 Rev. Jeff Nelson |
The
Yoke's On Us
Sermon:
Scripture: |
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They were there again the other morning. I felt their presence from the very moment my eyes opened on the new day. As I stood at the sink to brush my teeth and shave my beard, I could feel their presence—near, yet elusive. I asked Bridget if she could sense their presence. She said, “Jeff, there are pills for things like this.” I got myself dressed, ate my breakfast, grabbed my backpack, and made my way out the door— all the while with this hunch that I was being followed. I felt them climb into the car with me. A glance in the rearview mirror and there they were. All buckled in and ready to go. “Who are you?” I asked. The one on the right said, “Jeff, we’ve been through this a hundred times. You ask this question every morning.” “Tell me again,” I asked. “What’s your name? I can’t recall.” “Sin,” the one said in huff. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember your name, either,” I said to the one on the left. “That’s all right,” the other answered with a kind smile. “My name is Grace.” So there they were, Sin and Grace, sitting right there in my back seat. “Why are you here?” I asked. Sin didn’t hesitate. “To look out for you! It’s a hard world out there, and without me, people will trample you.” I glanced at Grace, who waited, as always, for Sin to finish. Grace replied, “I’m here to show you how to look out for somebody other than yourself, because it’s a hard world out there, and without me, you’ll trample people.” It turns out that Sin and Grace have been with me every day of my life. They go everywhere I go, see everything I see, and know me through and through. That day, as Sin, Grace and I rolled down the Lodge, someone driving a Ford Excursion pulled out in front of us, causing me break suddenly. Sin and Grace bumped their noses on the backs of the seats in front of them and gasped for air. Sin leaned forward, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “You gonna take that, Jeff? That guy’s got some serious issues. Someone needs to send him a message.” Sin has a point. Someone needs to teach this guy a lesson. An errant Excursion is a SWMD—a Suburban Weapon of Mass Destruction. But just as my knuckles turned white as my grip on the steering wheel tightened, Grace leaned forward and whispered, “That guy’s got some serious issues, Jeff. Just like you. Let it go.” And that’s the way it goes. Sometimes Sin wins. Sometimes Grace. I hear them out, every moment of every day. But they always give me the freedom to choose between the two. They’re with me all day. They are inseparable. Sin is part of my human nature. Grace, my Christian nature. I struggle between the two. But truth be told, Sin wins out more than I’d like to admit. When the homeless man walks in and asks me for twenty dollars to buy a new pair of shoes, Sin asks me if he deserves it. Grace asks me if I deserve the shoes on my own feet. When someone takes an unfair, cruel shot at me, Sin says, “Never forget!” Grace says, “Remember who you are.” When someone provokes me, Sin says, “Stand your ground.” Grace says, “Blessed are the peace-makers.” When someone hurts me, Sin says, “An eye for an eye.” Grace says, “Turn the other cheek.” Sin keeps an eye on his enemies; Grace prays for them. Sin packs a piece of chalk in his pocket to keep score of rights and wrongs; Grace carries an eraser to wipe them all away. Sin seeks revenge; Grace, redemption. Sin is hard headed; Grace is soft hearted. Have you ever met these two, Sin and Grace? Do they ride in the backseat of your car? Which one rides shotgun? Our scripture tonight suggests that Paul knows all too well the ongoing struggle between these characters. In this seventh chapter of the book of Romans, Paul seems to suggest that Sin and Grace have rented little loft apartments in his head and throw wild parties when he lies down at night. Listen to the words of Paul again. This time they are taken from Eugene Petersen’s contemporary adaptation, The Message: What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary.
But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.
It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.
I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question? If there was ever a piece of scripture that speaks to a universal condition of humanity, this is it. We’ve all been there, to a place that Paul describes this way: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” It is the crossroads where our best intentions meet our human brokenness…
“I’m going on a diet this
Monday for sure!” We so often find ourselves in this place, trying with every fiber of our beings to change ourselves, only to land right back where we started. For each step we take forward, we seem to eventually take the same one back. “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” Why do we keep getting stuck in the patterns, behaviors and ways of thinking that continually prevent us from doing the things we want or need to do and from living life in the way it is meant to be lived? Biblical scholar David Bartlett suggests that, “The fact that we want to do what is right shows that what is right is right. The fact that we don’t do what we want to do shows that there is something even stronger than our principles. That something, says Paul, is sin.” Sin. Now there is one of those heavy-duty religious words that comes with a ton of baggage. Too often, sin is used only to make people feel guilty or judged. Too often, sin is used to promote self-righteousness rather than to reveal God’s righteousness. “I am glad I’m not like those sinners…” (which is a more seductive form of sin altogether). Truth be told, the church has done a poor job in dealing with sin. Too often, the church and its leaders (I’m preaching to myself now) have reduced sin to a list of behaviors to avoid. With a stern look and a pointing finger, we say, “Don’t drink, smoke, cuss or chew, or go with girls who do!” When it comes to sin, the church basically has said, “Don’t, Don’t, Don’t, Don’t, Don’t!!!” (Maybe when it comes to sin and the sinners who sin, the church might instead say, “Come, come, come, come, come!!!”) You see, the problem with such a limited notion of sin is that it concerns itself with behavior modification rather than soul transformation. Dealing only with the behaviors keeps us on the surface and in the shallow end of the pool. I believe that God calls us into the deeper water of transformation. Instead of remaining on the surface, we must realize that what really constitutes sin is what lies beneath the unhealthy, oft-repeated behavior. Sin is the place of fear, hurt, anger, shame or frustration that continually leads us to do the very things we don’t want to do. Sin is believing and acting as if our fear is the only fear, our hurt is the only hurt, our anger is righteous anger, our shame is the only shame, our will is in step with God’s will. Sin is the place within us that leads us to separate from God and from each other. If we want to get serious about dealing with sin, we will move away from behavior modification and invite God into soul transformation. We will do the hard and often frightening work of opening up the deep, dark recesses of our hearts to the places where our insecurities and frailties lie. If we want transformation, let’s let God get in there. Our sin—our brokenness, our insecurity, our fragile egos, our need for control, our fear of intimacy, our fears of being unwanted, unnecessary or unloved—whatever it is that lies underneath the actions we wish we could change but cannot, is the place we need to invite God to be. (As a person who has struggled with his weight, I am finally getting it. It is not about what I eat…it’s about what’s eating me. And if I want my condition to change, it is more than just my relationship with food that has got to change. It is my relationship with God that must change first. I have to trust God with my deepest insecurities and frailties. And sometimes that is a scary proposition.) I think of St. Augustine, who in the fourth century wrote his Confessions, a book about his struggle with the desire to do what is right versus the desire to do what feels good, pleasurable, easy, safe or expedient in the moment. Augustine was a world-class partier in his day. He tried it all. He was a lost, wandering soul. He would come so close to turning his life around, then his desires for other things would get the best of him, his insecurities would flare up again, and he would wander off time after time. It is a heartbreaking story most of the way through, because like Paul, St. Augustine knows what he should do but he cannot bring himself to do it! The book rises to a crescendo where you hear Augustine cry out like Paul, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” He finally decides he can no longer run from God, he can no longer carry this burden alone, and he throws himself into the arms of his Lord and Savior. At this point in the book, Augustine pens these poignant words to Christ: When at last I cling to you with all my being, for me there will be no more sorrow, no more toil. Then at last I shall be alive with true life, for my life will be filled by you. You raise up and sustain all those whose lives are filled by you, but my life is not yet filled by you and I am a burden to myself. “I am a burden to myself.” Have you ever felt that way? It is when Paul finally throws himself into the arms of the God made known to us in Jesus Christ. “Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” he cries out. This brings us to this second text from Matthew’s Gospel. In the first, Paul introduced us to Sin. Here we meet the second character in our story, Grace. Here is what Grace sounds like. It is the voice of Jesus standing on a hill, his arms open wide, offering these words to a sin-burdened world: Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, 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 your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. This is what Grace looks like—the arms of a loving God who understands and clearly knows that we are not alone in the struggles of our heartaches, hard heads, broken dreams and broken relationships. And when we, the weary and heavy laden come, Christ gives us his yoke. Grace is a yoke. A yoke is a wooden brace placed on the shoulders of work animals so that they can be led where the farmer wants them to go. This is important, and to be honest, I don’t know if I ever understood this until now. When we come to Christ, he doesn’t remove the burden from us. There is no promise to make it disappear. Grace is Christ placing a yoke on our shoulders. Notice that the yoke is not made for you or me alone; there is room for another. Grace is the place for another to climb in and shoulder the burden with us. The life of faith is not some pie-in- the-sky dream that all of our troubles will disappear. It is the realization that Jesus has offered to carry our burden with us, to make it not quite so heavy. And maybe since Jesus is yoked with us, when we find ourselves confronting those situations where sin always gets the best of us—where we decide one way, but then act another—then maybe, if we wait before acting, Jesus will lead us down a different road. Grace is coming to realize that the yoke is on us. I used to work in a building that had an active Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that met in a room across the hall. It was where the battle between Sin and Grace—knowing what was right and not being able to do it—was played out each and every week. When those folks prayed, it was for real. And when they asked God to yoke up with them, the stakes couldn’t have been higher. From listening to them, I learned the first three steps of the 12 step program. I realize tonight that they are what these two passages are talking about. 1. We admitted we were powerless over sin—that our lives had become unmanageable. “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” 2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. “Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” 3. We made a decision to turn our wills and our lives over to the care of God. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, 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 your souls.” So this week when you get into the car, take a look in the rearview mirror and see if Sin and Grace are sitting there, and invite Grace to sit shotgun. Show Grace where you live and invite Grace to stay. Take Grace into your living room, your kid’s room, your den and your master suite. Take Grace next door, to the office, to the soccer field and to the supermarket. Take Grace into the loft apartments of your head at midnight, when you find yourself tallying up the score of the day. And when the sun peeks through the east window in the morning, and when you climb back into your car, look into the rearview mirror and ask the one sitting there this simple question: “What is your name?” He will say, with a kind smile, “Jesus.”
Note: The illustration of Sin and Grace in the back seat of my car was adapted from Mark Feldmeir’s sermon, “Don’t Do the Math,” in his book of sermons, Testimony to the Exiles.
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