Psalm 119:153-160
Matthew 11:25-30

During the last several weeks, many of us have had an opportunity to take vacations.  Students have had a break from classes and teachers.  Teachers have had a break from students.  Many of us have had a chance to look at some different scenery for a few days.  Having taken vacation, you may have discovered as I have there are at least three things wrong with vacations.  First, they never come soon enough.  Second, they never last long enough.  Third, they never deliver what they promise.  For some reason the blissful outlook on life we expect when we return from vacation is never there.  It's enough to make us throw up our hands and exclaim, "What vacation?"
           
One of the reasons often given for taking a vacation is to get away from it all.  By now, many of us who have given that reason for a vacation have realized that is an impossible goal for a vacation.  Whatever the struggle or difficulty with which we are dealing, whatever it is we want to get away from is in some way intricately tied to us.  When we go on vacation, we take part of the problem with us because we are part of what it is we want to get away from. 
           
However, a vacation can put us in a different setting.  The change in scenery may give us a different perspective and with the different view we are able to see some things in a clearer light.  Often in the midst of the pressure and struggle of the moment, our vision is hampered and our thinking is stifled.  Who of us has not been working on a situation that needed a solution and were making absolutely no progress.  Perhaps from sheer frustration and exhaustion, we left the situation or problem for awhile.  Suddenly, as if out of the blue, a solution came to our minds.  Moving away from the pressure of the problem enabled us to see it from a different perspective.  Vacations can help us do that.  Vacation means to empty the premises, to leave one place temporarily and go to another. 
           
The eleventh chapter of Matthew gives plenty of evidence that Jesus needed a vacation.  He had been traveling from town to town in the area of Galilee and about all he had received from the Galilean towns was rejection.  No one can take rejection after rejection without it beginning to weigh heavily on him emotionally.  Jesus was no exception.  Jesus said the people were acting like a bunch of irresponsible children who were unwilling and uninterested in being satisfied or pleased with anything.  The way Jesus described them was as if they had no idea what they wanted, but whatever was offered, they were certain that that wasn't what they wanted.  Whatever game was being played, they wanted to play something else.  When they played wedding, one group said they wanted to play funeral.  When they played funeral, one group said they wanted to play wedding. 
           
Then, Jesus suggested that John the Baptist and he represented different approaches to serving God and sharing God's love with people and both were rejected.  Jesus stated that it seemed impossible to please anybody.  He gave John and himself as examples.  John came fasting and drinking no wine.  He was too stern and rigid for the people.  John's actions were so strange that many of the people accused him of being possessed by a demon.  They said he was crazy to cut himself off from people and pleasure like he did.  Then along came Jesus who interacted with the common people.  He accepted invitations right and left from people to go to their houses and to eat and drink with them.  Some of these invitations came from tax collectors and sinners.  Jesus seemed to have no discernment about him.  He accepted invitations from anybody and everybody.  It seemed that whenever there was a party, Jesus was invited and he went.  When Jesus arrived, the party picked up and when Jesus left, the energy level at the party dropped.  The result of this activity and involvement by Jesus was that many of the religious leaders accused him of being a glutton and a winebibber.  John's actions were interpreted as madness.  Jesus' sociability was interpreted as a laxness of morals. 
           
Jesus' assessment of the attitudes of these people and the actions that John and he had taken was that "wisdom is shown to be true by its results."  John was accused of being a recluse, withdrawn, religiously fanatical.  However, John moved people's lives to God as they had not been moved for centuries.  The religious leaders criticized Jesus for mixing too much with ordinary people, but common people found a friend in him, discovered God to be like him.  As a result they found new life, new goodness, and new power to live.  Thus, Jesus summarized John's ministry and his with the statement, "Wisdom is shown to be true by its results."
           
Jesus senses that the religious leaders and the people they are seeking to lead are overloaded.  The religious rules and regulations had become burdensome.  In order to clarify and understand clearly and fully the meaning and impact of the Ten Commandments, the religious leaders had expounded on them to the extent that there now were over 600 religious rules and regulations.  Even the most invigorated life has times when enthusiasm dulls and excitement dissipates.  Sometimes even religion is a burden.  Participating in church, studying the Bible, focusing on spiritual matters can be tiresome.  It becomes especially heavy when it is no more than duty and habit kept going by inertia rather than by commitment.  Religion is a heavy burden when it is all shoulds, oughts, and musts. 
           
So, here Jesus is with all these tired, burdened people.  He invites them to come to him and he will give them rest.  What a refreshing invitation!  Actually, the word translated rest means refreshment.  Jesus sensed these people were exhausted.  They were exhausted from many things, but perhaps nothing had worn them out quicker than their search for truth.  Surely truth was tied up with religion.  Surely if they got involved with the religious community they would find relief, release, refreshment, and rest.  What they had received was rules, regulations, and requirements.
           
Jesus invites them to come to him and offers them refreshment.  But how does he promise them refreshment?  He tells them he has a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light.  Some of them must have thought Jesus was as crazy as John.  What kind of double talk was this to invite them to come to him only to be offered a yoke and a burden?  Even if it is easy, a yoke is a yoke.  Even if it is light, a burden is a burden. 
           
Just when we expect Jesus to offer us a vacation, he offers us a different yoke from the one that is around our necks and a new burden from the one we are bearing.  The issue in life is not if we shall be burdened but rather which burdens shall we bear.  Perhaps people burn out because they become exhausted by constant engagement with the trivial and the inconsequential.  Life's greatest burden is in having nothing worthwhile to do.  Jesus' idea of a good vacation is not "getting away from it all," but taking us some place where we are given something significant to do, namely participation in ministry with him.
           
When Jesus said that the yoke he offers is easy, another way of stating it is that his yoke is well-fitting.  In Palestine, as well as many other places, ox yokes were made of wood.  An ox was brought to the carpenter's shop and measurements were taken.  The yoke was roughed out.  Then, the ox was brought back for a fitting.  The yoke was tried on for size and fitting.  It was carefully adjusted and smoothed out so it would fit well and not irritate the ox's neck.  If the yoke irritated the ox's neck, then his attention was diverted from the task of pulling a load to the pain caused by the rough, poorly fitted yoke.  An ox yoke was tailor made for an ox. 
             
You will recall that Jesus' father was a carpenter and that Joseph probably died some time during Jesus teenage years, because nothing is said about Joseph after Jesus' first trip to the Temple when he was twelve.  Jesus learned carpentry from Joseph and being the oldest child, no doubt that became the way he provided for his family.
           
Legend says that Jesus made the best ox yokes in Galilee.  People came from all over to have Jesus make their yokes for them.  Craftsmen in those days, like today, often had signs over their doors that served as mottos for their work.  The suggested sign that hung over the carpenter's shop in Nazareth read, "My yokes fit well." 
           
Whether that sign hung over the carpenter's shop is unknown.  However, from every indication in the Gospels, that sign hung over Jesus' ministry.  As he invited people to be his disciples, as he approached people who were troubled, burdened, struggling, and heavy laden, in essence he said to them, "Come to me and I will fit you with a yoke that is smooth and comfortable, well fitted for you." 
           
Jesus also offered a burden that is light.  Notice that Jesus did not promise a burden-free life.  He offered a burden-light life.  Life will have burdens.  That is part of the nature of living.  Things happen to us, situations occur over which we have no control but with which we have to deal.  What makes the difference between those situations being burdensome and being burden-light.  Probably what makes life burdensome, to what Jesus was referring when he said, "Come to me all of you who labor," was to those keeping the religious rules and bearing its burden as taught by the scribes.  The rules had become numerous, tedious, and restrictive.  The interpretations given to nearly all of the rules heavily emphasized, "Thou shalt not . . . ."  People became so conscious of what they could not, ought not, and should not do that they were unable to experience the freedom of what they were permitted to do.  The rabbis often spoke of the law as a yoke and had spoken of it as a joy.  However, they had made it into a burden. 
           
The distinctive quality that makes a situation burdensome or burden-light has to do with the motivation a person has in bearing the burden.  When the motivation is out of ought and should and must and duty, the situation is burdensome.  When the motivation is out of love, interest, care, and concern for the person involved, the burden is light.  Jesus knew how to make a burden light.  His love for people motivated him to lead them out from under the burden and bulkiness of rules, regulations, and religious red tape.  As a result of his efforts, Jesus found himself in trouble with the religious establishment.  Jesus managed to offend nearly every religious leader around by the freedom and joy with which he moved among people of all kinds.  He refused to permit superficial rules or customs to take priority over people.  Out of his love for people, Jesus placed his life alongside the lives of the people, yoked himself to them, and together the burden was made light.
           
An old story is told of a man who saw a boy carrying a boy on his back.  The man remarked, "That's a heavy burden for you to carry."  And the boy replied, "That's no burden.  He's my brother."  Perhaps it was this story that inspired the line in a song several years ago, "He ain't heavy.  He's my brother." 
           
Ken Burke, a colleague of mine in Washington, told about being on his way to visit in the hospital driving his Volkswagen beetle when it stalled at the bottom of a hill.  Ken got out and began trying to push the car up the hill.  It wasn't that large of a hill or at least it had never looked that large before this day.  In any case, Ken began pushing on his car, rocking it back and forth, and finally got it to move ever so slightly.  Slowly, very slowly, and with great struggle, Ken was making slight progress as he began to push the car up the hill.  As he strained with all the energy he could expend, suddenly the car began to move fairly easily.  Ken was amazed.  Now, he didn't seem to be using nearly as much effort as he had before.  He looked around and discovered that a man had seen his situation and simply, without saying a word, was applying his strength to the back of Ken's car.  Out of his interest to help Ken, an unknown, unidentified man yoked himself to Ken and lightened the burden of pushing the car up the hill.
           
Whatever the burden is that comes to us at any point in our lives, the burden is made lighter when we realize and recognize that God loves and cares for us and desires to help us carry the load.  The life and ministry of Jesus disclosed for all people to see what God is truly like.  Knowing who is there to join us in the struggle and the burden bearing can enable us to deal with any what that may come our way.  Haven't you found it to be true that knowing you have the love and support of someone, you are able to face any task or struggle easier and with more confidence?
           
Burdens are going to come to us.  The issue before us is not IF we shall be burdened, but to WHAT shall we be burdened?  The question is not IF we shall be yoked, but to WHOM will we be yoked? 
           
Jesus seems uninterested in unburdening us so that we have no load to carry.  What Jesus does is to lift off our backs the burden of having nothing worthwhile to do so he can give us another burden, the light burden of caring for and loving others, sharing their load with them, helping them push their way up hill. 
           
Jesus' idea of a good vacation is not "getting away from it all," but taking us someplace where we are given something significant to do, namely, participation with him in his ministry to the world. 
           
"Make me a captive, Lord, and then I shall be free."  Isn't that how the hymn says it?
           
I pray for you and for me as we plow through the tasks before us when we would rather be on vacation.  I pray, not that God will deliver us from all burdens and free us from all yokes, but that God will give us a burden worth bearing and a yoke worth wearing.  Make us, make me, a captive, Lord.  Then, I shall be truly free.