Deeper Meanings

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be not afraid, burdens, experience, healing, Isaiah, Luke, participate, psalm 85, Scripture, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, yoke

One could say I’m rather stuck on a theme carried over from last week’s messages as I see and hear short but powerful texts from Scripture. It’s the power of words that makes me stop and say to no one in particular in the ethers of my bedroom, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before!” At other times it’s the tenor of the entire cluster of readings that wakes me up to the obvious, reminding me of something I have most likely known for decades. Both experiences speak this morning.

1. Throughout today’s texts (IS 35: 1-10, PS 85: 10-14 and LK 5:17-26) there is a consistent feeling of promise. God is working on physical wholeness and psycho-spiritual healing for all creation – not just humanity, and the urging not to be afraid is palpable. Assurances abound that God will do this!
2. In the “never heard it before” category is the gospel acclamation that says, “Behold the king will come, the Lord of the earth, and he himself will lift the yoke of our capacity.” I learned long ago that when Jesus told the people to take his yoke upon them, he was speaking metaphorically of the burdens that they carried, those he shared with us being lighter than those demanded by the laws of the religious leadership. Not so long ago I heard capacity defined not just as “the maximum amount that something can contain” like water in a bottle or pain the body. Rather another nuance was added, i.e., “the ability or power to do, experience or understand something.” For me, that moved the definition from one of passivity to active participation. This morning I am aware, therefore, that not only are my burdens light because I do not carry them alone but, in addition, I have the offer of laying them down totally if I am willing to work on expanding my capacity for living fully.

Occupy My Life With Love

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burdens, humility, life, love, Peace, pride, silence, simplicity of love, sin, strength, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, whole heart

Keep me, above all things, from sin.
But give me the strength that waits upon you in silence and peace.

Give me humility in which alone is rest,
and deliver me from pride which is the heaviest of burdens.

And possess my whole heart with the simplicity of love.
Occupy my whole life with the one thought and the
one desire of love, that I may love for You alone.

~ Thomas Merton
(from Thomas Merton’s Book of Hours by Kathleen Deignan)

Fully Human

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apostles, burdens, compassionate, concern, generous, human, humanity, Jesus, Mark, ministry, rest, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Over the past century we have come to know – because of advances in science and theology – that Mark’s gospel was the first of the four to be written. As such, there is more of a slant toward the humanity of Jesus than, for example, in the gospel of John (the last of the four) which did not appear until the beginning of the second century and was highly influenced by Greek philosophy, tending toward the divinity of Christ. This morning Mark gives us two examples of the humanity of Jesus (MK 6:30-34).

The apostles have come back from a missionary trip and are reporting “all that they had done and said.” Jesus, ever the compassionate one, says to them, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest awhile.” It’s as if a pastor noted all the work his staff had put into the activities of the Lenten season and said to them during Easter week, “Let’s find a place where we can have a nice lunch and maybe go swimming or catch a movie…” just to be together and be at peace. It might be easier to accomplish that now than in the situation of the apostles when the crowd saw them leave in a boat, figured out where they were going and followed them, so that when they disembarked there was a “vast crowd” already gathered. Scripture tells us that when Jesus saw them all “his heart was moved with pity for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.”

These are images of a fully human Jesus who recognized the burdens of ministry and tried for some “down time” with those closest to him. Couples who have babies know what that’s like as do AA sponsors or doctors or maybe even all the rest of us. It’s hard not to be moved by the needs we see around us and do our best to respond. I hope that there was enough time in the boat to be restorative for the apostles and Jesus, just as those little breaks sometimes refresh tired souls in our day. We need those moments, as Jesus knew, to refresh ourselves and carry on.

This morning I’m grateful for Jesus, the fully human man, who was always concerned for those he loved and those he had never met until one moment when they showed up in a crowd. I want to be like him – compassionate and generous and, yes, knowing also the need for rest.

Plowing Through

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burdens, closeness, God, Jesus, light, Matthew, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, yoke

Some years ago I heard an interpretation of today’s most familiar gospel lines (MT 11:29-30) that made sense and has stayed with me. “Take my yoke upon you,” Jesus says, “and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.” The picture this conjures up naturally is a pair of oxen joined together by a wooden crosspiece over their necks pulling a plow. The presenter I was listening to didn’t change any words but asked us to think for a moment about what Jesus was really saying to each person. He wasn’t just saying if we trust him our burdens will feel lighter; he was offering to share our burden, to join in the experience. He spoke of my burden indicating that our burden was his burden which he was willing to take on in humility, to give us rest from carrying it alone, to make it easier for us. In other words, he is the other side of the coupling, attached to us as we “pull” the burdens of our lives along. The definition of “yoke” implies a tethering, attachment, joining together that is inescapable. It seems then that Jesus is “stuck with us” – unable to detach until the field is plowed, the tasks are complete and we ourselves are no more. Until that moment, Christ is beside us lightening our load, cheering us on, companioning us in the way that St. Augustine saw things when he said, “God is closer to us than we are to ourselves.” When we recognize this closeness and let go into God, all becomes light. So today, those oxen are replaced in my mind’s eye with me and Jesus walking along, tethered together, hardly noticing what we’re pulling because we are so engrossed in the conversation he has begun about possibility and creative ways of living and the light that comes from within.