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7 Pentecost
July 3, 2005 Sermon
by Rev. Aron Kramer, Associate Rector
Readings
It is said that angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. How bound to the earth are we as we try to reason ourselves into the air. One of my favorite songs is sung by Mary Chapin Carpenter. It is called “Why walk when you can fly”, it is a wonderfully light song that recognizes the great pains and troubles in the world yet asks, why walk when we all could fly. Why be burdened and held by the bound of our fear and anxiety when we could let them go and fly. Jesus says in today’s gospel, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” I found a wonderful commentary by Paul Tillich on this particular passage, “The burden Jesus wants to take for us is the burden of religion. It is the yoke of the law, imposed on the people of His time by the religious leaders, the wise and understanding, as he calls them in our words, the Scribes and Pharisees, as they are called usually. Those who labor and are weary laden are those who are sighing under the yoke of the religious law. And He will give them the power to overcome religion and the law; the yoke he gives them is a new being above religion. The thing they will learn from him is the victory over the law of the wise and the understanding, and the law of the Scribes and Pharisees. Jesus is not the creator of another religion, but the victor over religion. He is not the maker of another law, but the conqueror of law.”
I wonder if we have entered a time where religious law and religious rules are becoming so overbearing and so black and white that we are being overcome by these burdens. Look at our country; look at the divisiveness that is so prevalent, the unwillingness on all sides to find compromise together. The hatred and bias that is truly bringing a sword into our midst cleaving reason from belief, rather than cleaving our materialism from our faith. Could it be true, as I believe Jesus is alluding to in this gospel, that if there are too many oughts and shoulds we will crowd out the spirit, rather than create new being, new life? I have been having many wonderful and varied conversations in the past two months with new people who have walked through our doors, people with backgrounds in very conservative and fundamentalist religion. They all have very heavy hearts, they all have been burdened by the rules and guidelines they have been fed about what it means to live a Christian life. Not many people in our world have spent a whole lot of time with this particular Gospel passage. Imagine if we had these words of Jesus posted on the doors outside of this building, every door on the outside of this building. What kind of message might that send not only to people who come through the doors, but also to people simply driving by, or walking by. This is a place of rest, come to me all you who are heavily laden and burdened and will we give you rest.
I find it interesting that the voice of religion in today’s culture has landed in a place where rules and law trump Jesus’ words of love. How many times when you listen to Christian radio or Christian television do you hear the Gospels quoted, it is so rare, but Paul’s letters all filled with rules and guidelines, several of which were not even written by Paul himself, are often quoted word by word, spelled out for us to try to understand? Why is it that Paul’s letters seem to have so much more value than Jesus words? Could it be as simple as it is easier to spend our time focusing on what we are doing wrong as Christians than what we are doing right or how we love each other? Did not Jesus trump all the religious law of the day simply by saying, “love one another as I have loved you?” Why is it so hard for us to love one another, to be compassionate towards one another? Is it really human nature to be suspicious and jealous and biased and so full of fear that we see other people as less than human or at the very least less than us? Human nature was restored by Jesus’ death on the cross, human nature was made whole again by Jesus death on the cross, that act of selflessness, that act alone transformed who we are as humans and gave us all the ability to love one another as we were and are loved by God. So why do we continue to hate, to fear and put up roadblocks to being in relationship with each other?
Is it because we are so burdened, so tired, that the only response we can give when religious rule is placed in front of us is acquiescence? It is time that we moderate, middle of the road Christians stood up and claimed our voice, it is time to speak up, not in opposition to, rather in communion with all those who are already claiming God is on their side. People are disillusioned by religion not because the fundamentalists have the most powerful voice in our country today, but because we as moderate Christians have not spoken up and shared our story, shared our beliefs with the world. Our voice has been silenced not because someone else’s voice is louder than ours, but because we have sat around and watched, unwilling to share with the world the value of living with and loving each other in the via media, the middle way. We are to blame for the suspicion of religious institutions; we are to blame for the overburdening of all people with religious law. We are to blame because we have sat idly by waiting for something, or just simply too burdened with our worries, cares and fears to do anything.
John Danforth, an Episcopal Priest and the current US Ambassador to the United Nations, who also served as a Republican Senator from Missouri for 18 years, wrote a piece for the New York Times that Terry Roberts pointed out to me, he says several wonderful things and the following really stood out to me:
It is important for those of us who are sometimes called moderate to make the case that we, too, have strongly held Christian convictions, that we speak from the depths of our beliefs, and that our approach to politics is at least as faithful as that of those who are more conservative. Moderate Christians are less certain about when and how our beliefs can be translated into statutory form, not because of a lack of faith in God but because of a healthy acknowledgement of the limitations of human beings. But for us, the only standard of behavior is the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. Repeatedly in the Gospels, we find that the Love Commandment takes precedence when it conflicts with laws.
What is wrong with claiming that we are imperfect human beings, that we can make mistakes and do make mistakes? Our daily lives are not like those who appear on Donald Trump’s The Apprentice, unlike them, we are allowed some breathing room, some space to be truly human and make the mistakes that allow us to grow and be as full of humanness as we possibly can. What is wrong with speaking loudly about the challenge of living in the gray area between the black and white answers we all hear everyday? What is wrong with simply sharing our stories of faith, our stories of daily struggle and resurrection? Oh yeah, I remember now, we do not want to be seen as vulnerable, we do not want to come to Jesus because what will Jesus or God think if we can’t carry our own burden. After all, doesn’t God give only what we can handle? Even worse than God and Jesus seeing our vulnerability is our neighbor seeing how weak we are, that we are truly human and will never live up to the expectation we believe that others have set up for us. So you see, it is simple to just come to Jesus and take on his yoke and be filled with the spirit and rest and peace that God so desperately wants to give us, what is difficult is cleaving our ego from the need to find the perfect answer and the perfect place, intellectualizing why this place would be better for our souls than another. Today everyone gathered here today is invited to come up to the Eucharistic feast and participate in it. The words of Jesus, “come to me all who are heavy laden and burdened” are no clearer than when you arrive to receive the body and blood of Jesus. In that action, leave your ego at the rail and walk away with the yoke that Jesus speaks of, leave your burdens, your cares your fears in the hands of Jesus, take on the mantle of Christ as we did at our Baptism and feel the weight lifted, replaced only with what CS Lewis calls, the weight of Glory.
Thomas Merton writes, “If we are called by God to holiness of life, and if holiness is beyond our natural power to achieve then it follows that God himself must give us the light, the strength, and the courage to fulfill the task God requires of us.” Come to me all you who are heavily laden and burdened, Jesus says, come to me and you will receive rest and the grace of God to be fully human. And when we receive that grace, when we have given up our fears, when we have given up or burdens, when we have given up our anxieties, then upon our heart we will see the wings that allow us to fly and praise God in all of God’s glory. When we are able to not take ourselves so seriously, then we will be able to say to one another, as Mary Chapin Carpenter sings to us, Why walk when we can fly!?