Genesis 24.34-38,42-49, 58-67, Matthew 11.16-19, 25-30
The Fifth Sunday after Trinity, 5 July 2023, Eldroth, Clapham
‘Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.’
Such gracious words tell us that ours is not a God who makes hard demands on people – contrary to what we may have been told. Ours is a God who wants to free us from our burdens.
Neither is our God one who controls us by keeping us busy – though the Church can tend to do that. Our God wants to give us rest.
Nor is ours a God who imposes on us – no, our God is gentle and humble in heart. His yoke is easy. His burden is light.
So if we are carrying heavy burdens, we must understand that those burdens are coming from somewhere else. God invites us to turn ourselves away from those places, and come to him to find rest.
The burdens we carry, they’re often to do with our relationships with others. It doesn’t take very long in the Bible before the perfect couple sail into troubled waters and Adam is blaming Eve for taking the apple – ‘she told me to do it’, he tells God, and god is unimpressed.
Then there’s Psalm 45, a song for a royal wedding, where the Psalmist sings to the princess, ‘Forget your own people and your father’s house. The king … is your master; therefore do him honour.’ [2] Imagine what pressure that put on this bride: the burden of her being pulled in two opposing directions at once: one way towards her beloved family, and the other way towards her beloved husband. Maybe you’ve sometimes felt torn like that.
We are always listening to what others say about us: how we respond to them is what shapes and forms us into the people we are. And when others’ expectations of us tear us in different directions or are impossible to fulfil, that’s a heavy load to carry. And, if we’re honest, then we must admit that sometimes we are the ones who burden others with our expectations of them.
I don’t think people have changed that much since New Testament times. Jesus said that his generation were never satisfied. They berated the ascetic John the Baptist for neither eating nor drinking, but when they saw how Jesus enjoyed eating and drinking, they called him a glutton and a drunkard.
Each of us feel the pressure imposed on us by outside forces: whether that’s what our friends and neighbours are doing and saying, or how the Sunday supplements or social media are telling us how we should live. It can be depressing, feeling that you don’t measure up.
Maybe the greatest burdens we carry are those we impose on ourselves. Whether it’s the young worrying about their image, their body shape, their looks, or the old worrying about their legacy, dealing with unfinished business, regrets.
Jesus invites us to turn our backs on these pressures, to cease comparing what others have achieved or what they want us to do and be, and to gently attend to our own, unique, life story.
Jesus invites us to trust God, to carry our anxieties to him in prayer. Our knees may buckle under the weight of these prayers; he promises that as we bend the knee before him he will take the load away.
Some things which burden us are outside our control and may not be easily fixed: so the pressures they impose are intense. Prayer can help us to cope with the pressure and to change these circumstances; in prayer God can reveal to us a way to deal with the challenges which life throws at us.
And praying with others can inspire and guide us to work together to change our material circumstances, and those of others who are in need or distress. [3]
Let us take a few moments now, to unburden ourselves before God….
Jesus says, ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens,
and I will give you rest.’
Come to me. Take a step back to forget for a few moments what others think of you; and to remember what God thinks of you.
‘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.’
Know yourself to be loved by him, so that love will fill your heart so much that that it flows out in blessing into all your other relationships too.
We thank you, Lord, that your yoke is easy, and your burden is light. We thank you that you always long to lift us up when we are down. Help us to always come to you with our burdens, to always trust in your care. Amen
Notes
[1] A rewrite of Unburdening: life in the divine presence, preached at Austwick and Keasden, 2023, and Come to me all you weary and burdened, preached in Devon, 2011.
[2] Psalm 45.
[3] See e.g., Deirdre Brower Latz with Carmel Murphy Elliott and Sarah Purcell, Church on the Margins. Church Action on Poverty, Referenced February 2023.
