A Well-Fitted Yoke Makes The Work Doable, The Burden Bearable

This was the backdrop for the message I gave at Zion Mennonite
Church Sunday, where I was a pastor from 1965-1988. 

“Come to me, all who are bone-tired and burned out, and I will give you a fresh supply of energy. Become yoked with me, allow me to be your teacher, and you will find direction and inspiration for a truly blessed and worthwhile life." 

Jesus, Matthew 11:28-30 (paraphrase)

We usually read these words as an invitation to stressed workaholics like ourselves to just relax and enjoy a much needed vacation like on a sunny beach or a mountain cabin somewhere. And there are times that can certainly be a good thing. 

But a yoke is designed to be an efficient way of getting needed work done, the kind that also makes us tired sometimes. Jesus is in fact extending this invitation at a time his followers are feeling fatigue, frustration and discouragement. Trying to keep up with Jesus wasn’t a picnic.

Jesus isn't just speaking to people as individuals here, as in privately addressing Matthew, the disciple who records the story, but he’s addressing all of the men and women who were his followers. The "you" in  “come to me all of you,” is plural, like the southern “you all,” Had Jesus been addressing a single individual, the older King James version of the Bible would translated it as, “Come unto me, thou who art weary and heavy laden, and I will give thee rest, Take my yoke upon thee and learn from me and thou shalt find rest for thy soul.” 

Charles "C.C." Turner, who donated the yoke to Zion (pictured above) when I was pastor there, explained that when an ox was needing to be trained to pull a plow or a wagon it would be yoked with a trained and experienced one. So we could think of the yoke metaphor as one in which Jesus is pulling on one side and his followers are yoked together on the other, with God as the one giving direction. Jesus, as the lead member of the team, demonstrates how to be faithful in being about his Father's business of healing, teaching, feeding and freeing people.

One of our neighbors years ago had draft horses who were trained to followed his voice commands. This was done for oxen as well, who don't wear bridles like horses, but are likewise trained to follow commands. Gee Haw means go straight ahead, Gee means turn to the right, and Haw to the left. And of course, Whoa means stop. Take a rest.

If you think about it, when in our baptism we become yoked with Jesus, we give up our right to go in whatever direction we choose, or at whatever pace we choose. When Jesus, at his Father’s direction, goes Gee, we can’t go Haw. When Jesus fearlessly moves forward, we move with him. When he pauses for rest, we rest. When he hangs out with questionable and rejected people in need of being loved, we do the same. If he is spending time feeding the hungry, offering hospitality to refugees and strangers, or ministering to people who are sick or in prison, we work with him as an extension of Gods hands and feet and voice, and as an expression of God's love.

If this sounds exhausting, this is where Jesus’s words of encouragement come in. 

Which is why I especially like Clarence Jordan’s Cotton Patch version of this passage. Clarence was a Bible scholar who founded Koinonia Farms in Americus, Georgia in the 60's when it was still one of the most segregated places in the South. Here he and his family and his fellow Koinonians were threatened, bullied and boycotted, and even had some of their property bombed and shot at because they believed following Jesus meant living and working with people without regard to race or class. So Jordan translated the passage: "Come to me, all of you who are frustrated and have had a bellyful, and I will give you zest, Get in the harness with me and let me teach you, for I am trained and have a cooperative spirit, and you will find zest for your lives. For my harness is practical (well fitted), and my assignment is joyful.”

If we’re not yoked with Jesus, we’ll likely find ourselves yoked with those following the the demands of anti-Christ forces like Dame Fashion of Madison Avenue, Lord Mammon of Wall Street and General Mars of the military-industrial complex. We will find ourselves yoked and choked to death with materialism, militarism, nationalism or whatever other ism that demands our allegiance, saps our energy and prevents us from living the good life God created us to live. 

The welcome word rest is like respite, renewal or refreshment, the word Jordan translates zest. The Aramaic word Jesus used would have been sabbat, or Sabbath, in which God was said to rest after six days of creation work. And according to the Fourth Commandment every man, woman, child, servant, and work animals is to take a regular "time out," a day off. 

In the Greek language Matthew used to write his gospel he chooses the word anapausa, from which we get our word “pause,” as in “the pause that refreshes.” We regularly need that as we keep on demonstrating, right here on earth, the way people are to live forever, and to pray and to live out God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven.

Another fitting New Testament metaphor for our intimate and faithful union with Christ is that of bridegroom and bride." Thus we might think of the Matthew 11 text as a kind of marriage proposal, which reminds me of the nineteenth century abolitionist Theodore Weld, in writing to his fellow activist fiancé, stated, "We join together, Angelina, not merely nor mainly to enjoy, but together to do and to dare, together to toil and testify and suffer... and [to be]happy beyond expression."

That's the "happily ever after" shalom the whole world needs.