If you’ve been following along in lectionary (and my preaching) installments of the Gospel of Matthew’s testimony about Jesus, you’ll know that Jesus has completed his first two courses of instruction:  how to live into God’s realm and how to bring healing.  Today, in an interlude between courses, we learn that things aren’t going as Jesus had hoped.  In this passage, Jesus expresses his frustration with his generation.  It’s somehow comforting to know that nostalgia for the wisdom of previous generations is nothing new!   The problem with his generation is that they’re unresponsive. They’re not laughing or weeping or fasting or feasting when called upon – they just aren’t getting it in spite of what he’s said and done -- and Jesus is exasperated.

      In the next part (in the verses that are omitted from our reading this morning), Jesus condemns the cities in Galilee – his home town of Capernaum, and neighboring towns of Chorazin and Bethsaida, saying that the notoriously godless cities of Tyre and Sidon would have been responsive  -- they would have gotten it – if they’d experienced his deeds of power.  It’s a fairly ugly tirade against entire populations of cities for not believing in God’s power to heal, for not responding to God’s desire for compassion and mercy.

      And then a quick turn of thanks and praise to God that leads to one of the most beautiful and comforting passages in the Gospels.  Jesus says to all who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, “Come to me….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.”   All who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens.  This could be any of us.

      At its most basic, most literal, a yoke is a beam of wood that serves to redistribute weight.  A yoke makes something easier to carry or to move.  A well-made yoke makes carrying heavy buckets of water, for instance, much less work.  This carpenter’s son probably knew something about making a comfortable yoke!  Yokes allow two to share a load, two oxen or two people can share a load that is too heavy for one.  But as early as the time ancient Hebrew scripture was being written, the yoke had a figurative meaning as well.  A yoke symbolized discipline, service, ownership and control (in the sense of slavery).  To be faithful was to bear the yoke.  To rebel was to break off the yoke.  Bearing the yoke of God’s sovereignty was a joy, an honor and a privilege.  The yoke of Torah was perfect freedom and wisdom in contrast to the yoke of lawlessness which was tragedy, hardship and sorrow.  The Rabbis said: "We cannot choose to serve no master at all, but can choose only which master we will serve.  The yoke of the law is better than the yoke of the world, because the yoke of the law is God-inspired."  (source unknown)  And ironically the word that gets translated yoke is also the term for crossbeam.  That would not have been lost on the followers of Jesus in the first century after his death.

      So here are some things that I notice that I want you to think about.  In Jesus’ invitation to those who are weary and heavy laden, the burden is not taken away, not removed, but more easily carried, more easily shared with a yoke.  Rest comes not from putting the burden down, but from redistributing the weight and sharing the load.  The yoke, as it turns out, both restricts and facilitates movement.  The yoke both limits and makes possible what is otherwise impossible.

      Perhaps you arrived in this place this morning weary and carrying a heavy load.  Perhaps that is not the case but you know others who are tired and weighed down.  What is it that the yoke – the discipline – that Jesus is talking about offers to you or to them?  What is the discipline that makes the burdens of life easier to carry?  It is, I believe, the discipline of community.  The exercising the discipline of community is the difference between going to church and being the church.  We have a call – an invitation – to be the church.  It’s about submitting to the practice of supporting one another, of learning how to disagree in love, of developing trust in one another and holding ourselves and one another accountable, of forgiving (and forgiving and forgiving), and of celebrating one another’s gifts.  It’s about responding when called upon to laugh or weep or fast or feast. 

      Henri Nouwen wrote about the discipline of community saying, “Community is the place where the person you least want to live with always lives…[and] in the eyes of others, you might be that person.”1  And yet putting on the yoke of community is about the difference between being a spectator and experiencing the joy, the honor, and the privilege of making burdens light for other folks and realizing in the process that one’s own burden has been lightened at the same time -- that one’s own weariness has somehow eased a little bit.

      This, then, is the beginning of the Wisdom that Jesus knew and the Wisdom he wanted his followers to remember from the Book of Ecclesiasticus. The author of that book of scripture described Wisdom, depicted as a woman, this way:

      Come to her with all your soul,
      and keep her ways with all your might.
      Search out and seek, and she will
      become known to you;
      and when you get hold of her,
      do not let her go.
      For at last you will find the rest she gives,
      and she will be changed into joy for you.
      Then her fetters will become for you a strong defense,
      and her collar a glorious robe.
      Her yoke is a golden ornament,
      and her bonds a purple cord.
      You will wear her like a glorious robe,
      and put her on like a splendid crown. (Ecclesiasticus 6.26-31)