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St. Charles Episcopal Church - Saint Charles, IL
The Third Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 9 RCL Year A
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67 – Psalm 45:11-18 – Romans 7:15-25a – Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Rev. William R. Nesbit, Jr.
In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
“I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”
Yesterday during the reception following Barbara Bachman’s requiem Eucharist, as I was sitting at the side of the room catching my breath, I noticed an interesting interaction that was repeated again and again. There was the cutest little girl in a bright pink patterned dress moving through the crowd. Her name is Maya and she is Phil Dripps’ grand-daughter. She is somewhere between one and two years old. To be precise, she is at that age where she has mastered the skill of walking, and is now discovering the joy of running. Maya would run through the crowd until she found a new pair of knees and then look up, way up, to the owner of the knees and smile her biggest smile. Once she got a smile in return, or if her mom got a little close to catching her, she would scoot off in another direction looking for a new set of knees. As every parent knows, it is a lot easier for a toddler to zip through a crowd at knee level than it is for an adult to “pardon me” through a crowd at shoulder level, and so Maya made it almost all the way across the room, stopping every few feet to share a smile and bring the special joy that only a toddler can bring to a room of adultsgathering to mourn the loss of someone they love. As I watched that interaction again and again, it became obvious to me that Maya knew exactly what she was doing. Kids are like that. They see things we miss. They know things we do not.
In our Gospel this morning, Jesus uses a brief story of children playing in the marketplace to illustrate to his first century listeners something we need to hear just as much as they did. You’re not getting it. It’s so obvious that children get it right off the bat, but you are missing it completely. And we still miss it today. But what exactly is this ‘it’ that Jesus is talking about? It’s simple really. It is a faithful life; a life lived in a healthy relationship with God and with each other. Just before the portion of the Gospel we heard this morning, Jesus has heard that John the Baptist has been jailed, and that John has sent messengers from the jail to ask Jesus if he is really the messiah. I can only imagine what a shock this must have been for Jesus, and what sadness as well. If his own cousin, and a prophet to boot, had come to doubt that Jesus is the messiah, what hope do the rest of the people have. With John thrown in prison it is clear that many, if not most, of the people have rejected his message; John’s call to repentance has fallen on deaf ears. For Jesus this is his first hint, I think, of what is to come; he sees for the first time the lengths to which his journey will take him. A mere return to the law will not be enough. The law has become a heavy burden; a burden it was never intended by God to be. Jesus sees that the only way out is to shatter our old perception of the law as burden, bringing into the light a new perception of law – as love. To do that he will need to take our burdens from us, take them all the way to the cross, for only there can they be removed well and true. And so, he began. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, 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.” We can never hear these words too many times. They are so simple and yet so easy to forget. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me...” A yoke, if you don’t know, is an apparatus used to allow two oxen to pull together side by side in a straight line. Without it any difference in strengths between the two oxen would cause the cart to veer to one side or the other. The yoke that Jesus is talking of is the yoke of complete obedience to God, a yoke Jesus himself already bears. To take that yoke is to strap in beside Jesus and to learn from him as you both bear your burdens together. In the midst of this hard work of the soul you will find again your connection to Christ and through him your connection to the whole of God, through the mystery of the Holy Trinity. And out of that awareness will flow the rest your soul longs for; the peace that passes all understanding.
It was the power of that mystical connection that allowed Maya to move among a strange crowd and share her smile without fear or self-consciousness. It is a connection we are born with, but all too often lose as we grow older. Imagine a world where everyone felt that connection. Imagine the kingdom of God. Not a far off pie in the sky in the great by and by, but here in the flesh in this world, in this town, in this church. What a gift that vision would be. What a gift to share. One might even say a light shining in the darkness; a true light. Remember that our job is to be that light. To show the world what they are missing. To name the mystery in our midst. To illuminate the link between us and God and to point it out to those who cannot see it. To share with the world the wisdom we have been given; To be God’s children in the world. If you have forgotten the way, fear not. Look to Maya. She knows. She’ll teach you. Amen.