The "rest" of your life

Sermon preached in St. Columba's 7pm Late Evening Office.
Matthew 11:20-30

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be now and always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

The gospel reading this evening comes from Matthew's Gospel, it is looking at how Jesus' miracles had been received …Up to this point Jesus taught people, he even displayed many miraculous signs but were they effective, did people respond in the way he would have liked them to? … did populations turn to God in repentance, clearly not.

It is quite amazing when we consider that when Jesus – the son of God was walking around - cities just did not change their ways, individuals did … we know that from the call of the disciples,- some followed, individual people were healed, lives were changed but there was no mass conversions. Jesus didn't go in and zap all peoples problems away, That is not how God works.

It was to individuals he related, it was to individuals he spoke, yes crowds clearly heard him, no doubt the bush telegraph was in operation, no doubt people were saying did you hear that Jesus guy healed Philip their next door neighbour from leprosy, but instead of falling in repentance they perhaps wrote it off as a co-incidence. Yes Jesus did teach publically, he fed thousands, he spoke in parables. It was up to individual's then to weigh up the pro's and cons of following him and to decide for themselves if they were going to follow.

His strong language in the first part of the passage, surely is justified, he has been preaching, teaching healing, he has put so much effort into these cities they did not repent, they did not turn from their wicked ways.

Their hardness of heart is remarkable, we might think that if Jesus was to come amongst us today, if he was to go up to stromount estate and set 5,000 people on the grass and feed them all with 5 loaves and a few fish, or heal 10 people, or preach a sermon such as the sermon on the mount people might actually fall in repentance. Or perhaps they might just ignore what he has to say, or say they are too busy right now and they will do something about it later on.

The passage then moves on, from Jesus' frustration to some more comfortable words – possibly explaining why the cities are so hard of heart. He has hidden this from the wise and the learned and revealed it to children.
This is of course not to say that we should throw out learning or wisdom, over the centuries some of the most learned and infulential people have been christians but that the basis of the acceptance of the message is simple – a child can understand it. We do complicate it so much with theories and discussion of nuaunced theological debate which is important but we do need to come back to the central message … Deitirch Bonnhoffer, who did much thinking as to the nature of christian discipleship boiled the christian Gospel down to 12 words …. “Jesus Loves me this I know for the Bible Tells me so”.

As we move on to The final three verses are extremely well known

28"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.".

The Burdens, the weariness we have … we will have rest from them. But look at what we are promised … Its not a sit back on the sofa and let the world drift by kind of rest.
The image we are dealing with here is a picture of farming day of old, where animals usually oxen is joined by a wooden beam and they would work together, ploughing or pulling a cart or doing some other work.
Jesus offers a yoke that is easy – meaning that it is good, comfortable and well-suited.
We all have some sort of yoke upon us – for the Jews, the yoke was the heavy obligation to the law and the various rules which were built up around the law which dictated what you could and couldn't do. They were called to exchange the heavy, burdensome yoke for the well fitted light yoke – allowing the same job to be done more efficiently and effectively.

The easy yoke may sound like an oxymoron. Plowing a field or pulling a load is hard work!
Nowhere does Jesus Promise softground for tilling or level roads for pulling our load

But when we look around at the alternatives, I know first hand, that the easy yoke is definitely a lot easier, a infinitely more effective than other yokes which the world can provide – Who in their right mind, if they have experienced the easy yoke of Christ would then turn to the gods of Self, Money, Lust or Power

When you do live in the light of Christ, when you know what it means to have the Joy, the reassurance that comes from knowing that eternity is secured, that God has plans for you, to prosper you and not to harm you, plans for a hope and a future and that he has come so that you may have life in all its fulness why would anyone opt for the alternatives?

As a society we are like those cities which we started off with, Northern Ireland has seen lots of preaching, we have seen teachers in our churches, we have Bible verses posted on lamp posts, on bill boards across the province, children are taught about Jesus, but what we need to do is allow ourselves to experience the rest which Jesus' easy yoke provides.

As Christian disciples we are called to take the lighter burden, to live lives surrendered to Christ, to live according to his law, to strip off the sin which entangles and to run. Where we end up we don't know but that is the adventure of faith. Living each day surrendered to the will of God, living each day for him.

During the week, Henry and Charles, the Rectors children were looking through some of my favorite songs on my laptop, they asked me what as my favorite … I have a full collection of Disney albums so I picked out Hukna Matata … from the lion King … It means no worries for the rest of your days, a problem free philosophy.
With Christianity, as disciples we are not promised a problem free philosophy but we are promised when we live lives surrendered to Christ, when we are prepared to say to God, Thy will be done, he will take us to places we never even thought we could go. The yoke is easy and the burden is light, he will give us rest, he will equip us with the gifts we need.

The path he will take us on will be difficult sometimes, it will be challenging, but I can testify that it is rewarding, it is filled with hope, it is filled with frustrations but at the end of the day, nothing makes more sense, is fitted more personally than living each day with the easy yoke. The knowledge that Christ is with you in what difficult circumstances you find yourself in, I can't imagine life lived without Him at the center of everything.