Proper 9 AMatthew 11: 16-19, 25-30Burdens and Joy

I know a retired priest in the Atlanta Diocese who was at his parish, in many ways like CHT, for over thirty years. Some years before he arrived, someone had painted a mural in the basement; Jesus is seated and a crowd of children, dressed in late 1960’s fashion, are all over him, literally. Several are climbing his legs, one is conspicuously wiping his nose on his robes, while another is on his lap with a chocolate ice cream cone, smearing it all over him. But the most remarkable feature is the utter joy on Jesus’ face, his beatific smile as he stares down at these children, not an ounce of judgment in his entire demeanor, despite all the mess. Whenever my friend would get a question about what the love of God was like, he would lead this person downstairs and invite her to spend some time in front of this mural.

It will come as no surprise, but we don’t appear to get it about Jesus and this is no more apparent than in Jesus’ own prayer this morning, “ I thank you Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes Father, for such was your gracious will.” The spiritually discerning indeed do not get it, those who reject the message of the ascetic John the Baptizer because they believed he “has a demon”; the Son of Man is even more dangerous, a glutton and a drunkard, a threat to the covenant community. Neither line up with the standards of the authorities; each defies the preconceived notions of what holiness is like.

That idea of holiness and its obligations are the stumbling blocks which Jesus is trying to remove. If you are like me, we are often trying to form ourselves into the mold of what is holy, measured by the arbitrary standards around us; they are the “heavy burdens” we carry, the back-breaking weight of our own expectations of ourselves and those we imagine our community has. But in this upside-down world of the kingdom, it is the children, the little ones, those without power or authority, who are free from that weight. The very fact of their openness to the love of God, outside personal or communal expectation, makes possible the intimacy of the presence of God in their lives. It is no accident that the invitation to the children earlier in the gospel and the summons to the weary and burdened are virtually identical.

Come to me, all ye that travail and are heavy-laden. We all know what it is to feel that weight, to not even comprehend why we feel we are inclined to the evil we do not want rather than the good we desire, as Paul says. The “yoke” at the center of the invitation of Jesus is not hard to understand in the context of the demands of the authorities in Jesus’ day, the load placed upon people who merely wanted to be living faithful lives. But we are no more immune to this burden, even if we create it for ourselves.

I had the good fortune to attend a seminary where Desmond Tutu was a visiting professor, where he taught some pastoral theology as well as the seminars on reconciliation for which he was so justly famous. There were many “Tutu stories” but one was cited by almost everyone,

probably because it happened so often and was so emblematic of his own spiritual life. A student would speak in a class about how badly he had handled an encounter, cite his own shortcomings in setting a relationship right; beneath these stories was a sense of deep unworthiness, the burden of failure all the more heavy spoken among these future pastors. Tutu would let a moment go by, take off his glasses, look in a very level way at everyone across the room and say, “You cannot possibly imagine how low God’s standards are.” There would then be a moment of stunned silence, as if the burden of expectation had been suddenly lifted from all in the room, a salvation moment for everyone present. There are days when I would trade everything else I learned during those three years for that one insight.

This Independence Day Weekend, it may be helpful to remember from what we are being freed, because Jesus’ words are really about salvation, right here and right now: the “rest” he offers for our souls is not about ease but about deliverance from the weight of obligation, perceived or real, in Jesus’ day as well as our own. After all, the love of God is about joy and celebration, as a vision of Julian of Norwich describes:

My mind was lifted up to heaven and I saw our Lord as lord in his own house where he had called his much-beloved friends and servants to a banquet. I saw that the Lord did not sit in one place but ranged throughout the house, filling it with joy and gladness. Completely relaxed and courteous, he was himself the happiness and peace of his dear friends, his beautiful love radiating measureless love like a marvelous symphony; and it was that wonderful face shining with the beauty of God that filled that heavenly place with joy and light.

For us, it is the joy of one who can look down at a robe wrecked with an ice cream cone and still project the abiding love of God. I am not trying to be flippant here. Only to point out, as my friend has to me, that our burdens are not really punishments or loads placed on us; they are our invited guests. The alternative to these burdens is to ponder the profound joy that God takes in us: not merely that God forgives us, has mercy on us or somehow puts up with us but actually enjoys us as God’s own beloved, irreplaceable creatures. Our very being at this moment is the fruit of the delight God takes in us. And, whatever our religion asks of us, our life’s highest purpose and deepest joy is to agree with that delight, to fill our lives with the joy and light of much-beloved friends and servants of God.