Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
The Gospel reading for this day is
written in the 11 Chapter of the Gospel according to St Matthew: Verses 15 – 19
& 25 – 30. The text for this meditation focuses on Verses 27 – 30:
27 “All things
have been committed to me by my
Father. No one knows the Son
except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom
the Son chooses to reveal him.
28 “Come to
me, all you who are weary
and burdened, and I will give you rest.29 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. 30 For my yoke
is easy and my burden is light.”
I cannot think of a more gracious invitation than the one we hear in today’s Gospel. Jesus declared, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest”. Here Jesus is not talking about being worn out from hard physical labour. Instead, He is talking about the burden of carrying our sins … the burden of attempting to earn our own salvation from God. He is talking about the burden that the Apostle Paul describes in today’s Epistle. Rom 7:14-25 “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing”. Paul mourns his failure … that no matter how hard he works at it, he cannot be good enough for God.
It is the
natural, false, sinful religion of we human beings to try to be good enough to
earn God’s favour. That make life very
hard, because false gods are not forgiving, and they are not merciful. Instead they are harsh taskmasters who desire
the constant labour of self-justification.
Down through
the ages people have tortured and sacrificed themselves and their children in
order to gain the favour of their gods. We read in 1 Kings 18 that the prophets
of Baal challenged Elijah saying their God was the most powerful and would
consume the sacrificed bull with fire on their command. Well we are told in [1 Kings 18:28] “They cried aloud
and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood
gushed out upon them”. It was part
of their worship to cut themselves in order to get the attention of the false god
they worshipped; but it was all in vain; and we know that God consumed Elijah’s
offering with fire even though it was drenched with water. The Aztecs were famous for cutting the hearts
out of living human beings as a sacrifice to make themselves right with the
gods they worshipped. Virgin sacrifice
was yet another customary way to earn the favour of certain gods. Today we have extremist in the Muslim faith
who encourage their children to sacrifice themselves in jihad in order to earn
celestial paradise. It’s all very
hideous, cruel, and obscene.
Some modern
religions burden their members with the demand that they give copies of their
tax returns to the church, so the elders can know income details and invoice
their offerings accordingly. Some fundamental religions do not allow their
followers to celebrate birthdays or Christmas or any other holiday. Some religions do not allow blood
transfusions. The list goes on and on.
I guess we have
to confess that our burdens are not always institutional; we also can be our
own worst enemies. As humans we get caught up in worldly wants – we need an
exceptional source of income so we can have more money to have the right house,
the right car, to send our children to the right universities. We need to
project the right image; we have to look right; dress right; mix in the right
circles to be accepted. The world of marketing tells us what we need to have a
good life.
The burden of
chasing the good life is constantly being imposed upon us by masters of social
engineering; we torture ourselves and become worn out chasing that impossible
dream. The scary fact is that history tells us that people like Hitler and
Stalin were convinced that they also were leading people into the ‘good life’
Why do we allow
ourselves to fall prey to these burdens that weigh us down and threaten to
destroy us both physically and spiritually?
I guess for those majority who identify themselves as non religious, a
material god would offer some earthly self gratification; but what about us
Christians? Do we see our Great Triune God as someone who is very powerful and
very angry? Do we feel the need to continually do something to gain His
approval so that he is not angry with us? This is the real burden about which
Jesus speaks.
The nasty truth
is that no matter how hard we work, things still go wrong. Tragedies still happen. The crops still fail. Plagues still strike. People get sick. People get injured. People die.
Nothing is ever good enough. The labours are never over until despair
and hopelessness strikes us down.
God’s Word
gives us an entirely different worldview.
It tells of the true God who created a world where work was a joy. Work was fulfilling. It was satisfying. It was never frustrating. Adam and Eve could go to sleep at the end of
the day knowing that their work was pleasing in God’s sight.
That all
changed when Adam and Eve sinned. Work
became a burden. Today, even those who
really enjoy their work have days of frustration. Many people think of work as a necessary evil
… something we do just so we can put food on the table, clothes on the back,
and a roof over the head. It is
something to avoid if possible. When we
go to sleep at the end of the day, we know that our work can never be pleasing
in God’s sight. Nothing we think, say,
or do can ever make us right with God.
Then Jesus
comes with a new teaching. “Come to me, all who labour and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest.”
This is unlike any other religion in the world. Here is a religion where God tells us to lay
down our burden of self-justification. Here
is God telling us to rest. Here is
Jesus telling us that He will take the heavy burden. He will take the hard labour. He will take our hard yoke and make it easy. He will take our heavy burden and make it
light.
The reason that
Jesus can say this is that He is the Son of God who entered history in order to
save us from our own sin. While we can
do nothing to please God, everything that Jesus does is pleasing to God. While we cannot endure the punishment that
will satisfies God’s justice, Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross totally satisfied
God’s justice as a substitute for us.
Jesus is the one who takes our hard yoke on Himself and gives us the
easy yoke of forgiveness in its place.
He is the one who took up our heavy burden of sin and replaced it with
the light burden of His righteousness.
He has taken the labour and
burden of false belief and replaced it with the rest of true faith.
Jesus has done
all the work that makes us right with God.
When we walk through that blessed gateway of the font of Holy Baptism, the
blessings of that work become available to us when the Holy Spirit works faith
in us. The Holy Spirit establishes the
faith that receives the gifts of God – forgiveness, life, and salvation. At the same time, the Holy Spirit creates a
new being in us – a holy child of God.
We now have the easy yoke of Christ’s forgiveness and the light burden
of His righteousness.
The forces of
evil hate Christ’s easy yoke and light burden.
They will tempt us to return to the life that struggles to earn God’s
favour. Our old sinful nature is still
around. There is the holy child of God
striving for righteousness and holiness, and there is the old sinful nature
constantly trying to turn us back to the broad road that leads to spiritual
destruction. We become battlefields and
the temptation is for us to try to do the fighting.
Never the less,
Jesus continuously invites us, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest”.
He says, “I am your champion. I have
already won the war. The holy, sinless
life that Jesus led – His innocent suffering and death – His resurrection and
the ascension – all these, Jesus did for us.
Through His holy life and sinless death, He won forgiveness for us. With that forgiveness comes life and
salvation. He has taken all our sin –
all our guilt to the cross, including those sins we commit even after we are a
child of God.
Way back on 31
October 1517, Dr. Martin Luther was at the time trying to reform the Church of
the day that called for it’s members to work to earn forgiveness. In a public
demonstration of his faith in God’s Word, he nailed a list of ninety-five
theses to the church door in Wittenberg, the very first of these theses stated
that the life of the Christian is one of continual repentance. We mourn the fact that, even as God’s
children, we fall into sin daily in what we say and do; but at the same time we
can rejoice in the free, abundant and overwhelming forgiveness that we have in
Jesus Christ.
The life of the
Christian is a battle, but we have the champion who has defeated all our foes,
Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. Amen
The love and peace of our Great
Triune God that is beyond all human understanding, keep your hearts and minds
in Christ Jesus. Amen
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