Have you heard the one about Jesus, the new rector? He came to town and preached his first sermon. It was a stem-winder. EVERYBODY loved it. The next Sunday, he got up and preached…the same sermon. Folks said, “Well, it WAS a GREAT sermon. I guess we needed to hear it twice.” On the third Sunday, Jesus mounted the pulpit and preached…? You guessed it. The same sermon, three Sundays in a row.
You’ll guess this part, too. The church’s leaders called a meeting. They found Jesus at coffee hour and said, “We need to talk.” Then they all went to a quiet place, and said, “Jesus, that really was a fine sermon, but people are beginning to complain. They’re asking, “What kind of preacher is this? Where did he go to seminary? Does he think we are mere children? Just how many times does he think he’s going to preach that sermon?” And Jesus said, “I’m going to keep preaching that sermon…until you get it.”
The mission statement of the Washington Post is, “If you don’t get it, you don’t get it.” For the past three Sundays Tommy Rogers and I have preached what is essentially the same sermon: welcoming, welcoming, welcoming. How many times will we preach that sermon?
Tommy and I need to hear that sermon, too. We need to know more about what it means – what JESUS means – to be welcoming. We all need to know that it can mean little things. Like wearing nametags. Like actually saying “welcome” to one another. We live in an unwelcoming world, and we need the church to be welcoming. We need to keep hearing and talking about being a welcoming church, because, if we don’t get it, we won’t get it.
One of the gifts your interim rector, Philip Wiehe, gave you before I arrived was to have someone come for a short time as an interim assistant rector. I am told that she gathered some new members together and asked them, “When you think of All Saints’ Church, what words come to mind?” Then she collected all their responses. Those who had just joined the church had suggested a pattern, a theme, just three little words: “Lively, prayerful, welcoming.” Do you know where those words are now? They are on the front of our bulletins, each and every week. Lively, prayerful, welcoming. Lively, prayerful, welcoming. Lively, prayerful, welcoming. Did we “get it” yet?
Today I want to talk about that middle word: “prayerful.” Recently I went on a personal retreat. It helped me find a focus for our Christian formation and education programs this year. I have been here for nearly six months. Next year, I hope our focus will be more of a joint effort, the result of some good, old-fashioned Anglican discernment in community. But for now, for this year, our focus will be those three little words that were something of a focus here before I came. Lively, prayerful, welcoming.
What does it mean to be more prayerful? For me, to be more prayerful means to be more like Jesus. It means to “pray without ceasing” (I Thess. 5:17). Jesus knows all about prayer. He “gets it,” because HE got weary. HE carried heavy burdens. HE needed rest. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” These are among the most beloved and quoted verses in the Bible. Why? Because all of us get tired, all of us feel burdened, all of us need rest. And all of us, from time to time, need help.
Those of us who are birthright Episcopalians know these as “comfortable words” from the Rite I service. Jesus knew the comfort of coming to God in prayer from his own, personal experience. “Come to me,” he says, because HE comes to God. Jesus is all about prayer. Christians all over the world know this about Jesus. Christians know that Jesus “gets it” about prayer and about being human, and so people have come to Jesus for more than 2,000 years. As that old hymn puts it, “What a friend we have in Jesus!…Take it to the Lord in prayer.”
What makes you weary? What kind of heavy burdens are you carrying? Originally, these verses spoke specifically to those burdened by the Jewish law. Matthew was probably thinking of the burden of religious obligation, imposed by the scribes and the Pharisees, which he saw as a barrier to communion with God (cf. 23:4)… (New Interpreter’s Bible, p. 274). So, I wonder: is anybody here like Matthew? Does anybody here ever get tired of religion? Does religion give you heavy burdens? In Alcoholics Anonymous they have a saying: Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell. Prayer (what AA calls “conscious contact with our Higher Power”), what they also call spirituality, is for people who have been there. Have you ever been to hell? Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired? Is religion part of what makes you weary and burdened? Regardless of what makes you sick and tired, do you need a little bit of heaven today?
Thank God for those comfortable words. But just how “comfortable” are they? In our Prayer Book we don’t include the next two verses that begin: “Take my yoke upon you. . .and learn from me.” A yoke is a work-tool, a piece of wood that a farmer places across the necks of oxen to enable them to combine their power when they pull a plow or wagon. A load that is too much for one ox might be easy for two. We know that Joseph (Jesus’ father) was a carpenter. He would have begun teaching Jesus the art of carpentry as soon as Jesus was old enough to hold a tool. “According to one legend, Jesus carved excellent yokes. People came from near and far to buy yokes from Jesus. It was worth their while to seek out Jesus, because a Jesus-yoke would wear comfortably all day….” (Richard Donovan, www.sermonwriter.com).
In Jewish tradition, “yoke” was also a common metaphor. It meant obedience. The rabbis of Jesus’ time would speak of the “yoke of the Torah.” But what did obedience to the yoke of Torah look like? Christian theologian Rob Bell, in his book Velvet Elvis, says rabbis “understood that (Torah), the(ir) Bible, was open-ended and had to be interpreted. (For example:) ’Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy….’ (raises some questions:) Who defines work? Who defines rest? What if work to one person is rest to another? What if rest to one person is work to another?”
“(The rabbis) understood, says Bell, “that their role in the community was to study and meditate and discuss and pray and then make…decisions….(They were interpreters. They) had different sets of rules…different lists of what they forbade and what they permitted. A rabbi’s set of rules and lists, which was really that rabbi’s interpretation of how to live the Torah, was called that rabbi’s yoke….When you followed that rabbi, you were taking up that rabbi’s yoke….The intent then of a rabbi having a yoke wasn’t just to interpret the words correctly; it was to live them out. In the Jewish context, action was always the goal. It still is” (Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith, p. 046-047).
“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.” As Christians, as little Christs, we seek the most excellent Jesus yoke, the Jesus way, the Jesus path of prayer-in-action path. We who seek to follow the rabbi Jesus will come to wear that yoke.
When I was on retreat, I found a yoke. It hangs over the door of the Yoke Room at the Lodge of the Carpenter at Dayspring Retreat Center. On my retreat, the Yoke Room is where I prayed and studied my Bible and worked on this sermon. And it’s where I learned that the Greek word that Matthew chose to describe the yoke of Jesus, the word we translate “easy” is the word chrestos. The yoke of Christ is chrestos. The Christ-yoke, the Jesus-yoke is easy. Why? Because we share that yoke. Because no one wears that yoke alone. Jesus the master carpenter makes a yoke for us to wear with him. You and Jesus, me and Jesus, us and Jesus – we share a yoke. We’re in this Jesus-yoke together. And the yoke is about loving one another – not as we prefer to love, but as Jesus loves.
Last week, more than 1,000 Anglican Christians, including 280 bishops, assembled in Jerusalem and issued a statement “to preserve and promote the truth and power of the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ as we…have received it.” The gathering was called GAFCON, Global Anglican Futures Conference. Some of the bishops there will not attend the upcoming Lambeth Conference of worldwide Anglican bishops, in protest. GAFCON launched their movement as a fellowship of what they are calling “confessing” Anglicans. They have encouraged the six Presiding Bishops who attended to form a council, and they have published “The Jerusalem Declaration” as the basis of their fellowship.
Here are a few responses from other worldwide Anglican leaders. Jerusalem Bishop Suheil Dawani said the GAFCON statement "totally ignores a living Christian and interfaith community in the very city in which they met and kept at a distance (from us)." Canadian Archbishop Fred Hiltz said, “The statement…accuses Anglican churches in Canada and the United States of proclaiming a ‘false gospel that has paralysed the Communion.’ I challenge and repudiate this charge….” Our own Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, said, "Anglicanism has always been broader than some find comfortable…This statement…represent(s)…merely another chapter in a centuries-old struggle for dominance by those who consider themselves the only true believers.” And Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and of the Anglican Communion, said the GAFCON statement is "problematic in all sorts of ways."
What does this mean for us at All Saints’ Episcopal Church? As part of the Fourth of July edition of Time magazine, in an essay called “Patriot Games,” Peter Beinart suggests that “Conservatives think patriotism is a tribute to the past. Liberals believe it’s a key to the future…both sides can learn from each other…Conservatives and liberals need each other.” In that same issue John McCain says, “Patriotism is countless acts of love, kindness and courage….Love of country is another way of saying love of your fellow countrymen…service to a cause greater than self-interest.” Barack Obama says, “We are a nation of strong and varied convictions and beliefs. We argue and debate our differences vigorously and often. But when all is said and done, we all come together as one people and pledge our allegiance (to our one nation)….”
What if we American Anglicans, we Episcopal Christians decided that, like those who have signed the Jerusalem Declaration, we wanted to return to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which would no longer allow for the ordination of women and would say, in essence, that we have no need of women in leadership? What if we, like those who went to GAFCON, decided we could break communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury and still call ourselves Anglican? What if we, like them, decided that, regardless of the consequences, we would insist that ours is the one, true gospel and that their version of the gospel is false? For us, is that what the loving yoke of the rabbi Jesus is about?
Or…what if we American Anglicans, we Episcopal Christians could learn to accept all our differences and beliefs – vast, varied and vigorously held – and actually did listen to and love one another, not as we prefer to do, but as Jesus does? What if we decided to come together, to stay together, to learn from each other, to see the need for each other, in a way that our candidates for President suggest our nation needs to do? What if we Episcopalians dared to believe that we have far more in common – our faith, hope and love in Jesus Christ – than we have in conflict? What if we dared to create a safe, just and open church – where all are truly welcome and included? Where all are prayerful and care for each other? Where all are lively in and enlivened by God’s Spirit? For us, is that what the loving yoke of the rabbi Jesus is about?
Jesus speaks today of rest. On this Independence Day weekend, I pray we will wear the loving yoke of the rabbi Jesus and find some good, Sabbath rest. I close with another version of the final verses of today’s Gospel, rendered by Eugene Peterson. Let this rabbi’s interpretation be an answer to our prayer:
(Jesus said:) “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 (light and) free” (alt.). (The Message)
The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg, Rector
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Frederick, Maryland July 6, 2008
THE LOVING YOKE OF THE RABBI JESUS