The Shape of His Yoke
The honest Christian struggle
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Romans 7:15-25a
Jesus said to the crowd, “To what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another,
‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.’
For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘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 have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and 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 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.”
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
We often don’t give Jesus enough credit for his humor. Shakespeare asked of his love, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” Jesus looked at the crowds and said, “Shall I compare thee to the most annoying children’s songs you’ve ever heard? Because you said John the Baptist was so strict he might be a demon, you saw me and said I’m a drunk who hangs out with drunks. If only you knew.” If only we followed.
As for himself, Jesus compared himself not to a summer’s day or to a children’s song but to the Divine Wisdom of his Scriptures. In Proverbs, Wisdom says, “‘Let all who are simple come to my house!’ To those who have no sense, she says, Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight” (Prov 9:4-6). Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who 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.” But is it so easy, Jesus? Come on. Look at this letter to the Romans, one of the most honest views of the struggle in Christian life we have. It’s an outright spiritual war, says Paul. He knows what he’s supposed to do but he simply can’t. He looks at himself doing the very thing he’s not supposed to be doing while he’s doing it. He tries to do good and does bad. This is the light burden, Jesus?
When I was growing up in a good Presbyterian household, we were allowed to watch most of the cable channels if they weren’t playing something crude, except for one: MTV, “Music Television.” It wasn’t just the music videos with lyrics and videos too lewd for young eyes, but the earliest “reality” shows like The Real World. Yes, you were living in a fake bubble, an illusion of piety; here’s real life with all the pleasure and pain and annoying roommates that come with it. But alas, I was not supposed to see this Real World, because it was under a parental password (which by age 10, my sister and I figured out was 0000). I couldn’t tell you the last time I watched MTV, and you probably couldn’t either. But I do know that nothing made MTV cooler than being not allowed to watch it. We call this the “forbidden fruit” phenomenon because it’s as old as humanity: we humans want to do the things we aren’t supposed to do precisely because we aren’t supposed to do them.
This is part of the spiritual war Paul describes, the part of him where sin still dwells. Sin is less the presence of an evil and more the twisting of a good thing, bending it back in on ourselves in self-centered pride. So it feasts when there is no law and we feel license to pursue our desires willy-nilly. But as Paul learned, sin feasts even on the law that is meant to protect us from ourselves and each other. It never sleeps. This is the inner war.
And we are not well-equipped for this war, whether we are religious or not. As Paul points out, many people who haven’t studied Scripture can still act from a sense of conscience (Rom 2:14-15); many of our neighbors have moral intuitions not derived from Christianity. And if we are half as honest as Paul, we must admit that even though we say we know the right thing to do, we still don’t do it anyway. We return, repent, and then do it again. As basketball coach Jeff Van Gundy said, “If you know better, but don’t do better, you’re no better.” In the end, while we struggle with different sins, all of us know better and don’t do better and are no better.
Sometimes, though, in our struggle, we want to make an adjustment to our conscience to relieve this burden; a little tweak to God’s wisdom so that we aren’t as bad as we think. Being rude isn’t being mean, it’s just being “authentic.” Being selfish is just “freedom.” Taking more than I need isn’t greed, just practical. That famous first question for that forbidden fruit was, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’” (It turns out God didn’t actually say that, just not to eat from one tree.) But Paul knows that rationalizations aren’t the way out. Just because we can’t live up to God’s spiritual law doesn’t mean we throw out the truth.
In fact, Jesus says the Law has an even higher standard than what it prescribes at face value, that sometimes what the Law might permit by the letter doesn’t even go far enough: it’s not enough to not murder, you must repent of your anger at a brother or sister (Matt 5:21-22). It’s not enough to avoid adultery, you must not look at a woman in lust or you commit it in your heart (Mat 5:27-28). When the disciples saw Jesus demanding the rich young man give up his possessions and follow him, they threw up their hands and said, “Who then can be saved?” (Matt 19:25) “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light”? Yeah right!
But maybe they, and we, have misunderstood the yoke of freedom in Christ. The Church Father Justin Martyr imagined that Jesus, as a carpenter, made many literal yokes, wooden frames to join animals together at the neck so that they pull together. They had to be constantly made and adjusted for each animal. When two animals were hitched together whose yokes didn’t fit perfectly, the yoke would be further twisted out of shape under stress. In Jesus’ time and then later in rabbinical Judaism, a yoke was a common metaphor for the things that enslave us (Deut 28:48) or that free us, like “yoke of the Torah.” We can either be yoked to the kingdom of man or, if we are yoked to a rabbi’s teaching, we can be yoked to the kingdom of heaven. When we Christian pastors wear a stole, it is a symbol that we have yoked ourselves to Christ.
But I do need to clear up a common translation error. When Jesus says his yoke is “easy,” chrestos, it is less like a yoke that requires no effort, but rather he is saying that his yoke is true goodness. It doesn’t mean there is no work to be done and no law to live under. It is the yoke that doesn’t injure. It’s a yoke that fits. Jesus is asking us to look at the other yokes that are really making you exhausted and weary. Look at the yoke of hedonism, constant self-centered pleasure in doing whatever you want, and see whether the fruits of that are actually as pleasurable as you think they are, or whether they cause more problems and pain in the long run. That’s one yoke of sin. But another yoke of sin is the yoke of trying so hard to save yourself, perhaps even to be the good Christian that your faith calls you to be, that you pull and pull and pull with the Law as a yoke until your spiritual bones break. Two yokes, same sin. The yoke of lawlessness is in Proverbs, where Divine Wisdom describes folly as a heavy burden, while Isaiah describes idols as a heavy burden. But Jesus says the Pharisees’ yoke ties heavy burdens on people while refusing to share them (Matt 23:4). Even if we want to follow Christ, sometimes the gap between who we know Christ wants us to be and how we end up acting is the heaviest yoke of all.
This weekend, I’ve been thinking about this struggle in our country, too. We live in a country that is a true grace, gift, and miracle to be alive in, for all the sacrifices made for it and all the goodness born of it. I wouldn’t rather live anywhere else. And in this time period, with technological and moral advances, we have more freedom and understanding than ever. Yet we live with such heavy, collective yokes, the yokes of a greater ability to pursue selfishness which our freedoms allow, and the yoke of knowing how much we haven’t lived up to our ideals. For all the litany of blessings we have, we have never fully lived into the ideals of liberty and justice for all, sinners that we are. And it can be agonizing to feel the gap between the promises endowed by God for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and the reality that too many neighbors have never fully enjoyed them. If we didn’t believe in our ideals, they wouldn’t bother us, just as if we didn’t believe that Christ was really calling us to a better way, it wouldn’t bother us. We know the right way is not spiritual lawlessness. We know it’s not self-hatred. And if we are honest, we know that by ourselves, we can’t do the very things we know we should. “Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24)
Into the heart of this struggle, now hear Jesus again: “Come to me, all you who 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.” Or as pastor Eugene Peterson translated this, “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me, and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
Sin wants to take us out of the rhythms of grace all the time. Sin thinks that if we make ourselves wise and smart enough, we can fashion the right yokes. Instead, Jesus says, what we need to do is come to God as a child (Matt 11:25). Sin wants to take our own very conscience that teaches us right from wrong and bend that wood into a shape that it cripples us. But thanks be to God that our savior is a carpenter, who takes the wood of that yoke and bends it back into the shape of grace. And thanks be to God that he does not give us a yoke to struggle alone, but tells us that he is in the same yoke with us. In the shape of grace, we do not deny what is right and wrong in God’s eyes, nor do we believe we can manage it by ourselves. Where sin says to you God’s wisdom is too heavy and you carry it by yourself, Jesus says to you that it is the Way of true life, and he carries it with you.
And because Jesus is carrying it with us, we are called to keep working. Not only for ourselves, not for just our families, not just for our church, and not just for our country, but so that all the world may feel the love of Christ. We can only do this in solidarity with each other’s suffering: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” (Gal 6:2) The burdens of love are too heavy for us alone, but not for Jesus Christ, who carries us all. No, we have not lived up to the standards of God’s love. But in Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. And every day in Jesus Christ, we can begin together again.
For he has already died to sin and been raised to life in triumph over it, and he lives and dwells in your inmost heart, fitting and forming and molding your heart if you let him, that his Wisdom might fit you more and more snugly in the shape of grace. The yokes of sin are all shaped in death, but in Jesus Christ, the very yokes that once deformed us have been redeemed into life. And so right into the heart of your despair, when you cry, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?”, you can cry with the tears of full assurance, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Amen.t
For more on this week’s readings:
