“Faith Matters” is a column that features pieces written by local religious figures.
Have you ever seen an ox yoke? My late father had one. It was used to “yoke” or pair oxen together to pull a wagon or a plow. Ox yokes are heavy. They have a big iron ring in the top to hitch it to the apparatus used to drive the ox team.
The iron is heavy. The ox yoke itself is heavy. Did I mention it was heavy?
So why did Jesus say, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light”? (Matthew 11:30) Really? It seems a contradiction in terms, like “authentic reproduction” or “jumbo shrimp” or “fast food.”
But Jesus provokes us to think about what we believe and what we are doing about it. He talks about losing our lives to save them; giving away all we have to inherit eternal life; loving our neighbor when they don’t love us.
So what? Some of us are so stressed dealing with the heavy yokes put on us by circumstance or other people that we don’t have time for brain-teasers, “co-ans,” “counter-intuitive images” or whatever one wants to call them.
Stress. Glad you mentioned it. It’s the awkward relative at the Memorial Day picnic that everyone tolerates because no one knows how to get away from him. Or her. But there s/he is. Not all stress is bad, but it all can take its toll.
I believe the lightened yoke is love. “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” Jesus intoned, quoting Leviticus 19:18 and pairing it with the Shema, Deuteronomy 6:4 – 5, commanding love of God. Love God. Love neighbor. A light yoke.
True story: When my now 37-year-old son Adam was quite little, perhaps 3 or 4, my good friend the Rev. Dr. Clayton Miller was visiting our home. As we sat around the dining room table, something in the conversation prompted Adam to look at me and say, “I love Daddy” and look at his brother and say “I love Dan.”
Their mother said “What about me?” and Adam said, “I love me too!”
Do we? Love ourselves I mean. Because if we don’t it’s darn hard to love our neighbors. One way to love ourselves is to get to know better this Jesus who tells us his yoke is easy and his burden is light.
Another way to love ourselves is to resort to more four-letter words. Pray. Hope. Rest. A friend with 20 years in business once said, “Nobody ever died with an empty ‘in’ box.” If we want to love ourselves, each of us will find our own way to observe Sabbath and experience rest and renewal.
Another way to love ourselves is to ask “Why am I here?” What is my purpose? If we are committed to faith community, why am I part of a church, a synagogue, a masjid, a meeting? A risk in being part of the institution is forgetting why the institution exists. I have never met a person who joined and served in a faith community so they could pay bills and do work! These things are by-products of a journey that seeks meaning. How is the faith community of which we are a part seeking meaning and value? As Dr. Albert Schweitzer, the great humanitarian observed, “Try not to become a person of success but rather to become a person of value.”
When we discover meaning, practice Sabbath and get to know this Jesus, we discover the truth of his light yoke. That’s the promise from the guy in the yoke with us.
The Rev. Dr. Brian R. Bodt is Pastor of Woodbury United Methodist Church, Woodbury, CT and Pastor of Community Care at Greenfield Hill Congregational Church, Fairfield, CT. He lives in Woodbridge.
Previous“Faith Matters” columns:
• Faith Matters: Scar Glory
• Faith (Still) Matters
• Faith Matters: Gaza & Ramadan
• Faith Matters: On Passover & Redemption
• Faith Matters: Freedom Struggles & Holy Week
• Faith Matters: Welcome The Stranger
• Faith Matters: Beyond Neutrality