3 July 2011

“A recipe for a blessed 4th … 5th … 6th … and beyond”
14th Sunday in Ordinary Time series A
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
3 July 2011


Happy Independence Day weekend!
Maybe that strikes your ears as a strange greeting for this morning … because the polls say that, as a nation, a people, we are celebrating one of our unhappiest Independence Days ever. Political unhappiness … economic unhappiness … family unhappiness … religious discontent … many of us don’t feel like we have much to celebrate this 4th of July.
Now, I don’t know what it will take to “fix” our national situation … and frankly, you didn’t come here today to hear that anyway … you could have stayed home and tuned into Sunday morning talk television, where the wide array of presidential candidates will gladly give their wide-ranging opinions.
But I do have an idea of where each of us can start in our own personal quest for renewal … the pursuit of true life, authentic liberty and deep, abiding happiness.
Our Gospel text for this morning points the way, Jesus beginning with a description of “his generation” which sounds strangely like our own:

But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another, “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed and you did not mourn.”

Jesus is describing a children’s game in which the boys and girls “play grown up” – the first part of the sentence refers to what happened at a first century wedding; the second, at a funeral. The point is that children who cannot respond positively to any suggestion end up playing nothing.
And this is precisely where Jesus goes next in his biting criticism of “this generation.” John the Baptist they criticized for his ascetic ways – they called him crazy, demon possessed … yet of Jesus himself, he who lived a “normal” life among people, eating and drinking as any typical person of his time would … “this generation” called him “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.”

To put it in the vernacular, Jesus is saying “I can’t win with you people … there is no satisfying you!”

How similar Jesus’ “generation” is to ours, eh? Frustrated, confused, troubled – decentered - people making irrational judgments, statements, choices … of this we are all witnesses, indeed, we’ve probably made, done them ourselves.
Ah, but Jesus does not leave us without a way out. Again, his answer isn’t one for “how do we fix this generation … this nation … this civilization?” It is, however, highly personal, a Word with and for, one-person-at-a-time.

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.

“Weary” is too light a translation for what Jesus means. Many of us are tired … tired from the very circumstances of our lives … but Jesus’ weary indicates something deeper, “those who have lost heart, who have given up.” They haven’t totally given up because they, we’re still carrying “heavy burdens,” but these “weary” are well on the way to exhaustion.
God knows what those burdens are. They might be due to health. They might be financial. They might have to do with relationships … or aging … or change … or the fear that surrounds them all.
So Jesus is saying, right there, right here in the midst of all that burdens and troubles you … all that causes you frustration and anger and confusion and decenters you from life, life rich and full, as God wills and wants for you … Jesus says, right there, right here … I’m here to take your burden.
Now, this isn’t a “wave the magic wand and it will all be better” Word … such as that which some of our mis-guided brothers and sisters assume, “when you turn your life over to Jesus it’ll all be OK and wonderful and one material blessing after another.”
No, far from it.
Jesus is calling, expecting us to apprentice with him in the life-lesson of burden-carrying.
When Jesus says, “learn from me,” he really means, “learn with me.” Follow my four-step program, he says, which I lay out clearly all through the Gospels:

• I do, you watch.
• I do, you help.
• You do, I help.
• You do, I watch.

Now, the thing about apprenticing with Jesus, is that it’s a life-long process, and it doesn’t go in a straight line of “progress” as we Americans might like to draw it … you know, “every day in every way we’re getting better and better,” we can always pull ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and make something better of ourselves.
But you know as well as I that those words are a lie. Sometimes we can’t pick ourselves up. Some days it just keeps on getting worse and worse, not because of our fault … and it’s nothing we can help.
And so here’s a tough word for US Independence Day … one of those “American values” we may cherish the most – total independence, believing that I can do it all – anything – by myself, that I can make it all better, without any help from another … and so should you, and you, and you … that value is in direct opposition to the reality of life as Jesus acknowledges it and claims and redeems it for us.
And we know this, as we walk in faith. It has to do with being a saint and a sinner at the same time, as Luther put it so well. Saved by grace, we still and always mess up, hurt others, sin. So the most important part of apprenticing with Jesus is to drop to our knees and repent … each and every one of us, each and every day.
Repenting is the most important part of apprenticing because you have to admit that it can’t be “me-right or wrong, always.”
Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn – one of my favorites – puts it so well in his new song, “Call Me Rose” --

I was the boss of bosses the last time around
I lived by cunning and ambition unbound
The suckers said they'd stand behind me right or wrong
As if they thought that hubris was the mark of the strong…

That ideal … stubbornly holding our place, our ground, right or wrong … that puts us -- and anything else we say that sentence about – family, employer, political party, nation … that puts something or someone else in the place of God. That’s the literal definition of hubris. And you can’t apprentice with Jesus if God is decentered in our lives … because then we’re decentered … we’re no better than the whiny little children who can’t play the game correctly so they end up playing nothing.
And so we always start our apprenticeship with Jesus with repentance. Always. Each and every day.
And then … then, after we rise from repenting … as we feel ourselves lifted by the arms of Jesus … we receive refreshment … the forgiveness we’ve been lacking in our lives … patience … trust … encouragement … and the easing of our burdens, as we turn and see Jesus next to us, bearing the same yoke along with us … teaching us … we, apprentices at discipleship, apprentices at faith, apprentices at life, yes, life …
… and we receive … we receive from Jesus … because apprenticing also means receiving … we learn to be gracious receivers as well … as Jesus does for us … Jesus, sometimes helping, sometimes teaching, sometimes just plain doing it all for us … depending on how life is for us … that’s precisely how Jesus wants and wills to be for us.

Here is a recipe, a calling, for not just a blessed 4th of July … but also, a blessed 5th, 6th, and beyond.
So Happy Dependence Day … today, and every day, as we walk with Jesus in his humble, centered, restful way, which is for each one of us. Each one of us, called to total and utter dependence on Jesus Christ … so we can be truly free … with freedom from our life’s burdens … liberty to live to and for others, sharing their burdens as well … and happiness in Christ … full, rich, abundant life … life in Jesus, life with others.

Amen.