of his life, on the cross, where he is tempted to do something—flee, perform a miracle, who knows—to save himself, to escape his coming execution. And here with Peter, to abandon his mission, which anyone can see will lead to a bad end for him. In all these cases, the underlying temptation is the same: to live an ordinary life, in peace, with good friends and daily bread.

But that is not his job. He has come to heal the world, and no matter what you think that means, it entails struggle and grief.

But there is a second temptation for Jesus. And that is the temptation to be the warrior that many of his followers hope for. The Messiah not in the way Jesus describes it here, but the king that the crowds wish him to be. Someone who will conquer the land for Israel and defeat the oppressors and occupiers. A king like great King David, who once ruled Israel. Someone who knows how to fight and to win. Not go quietly to the cross.

In Exodus, God comes to the world to be a savior. God calls to Moses because God sees that the people of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are enslaved and oppressed. I have observed the misery of my people, God says. I know their suffering, and I have come to free them from slavery in Egypt. This is a story of promise, since God promises not only to free the people but to bring them to a fertile and good land, a land of milk and honey. The story for Israel promises a happy ending.

But there is a story on the other side, which is the story of the people who lived in the land before the Israelites invaded it. Given to Israel, it is taken from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Other people. It is hard to know in real life whether the story really turns out well in the end, for much of the rest of the Bible is the story of battles won and lost, people exiled and returned, cities destroyed and rebuilt. It is still today a violent and open-ended story.

The temptation to turn salvation (which means healing) and redemption into warring, and to turn God, including in the form of Jesus, into a warrior, finds its source not in the divine being but in our own hearts. We want a victory over enemies, freedom from oppressors, bountiful lands. We want to think that God is on our side and no other side. We want our salvation at whatever cost, not wondering whether God works that way at all. We wish to enlist God in our battles.

For some, this is the point of God. The emperor Constantine, who in the fourth century allowed Christians to worship freely and to gather publicly, had a change of heart—or so the story goes—when he won a battle led by banners showing the cross of Christ. For some, the light of Israel to the gentiles was not the example of a compassionate and obedient community, but the rise of a nation in an otherwise occupied land.

At the end of this story in Exodus, Moses asks for God’s name. And God gives Moses two different names. God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” God said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” But then there is another name, given in an identical protocol: God said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’”b This is my name forever, says God. But which name?

This second name is the name of a God of a particular people, the people of the tribe of Abraham and his descendants. But the other name, the first name, is the God of creation, creator of the universe and all that is in it.

In Christ, the savior refuses to be king, becoming instead a victim, true to his teaching, and showing us thereby a different way for the world to be. No wonder Peter says, “God forbid it.” But God backs this plan of Jesus. Jesus rejects our temptations. “Get behind me,” he says to Satan. The longing for a warrior king God is human thing, not a divine thing. We are wise not to be tempted to ask our God of creation to be a destroyer of enemies. And not to think that the destruction of enemies is the work of our own healing God.

The Way of Blessing

Text: Psalm 67

We have been reading Genesis after coffee hour. This is the fifth or sixth book of the Bible that we are reading straight through, guided only by our curiosity and the Holy Spirit. We started with Job, and have since read a mix of Old and New Testament books.

But we have come to Genesis to start at the beginning of things, thinking that not only would we get the foundation stories of our faith, we would get some of the fundamental theology, too. And so it has turned out to be.

Genesis starts with two different stories about the beginning of the world. You are probably familiar with both. The first is the creation of the world in seven days including one day of rest. Let there be light. After each day, God sees that what was there was good. And at the end, God sees that everything God had made was very good. Things are good, very good. The word means perfect, or just right, just as things should be. And that’s how the story ends. God sees all creation as very good.

The second story is the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. This is a very different story from the first. It is less cosmic, more local, for one thing. And the events are different and in different order, for another. And in this story, things are not so good. The story is full of procedures and rules. And full of judgment. The first couple are disobedient. And as a result, they lose their garden, and are exiled from it. And that’s how that story ends. Not very good.

These two stories represent two ways to think about the nature of humanity and about God’s relationship with us. These two ways are in tension throughout the Bible, and in our own thoughts and conversations about how things are, how they got that way, and what the future holds.

In one way, people are intrinsically not so good. They do bad things, and the way to make the world work is to keep them in check. I’m going to call this the way of troubles. There is a lot of this in both the Old and New Testaments.

In the other way, people are intrinsically good. They do bad things because they are fearful or cowardly—things get in the way of being good. The way to make the world better is to help them overcome their fears. I’m going to call this the way of blessing. And there is a lot of this in both Testaments, too.

How you think about people affects how you think about God. Is God mostly someone who keeps us all on the straight and narrow through rules and punishments? Or is God mostly someone who helps us to do the right thing by freeing us from our timidity? I do want to point out that in both views, God acts out of love for us and does not abandon us. Someone once called these two ways of God’s acting as God’s saving activity and God’s blessing activity.

The psalm today, Psalm 67, is all about God’s blessing activity. It does not equivocate. It is about God’s blessings, God’s goodness. It starts out first asking for God’s blessing. Then in the middle it gives thanks for God’s blessings so far. And finally at the end it asks that God’s blessing please continue on in the future.

The psalm is strikingly satisfactory. It feels good to read and hear this psalm. It has an atmosphere of rest and confidence. Something that reformer John Calvin called repose. There is a sense here of being so completely blessed by God that we are as we are meant to be, complete in ourselves and married to God our creator.

It seems that there are no enemies here. That is not quite true, but the enemies are off stage, so to speak. In the wings. It is not that the psalm is naive about the ways of the world. It does not deny sorrow and oppression and violence. They have and no doubt will again have their time, but that time is not now.

This psalm is a little treatise on blessing. It tells us four things about the way of blessing.

First, we agree that there are some good things in the world. Perhaps you think this should go without saying, but no one sees good things all the time and some people never do. In times of deep despair and loss, it is hard to see any good. “The earth yields its increase,” says the psalm, but sometimes it feels, or it is, that earth is barren and there is no harvest. To see blessings is to first see good.

Second, we acknowledge that God is the source of all good things. “God, our God, has blessed us,” says the psalm. A blessing is not just something good, it is a gift from God. If you think that the person responsible for the good in your life is you, then good for you, but it is not a blessing. Blessings reveal God, or perhaps blessings are a way for God to reveal God’s self. Blessings are pure grace, unearned, undeserved and often unexpected.

Third, that God blesses us makes a difference to other people. Our mission as a worshipping community is to be a light to others so that they also might see and know God as we do. Others see the blessings we have received, the psalm says, and are glad and sing for joy. “May God bless us,” it says, “so that your way may be known upon earth.” Blessings reveal the nature of a gracious God.

And fourth, blessings move us to be grateful. “Let the people praise you” is the psalm’s refrain. Gratitude for our blessings is not a requirement but a response. It is a benefit. Gratitude itself is a blessing. It is better to wake up feeling grateful rather than sour. Better to go to bed feeling grateful rather than disappointed. God’s blessing gives us a target for our gratitude. As in the psalm, in the same breath we ask for and are thankful for God’s blessings.

We’ve been talking about blessings as if they were things. But they are not things. They are embodied in things: a good harvest, as in the psalm; good friends, music, prosperity, lively energy, contentment. But to see those things as gifts from God, to see them as blessings, to be thankful for them, is more like a lens through which we see the world. Or a framework that organizes our thoughts about the world and what happens to us in it. To see things as blessings is to see in a particular way. When we hear the psalm, it appeals to us because we can admire the writer of it for the clarity and enthusiasm through which he or she views the world.

At one point, in our long-distant past, when the people of God were trying to decide whether to be people of God after all, Moses stood before them and asked them to choose between two ways of being: I put before you blessings and curses, Moses said. The psalm describes a way of living that is available to us, has been offered to us. A way of seeing. A way of blessing.

May God bless us. Our God has blessed us. May God continue to bless us.

Little Steps for Little Feet

Text: Matthew 14:22-33

There are three versions of this story in the Bible, the other two are in John and Mark. But what makes this one special is that most of the action is centered around Peter, who does not even appear in the others. Peter, a man who in all the Gospels is a stand-in for us as we try to figure out how to live a life of faith.

Many people see this passage as a story of a man who starts out in faith but ends up in doubt. They see the faith that Jesus commends Peter for enabling him to step out of the boat into the troubled sea. The implication is that with just a little faith in Jesus we can, with his help, do miraculous things. That may be so, but that is not how this particular story goes.

The disciples are alone on a troubled sea at night. Water, even though the source of livelihood for the people in the area, can be deadly. Just as it is for modern day fishers and other workers on the sea. The waves are tormenting the boat. Surely the disciples must be tired, and it is likely they are frightened, too. That’s even before they see an apparition—not a ghost like a long-dead soul, but a shadowy and ominous presence. And it is walking on the sea, which is pretty weird. But hooray! It is Jesus. “It’s me” he says. Don’t be afraid. It is hard to tell whether that worked for most of the disciples, who we imagine to be cowering in the back of the boat.

But Peter is being Peter, a man who is without fear, because he is so clueless. Not much fazes Peter. Does he first look back on his huddled colleagues? But then he turns to the ghost who claims to be Jesus and says, “if you are Jesus, ask me, Peter, to walk over to you on the water.” What a strange request. Any other test would have been safer. Some authentication password or security questions. “Tell me your mother’s birthday.” Or “Who is Martha’s sister?” Or just ask him to come a little closer. But Peter asks Jesus to ask Peter to step onto the sea. So Jesus does. “Come,” says Jesus. Come Peter, here to me. Come walk to me as I am walking to you.

Peter is in a pickle. He has painted himself into a corner. Do the other disciples tease him now? Nice going, Peter. You are in deep trouble now. Good luck with that walking on water thing.

There is a moment of faith in this story. But this is not quite that moment. Peter steps from the boat. This moment is perhaps a moment of regret at his foolishness. His big mouth getting him into trouble as usual. Or a moment of bravado. He steps from the boat. Thinking, I’m convinced, that he is about to take a cold bath.

But he does not. Imagine Peter, looking down at his feet, standing on top of the swirling waves below him. It is a shocker. This is the moment of faith. When Peter does not sink. When he realizes that he will not sink, when he knows that Jesus is in control of the dreaded sea, that this person ahead of him is Jesus.

Peter walks up to Jesus—how many steps did it take? how long did it take? Long enough for the moment to fade, as faith sometimes does. Fear overcomes Peter, the enormity of what he has done, the violence of the world around him, even with Jesus by his side. He begins to sink, cries out to Jesus, and takes his saving hand.

Ah, Peter, says Jesus. You of little faith, our Bible puts it. But there is no condemnation here. The word Jesus uses could mean that Peter has a little quantity of faith. Or it could mean that he had a short moment of faith, which seems to me to be more true to the circumstances. Jesus is not berating Peter for having too little of some magic substance. It is just as likely that he is praising Peter for having enough faith, even if it only lasted for a minute or two. Good for you, Peter, I hear Jesus saying. Even though you were scared, you did it. Here now, take my hand and we’ll go back to the boat together.

Faith is not so much something you have. But something that happens to you, or that is a part of you, or that colors the way the world looks to you. It is not a thing as much as a way of understanding things. Not a substance, but an action on the part of God.

Faith sometimes comes to us—that is, happens to us—in a powerful blasting moment. An instant transformation that makes our lives different forever. In this moment we lose an old way of being and come upon a new way. So such moments are scary and exhilarating, for they mean a loss of the familiar and the discovery of the unforeseen.

And sometimes faith happens to us in secret. Hidden from us. And one day, we find, like Peter, that we have been acting in faith, trusting in God, and listening to hear God’s voice as we plan our futures and understand our present.

But more often, faith grows in us, like affection or love for another. It is like trust, which as you know is another meaning of the same word. It takes a long time to develop, and the path is often a rocky one, as it is in any ongoing relationship. There are good times and tough times. It develops, rather than progresses. It is less like a wedding and more like a marriage.

When Jesus calls Peter, he does not call Peter to be faithful. He does not ask Peter to feel some way, or even to believe some thing. This is not a call to conviction or devotion, but a call to obedience. He asks that Peter obey him. To do something. It does not matter whether Peter believes Jesus or not, only that he does what Jesus asks him to do.

God calls us, even when we do not know that it is God calling, and we respond even when we do not know to what we are responding. For some reason, we take that step off the boat. The water supports us as it never did before. We are surprised. Maybe later, like Peter, we become confused (Jesus says to Peter: why did you become of two minds). Life becomes more ordinary. We sail on, as the disciples, Peter, and Jesus did.

This is not the end of the story for Peter, but one episode in an ongoing saga, with high and low points yet to come.

A life of faith is full of small steps. Actions—occasionally big, usually little—that sometimes lead to unexpected results. Doing what Peter does—that is: Listening to what Jesus says. Taking him seriously. Trying to respond. Seeing what happens when we do.

The Prayers the Spirit Prays for Us

Text: Romans 8:26-39

The Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

This verse is the scriptural basis for the closing of the prayers of the people, when we rely on the Spirit to pray the secret prayers that are deep in our hearts. We assume with these words that there are longings of our hearts that we cannot express, or perhaps even know in detail.

We are not complete without God. If we are complete without God, would we pray? If we are strong, and clear minded, and self-satisfied, it is hard to know quite what we would pray for. Maybe we could pray in a transactional way, like ordering something from Amazon.com. A prayer could be an order, or a wish list. But this is not what Paul is talking about.

Paul is talking about being separated from God. And things that might separate us from God. Things that get in the way of our being close to God. When you hear that neither death, nor life, not angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, no height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus—when you hear these words, you might be moved to tears. How could this be? To be alone from God is scary and disorienting and lonely.

Partly it is like being alone from anyone you long to be with. Your lover, or your parent or your children, or a friend who is far away. Or just being alone. But more deeply, it is that God is part of us, essential to our existence. And to be separated from God is like drowning. Suffocating. We are not built to be without God. Perhaps that’s one of the things we mean when we say we are made in God’s image. You might feel this even if you do not believe it. You might find Paul’s words powerful even if you do not even believe in God. It is not about belief.

In these past few days of hot and humid, people have been feeling crummy and confused. Out of sorts and unable to think clearly. Trying to do useful work in the heat feels like when you read the same paragraph in a book over and over again and just don’t get it because your mind is mush.

But it does not require extreme weather to be distressed and disoriented. We are never as focussed, bright, and strong as we would like to be. It is our creaturely nature. Even though we have deep longings, it is not always clear what we want. Not all that we desire is easily expressed. The Spirit helps us in our weakness, the verse says. The word for weakness means “not strong.” It is not a question of failing or not living up to expectations. No one says you are weak because you cannot lift a mountain. You are just not strong enough. The Spirit helps us because it is our nature to not always know clearly how to ask and what to ask for. Even when we are desperate to. We do not know how to pray as we ought, it says. But again, there is no judgment here, no should. The word translated as “ought” that Paul uses means more like: what we need to say to convey what we mean. We don’t even know it, much less know how to ask for it. Or sometimes we just cannot pray. Out of shame, or anxiety and the press of time, or being tongue-tied. We could use some help.

The Spirit helps us, Paul says. It does not help us like someone we hire to help us. We are not paying the Spirit to do our praying for us. It helps us more like someone who loves us helps us. Someone who knows us intimately and respectfully. Who sometimes knows what we want better than we do. The word that Paul uses to describe what the Spirit does when it helps us is a strange one. It appears only here and in the story of Mary and Martha in the Gospel of Luke. The word implies a generosity plus togetherness, or being with. One Bible says that the spirit joins its help to our weakness.

It seems from this passage that God puts the Spirit into us in order that the Spirit can speak our deepest longings to God. The Spirit intercedes—another strange word that appears only here in all the Bible—intercedes with sighs too deep for words, it says. The Spirit says for us what we cannot seem to express. Our inexpressible groanings, as one Bible puts it. As someone said, we have our own personal groaner. And the job of that groaner is to convey to God our ongoing state and desires.

There are many things that might come between us and God. Things that might separate us from God. Paul makes a partial list of them. They are not cosmic but day to day and ordinary. Hardship: that is, the meeting of daily needs in times of want. Not enough food, no shelter, illness. Distress: that is, being without options, stressed and pressured, feeling stuck in a tight spot, no clear exit. Peril: that is, physical danger, risks and hazards. The sword: that is, war and violence.

Fear and worry and anger and suffering sometimes turn us to God, but just as often they keep us away—drive us away. We become silent as far as God is concerned. We are not interested in praying—either to talk to God or to listen. We feel estranged. Perhaps we want to be separate from God. Perhaps we are looking for reasons not to engage with God. Perhaps we really couldn’t care less about God at the moment. But the Spirit continues to keep the lines open, the channel open.

There is nothing in all creation that can separate us from God. Not even our own silence. It is our destiny, as Paul says, to be connected to God. God makes it happen. Not because of our own efforts or desires, but because of God’s. For better or for worse, we cannot mess this up. God will not leave us alone.

Made from God, when separated from God we feel incomplete and homeless. The Spirit resides in our heart, praying for us, so that we might be drawn home, and made whole.

Saints and Sinners Both

Text: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

We are going to start today with a little Bible study.

There is a school of thought that says that the closer things are to us, the more influence they have over us, and the more they affect who we will be in the future. Things that are far away in time and space are less important to us day to day than things that are near. One purpose of the Bible, or one thing it has succeeded in doing, is keeping Jesus close to us. Jesus lived and died two thousand years ago, yet his life and teachings remain in us. The institution of the church has done the same, preserving the story of Christ and keeping it near.

The church and the Bible do an OK job of this, but they are not perfect. We are a long way in years and culture from the time of Jesus, and much more from the time of Jacob, the hero of today’s first reading. Our devices—books, tradition, ceremony—do their best. Though the church claims the Bible is inspired (Lutherans of our sort do not officially insist that it is inerrant)—though it may be inspired, no one claims that all interpretations of it are. And even the translations we read are interpretations. It is a twisty road that runs from the words that Jesus spoke in Aramaic to the stories people told about him to the writing down of those stories in Greek by Matthew to the assembling of all the fragments of the Gospel (there is no such thing as the original complete Gospel of Matthew, just little bits), to the translation of the result into English. There are by necessity interpretations all the way, before it even gets to our own thoughts.

Why does this matter? Because everyone in the chain of interpretation has some agenda or other. Everybody has a stake in the meaning of Jesus and his words. Jesus means something, otherwise the people would not even be involved in the program. They cannot help, and they might not want to help, explaining Jesus in a way that makes sense to them in their own time, according to their own circumstances, and in light of their own hopes and fears. We have to remember this because their agenda may not be ours.

Today we look at the agenda of Matthew, the author of today’s reading, in telling this story of Jesus telling a parable. This parable appears only in the Gospel of Matthew, not in the other very similar Gospels of Mark and Luke. It is possible that Matthew made it up, but I’d say that’s not likely. It is likely, though, that Matthew included this parable because it suited his purpose—his agenda—but did not suit the purposes of Mark and Luke. If you want to guess what Matthew’s purpose is, you can refer to the little program guide he includes right after the parable. An interpretation of the parable as an allegory. I suspect this interpretation, even though it is in the Bible, was made up by Matthew. I have doubts that Jesus said what Matthew quotes him as saying.

I say that for two reasons. The first reason is that we know from the rest of Matthew that he was really interested in figuring out why everyone did not immediately turn to follow Jesus. And more to Matthew’s point, why those who did went to a different church than Matthew did and probably disagreed with Matthew. Now, there were not really churches like that in those days, but there were communities of followers of Jesus. And they all had slightly different ideas about what Jesus meant, said, and did. In spite of Jesus command that his followers love one another, by Matthew’s time they probably didn’t.

And the second reason I think Matthew made this up is that in this passage, Jesus interprets the parable. Which he sometimes does elsewhere, but not often. And interprets it as an allegory, which parables were not. Not allegories. Matthew has Jesus saying “this part of the parable stands for this other thing.” But parables are not really told that way. They are intended to be weird little stories that make us think. They are the Christian equivalent of koans. In them, there is usually a shocker of sorts. In today’s parable, the shocker is that the landowner does not weed his crops, but lets a dangerous invasive look-alike plant grow among the beneficial wheat. Why would he do that? That is one of the things that is supposed to make us think.

This does not mean that we can just toss out the allegorical interpretation of the parable. The verses are, after all, still in the Bible. People left them in when they were first assembling and then repeatedly copying this Gospel of Matthew. They could have left them out; they have left out lots of other parts of which we have evidence. But it does mean that we can look at this parable with different eyes than Matthew’s. Which we will do now. (Finally.)

One way to think about parables is that they are like poems. They paint word pictures. They are about deep things in the guise of stories about events. They have points and themes. Matthew picks up these themes in today’s parables, and I’m sure you did, too. (Just because Matthew interprets these themes does not mean they are not in there.) This particular parable is more complex than most, and it has at least three themes. Which are: the existence of evil; the impossibility of human judgment; and a call to action.

[Regarding evil.] Martin Luther promised to spit in the devil’s face. And he wrote that we should share the Lord’s Supper everyday to have the strength to fight evil. In the ceremony in which we welcome new members we all agree to renounce the devil and all his empty promises. What is the cause of bad things, vicious and nasty actions, malevolence? We modern types do not often personify evil. Evil seems mysterious and unexplainable. Often more of a corruption or perversion than an active force, or inherent in creation and life, or sometimes just considered a shortage of goodness.

But in this parable, the sower of the deadly weeds is an enemy, a force for badness, purposely causing harm and sorrow. Evil is not happenstance. There is a battle in the background between two forces, competing for the world, and in this battle we are at the same time the victims, the pawns, and the fighters. It is not that there are good people and bad people, but that that goodness which we all desire fights against the evil which we all deplore. All are on the same side here.

[Regarding judgment]. Though Matthew hopes to punish evildoers, in the telling of the parable Jesus is more gentle. Good wheat exists, and evil weeds exist, but humans are not called to figure out which are which and certainly are not called to eradicate the weeds. We are not called to judge. That does not mean that judgment is not real. There are lots of stories in the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, about judgment. But the prerogative of judgment and the skill it requires are not ours, do not belong to human beings. Just because we acknowledge evil does not mean we can identify it.

In another story near the end of Matthew, the Son of Man sits on his throne, and separates out the good sheep from the bad goats. But in this scene, first, none of the goats or sheep know which ones they are before they are judged. Which one am I? they all wonder. So people are not able to see very well who is what. And second, it is not clear how many folks end up in the goat pile. If any. Maybe none. Lutherans say that we are all saints and sinners. We are weeds and wheat. It is not even possible to be all wheat, all good. We are not qualified to judge one another.

In the parable, the servants ask it they might pluck out the weeds. But the landowner says “No.” Just “no.” You may not. We are commanded not to judge. It is not just that we are discouraged from making such judgments. We are prohibited from doing so.

[Regarding action]. What, then, are we to do? How shall we behave as human beings in the world. There is a call to action in this story. But not a call to arms. We are guided to be humble, patient, and vigilant. Humble, because we know we are not God’s proxy judges. Patient, because we are not so clever that we can know the future. And vigilant because we are mindful of the devil’s empty promises.

To worry about weeds is not only destructive, it is a waste of time and energy. And it limits our gratitude, joy, and freedom—which seem to me to be good gifts not to be squandered.

Following this guidance, we first of all give God a chance to get a word in edgewise and to do God’s work. And second, we open for ourselves—or maybe better to say we leave open for ourselves—a different way of being than usual, a chance to see things go in an unpredictable and surprising way, to have a larger future.

Like all parables, this one is about something. Many have interpreted this parable as being about the church. (Yet another allegory). But that is a narrow view of things. For this is about the realm of God. Jesus is telling us what the kingdom of heaven is like, he says. This parable is one of a series in Matthew, which all seem to say: there is more to the world right now than you might think, there is a different way to be, and better things are still to come.

Evil and good grow side by side, and it is often hard to tell the two apart. Yet people are called to act with restraint, being mindful of being at the same time saints and sinners, and in the end they trust in God to resolve and reconcile, and are gathered into God.

Depending

Text: Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

It may seem odd on this weekend celebration of Independence Day to speak about yokes and burdens. After all, did our forebears not free themselves from the yoke of tyranny and the burden of injustice? Aren’t we the home of the free, not the home of the beasts of burden that work hard for someone else’s benefit? Not home of the servant, the reins of our lives in someone else’s hands.

Yet here is Jesus. As usual, making us think some other way than we’d like to think. Jesus seems clearly to be offering a gift here. A positive good. Come to me, he says, all you who are weary and carrying burdens. Come to me, and I will remove the yoke from your shoulder. Nope. That’s not what he says. Take my yoke upon you, he says, and you will find rest. If you wish to find rest from your burdens and your weariness, put on this yoke, take up this yoke.

You might say—as some have said—that Jesus is offering to join us in bearing the burdens we already bear. A yoke is a device that lets two oxen—or some other animal, or people, even—to pull more efficiently by dynamically balancing the load between them. Two animals can pull more, more easily, yoked together than they could harnessed separately. So, the picture that appears today on the children’s blessing cards that we give at Communion shows Jesus and someone—signifying you or me—yoked together. Jesus is helping us.

But that’s not quite what Jesus says here. He does not say, let me give you a hand. He says, take my yoke upon you. Learn from me.

A yoke is a method for being led, for being guided, a device for those doing the will of another. It is not a device for those who are doing the leading, the guiding, and the directing. A yoke is the answer to the question: who shall guide us and how, not whom shall I guide and how, and not how shall I myself choose the best direction in which to go and how shall I get there. The question to which Jesus supplies the answer is the question we all want to know the answer to. The question is: how shall we live?

How shall we live to most effect our safety and happiness, as the Declaration of Independence puts it? How shall we achieve happiness? How shall we achieve goodness, be good people? How shall we sustain and increase our capacity for love? How shall we increase our ability to have compassion for others who are not like ourselves? How shall we find peace of mind?

The people of this generation, as Jesus calls them, desire to learn, to know, to be shown the answer to these questions. They desire to find a prophetic leader who will guide them and show them the way. They desire this, … and they don’t. They long to be led, … and they don’t. Their wishes are ambiguous and conflicting. They heard John the baptist, who told them how to live. They spurned John, saying that his asceticism was demonic. They heard Jesus, the Son of Man, who told them how to live. They spurned Jesus, too, saying that he was a glutton and a drunkard. They don’t know what they want.

They want to be guided, yet also to refuse guidance. They want to be able to count on others, yet be independent. They want to ask for help, yet reject help. They want to ask for wisdom, yet preserve the right to act in ignorance.

What Jesus offers them—as John before him did—what Jesus offers them is a disciplined way of life. To follow him, which means to be led by him. To put on his yoke. To do what he teaches us to do. To believe in him in the sense that we trust not his existence, or his heredity, but his guidance. Learn from me, Jesus says.

And he says, I am humble of heart. Discipline is by nature a humbling activity. To be humble requires that we acknowledge we are in need of help, that we are uncertain, and that we are not in control. Discipline by nature is a quiet activity. It requires that we listen rather than talk, hear rather than pronounce, that we keep our opinions to ourselves. Discipline by nature is a focused activity. It requires that we put aside distractions, rather than seek them out, and that we strive for a simpler life.

Christianity is religious, not only spiritual, because it embodies practices as well as beliefs. It is a discipline. It requires, among other things, periodic and repeated worship with others, almsgiving to those who have less than we do, regular prayer, and an attempt to love our neighbors and our enemies as we love ourselves and to forgive those who sin against us, and to not worry too much about the future. We gather into communities, churches, both because it is easier to do these things together and because Jesus told us to.

We perhaps have forgotten that the Declaration of Independence was really a declaration of redirected dependence. Not of anarchy or individualism, but a plan to choose how we would be led.

Take my yoke and learn from me. This is an offer of a disciplined life following the guidance of Jesus. This is an offer that, by taking up this way of life, we may find happiness, become good people, have compassion for others. That we will find rest for our souls. That we will know God.

Depending

Text: Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

It may seem odd on this weekend celebration of Independence Day to speak about yokes and burdens. After all, did our forebears not free themselves from the yoke of tyranny and the burden of injustice? Aren’t we the home of the free, not the home of the beasts of burden that work hard for someone else’s benefit? Not home of the servant, the reins of our lives in someone else’s hands.

Yet here is Jesus. As usual, making us think some other way than we’d like to think. Jesus seems clearly to be offering a gift here. A positive good. Come to me, he says, all you who are weary and carrying burdens. Come to me, and I will remove the yoke from your shoulder. Nope. That’s not what he says. Take my yoke upon you, he says, and you will find rest. If you wish to find rest from your burdens and your weariness, put on this yoke, take up this yoke.

You might say—as some have said—that Jesus is offering to join us in bearing the burdens we already bear. A yoke is a device that lets two oxen—or some other animal, or people, even—to pull more efficiently by dynamically balancing the load between them. Two animals can pull more, more easily, yoked together than they could harnessed separately. So, the picture that appears today on the children’s blessing cards that we give at Communion shows Jesus and someone—signifying you or me—yoked together. Jesus is helping us.

But that’s not quite what Jesus says here. He does not say, let me give you a hand. He says, take my yoke upon you. Learn from me.

A yoke is a method for being led, for being guided, a device for those doing the will of another. It is not a device for those who are doing the leading, the guiding, and the directing. A yoke is the answer to the question: who shall guide us and how, not whom shall I guide and how, and not how shall I myself choose the best direction in which to go and how shall I get there. The question to which Jesus supplies the answer is the question we all want to know the answer to. The question is: how shall we live?

How shall we live to most effect our safety and happiness, as the Declaration of Independence puts it? How shall we achieve happiness? How shall we achieve goodness, be good people? How shall we sustain and increase our capacity for love? How shall we increase our ability to have compassion for others who are not like ourselves? How shall we find peace of mind?

The people of this generation, as Jesus calls them, desire to learn, to know, to be shown the answer to these questions. They desire to find a prophetic leader who will guide them and show them the way. They desire this, … and they don’t. They long to be led, … and they don’t. Their wishes are ambiguous and conflicting. They heard John the baptist, who told them how to live. They spurned John, saying that his asceticism was demonic. They heard Jesus, the Son of Man, who told them how to live. They spurned Jesus, too, saying that he was a glutton and a drunkard. They don’t know what they want.

They want to be guided, yet also to refuse guidance. They want to be able to count on others, yet be independent. They want to ask for help, yet reject help. They want to ask for wisdom, yet preserve the right to act in ignorance.

What Jesus offers them—as John before him did—what Jesus offers them is a disciplined way of life. To follow him, which means to be led by him. To put on his yoke. To do what he teaches us to do. To believe in him in the sense that we trust not his existence, or his heredity, but his guidance. Learn from me, Jesus says.

And he says, I am humble of heart. Discipline is by nature a humbling activity. To be humble requires that we acknowledge we are in need of help, that we are uncertain, and that we are not in control. Discipline by nature is a quiet activity. It requires that we listen rather than talk, hear rather than pronounce, that we keep our opinions to ourselves. Discipline by nature is a focused activity. It requires that we put aside distractions, rather than seek them out, and that we strive for a simpler life.

Christianity is religious, not only spiritual, because it embodies practices as well as beliefs. It is a discipline. It requires, among other things, periodic and repeated worship with others, almsgiving to those who have less than we do, regular prayer, and an attempt to love our neighbors and our enemies as we love ourselves and to forgive those who sin against us, and to not worry too much about the future. We gather into communities, churches, both because it is easier to do these things together and because Jesus told us to.

We perhaps have forgotten that the Declaration of Independence was really a declaration of redirected dependence. Not of anarchy or individualism, but a plan to choose how we would be led.

Take my yoke and learn from me. This is an offer of a disciplined life following the guidance of Jesus. This is an offer that, by taking up this way of life, we may find happiness, become good people, have compassion for others. That we will find rest for our souls. That we will know God.