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The Seventh Sunday After Pentecost
O God, who hast taught us to keep all thy commandments by loving thee and our neighbor: Grant us the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to thee with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Proper 9)
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The Seventh Sunday After Pentecost
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Scripture citation(s): Matthew 11:25-30
A Sermon by
Fr. Stafford
on
Matthew 11:25-30
✛
A Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
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“…My yoke is easy, and my burden is light”
The yoke of mortality is something we all wear. It is never easy or light. And, it is this inseparable bond with death, often covered-over in daily life in illusion, that motivates our need and propensity for violence, suffering, power, and alienation in the kingdom of this world, where, sadly, we can be both victim and victimizer, people driven to catastrophic conclusions and actions. This yoke of mortality, which constitutes a broad basis of human identity, I am saying, is all about time, and time, or what Scripture terms, the kingdom of this world, is running out!
I am not in the pulpit this morning to tell you about the kingdom of this world, whose burdens and labors we all know and must bear. I am here with a purpose of a different sort; the Gospel proclamation or good news of the kingdom of heaven; the yoke of eternal life that Christ tells us is easy and makes his burden light; something our Lord invites us to put-on, as if it were a necessity for life, here and now. This is because its purpose is to help us live with and through the powerlessness and unmanageabilities of this present age amidst all the forces and principalities of this world that threaten to undo us, especially, death, our ancient and great enemy. The yoke, of which Christ speaks in this morning’s Gospel, reveals the peace, healing, victory, and love of the kingdom of heaven come amongst us, a new time. This yoke is Christ’s unique offering and is the comfort of divine Truth, an eternal world, within this present time during which all is passing away. In this eternity already-but-not-yet-fully-revealed, we, by putting-on the yoke of Christ, what is often termed his grace and the power of God, can be participants in something radically new, making of us people we inherently are not, that is to say, pilgrims of resurrected life. When we take up the yoke that our Lord offers, life re-begins, as we are transfigured amidst disfiguring time. My purpose this morning is to convince you that this eternal kingdom that we so much read and talk about in Church is real, and because it is real can make a difference in our lives.
The apostle Paul, in this morning’s Letter to the Romans, is intent in this same purpose, contrasting what he terms the law of sin (7.25), or the yoke of death, with the law of the Spirit (8.2), or the yoke of eternal life. Paul, in this juxtaposition of opposites, distinguishes paganism from Christianity, untruth/ illusion from truth/reality. In his theological argument, he condemns a paganism that we, ourselves, share because of our mortality, our flesh being shot through with death (ref. to James Alison). For Paul, humanity’s fatal and tragic partnership with finitude is a dilemma that cannot be ameliorated through religious law or sacrifice. It is a crisis in which humanity and history are catastrophically fastened to death, motivating men and women to desperation, violence, and prejudice, and the illusion by which so much earthly meaning and power are derived. For the Apostle, the cross of Christ is the answer and solution to humankind’s ancient enigma and cursed dilemma with the yoke of death. The cross is the final, true, and complete sacrifice; Christ’s death an end to the rule of death, the conclusion, as well, to earthly time (chronos). The passion, death, and resurrection of the Son of God proclaim good news, the arrival of an eternal kingdom, a new time of recreated life, amidst a world of broken and impoverished empire, where having everything is nothing. The cross, for Paul, is none other than God’s yoke, the means by which the humility and mercy of Christ poured out in His death at Calvary establish a final time (xairos), the last age of God’s coming, in which the believer is invited to step out of old, earthly mortality and illusion and into the fullness, vision, and vitality of eternal life — a reality that the kingdom of this world is incapable of providing, because the kingdom of God has everything to do with love and forgiveness as pure, eternal gift and nothing to do with death. Paul, in his writings, admonishes the reader to submit to a spiritual surrender, an inner death or letting-go, whereby, we might come to receive power to live differently in this life, set apart, as if death were not (ref. James Alison), under the rule of the mercy of God, the same truth and blessing breathed out upon creation by the one whose death upon the cross triumphs over the reign of mortality.
The point I want to make and have you remember this morning is that to take on the yoke of Christ is to desire what the author of the Letter to the Hebrews terms “…a better country, that is, a heavenly” (11.16). This is what Paul in his Letter to the Galatians refers to when he speaks of “…Jerusalem, which is above…free…the mother of us all” (4.26). Our desire for this heavenly homeland is not prompted by anything human but is the Spirit of God tugging at our heart-strings, calling us to become a people whose feet are set on the pathway of a new exile, a journey deeper in life to a heavenly city. But, this life-long trek to our spiritual home-town is not without discomfort, because it calls us out of the superficial life we are currently living, the life that so often costs us our life (ref. to Eliot). “I am a stranger here on earth…” (110.19), writes the Psalmist, reminding us that putting on God’s yoke and stepping forward to embrace something that only the heart can sense and what to some is sheer folly and to others is faithfulness of command makes believers of the Gospel different from those yoked solely to the kingdom of this world. Our uniqueness as pilgrims on this new exile of God’s people is not to be confused as righteousness. We are different, because believers are ruined for life. And, here do not confuse ruination with destruction. I am saying that to be a Christian is to participate in a Law and Sacrifice that are not of death’s making. It is to be in the world and not solely of it. For men and women this has profound consequences. And, here, I must become personal and hopefully reveal the reality of the Gospel in my own life, the yoke that has made all the difference.
Thirty some years ago, I was lost in an addiction to alcohol. Time and reality as I had understood them three decades ago had simply run out. For reasons that are beyond my comprehension, apart from the grace and intervention of Almighty God, a door was presented for recovery, an entrance into what was to become a new way of life. From that moment in November of 1972, I have felt as if I have never quite fit back into the pattern of things. In order to recover, I left behind a relationship to living that I had completely trusted and took a gamble on a new path of life about which I knew little if anything, hoping only that it would be better than what I had formerly known. For me, sobriety/recovery is the spiritual exodus where God’s grace is continually revealed. Do I feel like a stranger in this life? Yes, because so much of what I had devoted myself to at one time was little more than illusion and suffering, both for others and myself. As a stranger, life is clearer. I am the same and different. This paradox is the yoke of eternal life, a willingness to walk with Christ through the ruins of the kingdom of this world as a place one cannot comfortably re-enter once that journey has begun. I am not implying that in this alienation that is also revivification that there is no comfort, because here is found the deep and abiding peace and joy of God. The story of Christianity is not about success or how I turned from my evil ways and became righteous. That is simply the yoke of this world in a different guise. The story of Christianity is the Cross and how it ruins our illusions with God’s love, a power greater than this world, greater than death, that waits to overtake each and all precisely where old life runs out and where new life needs to begin. The cross and the exile it commands individuals, groups, and even nations to undertake, is, above all else, a mystery into which we can pour and entrust our heart, a difference in life between simply going-on and going-within! Deeper into the mystery of salvation Christ calls each of us, a journey where he alone in the good company of the faithful is our stay and guide!
In calling God’s people to faithful perseverance, or life from the heart, the prophet Zechariah (9.9) this morning summons Israel to rejoice in the advent of a new time in a country with a humble and lowly king whose power shall stretch across the earth and whose covenant shall release the prisoners and captives from the pit of death and lifelessness. This is the promise of our God, a promise that will give life not as we want but as God wills for our growth and health. It does not ask of us great acts of heroism but little steps and daily surrenders to those people, places, things, and events which would distract us from our journey to the reality of our eternal homeland. The importance of what I am saying to you this morning is that the yoke of Christ will require of each of us God’s gift of perseverance. It will be found in that Calvary of each and every life where the great struggle is between death and love, a place where the Spirit invites us to leave behind a world that is passing away so that we might become children of light and truth, love and joy, the eternity that is Christ, here and now, the eternity that his cross has begun!
Let me summarize what I have said this morning.
1) What is real in life is the kingdom that we cannot see but are invited by faith and baptism to inhabit. 2) Only the heart and our unity with one another can lead us to truth. And, 3) We become who we really are by surrender to the grace of God and willingness to persevere in a life long discovery of a new Jerusalem.
I conclude with three actions of willingness and perseverance that we can practice mindful of today’s Gospel. 1) Credo ut intelligam, said St. Anselm: “Give your heart in order to understand.” Live more from the heart and less from the head. Remember that the kingdom of this world is willful, headstrong, is filled with stumbling-blocks. For example, I recall playing the slot machines with my favorite uncle one night forty years ago at a casino in Lake Tahoe. He’d put a lot of money into a certain machine and was obviously frustrated when he turned to me and said, “I’ve put so much into this slot that I’m staying until it pays off.” Our heads, I am saying, teach us to put money and energy into failure until it becomes success. Sometimes it’s better to simply admit defeat. 2) Go slowly. Life is like reading a book, the slower you read, the more your mind and imagination are engaged. Our world encourages us to speed read; quantity at the expense of quality. Much we have to face, like illness, for example, requires mind and imagination. Easy does it. Keep your mind and imagination at work. And, 3) Zelda Fitzgerald, whose life I view with a certain sense of fascination, identification, and horror, once wrote in her book, Save Me the Waltz, that “it’s approval you need to avoid” (Southern Illinois University Press, 1967, p. 62). Well, she and F. Scott certainly put that theory to the test! I am not advocating it in quite the same extreme as she and her Minnesota born husband lived it. I am saying that God’s grace is the approval and power we need to step out of lives that imprison any one of us in the death, illusion, or emptiness of the kingdom of this world. We all know what those labels are that we apply to ourselves and to others that attempt to limit and control. What this world worships is fear. Compassion and hope are what the kingdom of heaven command, the journey out of fear that not everyone finds timely or desirable to make. But, this exile to an eternity within the present age, when the invitation comes, shall always surprise, shall always make us new, because the cross, Christ’s yoke of love by which the world is redeemed, shall always make us real, shall make us more like our Father!
