Sermons

“Take My Yoke”

Matthew 6:25-34; Matthew 11:28-30 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – April 22, 2018

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we might open our hearts to your Christ and find our rest in you. In the name of Jesus we pray, Amen.

I’d like to have you stop and ponder for a moment: What are the first three words that come to mind when you think about God or Jesus? What are the first three words that come up for you? How would you describe God? What does Jesus mean to you? Would anyone like to share your words?

We’ve got some good words in our minds, it seems. It’s fun to think about how we see God and compare what comes up most naturally. But here’s a harder question. Do you really live like you believe in the God you say you believe in?

Last week, as we considered our theme scripture for our stewardship campaign, we took a pretty practical approach. We talked about how the Estimate of Giving cards and the special occasion of Consecration Sunday are tools, like a yoke, that make the vital work of stewardship easier. Today, we’re going to take a more spiritual approach, though, in truth, the two are more closely intertwined than we often imagine. We are here, after all, to nurture our spiritual lives. And as you’ve heard me say repeatedly, if we’re not bringing the rest of our lives into conversation with our spirituality, then there isn’t much point. And that includes our financial lives. So let’s ask the question again: are we living like we believe in the God we say we believe in?is day. I h for today.” for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’ will be given to you as well.

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What does it feel like to hear Jesus say “I am gentle and humble in heart”? I feel like that sentence makes it easier for me to breathe. There are some words from the other passage we heard from Matthew that have the opposite effect: striving, toil, worry. What about some other words? I wonder if any of these popped into your head when I asked you to consider how you would describe God or Jesus? Taskmaster? Judge? Demanding? Whether these words came to mind or not, many of us often live as though this is what we believe about God. We’ll tell other people they should give themselves a break and that they’re loved and worthy and enough, but when it comes to evaluating ourselves, suddenly the standards change. We haven’t done enough. We haven’t gotten things right yet. We’ll never catch up. We haven’t earned the right to relax.

“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.” Jesus isn’t just talking to everyone else. He’s talking to you. Where does it come from, this idea that we have to earn the space we take up on the earth? Because it doesn’t come from Jesus. It doesn’t come from the God who created you in God’s image and pronounced you good. There are so many other messages bombarding our hearts on a day-to-day basis – from commercials and pop culture and the corporate media – so much bad news counteracting the good news. And sometimes we start to believe it. Even if we don’t think we believe it, we behave as though we do. We strive and worry and toil and wear ourselves out and insist that we must keep carrying our heavy burdens.

This is why I keep insisting that we’ve got to talk about money at church. It’s the part of our lives that is wrapped up with our finances that is most likely to trap us in this ugly place where we’re convinced we’ve got to earn God’s love. We would never admit it, of course, but our actions tell the story. We strive, and we toil, and we worry. And so we’ve got to come to church and remind each other. I want you to turn to your neighbor. Say “Neighbor”. “Your money isn’t going to set you free.” Say “Neighbor”. “God loves you and that means you’re always enough.” Now say it to yourself, “Self.” “God loves you and that means you’re always enough.”

A few weeks ago I told you about my Lutheran colleague suggesting that the Invitation to the Offering is kind of like an exorcism. It’s a chance for us to be released. We come here every week because we need to be reminded on a regular basis that the measurements the world is using are not the standards God is using. “My yoke is easy and my burden is light,” says Jesus. “I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Maybe your burden isn’t about working too hard. Maybe your burden comes from the fact that you’re not working at all. Jobs are hard to find, and because of the standards our society sets up, it’s easy to feel worthless when we don’t have paying work. It’s easy to get discouraged and give up. Not having a regular, valued thing to do can eventually lead to doing nothing at all. Situational depression is a difficult burden to bear, for those experiencing it and those around them. But the lie motivating this kind of burden is the same lie that makes others strive and toil past their breaking point – the lie that says we must earn our right to exist, that we’re not worthy of love unless we’re financially productive. This is the lie that we all need to be released from. This is the demon we all need to be freed of. It’s not that we’re to throw off yokes completely and never lift a finger again, while God provides us plenty to eat and drink and wear. It’s that we throw off the yoke of believing our bank account measures our value and take on the yoke of Jesus, whose work begins and ends with unconditional love.

What does any of this have to do with our annual stewardship campaign? Obviously, a large part of the reason we take these couple weeks to focus on stewardship is because the church cannot function without your tithes and offerings. But more importantly, we cannot function without the continual reminders of our inherent worth that we get when we come to church. The spiritual discipline of stewardship is about learning to trust in God. It’s about experiencing God’s promises of abundant life, by noticing what happens when we are generous and seeing what happens when we takes risks for the sake of the gospel. One of the best ways to free ourselves from the emotional clutches of money stress is to give money away. “See, you ridiculous ball of stress trying to tell me I won’t ever have enough? Here’s how much I don’t believe you! I’m giving some of this away, for no other reason than because I love God and want to answer God’s call to love my neighbors. How do you like that?!” Giving money away is a great way to tell our money stress to get lost. And that’s a great way to find rest for our souls.

The reason we’re encouraged to come to church every week, rather than once a month or once a year, is because there are a lot of things we need reminding of on a regular basis. We need to be reminded that we’re worthy because God made us and loves us, and not because we earned it. We need to be reminded what “enough” looks like and that when we’ve got enough, our next step is to share. We need to be reminded what we believe about God, what it is about God that makes God worthy of worship, and how we will behave if we really believe in the God we say we believe in. We need to be reminded what it looks like to live a life grounded in love, motivated by love, and reflecting love. There are a lot of other messages out there, trying to convince us of other realities. Don’t believe them. They’re fooling themselves. You know the true God. You know the God of unconditional love and unwavering grace. You know the Savior who comes after that last, lost sheep. You know the God who cries out for justice in the face of oppression. You know the Lord who offers rest for your souls. Let us commit ourselves this day to proclaiming these truths with our tithes and offerings, our actions and our community and with our very lives. Alleluia and Amen!