28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30 NIV
Jesus is the only One in whom our souls find true rest. The biblical context for one of his most well-known statements, “Come, take my yoke” is a bit odd. Just before this, Jesus had been talking about John the Baptist, who at that time was imprisoned. (Later, John was beheaded by King Herod.) To sum it up, the situation feels a bit like, “D—- if you do, d—- if you don’t.” People judged John for his fasting, and thought he was demon-possessed. Then, those same people turned around and judged Jesus for NOT fasting and thought he was a drunk. Jesus acknowledges and points out the irony of this, but concludes by saying “wisdom is proved right by her deeds.”
Then, Jesus denounces all these towns where he preformed miracles because they saw his power but didn’t change their ways. He calls them out pretty harshly. He says if Sodom had seen him do what they had, its people would have responded rightly and been better off than they were. (Sodom was one of the most detestable and notorious cities of the old testament – it was so bad, God razed the place to the ground after he couldn’t find so much as 10 righteous people in the whole place.)
Now, we come to it. Jesus thanks God for taking what should have been obvious to the wise and revealing it to children. He calls to the weary, the burdened, the exhausted, the ones who’ve been knocked down, and nearly given up. These are the ones he implores to learn from him, to take his yoke because he is gentle and humble. His burden is light.
The audience doesn’t seem to get it though. The next scene finds Jesus walking through the grain fields on the Sabbath, and his disciples are picking some of the grains and eating them. This was against the Jew’s religious laws and customs, which were very strict about what could and could not be done on the Sabbath day. Jesus explains again, pointing the criticizers back long ago when King David’s warriors, who were starving and desperate, ate bread specially blessed in the old testament temple that they weren’t supposed to take. Jesus says if they had known what it meant that God desires mercy, not sacrifice, they wouldn’t condemn the innocent.
It is perilously possible to miss Jesus’ point entirely. Mercy means withholding a punishment that someone justly deserves. A yoke was a device meant to harness oxen to a plow. In ancient times, oxen were often driven to pull heavy burdens and were incentivized by people standing behind them with sharp sticks (ox goads) or whips. It wasn’t kind, nor particularly merciful. Yet, Jesus stood between us and the whip, taking the punishment we earned. Mercy. He withheld and absorbed the pain and bears the load himself.
The religious leaders and many in the audience missed it. They were hurling ox goads at other’s wrongs. Nothing anybody did (or didn’t do) was acceptable, even Jesus’ own actions and those of John the Baptist were met with scorn and self-righteous attitudes.
These people were holding the wrong yoke. They didn’t realize it but they were burdening themselves deeper and deeper in the mire. They constantly forced unbearable yokes upon themselves and one another. When they, inevitably, didn’t measure up, they were swift to follow with an ox goad instead of compassion. They were trapped in a yoke of their own making, unable to give or receive mercy.
Many of them never got what Jesus was trying to tell them. Hence, the really strong warning Jesus gives the towns who couldn’t see past their own noses even with miracles of mercy and grace smacking them right in the face. Put another way, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”
Sometimes the yoke can look like all the right things. Maybe it’s an idealized notion of what something ought to be. Maybe it’s even within a church or a ministry. Maybe it’s other people’s expectations of you or the weight of their godly passions and dreams that for whatever reason you feel obligated to take up. Then, when something happens and the body of Christ starts to bicker, we go right back to putting yokes on each other and we can’t even see it, because we think we are doing the thing God wants: sacrifice, not mercy.
That doesn’t mean there is no judgment of wrongdoing. Jesus is very clear that there is. It’s not an anything goes, do what’s right for you, claim your truth, judgement free zone. It’s also true though, that we (human beings) are not the judges. God is. When people come to Jesus, when they seek him out, Jesus is quick to step between them and the ox goad, freeing them from the burden of the plough. Jesus is the only one with the right to condemn, and yet he doesn’t, “Let him who is without sin, cast the first stone.”
Every person must choose for him (or her) self which yoke they are going to hold. Like Paul, Jesus allows people to “kick against the goads” for themselves, but it doesn’t get them very far, and it makes the pains of life worse.
The only yoke that matters is the one that is between you and Jesus. You’ve got to accept it, but once you do, you find there is no condemnation within it. Jesus has withheld the punishment from you. He pulls the weight and lavishes unmerited grace and favor. Everyone is yoked to something, but only Jesus’ yoke is freedom.
Grace and Peace,
A.A. Wordsmith
Selah Vie! 