You know that desert island question, if you were stranded on a desert island and could have only one book, which would it be? My tricky answer, since at least the third grade, (geek that I am) has been The Bible, because that’s when I learned that there were 66 books in the Bible (that is, the Christian Protestant Bible, or the real Bible, according to my Protestant father). Imagine my delight when I arrived at college and got my hands on the Bible that the Episcopal Church uses with 16 more books in it for a grand total of 82! Bonus! But it’s not only because there are so many books bound into one that I love the literature of the Bible – it’s that there’s hardly a part in which I cannot lose myself and find myself in the stories of the chances and challenges of the people of God.

When my daughter Laura was a toddler, she had an endearing way of identifying who she was pretending to be when looking at the pages of a book. She would point and say, “I’m dat guy.” When I hear the story from Genesis this morning, I want to point to the servant who is thirsty for a sign from God and who finds the sign in a shared cup of cool water, from the generous, compassionate and courageous person of Rebekah. The thirsty servant: “I’m dat guy.” In Romans, when Paul writes, “for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate,” [1] I often think, “I’m dat guy.” When it comes to this Gospel portion, I most identify with the one who is weary and carrying heavy burdens. Don’t you? And maybe if it’s not you today, don’t you know someone who is weary and carrying heavy burdens?

Our Gospel portion picks up in the middle of a teaching of Jesus about John the Baptist – well, in the middle of a rant, really. Things aren’t going as Jesus had hoped and Jesus is expressing his frustration with his generation. For me, 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 – inured maybe. 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 about living and loving into the realm of God, 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 in the Galilee for not recognizing God’s power to heal, for not responding to God’s desire for deeds of compassion and mercy toward dishonorable people (like tax collectors and sinners).

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.” [2] All who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens.

At its most basic, most literal, a yoke is a crossbeam of wood that serves to redistribute weight. A yoke makes something easier or even possible to carry or to move. A well-made yoke makes carrying heavy buckets of water, for instance, much less work. This builder’s son (Jesus) 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 loyal 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, in other words, the yoke of Love, 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)

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 heavy burden is not taken away, not removed, but more easily carried, more easily shared with a yoke. Here, 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 unlimited and impossible to bear.

When we were talking this past Tuesday morning in our Bible Study gathering, we got to the part where Jesus says, “take my yoke upon you and learn from me,” someone remarked with a smile and a sigh, “I really need the rest, but I just can’t get to gentleness and humbleness of heart!” (CR) That’s it, isn’t it?

Perhaps you arrived in this chapel this morning weary and carrying a heavy load. Perhaps that is not the case but you do 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. 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, by showing up, the practice 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 and about offering our peculiar honors to God through our peculiar community.

Henri Nouwen famously 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.” [3] 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 recall from the Book of Ecclesiastics. The author of that book of scripture that Jesus surely knew, 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. (Ecclesiastics 6:26-31)

What to do with this raggedy ending?

You might know the author, Christian Wiman. He teaches at Yale Divinity School. Diagnosed with a rare and deadly cancer, he wrote a book called My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer. In it he said, “So much of faith has so little to do with belief, and so much has to do with acceptance. Acceptance of all the gifts that God, even in the midst of death, grants us. Acceptance of the fact that we are, as Paul Tillich says, accepted. Acceptance of grace.” [4] The title of Wiman’s book is taken from this stanza of his unfinished poem:

My God my bright abyss
into which all my longing will not go
once more I come to the edge of all I know
and believing nothing, believe in this. [5]

For me, the “this” to believe in is the power of a beloved community – full of sinners and saints (who turn out to be the very same people) – who learn to share each others’ blessings and each others’ burdens and lighten each others’ loads with gentleness and humility. I want us all to be dat guy.

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