Yoked with Christ
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July 5, 2020“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 your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Mt 11:28-30)
This passage has a structure to it that may be summarized as follows:
Heavy burden – Rest – Christ’s Yoke – Rest – Light burden
Known as a chiasm, this pattern of mirroring concepts makes use of some key themes from the Old and New Testaments to throw light on the central element: the yoke of Christ.
The yoke has two distinct meanings in Scripture – a negative and a positive one. First, the yoke is the symbol of a heavy burden, servitude, or oppression. Israel’s history is one of enduring from successive oppressions under the hand of foreign nations and of being released by God.
The Exodus from Egypt: “Therefore, say to the Israelites: I am the Lord. I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and will deliver you from their slavery. I will redeem you by my outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.” (Ex 6:6)
The Babylonian Exile: “For the yoke that burdened them, the pole on their shoulder, the rod of their taskmaster, you have smashed, as on the day of Midian.” (Isa 9:3)
“On that day—oracle of the Lord of hosts—I will break his yoke off your neck and snap your bonds. Strangers shall no longer enslave them.” (Jer 30:8)
God may have permitted such a yoke for a time to bring his people to consciousness of their dire need for him, but he longs to remove or even break the yoke to release his people from bondage.
Rest is also a key biblical concept, going back to the earliest days of creation:
“On the seventh day God completed the work he had been doing; he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had undertaken.” (Gn 2:2)
Man sinned and was cursed to toil, rather than entering into God’s rest: “Cursed is the ground because of you! In toil you shall eat its yield all the days of your life.” (Gn 3:17)
In Egypt, Moses pleaded for a rest from the people’s labor, but none was allowed: “Pharaoh continued, ‘Look how they are already more numerous than the people of the land, and yet you would give them rest from their labors!’” (Ex 5:5)
The rest intended by God is freedom from bondage to other nations, to other gods, which on a moral level means bondage to the lower impulses of human nature. Rest means freedom to serve God with one’s whole being.
This is expressed positively in the symbolic presentation of the Mosaic Law and of Wisdom as a yoke – this time a delightful, life-giving yoke:
“Listen, my child, and take my advice;
do not refuse my counsel.
Put your feet into her fetters,
and your neck under her yoke.
Bend your shoulders and carry her
and do not be irked at her bonds.
With all your soul draw close to her;
and with all your strength keep her ways.
Inquire and search, seek and find;
when you get hold of her, do not let her go.
Thus at last you will find rest in her,
and she will become your joy.” (Sir 6:23-28)
This passage is the single most important one for understanding today’s gospel, since it makes clear that following the way of life laid out by God is both challenging and joyful. It involves both discipline and freedom, “bonds” and “rest.”
Jesus uses the same image to refer to the Law as interpreted by the Pharisees. Twisted from its true intention to free and save, the Law becomes a burden and an impediment he wishes to remove:
“They tie up heavy burdens [hard to carry] and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them.” (Mt 23:4)
On the other hand, Jesus himself is identified with wisdom in the gospels, and in today’s passage he uses wisdom language: “Come to me,” and points to himself as the source of rest: “Learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart.” In our lives we have no shortage of burdens, and who does not yearn for rest? But what exactly is Jesus offering us – a yoke that is both burden and rest? He offers us himself. The yoke is Wisdom, the yoke is Christ, the way to the Father.
“My yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Mt 11:30).
How this can be so, since the way of the gospel is so challenging to human nature, so difficult and burdensome? John Cassian addresses this in the last of his Conferences. His answer is that one who is seriously living the gospel finds nothing too hard:
“For what can be heavy or hard to the person who has taken up Christ’s yoke with his whole mind, is established in true humility, reflects constantly upon the Lord’s suffering, and rejoices in all the hardships that come upon him, saying: ‘On this account I am content with weakness, reproaches, need, persecutions, and distress for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.’” (Conference 24.23.2)
If we embrace the way of Christ with our whole mind – whole heart – whole soul – whole strength, it becomes our joy. Wholeheartedness brings happiness. Isn’t this the truth? We are happiest when we give ourselves without reserve to the task of life under Christ’s yoke. Dom Bernardo Olivera has a saying that strikes me as deeply true: “Cenobitic happiness consists in giving oneself to the community, to each brother or sister and to the Lord.” Truly to give ourselves – not only to God in an abstract way, but to one another in a concrete way – is the only way to be happy, to find rest in our life. On the other hand, it is possible to choose another way, which does not bring rest or happiness:
“It is clearly we, I say, who make rough the straight and smooth paths of the Lord with the wicked and hard rocks of our desires, who very foolishly abandon the royal road paved with apostolic and prophetic stones and made level by the footsteps of all the holy ones and of the Lord himself, and who pursue byways and brambly roads. Blinded by the seductions of present pleasures, we crawl along the dark and obstructed trails, our feet lacerated by the thorns of vice and our wedding garment in tatters, and we are not only pierced by the sharp needles of thorny bushes but also brought low by the stings of poisonous serpents and the scorpions that lie in wait there.” (Conference 24.24.5)
These words are strong, but they speak truth. Christ’s yoke seems hard because of our obstinacy, lack of confidence and unbelief. We fight against the counsel to give away all and follow Christ, and instead seek solace in comforts and conveniences. Thinking that we will find rest for ourselves, we begin to cut corners, we wander from the path. Once we are off the beaten path, the going gets harder, much harder. Cassian says that pleasure and prosperity become our torturers – why? – because clinging to them prevents us from rejoicing in the freedom of poverty and humility. It is all too easy to become saddened, to feel burdened by worldly worries. We blame Christ for the harshness and roughness of his yoke. We blame everyone and everything else as well. But it is we ourselves who removed our necks from the yoke and wandered from the path.
I remember Mother Agnes saying that she kept finding she needed to “jack up” her monastic life, because whenever she looked away it began to sag. Jacking up sag is one our most important responsibilities in the Christian and monastic life. It is an unending task, but it can be a joyful one, if we recognize the we are always returning to the path, to the way, to the sweet yoke of Christ. St Benedict wants to be sure that one preparing to make a final commitment is clear that “from this day he is no longer free to leave the monastery, nor to shake from his neck the yoke of the rule which, in the course of so prolonged a period of reflection, he was free either to reject or accept” (RB 58.15-16). Some years in the monastery reveal that, far from remaining constant in our commitment, we keep discovering, over and over again, that we have shaken the yoke from our neck. No less stiff-necked than those who have gone before us, we need to bend that neck to the yoke again and again. The saving grace is the realization that we are not alone under the yoke. We have a partner, a yokemate, someone who labors by our side in pulling the plow. The return to the yoke is a return to the side of the One who is always calling to us: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. … For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Mt 11:28-30)
