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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
When we hear Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading call those who labor and are heavy laden to come to Him, Who gives “An easy yoke and a light burden”, we may think, as we should think, that He is calling us! We labor; we are heavy laden! Is there anyone who does not in some way labor under a difficult figurative, if not literal, yoke? Is there anyone who is not in some way heavily burdened? If we think about the situations in the world and country around us, if we think about the situations in our church body and congregation, and if we think about the situations in our homes and personal lives, there are any number of things that can not only feel but also actually be oppressive. Jesus promises ultimate rest from all such oppression, and we trust His promise, and we look forward to its fulfillment, but there is one thing in particular from which Jesus promise ultimate rest, that at least some of the people in His day, as in our day, often miss.
Just before today’s Gospel Reading in St. Matthew’s Divinely-inspired Gospel account, Jesus had both answered questions raised by John the Baptizer and spoken highly of John the Baptizer, though fickle people complained about John the Baptizer as they complained about Jesus (Matthew 11:1-19). Then Jesus began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent (Matthew 11:20-24). At that suitable time, Jesus spoke the words of today’s Gospel Reading: thanking the Father for His concealing and revealing matters related to salvation, declaring Himself to be the Christ and revealer of the Father, and inviting all who are sorry for their sins to come to Him for the forgiveness of their sins.
Two years ago, when I was out west in Big Spring, Texas, for Emily Melendrez’s funeral, I wanted my friend who lives in El Paso, Texas, to come to see me; after all, I told him, I had already come 400 miles, more than halfway, and he would have to come only the remaining 340 miles. (My friend was not persuaded by my argument.) However, when our Lord calls us to come to Him, we are not meeting Him halfway, or anyplace else in the middle, either. By our own reason or strength, we cannot come to Him (Small Catechism II:6)! The people who did not repent, in the cities where most of Jesus’s mighty works had been done, apparently thought of themselves as wise and understanding, and by nature we might think of ourselves that way, too (confer Isaiah 29:14 and 1 Corinthians 1:19, which cites it). We may think that we know better than the Bible, instead of regarding ourselves as little children, those who are untaught and unskilled and have nothing inherent about ourselves to commend us. We may focus so much on the things of this world that we think oppress us that we miss the things that really oppress us: things such as sin, death, and the power of the devil. Even believers’ lives are as St. Paul described his life in today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 7:14-25a), with a war waging inside of our bodies of death, in need of the deliverance that only comes through Jesus Christ our Lord!
As we heard in the Gospel Reading, we cannot know the Father unless the Son reveals Him to us (confer Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration II:26). And, out of God’s great love for even us fallen people, in the power of the Holy Spirit, the Son does reveal the Father to us. God comes to us and enables us to come to Him (confer and compare James 4:8). From those who do not then come to Him in repentance and faith, God may hide matters related to salvation, but to those of us who do then come to Him, laboring and heavy laden by the terrors of sin and the death that we deserve on account of our sinful nature and all of our sin (Apology of the Augsburg Confession XII:44), Jesus gives rest for our souls, by way of “An easy yoke and a light burden”.
Jesus carries out the Father’s gracious will. As we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Zechariah 9:9-12), our King brings salvation to us humbly. As we heard in today’s Gospel Reading, all things were handed over to Jesus by the Father. Those things belonged to the Son of God as part of the shared Divine nature, but, as that Son of God assumed a human nature in the womb of the Virgin Mary, all those things were handed over to that human nature, and so Jesus calls us to come Him, God and man, to find the Father and the Father’s blessings. As St. Paul wrote to the Philippians, being found in human form, Christ Jesus humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:8). On the cross, Jesus died for us, in our place, the death that we deserved. And, Jesus rose from the grave, in part showing that God the Father had accepted His sacrifice on our behalf. So, the Holy Spirit leads us to be sorry for our sins, to trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, and to come for that rest—to come for the forgiveness of sins—to God’s Word, especially in the Sacraments.
This past Friday I had the privilege of communing our member John Wilson and his wife B-J, both of whom some of you may know. I communed them right after John, who had undergone heart surgery on Thursday, was discharged from Good Shepherd hospital in Longview, where I had gone to visit them. With permission, for our visit we used the hospital’s chapel, which chapel has Jesus’s words of invitation from today’s Gospel Reading etched on its glass door: Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. How appropriate! For, regardless of where they are located, we come to Jesus at the lectern and pulpit. No matter our age, we come to Jesus at the Baptismal Font. We come to Jesus wherever we might confess our sins privately in order for our pastor to absolve us individually. And, we come to Jesus at this altar and its rail, where we receive bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us, and so we receive the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation—rest for our souls! No wonder the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther applied Jesus’s invitation in today’s Gospel Reading to the Sacrament of the Altar and called it “our highest and greatest good” (Large Catechism V:66-67).
In George Frideric Handel’s 17-41 Oratorio Messiah, the chorus appropriately sings about the Lord’s “easy yoke and light burden” to a light and upbeat, joyous tune. Whether simply receiving God’s forgiveness of sins through His Word and Sacraments, or also the beginning to keep God’s law that follows from receiving that forgiveness of sins, the Lord’s “easy yoke and light burden” are a far cry from the labor of the hard yoke and heavy burden of the terrors of sin and death! His yoke is so easy as to not make us weary; His burden is so light as to not make us burdened at all. His Word and Sacraments transform us so that we joyfully at least try to keep God’s Commandments according to our various callings in life. We learn from our Lord to be gentle and lowly in heart. And, we live in His forgiveness for our failing perfectly to keep God’s Commandments and to live humbly. As the people of Israel who entered the Promised Land still had a rest that they had yet to experience (Hebrews 4:9), so do we still have a rest that we have yet to experience. As St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, if in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied (1 Corinthians 15:19)! When the Lord comes in glory, both believers whose bodies have rested in the grave and believers who are alive at that time together will rest in the presence of God for eternity, bodies and souls glorified and so free from sin and the disease and death that sin brings.
Because He loves us, the Lord gives us, who in repentance and faith come to Him laboring and heavy laden, “An easy yoke and a light burden”. As we prayed in today’s Collect, our Heavenly Father’s mercy attends us all our days; He is our strength and support amid the wearisome changes of this world, and, at life’s end, He grants us His promised rest and the full joys of His salvation.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +