July 6 2008
Text: Matthew 11:16-19; 25-30
Pr.Robert Goldstein
On the Lightness of Being

Around the table sat seven adults discussing prayer. Four out the seven adults shared that prayer was usually difficult for them because they feared encountering a wrathful God. The inner voice that they heard, if they dared to still themselves for silent or contemplative prayer, was the voice of a demanding judge, a harsh arbiter of the law. Those four adult Christians did not often or easily prayer, and one can understand why. For them the Christian life is full of unrelenting demands, harsh condemnations, and a towering divinity ready to exact punishment upon them for failure to live up to God's commands. It sounds like a caricature, except that it's true.

Many people labor under immense burdens of fear, or they struggle under the weight of a nagging yet profoundly debilitating sense of unworthiness. Frightened or beaten down, their Christian life is ponderous, joyless, deadening. Hemmed in on all sides, the hope and compassion that radiates at the center of the gospel is all but extinguished. When the flute is played, they do not dance, and when others are grieving they do not mourn.

When John the Baptist comes announcing the Christ, they cannot trust him. When the Christ comes, they do not receive him. Nothing is more destructive of the Gospel than a deeply scored mark of demand and judgment. Nothing is farther from gospel-good news-than the mistaken conviction that one's faith has to measure up to impossibly demanding standards. Under such misconceptions we are simply unable to hear the startlingly good news of freedom announced and fulfilled by Christ.

There are those good hearts of fine people who want to believe in God but cannot believe in such monstrous distortions which divide people by condemning homosexuals, women or races to some lower castes of existence. Jesus was never there. He is with the religiously condemned, with the marginalized, as he is with every person, straight or homosexual who comes through this door of this church. Jesus doesn't want to change you into something you are not or couldn't even become. Jesus is here to affirm you as God has created you in all your uniqueness and humanity -straight or gay, male or female, rich or poor, whatever category you see yourself in. Some people in the name of religion make Christianity so inhuman, so miserable, so sick in sinfulness. But Jesus has the reputation as a jolly drinker and a lover of this precious life we have been given.

Sure, there are two seasons in the church year when we focus on self reflection, being Advent and Lent, but even they are not there for the purpose of making religion morose and gloomy, but to remind us that God loves us and wants us in God's Spirit to make amends for wrongs we may have committed. Not to end there, but to grow in that graciousness that God really is and by which God relates to the world around us. This season of Pentecost is colored green because it reminds us of growth in nature as well as growth in ourselves in Christ. The two are not unrelated. Their source is a loving Creator.

To all who are burdened, whether by the driving demands of should and ought or the unavoidable weight of human suffering, the final verses of today's reading fall like rains on a summer desert. There is One who exchanges the millstones of life for the much lighter yoke of grace. Awaiting us just around the corner is a place of rest prepared by the Christ who is "gentle and humble of heart". Jesus' "yoke is easy," and his "burden is light". There is nothing we can do to earn such a gift and there is nothing the world can press upon us to deny it. At the heart of God's kingdom sits not a stern judge but a loving redeemer with arms warmly outstretched.

It takes many of us a lifetime to fully embrace the paradoxical gift of the gospel-ponderous law gives way to fountains of grace, that death of selfishness leads to new life so that death itself becomes not a focus for fear, but a companion on the road of eternal life. This is the realized promise Jesus offers through his life, death, and resurrection.

Like the character of Manuel Jordan played by Billy Bob Thornton in the movie Levity, on our own we will never find a way to atone for our wrongs or bear the weight of human suffering. We cannot be smart enough or strong enough nor do enough time in the prison cells of our own lives we make for ourselves to put everything right. And finding only an angry God when we come to such awareness, hunger and need, is like a father handing his hungry child a stone instead of bread. Jesus is this bread.

The God Jesus knows is not heavy but delightfully light-hearted. Such lightness always comes as gift. When we finally receive that gift, like an infant receiving the love and security of a gentle parent, we will know the "rest for our souls" announced by Jesus.

Amen