PROPER 9, YEAR A

Sunday 9 July 2017

Christ Episcopal Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

Romans 7:15-25a

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

 

During the past week we celebrated our national Independence. And today’s readings invite us to reflect further on the meaning of freedom.

 

As I mentioned in my sermon on July 4^th, the contemporary world tends to define freedom in 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 all the 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; it gets us into trouble; and sooner or later most of us—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, 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. When there’s an important exam in the morning, it’s not a great idea to go out on the town partying the night before. If the opposite of freedom is servitude, then all those years of college and law school are a kind of servitude that leads to a greater freedom.

 

In the Christian understanding, true freedom is the ability to fulfill our calling to know, love, and serve God in this life and enjoy him forever in the next. And what keeps us from this freedom is not so much any earthly king, governor, legislature, or magistrate, as the spiritual force we call sin. 

 

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 preventing us from having fun and being happy. But that’s not what sin means in the biblical worldview. It’s something much deeper and more insidious than just breaking the rules. In today’s epistle, Saint Paul vividly describes sin as a form of spiritual slavery. Its power is such that even though we know and want to do what’s right, we end up doing what we hate. Sin catches us up in patterns of self-destructive behavior, from which, try as we may, we cannot break free by our own efforts. Understood this way, sin is the opposite of freedom. True freedom is first of all freedom from sin: freedom to become fully the people that God created us to be. 

 

In today's Gospel, Jesus 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 the 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. But in his Letter to the Galatians, Paul writes of slavery to sin as another form of yoke: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

 

In biblical times, 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 on the road to Calvary.

 

True freedom is costly; it requires sacrifice. But as Christians we believe that our freedom from sin and death has already been won by Christ’s own sacrifice of himself on the cross. And his exhortation to take his yoke upon us is really another form of his invitation to take up our cross and follow him.

 

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

 

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 is easy and his burden is light—precisely because he shares them with us.  When we take up our cross, Jesus is right there, shouldering it with us. Were he not there, its weight would crush us.

 

The 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 after Independence Day, we remember that true freedom consists in knowing, loving, and serving God in this world and enjoying 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. Still, he promises us, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Only by taking his yoke upon us do we discover and experience for ourselves the service that is perfect freedom.