Proper 9, Year A

Romans 7:15-25a
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Today, on Sunday in the weekend of our national Independence Day, it seems appropriate to reflect a bit on the meaning of freedom.

Contemporary society tends to define freedom in purely negative terms as the absence of external restraints on our thoughts, speech, and behavior: the ability to say and do whatever we want without having to answer to anybody. When I was a teenager, I waged a relentless war of independence against parents, teachers, and all the other adults in my life who wanted to curb my freedom to smoke, drink, go out without saying where I’d be, and stay out as late as I wanted. This negative drive to free oneself of all accountability is typically adolescent; and sooner or later most of us get over it.

But freedom also has a positive meaning. Imagine a young woman who’s known from the fifth or sixth grade that she wants to be a lawyer. Pursuing her chosen profession entails years of grinding study to get good grades in high school, college, and law school, until she finally passes the bar exam, lands a job in a law firm, and gets started on her career. And that’s only the beginning. For her, freedom is the ability to fulfill her calling. But notice that this type of freedom severely restricts her liberty to do whatever she wants whenever she wants. 

For most of us, at least, when you've got an exam in the morning, you can't go out on the town. If the opposite of freedom is servitude, then all those years of college and law school are a kind of servitude, which leads to a greater freedom. The founding fathers of this country knew well that freedom is costly; it requires enormous discipline and sacrifice – without which they never would have won the War of Independence.

In the Christian understanding of the word, true freedom is the ability to serve God in this life and to enjoy him forever in the next. What keeps us from this freedom is not so much any earthly king, governor, legislature, or magistrate, as the spiritual force known as sin. 

Of course, much of our culture thinks of sin itself as a form of freedom. So many petty rules of morality seem to have no other purpose than keeping us from having fun and being happy. But that’s not what sin means at all in the biblical worldview. It’s something much deeper and more insidious than just breaking the rules. In today’s epistle reading, Saint Paul describes sin as a form of spiritual slavery. Its power is such that even though we know and want to do the right thing, we end up doing what we hate. Sin catches us up in patterns of dysfunctional and self-destructive behavior, from which, try as we may, we cannot break free by our own efforts. Understood this way, sin is the very opposite of freedom. True freedom is freedom from sin: the freedom to know God, to worship, love, serve, and obey him, and finally to become fully the men and women that he created us to be.

In today's Gospel, Jesus shows us the path to this freedom when he says, "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Here, the word “yoke” refers to a wooden beam placed over the neck of an ox or mule. The harness on the animal is fastened to the yoke, which is in turn connected to a cart or a plow. So, when you put a yoke on an animal you subject it to your control, and make it work to serve your purposes.

In ancient world, the yoke was also a symbol of political servitude. Slaves were said to be under the yoke of their masters. The Jews spoke of themselves as being under the "yoke" of Roman rule, from which they longed to be free.

In the ancient world, moreover, a yoke referred not only to a contraption for harnessing animals, but also to a cross beam laid on the backs of prisoners for a forced march. So, Jesus took his yoke upon him, when he carried the cross the road to Calvary. So for Jesus, the words, “Take my yoke upon you...” are really another form of his invitation, “Take up your cross, and follow me.”

True freedom is costly; it requires sacrifice. We Christians believe that our freedom from sin and death has been won by Christ’s own sacrifice of himself on the cross. And we in turn receive and grow into this freedom by taking up our cross and following him.

So, our choice really is between two servitudes: to sin, or to Christ. Like a yoke, the Christian life subjects our unruly desires and passions to God's will. When we take the yoke of Christ upon ourselves, we renounce our liberty to serve our own pride, greed, and ambition. We renounce our freedom to do whatever we feel like simply because we feel like it. Conversely, we oblige ourselves to do whatever God asks us to do even when it's the very last thing we feel like doing.

The yoke of Christ is none other than the cross. Yet, paradoxically, Jesus says, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." What can he possibly mean by this? Well, on another occasion he criticizes the scribes and Pharisees, and says that they "make up heavy loads and pile them on the shoulders of others but will not themselves lift a finger to ease the burden." By contrast, our Lord's yoke and burden are easy because he shares them with us. When we take up our cross, Jesus is right there, shouldering the burden with us, making it light and easy to bear. Indeed, were he not there, its weight would crush us.

In the end, our choice between the yoke of sin and the yoke of Christ is not unlike the alcoholic's choice between the yoke of the bottle and the yoke of abstinence. One leads to darkness and destruction, the other to light and life. One leads to slavery, the other to freedom.

So, on this weekend of our national Independence Day, we remember that true freedom does not mean merely the ability to do whatever we want whenever we want. Rather, it consists in the ability to serve God in this world and to enjoy him forever in the next. This freedom cost our Lord nothing less than the cross to liberate us from the power of sin and death. It costs us everything as well when we take up our cross and follow him. Yet, Jesus promises us, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” And only by taking his yoke upon us do we attain that perfect freedom which consists in the love and service of Almighty God.