July 3, 2005 - Seventh Sunday after Pentecost - Mother Stephanie Parker

FIRST READING: Zechariah 9: 9-12
PSALM: 145¨8-15
SECOND READING: Romans 7:15 - 25a
GOSPEL: Matthew 11: 16-19, 25-30

The higher the love and the loyalty, the lighter the yoke.

The lesser the love and the loyalty, the heavier the yoke.

In the Name of God,

AMEN

(Mother Stephanie then sat down, and silence ensued!)

O.K. You knew it wasn't going to be that easy with me!

I actually stole that from Father Barry Woods this morning, and it actually fit in with my intro; but it was also a form of penance for the marathon sermon I preached on my last Sunday here before vacation!

The higher the love and the loyalty, the lighter the yoke. The lesser the love and the loyalty, the more burdensome the yoke.

This is the message that Jesus is bringing to us today, afresh and anew. Jesus' whole purpose in coming to us was to form us in tighter and truer and deeper relationship with the God who formed us, the God who made us in His image, and the God who loves us more than anything or anyone else in this world ever can. The higher the love and the loyalty - it is all about relationship with us and God, and Jesus is all about enfleshing that relationship and showing us how it is to be in real relationship to God that absolutely calls from us our highest love and our highest loyalty.

Now, think of any relationship you have ever had. It can be a business relationship, a business partnership that has no emotional investment whatsoever. It can be a relationship between a child and a parent, an aunt and a niece, certainly husbands and wives, between a Parish, even, and a Rector or Associate Rector - all of these relationships have a common purpose and a common bond that we all dictate. We start a business relationship because we have this vision, this dream, and we want to see it fulfilled, and we have all good intentions that this will be a life-giving and wonderful experience for all those concerned. And, certainly, if we have a child and bring that child into the world, our greatest hope is that there will be this mutual love and affection that time cannot dim and oceans cannot separate. These are the ideals and what we seek.

Certainly, when two people start out in a romantic relationship, and love and partnership and marriage is their goal in that relationship, what is the greatest, highest hope for forming that union? Mutual love and respect; mutual support and building-up of one another.

Now, we live in the world. The Kingdom of God has surely come when Jesus came to us, but we still occupy the world, right? And do those relationships always follow a path that takes us to that higher love and higher loyalty? No. That is our heartbreak. We start with the best of intentions. We have something pure and wonderful and bright; and we want to grow it, and we want to see it succeed; but, very often, despite our best efforts, or sometimes because of our failed efforts, the ideal fades away, and we are just sort of left with this sense of . . . what? It is a word that breaks my heart - obligation. Have you ever been in a relationship that you were staying in because you felt obligated to do so? I tell you what - if you are a child, and you have ever heard your parents utter the phrase (and if you have said it, forgive yourself; be gentle; this is not a point of judgment; I have said equally harsh words) - if you are a parent and you say to your child, "Well, your father and I, our marriage was over about 30 years ago, but we stayed together for the kids; we felt like it was our obligation"- well there is a sense of something that is weighty about that and something that suddenly feels like a great burden. This incredible commitment and sacrifice, which seems good on the surface, but, when done out of obligation, starts to feel like a weight on that child's shoulders, even if that child is 60 when the child hears it. There is a sense of loss and a sense that that higher loyalty and that higher love have somehow been missed; and we get that.

And, if you have ever been in a working relationship where you wanted to quit, and you wanted to leave, and you weren't really happy to be there, but you knew something compelled you - probably the economy or some other need or your own fear, whatever it was - isn't' getting up to go to work in the morning fun in that kind of setting? I was actually working at a place where I loved the job, but the supervisor I had - I can't even call her my boss; it just hurts too badly - the person who was over me in the food chain - I was in such a difficult relationship with her, that, one morning (and this was when I got the signal to quit that job) . . . I was driving to work, and there was this long point on coastal Georgia, an island on the coast of Georgia, and we had these long causeways that sort of go through the swamps between islands. I was driving down this long causeway thinking, "Golly, wouldn't it be great if I ran off the road, and broke my leg, and didn't have to go to work today!" Well, that was my wake-up call! I said, "Oh, I think it's time for me to go, no matter how much I love doing what I do!"

But that is what can happen when we feel a sense of obligation in any relationship we are in, and, as soon as it breaks down from this higher love and higher loyalty, what happens to the communication in any of these relationships? It stops. Its shuts down. We don't want to reveal ourselves to one another. As a matter of fact, we sort of take delight in withholding ourselves. We use it as a source of power to withhold our deepest selves - again, be it a work relationship or a personal emotional relationship of any kind - and that is where we find our power.

Well, today, we see Jesus at a very frustrating and disappointing juncture in His great call and His great mission. Remember, we saw in John's Gospel, right off the bat, "I have come to reconcile the world to God", and, in the past weeks, we have been hearing of Jesus' ministry, as Matthew tells it, where he has been healing. As Isaiah predicted, "The blind can see; the lame jump for joy; the leper is cleansed; we are all healed". Jesus has been doing everything in His power - and His power is supreme - to show that, in fact, the grace and love of God is present on the earth.

In the last weeks, we have heard very difficult sayings of Jesus, where he talked in the Gospels about how difficult discipleship would be. Just the one from last week, for those of you who were here, do you remember? It says, "If you say these things, you will be honored as a prophet". But then Andrew reminded us that most prophets are honored by having their head hung on a stick on the wall outside of the city. So, Jesus has told us time and time again that this is going to be difficult, and so we know all that.

So, suddenly, after all of these difficult sayings, we hear Jesus say, "Come to me; My yoke is easy, and My burden is light". And, if we have been following the thread, we might scratch our heads and say, "Did not Jesus read the rest of Matthew's Gospel before He said that? Because that is not what I heard." But, Jesus is at a very difficult and frustrating point, at this time, as I said, because He has done all those things. He has brought this incredible love and mercy to the earth in God's Name and as God, and what has been the response, primarily? Rejection.

Now, I always hate to go to a movie quote, but when I was reading this first part of the Gospel this morning, I started thinking about that movie, Jerry Maguire. Do you guys remember that movie, or have you seen it? There is this scene - and it is not the show-me-the-money scene, although I think it is attached to that - but there is this scene where Jerry Maguire, who is in a very desperate situation, is in the bathroom with the only client that remains on his roles. He is a sports agent, and the client is demanding all of these things from him - "I want this, and I want that" - and Jerry Maguire feels like that is what he has been trying to do this whole time. And then, suddenly, he just loses it - Tom Cruise, but not like he did on the Today Show!, but in character as Jerry Maguire - and he says, "Help me to help you! Help me to help you! I need you to help me to help you!" It's a great scene, and it has all of this energy; and you see his frustration coming to the fore.

Well, that is the scene we see in this Gospel this morning when Jesus is first talking. "To what can I compare this generation? You are like a bunch of whiney kids in the summertime who haven't got anything to do; you know 'I want to play this, but Timmy can't play, and I want to play this, but Suzy couldn't come overrrr!'" And He says, "What is this? John the Baptist came, and he was so pure and holy that you guys thought he was a nut case! So then, I come along after John announces Me and proclaims the day of the Lord - I come along, and I eat, and I drink, and, heck, being with Me is like going to a wedding every day! It's a glorious time! And yet, you call Me a drunkard and a sinner and a no-good!"

So, we see Jesus, like Jerry Maguire in the bathroom, where He just wants us to help Him to help us! This is not a diatribe. Well, actually, it is a diatribe. It is a pretty stern argument against what we see as Jesus' opponents, the Pharisees, but does Jesus see these people as opponents? No. The Jewish temple authorities, where Jesus is, are respected leaders. Jesus was a very faithful Jew, so we don't see Him railing against the Jews, as has sometimes been put forth with this. We see Jesus, who loves the Pharisees and has come to redeem the Pharisees - just as much as He has come to redeem the blind and the lame and the poor - we see Him at this point of frustration. "What can I do to convince you people that the mercy of God is here and it is real? And, guess what folks, God does not want your sacrifices or your burnt offerings; God wants to be in real relationship with you."

People dreaded going to the temple on Sundays (or Saturdays or Fridays, or whenever you went to temple), because everything was such a heavy obligation. "If I don't have enough money to buy a sacrifice, I can't go, and I am outside God's love". "If I didn't follow the Law properly in all 643 categories, I can't go before God in the Temple". This heavy, horrible feeling of obligation to constantly be opening their wrists and pouring themselves out in ways that makes their relationship with God seem so much like a heavy burdensome yoke - one that weighs them down and keeps them from even hearing Jesus and seeing the miracles and the wonders that He has done.

There is that great line, "Thank God for the children who get it". And He is, of course, not talking about small children in this case; He is just talking about people who aren't educated and wise and sophisticated enough to reject it. And that happens to all of us as we go along in our faith. You know, we get so sort of . . . Well, at least I do. O.K., I am going to make my confession. I was in a debate with someone the other day, and I actually (and this is a horrible confession, and it was another priest, by the way!) - I actually heard myself thinking, "What an idiot! I know I'm smarter than that girl!" And I was mortified even as I am thinking it! I am thinking, "What a moron!", you know? "I don't know where she went to seminary, but whoo!" O.K.? It is a shameful side of me, but it exists. O. K.? So, we have this sense that we can't accept something new, especially if it doesn't look sophisticated enough or clear enough, or if it comes to us in a way we don't understand.

So then we have Jesus, once again, back at this point, and we have this great shift. In our lectionary, it actually cuts out that diatribe where He is saying, "Woe to you!", and He names all the cities that He has come to and that have rejected Him, and it is a wonderful tale. We get a great glimpse of this in the Gospel where you hear Jesus saying . . . . and if you put in the emotion and take it out of that one-dimensional way we have gotten used to hearing Scripture - you know, "blah, blah, blah-blah, blah, blah, blah", O.K.? . . . . . we hear Jesus saying, "Oh, my gosh, what can I do! Woe to you! Don't you hear me? Why are you so whiny?" And then we see this wonderful shift. Suddenly, we just hear Jesus start to pray in the most loving and caring way that is imaginable: "Heavenly Father, I am just so thankful that there are some people who get it. I am so thankful for all of those who do. Here is my prayer, as well, for those who don't yet get it - open their hearts and minds to see You in Me; help them to know that I come bearing Your love and, not only bearing Your love, but granting this incredible mercy and love and this gift of power to them; help Me, dear Father, to find some way to take this burdensome yoke from Your people; help Me to lift their sense of obligation; and help Me to help them remember the love with which this whole story began; that God so loved, and God, with such infinite love, that God poured God's self out into creation and made humanity out of pure love and generosity; help Me, dear God", He says, "to free them once and for all from feeling like they are obligated to You instead of simply loving You with all their heart and with all their mind and with all their soul". And then He turns outward, and He says, "Come to Me, all of you who are so burdened and heavy-laden; My yoke is easy; when you worship God with Me, it is all about expressing your deepest love and your greatest loyalty; it is about knowing that God knows that you are imperfect; and that God loves you anyway; it is a yoke that is so light and a burden that is so gone, that it knows that even when we fall short of God's desire for us in the world, when we are out in the far country in the dark places where we take ourselves and shut ourselves away from God and close down that relationship as a source of power - 'I'm not giving God any of me!' - help them to know that even in a place that has driven them out that far, I am here; I am waiting; and help to relieve them of that burden".

God's greatest gift, in the gift of Jesus Christ, is visited on us today. It is called the Great Invitation, and it is an invitation, I hope, that today, instead of walking out that door and just heading for the next thing and putting it all away, that we will hear Jesus in all of His frustration and all of His love and desire for us to get it - I hope that all of us will help God to help us.

Free yourselves. On this Independence weekend when we celebrate the freedom of our country, free yourselves from everything that burdens you and holds you down and makes you feel obligated to God, as opposed to just stepping into the glorious embrace that wants nothing more than your most loving and gifted loyalty; because that is no less than what God gives us every day we rise.

In the name of God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

AMEN