Jesus' yoke and burden

Sermon for Pentecost VI, 2026, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY
Texts: Psalm 145:8-15, Romans 7:15-25a, Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

If you are like me, of a certain age, and grew up in the church using the 1928 prayer book, the sentence toward the end of the gospel reading will be familiar, and I can still recite it by heart: “Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy laden and I will refresh you.” It was one of several scriptural quotations said right after the absolution of sins, and they were called the “comfortable words.” I didn’t appreciate the Elizabethan English that the 1928 prayer book preserved until I read Shakespear’s plays in high school. I also glossed over the word “travail” until one day during the service I realized what it meant: it came directly from the French verb travailler, meaning to work, or to labor, and suddenly the sentence made sense to me. It was an invitation from Jesus to bring our laborious burdens to him so that we could find rest. Later on, I became familiar with the rest of that paragraph, where Jesus invites us to take on his yoke, and I imagined an uncomfortable harness of wood and iron that beasts of burden wear to do their work. But, it is an invitation to perform another sort of work, one that uses a different yoke.

We all have experienced burdens that feel too heavy to carry. This parish has had four funerals in the past two months that have left us struggling with grief and loss of long-time friends. We are dealing almost daily with social and political strife and instability. We are aware of the food desert in parts of Old Louisville from the unrelenting need seen at Calvary’s food pantry, a service we support. We have experienced economic burdens of higher gas and food prices as market investments ride a roller coaster, gaining and losing value. We also have disagreements with family and friends that we cannot seem to resolve, or at least find peaceful common ground. And there are many other burdens that we carry, deeply personal burdens that are ours alone that we hide from the world. How do we manage to find the strength to carry all of that? Sometimes we do not have the strength, and we fall, and the many crosses we carry end up on the ground in a heap around us. How can we look to Jesus, who carried his cross all the way to Golgotha to die on it?

It does us no good to sacrifice ourselves to our burdens, to suffer for pity or recognition that we have the heaviest burden of anyone. We are called to be Christ-like in life, not die as he did. But, to take on his yoke just seems like one too many burdens, like one more password I have to remember, even if it is for a password manager. It is counterintuitive to take on Jesus’ yoke, to add to what we already carry, and on top of that to do everything that he did. But that is not what Jesus calls us to do. The heaviest burdens we carry are feelings, like fear and dread, and thoughts of, “Am I good enough?” or “Did I do the right thing?” or “What if I fail?” We are like Paul in his letter to the Romans, where he agonizes over the paralysis of not controlling his desires and doing things he does not want, and unable to do what he is called by God to do. It is just too much for him and too much for us. But then we hear in the Psalm, “The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great kindness. The Lord is loving to everyone and his compassion is over all his works.” This is what Jesus’ yoke is built of, patient compassion and mercy for us and our suffering. Another part is what we hear in the Absolution, that we are forgiven and strengthened in goodness by God. Yet another part of the yoke is freedom from having to prove ourselves again and again, a desperation to be worthy of God’s love and attention and salvation. What we lose track of is that Jesus is in the other yoke, next to us when we fall, and he picks up some of the crosses that we dropped. This is what we hear in the Psalm, that the Lord upholds those who fall and he lifts up those who are bowed down. We are not alone, or condemned, or ignored as we carry our burdens. We will find that our burdens are lightened by Jesus’ presence in our lives and by being lifted up by him like he lifted up others in compassion. When we take on his yoke of love, we are freed from the emotions and doubts that we are not good enough, or not religious enough, or other thoughts that bring us to our knees.

There’s a paradox here, though. How can we be freed if we take on a yoke, even if it is Jesus’ yoke? Doesn’t that mean that we are still bound, still carrying a burden? Yes, we are, but if we think we can be the authors of our own salvation, if we think we can avoid those burdens altogether, well, look around at where a lack of humility has led us. The paradox is resolved with the question, “What will you be yoked to? Will it be to make unconditional love real, or will it be to the worst part of yourself?” Jesus’ burdens that we are yoked to are what he calls us to: loving our neighbors as ourselves, including the unlovable, setting aside hate for love of our enemies, caring for all of the needs of the world, and seeking out righteousness before God rather than trying to outdo each other. He calls us to do these and more because we are loved unconditionally, and it is this love that gives us the strength to wear his yoke and do them. They are not easy to do because they go against our immediate reactions of fear, loathing, and confusion. But it is those emotions that add to our burdens because we are struggling with their weight as well. When we do things because we love, the burden is light, as Jesus says. We ourselves, and what we do, are lifted up not just by love, but by God because we follow Jesus’ example. We can never get away from burdens altogether, like grief and uncertainty. But we can ask what we want to be yoked to. Do you want to be yoked to fear and anger, or do you want to be yoked to love? How you answer will determine how heavy or how light your burden will be.