“The Yoke that Sets Us Free”

A Sermon Preached by

The Rev. Jean Niven Lenk

First Congregational Church of Stoughton

United Church of Christ

On this Fourth of July weekend, we celebrate the birth of our country and the great gift of our freedom.  Freedom is a value that we hold dear -- and well we should, for it is a privilege that has been hard won and hard kept.  Many people in many places have worked to protect the gift of freedom – on the battlefields and in our courts, in our schools and in our churches, in our public spheres and in our private lives.  It might be difficult to find very many values that Americans hold in common, but freedom is one of them.

So, when Jesus says in our Gospel reading this morning to “Take my yoke upon you,” it is understandable that our first reaction might be to pull back with caution and resistance.  The idea of being yoked to anything or anyone threatens our sense of freedom to decide for ourselves how we will live our lives. 

Jesus spoke these words to an audience that included Pharisees, and these affluent and educated scribes thought they had life and faith all figured out.  They knew the religious laws and spent enormous amounts of energy and effort trying to determine how best to obey them in order to please God and gain God’s favor.

The apostle Paul had once been a Pharisee and a zealous advocate of living by the law.  At one time, he had believed that the law was God’s gift, a means for helping God’s people to stay in relationship with God.  But after his conversion on the road to Damascus, when he encountered the risen Christ, Paul spent the rest of his life announcing the difference between law and gospel. 

He criticized the scribes and Pharisees for turning God’s law into a constraining burden, a heavy yoke.  As useful as the law might have been for preserving and protecting the faith, its weighty expectations and theological understandings made it difficult to hear wisdom of God that revealed in Jesus Christ.

Paul could see that the difference between the law and the gospel is that one constrains your life while the other gives life and transforms it; one burdens your life while the other sets you free.  As he writes to the Galatians in this morning’s Epistle lesson, “For freedom, Christ has set you free.  Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

Christ invites us to be yoked to him rather than be enslaved to the law.  And the yoke that Jesus offers does not burden us, but indeed frees us from having to go through this life alone.

As a carpenter, Jesus may have had the opportunity to make many yokes and to understand their value.  While we might think of a yoke as an instrument of constraint, it actually eases the burden of the animal that wears it.  A yoke allows a set of oxen to work together, pulling the load evenly.  They can work all day without wearing out because under a shared yoke, one can rest while the other pulls.  They can take turns bearing the brunt of the load, and cover for each other, without ever laying their burden down.  At the end of the day, they may be tired, but they are not exhausted because they have worked together as a team. 

In the same way, it was God’s desire, through Jesus Christ, to lighten our burden, to increase rather than diminish our freedom.  When we accept the yoke of Christ, he doesn’t add to our burden but instead takes our burden upon himself to share our load in life.  His offer is not to remove trouble, but to help.  With Christ as our partner, we can undertake and endure more than we ever could on our own. 

When we choose to become a follower of Jesus – and we have the freedom to choose – we commit ourselves to a learning process.  We don’t start off having it all figured out – and we don’t need to.  We only have to be willing to let Jesus teach us – teach us how to deal with the problems we face, how to grow and change, how to let go of the things that get in the way, how to be in a loving relationship and how to serve.

The great theologian and church father St. Augustine experienced this first hand.  Before his conversion to Christ, he led an undisciplined, carefree existence.  After his conversion, Augustine noted that freedom is not doing what we want to do, but rather it is being free to be whom God intends us to be.  

It can be hard for us to let go of our need to control our lives and follow where Jesus leads, but he is lovingly inviting us, waiting for us to decide -- in our freedom -- that we are ready to come to him.  The yoke that Christ offers is not a heavy shackle to chain our freedom, but rather it is a yoke of love, a way of coming into relationship with him so that our burdens might be shared and our loads lightened. 

There is an old story about a little boy who was out helping dad with the yard work.  His father asked him to pick up the rocks in a certain area of the yard, and he looked over to see his young son struggling to pull out a huge rock buried in the dirt.  After trying in vain for a few minutes, the boy gave up and said to his father, "I can't do it."  Dad asked, "Did you use all of your strength?"  The little boy looked hurt and said, "Yes, sir. I used every ounce of strength I have."  The father smiled and said, "No you didn't.  You didn't ask me to help."  The father walked over and together, the two of them pulled that big rock out of the dirt.

Today as we celebrate our nation’s freedom, let us also remember Christ’s invitation: “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you… for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

On this 4th of July weekend, let us celebrate our freedom by yoking ourselves anew to Christ.  Let us recommit ourselves to the One who willingly shares our load, the One who invites us to find rest in Him and who sets us free from our burdens.  Come, all you who are weary and heavy burdened.  Come, for Jesus is calling.  Amen.