"Whose burden will you carry?"

Isaiah 10:20-27, Matthew 11:25-30

Jeanette Mathews

“Come to me all who labour and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest” - how many times in the history of humankind since these words were spoken must they have been very welcome! I don’t know what sort of burdens are weighing you down today, but I can be fairly sure that most of us feel burdened at one time or another.

It may be for you that work itself is a burden. In the first sermon I preached on the theme of God and work we reflected on words in Ecclesiastes, where the writer despaired at the meaninglessness and drudgery of work. Some forms of work are literally burdensome - hard labour which leaves one physically exhausted. Other forms of work weigh heavily on us mentally - demanding high levels of concentration and creativity. Even voluntary work can be a heavy burden to bear: especially if it means working with people whose lives have little joy and hope.

Then there is the burden of ill health, or a diagnosis of a life-threatening condition. What a burden that can be! Living with pain, or depression, coming to terms with our decreased ability to cope with everyday things.

There is the burden of worry - and there are so many things to worry about. It may be worry about coping with illness. For parents there is worry about their children - coping with difficult behaviour, knowing how to discipline them, wondering if their schoolwork or study is up to standard, wondering if they will find jobs when study is finished, wondering if they will take on the values of their parents, and the ever present threat of drugs.

There may be worry about an important relationship - spouses whose communication is breaking down, or how to relate effectively to parents or siblings when there are lifelong hurts still affecting the relationship.

For many there is concern about the future: on an individual and a global scale. Maybe there are financial worries -- with the current climate of job uncertainty and the unending demands on our resources.

It may be that your burden is for the world around you - an issue that concerns you deeply but doesn’t seem to impact on anyone else. Some people in our community are so concerned about environmental degradation that they are willing to engage in acts of civil disobedience as a protest. Others feel the burden of reconciliation in our nation enough to spend much time and energy and other resources in support of this issue.

The burden you experience might even be in the area of spirituality - you may feel so dried up spiritually that you don’t know how to relate to God -whether it be through prayer or anything else. Perhaps even coming to church is a burden if you can’t get anything out of worship.

If you weren't burdened already you probably are by now! And you might also be burdened by a sense of guilt: after all, Christians aren’t supposed to be worried are they? We are supposed to just seek the kingdom of God and then everything will be added to us. I often think when Jesus said we must be like children to enter the kingdom it was this he had in mind - the ability to live each day for itself, without being concerned about what was to happen tomorrow or be bound up in what has happened yesterday. And yet just a few chapters later Jesus is saying “come to me all who are heavy burdened and I will give you rest.” It's as if he was acknowledging that as we continue on through life we do find it hard to be free of burdens.

Indeed, these are welcome words only when we have experienced burdens. I used to go hiking quite a bit when I was a teenager. I remember weighing my pack before going on a hike and trying to get it down to under 20 kilos. That really was a burden to carry, but the sense of relief at being able to take off the pack at the end of our destination made the effort all the more worthwhile. Being able to rest in a beautiful place at the end of hard labour was very appreciated.

Being burdened is a part of life. Whatever form the burden takes for you. And this isn’t just a new discovery - people in the bible also had burdens. If you read through the books you’ll find stories of difficulties amongst families - just think of Jacob: he cheated his father, he had a running feud with his brother, his own sons lied to him and he missed out on watching his favourite son grow up. A number of the psalms express the burden of guilt or depression. The book of Job is a very honest cry of feeling burdened in the face of overwhelming circumstances. Even Jesus is overcome with anguish in the Garden of Gethsemene in the knowledge of what he must face.

We read today from Isaiah - a description of the people of Judah groaning under bondage to Assyrian powers about 700 years before Christ. King Hezekiah had become an unwilling vassal of Sennacherib - the leader of the Assyrian army. Quite often the prophets of the exile wrote about the experience as an echo of the period Israel had spent in Egypt, suffering in slave bondage. In this chapter the prophet Isaiah is looking toward the day when the people of Judah are able to trust Yahweh again, as they did when he led them out of Egypt. Then they will “no more lean on the one who struck them, but will lean on the Lord.” Then the “burden of Assyria will be removed from their neck” by the same one who had been able to give them rest from their burdens in Egypt.

As we are reminded again from our readings today, the God we worship now has been a burden bearer since the beginning of the history of faith.

• After the flood God acknowledged that as long as humankind was in the world, sin was in the world to stay. Nevertheless God made a covenant with Noah and all of creation, and took on the burden of responsibility for this covenant. "When I see the bow in the clouds, I will remember my covenant and the waters shall never again destroy all the earth" (Gen 9:13-15)
  

• Hundreds of years later God saw the Israelites suffering under the Egyptians and freed them from slavery.
  

• These people themselves became a burden for their leader in the wilderness - do you remember passages such as this in Numbers 11?

Moses said to the Lord, “why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favour in your sight that you lay the burden of all this people on me? I am not able to carry this people alone, for they are too heavy for me.”

God saw the burden that Moses was carrying and found ways to help him.

• God gave new hope when the psalmist was weighed down with guilt and despair:

Ps 55 is full of phrases like “I am troubled, I am distraught, my heart is in anguish, horror overwhelms me.” And yet it ends with words of faith very similar to those in Matthew’s gospel - “cast your burden on the Lord and he will sustain you”

• In today's reading we are told how God removed the yoke of the nations oppressing Israel and Judah and did indeed bring back a remnant to settle in their home land again.

• And there are the famous words of the apostle Paul in Romans, expressing the central message of our faith that through the cross of Christ God has set us free from the burden of death itself.

And so the Bible's a good place to start for those of us feeling weighed down. To be in worship is a good place to be if we feel heavy laden. Don’t we often acknowledge our need for strength and comfort in the prayers we pray, in the hymns we sing?

• there is a place of quiet rest near to the heart of God

• Drop thy still dews of quietness...take from our souls the strain and stress

• Wait for the Lord, be strong take heart

• Stay with us O Lord Jesus Christ, night will soon fall.

• God is our strength and refuge, our present help in trouble

• love that will not let me go I rest my weary soul in thee.

Through the ages God's people have recognised and named their need for God to be with them, to hear and understand their deepest needs, to help bear their burdens.

Two images come to mind for me when I think of God as a burden bearer.

The first is the image of a Sherpa - the Nepalese or Tibetan guide who takes trekkers through the Himalayas. It is the guide who knows the way, who has lived on those mountains all his life and knows how to read the signs of the weather as well as knowing the paths. It is the guide who decides when to walk, when to stop, the guide who goes first over the rough terrain, and who goes the whole journey with the trekkers. And it is also the guide who helps carry the load. Those who are travelling the path for the first time may be distracted by too heavy a load. But the one who knows the path, who is used to travelling rough terrain and who knows the pace that must be set, the one who knows what it like to carry things on his back, this is the one who can carry another's burdens.

Someone at Playgroup last week was commenting on how keen my 3 year old Joshua is on his backpack. He'll wear it all day if you let him. Recently I was holding him with his backpack on, as well a a number of other bags. When Ben asked if he might be carried too I started listing all the things I was holding. Josh corrected me when I got to his backpack, telling me that he was carrying it, not me. That was certainly the way he understood it. It is a lovely illustration of God supporting us even when we feel we are carrying the load.

Another image to remind us of God as a burden bearer is of a pair of oxen yoked together to pull a load. A friend who has lived in Bangladesh described to me how a stronger oxen is always yoked with a weaker one - although they must work together, the weaker one takes the lead from the stronger. If they work in this sort of harmony then the yoke doesn’t cut into them, the pulling force of the load can be managed smoothly. And even though the stronger oxen is the more important of the pair, they are down in the mud together!!

God is with us in our own mud and mess. God understands the stresses, the anxieties, the burdens that are weighing us down. God is pulling along with us- and if we seek God’s help, if we let God do what God wants to do, then there will be new strength for us. “Come to me and I will give you rest, take my yoke upon you.”

What is the yoke of Jesus that we are being called to take on? Like the pair of oxen, we are being invited to join with him in his work. We are invited to follow his lead. When Matthew recorded Jesus' words "my yoke is easy, my burden is light", he undoubtedly had in the back of his mind the demands of the Jewish law. The rabbis spoke of the law as the yoke of the Kingdom of God. But their interpretation of that law had made the yoke too heavy.

The law said people must be clean to come before God in worship. The interpretation of the rabbis meant that people who were physically ill were excluded, women who may have been menstruating were excluded, foreigners whose motives were suspect were excluded. So when Jesus, a rabbi, welcomed lepers, women and Samaritans amongst his followers he was lightening the yoke.

The law said that the Sabbath was a day of rest. The interpretation of the rabbis meant that the work of reaping could not be done and the work of healing could not be done. So when Jesus, a rabbi, plucked grain for food on the Sabbath, and healed a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath, he was lightening the yoke.

When the yoke of the law was lightened, the followers of Jesus were freer to do the work of Jesus. In the book of Galatians we find Paul stating this very clearly: "Bear one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ" (Gal 6:2).

We worship a God who knows we are burdened, and who has been revealed to us in our scriptures as a burden bearer. We are invited to yoke ourselves to this God, sharing the work but allowing God to take the heavy load from us. We are invited to follow the one who is best able to guide us and who will be with us, even when the way becomes rough. And we are asked to do this together, to share one another's burdens.

Finally, I want to point out the similarities between these verses in chapter 11 of Matthew's gospel and the great commission at the end in chapter 28. Let me just read the verses to you:

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Mt 28:18-20)

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." These words of the risen Lord echo the words spoken earlier - "All things have been handed over to me by my father." The invitation "come to me" has become a command by the end of the gospel - "go into the world". Jesus said "learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart". To the disciples at the end of the gospel he says, "make disciples, baptising them and teaching them everything I have taught you". And in both there is the promise of peace - "I will give you rest" and "I am with you always".

Just as if we were the first followers of Jesus, God is offering us the opportunity to be disciples: to follow, to learn, and to find fulfilment in our lives. And as we are doing these things, we are being equipped in order that we might make disciples: go, teach, become the presence of God for others.

God is a worker. We are to be God's workers. But our work as Christians is grounded in the comforting presence of God in our lives, bearing our burdens, sharing the yoke with us.

Let us remind ourselves of these words again as we sing the next song - it may be new to some of you but Judith and the choir will lead us in it. After the music, we will spend a short time in quiet reflection, drawing on the comfort God has offered us through the ministry of the word today.