Matthew 11: 16–19, 25–30 All Angels
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Lord, may we hear your voice in the words spoken in your Name. Amen.
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This morning, in the Gospel of Matthew we are walking into the middle
of a conversation between Jesus and a crowd of his followers. And
in this crowd, nobody seems to be content. They are anxious,
dissatisfied, demanding. So, the Gospel words I just read aloud
here don’t make much sense until, that is, we understand what
has been going on just before we entered the scene. You see,
just as it is in our day, in those days the people were anxious about
many things. All their lives, when times were tough and enemies
threatened, they had been reassured – “Don’t worry,
honey. When Messiah comes ’ he will set everything
straight. When Messiah comes our troubles will be over; no
more tyrants, no more unjust taxes, no more ‘rich getting richer
and poor getting poorer’. When Messiah comes, he’ll
settle everybody’ hash!” That, anyway,
is what they’d been told.
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So, when John the Baptist came on the scene, announcing he was the
forerunner of long–expected Messiah, people flocked out
into the Judean desert to hear him preach, to be baptized by him, to
begin what they hoped were their brand–new lives in the Kingdom
of God.
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In other words, they did what John had told them to do. But
things hadn’t turned out quite the way they expected. The
Kingdom of God had not descended on them like some radiant cloud,
obliterating all their troubles. Instead, John’s fiery
preaching landed him in prison when he dared to tell Herod Antipas
he had no right to marry his brother’s wife. And overnight,
from the depths of that prison, the prophet’s strong preaching
turned into plaintive questions, carried to Jesus by his
followers. “Are you the One we expected, or are we
to wait for another?” Even John the Baptist, you see,
suddenly doubted whether Jesus really was all they had hoped for.
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That’s the setting for our reading from Matthew this
morning – that nothing the people had assumed would
happen – now seemed to be happening. The Roman occupying
forces were still in power. Oppressive taxes were still being
levied. And their own Temple officials were still colluding
with those Roman forces. So, what was wrong? What
had happened?
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What had happened was that peoples’ expectations had tripped
them up. They thought if they followed the prophet’s
recommendations to the letter that Messiah would come with an
avenging force of angels – and their troubles would be
over. Or maybe, they thought, it was their fault – that
they hadn’t followed every single tenet of the Law scrupulously,
as the Pharisees insisted was necessary. Whatever it was,
nothing seemed to be working. And the crowd was looking
for someone to blame.
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So, this morning, Jesus is trying to set everyone
straight. “Don’t you see what you have
done?” he asks them. “You have gotten entangled
in a human set of rules, turning what was meant as an article of
faith – into something like a sure thing, something under your
control. And — on the basis of your human expectations
— you have discredited both John the Baptist and me. John came
neither eating nor drinking as you thought was right – and you
said he had a demon. Then I came, eating and drinking with
people you’d been told were low lifes – and you called me
a drunkard and a glutton.”
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“In fact,” he adds, ”you seem to think you’ve
set the rules of this game — and everybody ought to follow your
rules. But let me tell you: You have mistaken a set of
human rules for the abundant life God wants to give you. You
have mistaken human standards for the loving wisdom of the One who
wants to guide you — step by slow step through this life.
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Then, abruptly, Jesus’ tone softens as he begins to pray to
his Father in heaven. “Father,” he says, “I
thank you that you have hidden these things from the wise and the
intelligent. You have shown them instead to babies. Crying
babies. Hungry babies. For this is how you do
things. You reward those who admit their need – and
confound any who think themselves wise. For this, Father, is
how you do things.”
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And then Jesus addresses us all — in what is probably the most
tender invitation in all of Scripture. “Come to me, all
you who are weary and heavy laden,” he says. ”And I
will give you rest. 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.”
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The answer to the troubles of their world, you see, lay in their
relationship to Jesus. Not in a series of rules, a series
of “thou shalts” or “thou shalt nots.” And
not in the cataclysmic arrival of warring angels suddenly appearing on
their doorstep – ready to defeat their enemies. No, the
answer lay in a working relationship, a yoked–together
relationship with Jesus, a relationship they could enter into by
taking on his yoke of love.
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You see, in those simpler agrarian days, everybody understood what a
double yoke was and how it worked. The farmer would place an
animal who had experience pulling the plow on one side of the
yoke – and an animal who was new to the task on the other
side. And the inexperienced animal would learn from the
experienced one, as they both pulled the plow together. That,
you see, is what Jesus was offering the people that day – the
experience of walking through this world beside him, yoked together
with him, and learning how to handle all they encountered through his love.
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And that, I believe, is what he’s offering us this
morning — in that same tender invitation. “If
you are weary, if you are burdened, Come to me,” he
says. “Walk with me, yoked together with me, through
this world. With all its uncertainties. All its
terrors. All its cruelties and deceptions. Not to
mention all its characters – bent and twisted out of shape
by the sin they’ve encountered. Together, in my
gentleness, my humility, we will love them into the Kingdom of God.”
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You see, the answer for us is the same as it was for them. Walk
with Jesus, and he will walk with you. And no power on earth
will defeat that combination. Amen and Amen. Thanks
be to God.
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Amen.
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