"Gracious God - bless now the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts. Breath your Spirit into us and grant that we may hear and in hearing be led in the way you want us to go. Amen.
Many of us here today have had, or still have, many problems in our lives. We are under constant stress from one thing or another:
- there is an interview coming up
- some one we know and love is sick
- our finances are shaky
- we feel understandably depressed and find it difficult to watch the news on TV or to think about anyone else's troubles.
Something is eating at us.
Stress is a common, all too common fact in our lives.
It could be any of a thousand and one things that afflict us, but the result is we feel tired; or we find ourselves being angry at other people for almost no reason at all or, even more commonly, we feel unable to think good thoughts or do what we believe are good things.
We are not at peace.
So what do we do about it?
A lot of people do nothing... they feel that somehow this is meant to be their lot in life - or they feel powerless to change things.
Others - those blessed with the conviction that they should be more at ease with themselves and with the world around them - are more active.
And many of these - and in this age it seems the majority - turn to the solutions offered at the local library and at the supermarket stands or on TV, and they buy self-help manuals or they watch shows featuring pop psychologists hoping against hope that by following the instructions of the books or enacting the principles outlined in 30 minutes by some expert on the tube - that they will be able to get a grip on their problems, and find a happier and more fulfilling life.
Yet, despite all their efforts - all too often they are just as tired and unhappy as those who have done nothing, perhaps even more so - since the rules and regulations and principles they try to follow to help themselves require a lot of effort.
Who will rescue me is a cry heard not only on the top 40 charts, but in the depths of our hearts.
Who will rescue me...who will rescue me from the aimlessness of my life? Who will rescue me from my pain and loneliness? Who will rescue me from the negativity of the world? Who will rescue me from myself?
Again, hoping against hope, some of us turn to religion, we turn to the values and principles taught to us on our mothers knees and we try to live our lives by the ten commandments and by the laws taught to us by Moses, Jesus and Paul.
But like Paul - we end up finding that this does not work either, we find that the good that we would like to do we do not do and the bad that we would not do, we end up doing anyway.
Like Paul we find that there is a kind of war going on inside us, And deep down we end up saying with him -
What a wretched person I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?"
Brothers and sisters in Christ there is a better way, - a better way than the quick fixes offered by the wise psychologists on the supermarket stands, - a better way than that which is offered to us by a religion based on do's and don'ts, laws and regulations.
The way I am referring to will strike many of you as being very silly, very simplistic, very naive, but I assure you that it is not - even when applied to problems that are larger than our own personal ones.
I do not know how many of you ever heard of a person by the name of Samantha Smith -
when she was 10 years old she woke up one morning in her home in Maine and "wondered if this was going to be the last day of the earth". She had just read about the arms race and thought that it made no sense. So she did something that only an unsophisticated child would do - she wrote a letter to Mr. Andropov, the Soviet Leader at the time. She said "I am worried about Russia and America getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to vote for war? Please tell me how we can stop having a war?"
To many peoples' surprise, Mr. Andropov answered her letter and invited her to Russia to see things for herself. She went and met Mr. Andropov and many children of her own age. She got along very well. When she returned to the States she said "If we can be friends by getting to know each other better, then what are our two countries arguing about? Nothing could be more important than stopping a nuclear war".
Adults cannot say such things lest they seem silly...Yet is there not a profound wisdom here? Something greater than the wisdom of our political scientists and international experts?
We have so many problems - both personal, and as a nation and a world. And we have so little peace, so little rest.
Who will rescue us?
You know that it is all enough to drive a person to pray, we get to the point after we have tried this and that formula and consulted this and that expert in our problems that we do not know what else to do.
We've tried to make it under our own steam - and we are tired, and in desperation, finally, we try God.
But wouldn't we be better off to try God first? Wouldn't we be better off to live by God's wisdom rather than the wisdom of the learned of this world?
But we don't do this do we? It is just too silly to expect that something simple can solve a complex problem.
But listen to Jesus once again. He said:
"I praise you Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children."
An ancient story is told about a Rabbi who had the prophet Elijah appear to him one day while he was in the market place.
There the teachers of the Law were holding forth, others were buying and selling goods, and still others were listening to the disputes that were brought before the elders of the people in one corner of the market.
The Rabbi asked Elijah if there was anyone in the market place who was destined to share in the blessedness of the life to come. At first Elijah said no - but then he pointed to two men and said that they would. The Rabbi went over to them and asked what they did. "We are merry makers", they replied, "When we see a person who is downcast we cheer him up. When we see two people quarrelling with each other, we try to make peace between them."
Brothers and sisters in Christ, the answers we need to our problems are often hidden from us, because so many of us, particularly those of us who are well educated cannot comprehend the simplicity of the truth - for us there always has to be a catch, we cannot accept that things might be easier than they appear.
I tell you this: God wants us to understand and find solutions to our problems. And so God has arranged things so that it is not our knowledge that is important, but rather our heart and our will.
God wants us all to have peace and fulfilment, and so there is nothing complicated here, instead there is only a call, a call to yield yourself to God, a call to follow Jesus and enter into a relationship with him.
As a theologian once put it: "the heart, not the head is the home of the gospel"
The smallest child is given the faculty of knowing Christ, of knowing what is important and what is not, - but for us adults it seems we need something more, we need a model which we can consciously follow.
Jesus said:
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in spirit, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.
Come to me, take my yoke upon you, my yoke is easy and my burden light.
The word yoke in the scripture often refers to the TORAH - to the way of God, to the teachings of God through the prophets, and as such it is it is not so much about servitude but rather about the direction of things - the focus of our labours, which is for us the focus of Jesus and not the rules and laws of religion.
And the word easy - my yoke is easy - in the Greek means well fitted.
In the days of Jesus yokes were made of wood. The ox was brought to the carpenter's shop and carefully measured and then the yoke was roughed out. Then the ox was brought back and it was tried on him - the yoke was then marked - and carefully adjusted by shaving the wood. Each yoke was tailor made to fit each ox.
When Jesus says that "my yoke is easy and my burden light" what he means is this: The life I give you is not a burden to gall you, your task is made to measure to fit you.
What Jesus is saying is: My burden is light, it is not meant to weigh you down with demands, it is not rules and regulations about what you can and can not do, nor is it a task that you will hate doing.
No, the burden of Jesus is like the one in the old story about a man who comes upon a little boy carrying a still smaller boy, who was lame, upon his back.
"That's a heavy burden for you to carry", said the man. "That's no burden", came the answer, "that's my wee brother".
What ever Jesus sends us, and whatever he asks of us is made to fit our needs and our abilities exactly, it is made to give not only us, but our whole world rest.
We need to give up our old way of looking at life and assume the way of seeing and living that Christ wants us to have, - the one that concerns our heart, - the one that is suited to us.
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened. Come to me you who are tired of doing it all under your own steam and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, take what I have designed especially for you, and learn from me, learn from me for I am gentle and humble in spirit, for I am one who is at peace, one who knows the right way. Do this, come to me, and take what I have designed for you, learn from me, and you will find rest for your souls.
You will find rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden light.
Who will rescue me?
An old hymn by the name of "Come Unto Me" says in its second verse:
Are you disappointed, wandering here and there, dragging chains of doubt and loaded down with care? Do unholy feelings struggle in your breast? Bring your case to Jesus, He will give you rest.
Come unto me, come unto me, I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, Hear me and be blest. I am meek and lowly, come and trust my might. My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Who will rescue me?
Jesus invites us - come to me, learn from, take my yoke upon you - and I will give you rest...
It is a promise, a promise that requires a very simple answer on our part to take effect.
Come to Jesus like a child - listen to him, talk to him, do what he asks of you, and you will find your rest. AMEN
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