2022-11-04 A Meditation on Easy Ways

“For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”” (Mt 11:30 ESV)

Anticipation, anticipation, anticipation, the young journeyman, journeywoman, wants to be sharp, ready, bull-by-the-horns kind of purposeful. And then, finds her or himself in the thick of things. Rollicking good times alongside panic attack and doubt; the rolling goodness is wrapping up and quietly accomplishing the panoramic light burden and easy yoke promised by our Lord and Savior: it is a quiet yoke because no other exchange with the Most High will do. We are to abide in that place where all is re-oriented outward, rays of light illuminating all things in our lives, not just the presentable and boastful. So the youth and the aged alike put self on the altar, let self go by the baptismal waters, no longer fear what outlays are endeavored upon by our inner selves.

We turn anxious hours into cause for testimony. We have harrowing experiences of grabbing hold and refusing to couch our faith in an easy yoke and light burden. So the one with few possessions is now the head, and the rich are—not because Jesus is greedy or coveting their stuff—having a harder time accepting that kind of liberation.

Today, do you hear His call to accept a new kind of headship in your life? It is a headship bringing immediate reassurance: God is not banking your salvation, you who are saved, on any wild bequest of your goods. Nor is He banking on you dropping everything and going into the mission field. Nor is He letting your looks or family background or wit or capacities prevent you from simple approach, drawing near, finding a fellow traveler, attractive in all the fact-of-the-matter ways, not overbearing in any such regard, but likable and decent, knowing the wit and appearance of the face servant-minded, the mind at ease and outwardly turned.

So the new Head is more than familiar with our old guise, our former allegiances, our past fantasy. He is a fellow traveler; He has gone that route and more; He is in no position to judge, as He Himself went the way of the Accused and Convicted. So, today is as good a day as any to begin with the First Things: forgiveness of sin, that is, acceptance of us as we in fact are, in all our conceits, in all our accomplishments according to the world, in all our inner narrative of what makes life tick along. And today, we are turning a corner, stormcloud and clamor giving way to an easy yoke and a light burden.

For we clamor around deep self-identities. We would wish to be no longer in the driver’s seat, if it is a driving that asks us to be anything like this One; would that we were conscripted unto holy service, right? Would that all existential questions about our decision-making and agency, were handed over to a God who properly, with sufficient ministry of Presence, does call unto us. For then, then we could say, “It was He who saved me, not me myself!”.

Yet the world mocks, and demons come out screaming and self-justifying, because they are ministered to by one long at peace with a church’s established hangups: it’s “Law”. The one at peace, making self-humbling jest, laughing around things too Serious and Verboten to discuss, is one who heals, who causes demons to make their presence known in absolute frustration.

The anticipation of future trials, is a state of mind that can carry us through always ready and somehow avoiding what we internally fear may be too great a burden for ourselves. Rather, we anticipate it may involve abandonment and unpopularity. We fear all Christian faith is sharp on this point, that each disciple went to a martyrdom, and we murmur thanksgiving when near and present, prayerful, with friends, all the while wondering when and how trials will come upon us.

Yet the birth pangs are now. The hangups, the things we clutch and hold fast to, the relationships not delivered over unto that True relator, Jesus, the relationships that distract, detracting from prayer by an insecurity or an unknown, those wherein we are trying to please rather than to know that gentle presence that does minister calm and relaxation. Those false friends are false, not because of anything they have done, but because we have failed to turn them over unto our Lord of the Harvest, whose burden is light and whose yoke is easy.