Non-burdensome Religion

A NON-BURDENSOME RELIGION

(Matthew 11.28-30)

"Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light". (Matthew 11.28-30)

Whenever I hear those words of Jesus, I am transported to a property in the mid-Pyrenees in France owned by a friend of mine.

There, set in a very rural setting, and hanging over a bare wooden kitchen farm table, is a yoke, once used for harnessing oxen.

It is a wooden frame which is designed to fit over the necks of two beasts of burden, thereby putting them into double harness and enabling them to do together what neither by itself could do. It is rough and ready made and I am glad I don't have to wear it since it is also pretty heavy.

The sight of animals wearing such yokes in order to plough the fields, or to carry heavy loads on carts, would have been a familiar sight to Jesus in New Testament times. In fact, there is a legend that Jesus, working in his father's carpenter’s shop, made the finest yokes in the whole of Galilee and people would travel many miles to have a yoke made and fitted by him.

I cannot vouch as to the truth of that but it not only reminds us that Jesus was the son of a carpenter, but also that great care needs to be exercised in the making of yokes to ensure that they do not bite into the neck of animals and cause unnecessary suffering.

And that is exactly what the Jewish religion did with its emphasis upon the keeping of rules and regulations. It had become an uncomfortable burden upon the shoulders of Jews and caused them much personal suffering. Instead of leaping forth with joy in their love for God, they had become weighted down with the observance of the law.

You don't need me to tell you how important the law - or what we call the Ten Commandments - was and still is to the Jews.

For the Jews, loving God was and is expressed in the keeping of the law. Now that may sound very simple to people like you and me. But is it?

For instance, take the fourth commandment which is about doing no work on the Sabbath. What do we really mean by work? The Jews defined work under 39 different headings which are called "Fathers of Work".

One of the things that they were forbidden to do is to carry a burden. But you may well ask, what is a burden? And they defined a burden as being "milk enough for a gulp, honey enough to put on a sore, oil enough to anoint the smallest member (which is further defined as a little toe of a child one day old) water enough to rub off an eye plaster, leather enough to make an amulet, ink enough to write two letters of the alphabet". And so I could go on. I think you are getting the message.

And the people who defined these rules and regulations were the Scribes and by the third century AD, there were just so many rules and regulations that they could not even remember all of them. And so it became necessary to commit them to writing in what is called the Mishnah. This consists of 63 books, each about 800 pages long. Not content with this, the Scribes then embarked upon writing commentaries upon these books to help people to understand them more fully. So two commentaries came to be written - The Jerusalem Talmund which consists of twelve volumes and the Babylonian Talmund which consists of 60 volumes. In short, the simple ten commandments finished up as a library - for ever unfinished - of rules and regulations.

No wonder Jesus likened the religion of the Jews of his day to that of submission to the burden of a heavy yoke. As he says elsewhere in St. Matthew's gospel when talking about the Scribes, "they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders". (Matthew 23.4)

So he invites his heroes to "take my yoke......For my yoke is easy and my burden is light". What a relief those words must have seemed to the early followers. Jesus comes and rescues them from a burdensome religion and replaces all those many rules and regulations with the one simple rule of love.

In answer to the question from puzzled worn out followers of Judaism as to which is the greatest commandment, he replies "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind" and "you shall love your neighbour as yourself'. (Matthew 22.37-39).

No wonder St. Augustine is alleged to have said "love God and do what you like", because if you really love God, you will automatically demonstrate that love in the way you regard other people. In other words, it is not a licence for permissive behaviour but for holy behaviour.

I recall someone once saying that you can always pick out Christians in a crowd because they always have solemn faces! Yes, we often behave like the Jews of the New Testament and walk around with long faces making our religion a heavy burden to be borne, rather walking with a spring in our steps and a smile upon our faces as one in love with God.

There should be a song of joyfulness upon our lips and not a worried brow upon our foreheads wondering whether or not we have done the right thing. Religion is about loving God and not about keeping rules and regulations. True we may choose to express that love in a tangible and disciplined fashion, such as being regular in worship, generous in giving, and willing in service. But first and foremost it is about loving God because he first loved us.

Now that does not mean that there is no room for striving or for effort on our part. It does not mean that we just "lie back and think of God" and all will be well. Jesus does not say there is "no" yoke or "no" burden but rather that "my yoke is easy, and my burden is light".

After all we are disciples and the word 'disciple' comes from the root word which means discipline. But discipline in our daily lives as Christians should be such that it challenges us to growth and not a burden that weighs us down and destroys growth.

I am reminded of those very wise words of St. Benedict on the abbot’s role in his community. He is "so to temper all things that the strong may have something to long after, and the weak may not be drawn back in alarm".

In other words we should set ourselves a level of demand that will not frighten us away, but will nevertheless hold out a challenge for us. To put that in very simple words, it is better to set oneself a target of five minutes of private prayer and allow it to grow into ten minutes, rather than to aim for ten and give up after three.

What I am saying is that we need a yoke of discipline, but one that fits comfortably to our own particular needs and circumstances whereby we seek to express our love for God.

Jesus does not free us from the yoke of discipline but rather encourages us to discover one that is easy to wear and whose burden is light and thereby we can find "rest for our souls".