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SHOULDER THE YOKE WITH JESUS - stephenkhoo - 07-17-2014 09:30 AM
SHOULDER THE YOKE WITH JESUS
SCRIPTURE READINGS: ISA 26:7-9. 12.16-19; MT 11:28-30
http://www.universalis.com/20140717/mass.htm
Are you over burdened by the pressures of work, family responsibilities and the demands of the office you hold? Are you overwhelmed by anxiety over your financial difficulties or health? Are you emotionally wounded because of rocky and estranged relationships with your spouse, children and loved ones? If you are, then perhaps you have been relying only on yourself and your ingenuity to resolve all these challenges in your life.
Isaiah in the first reading tells us that justice and salvation are not brought about merely by human effort alone. Only God can help us to overcome all the obstacles of life. It is to God that we must turn for deliverance and salvation. With God, nothing is impossible, for He can even give life to corpses: “Your dead will come to life, their corpses will rise; awake, exult, all you who lie in the dust, for your dew is a radiant dew and the land of ghosts will give birth.”
So what must we do? Turn to the Lord in prayer and supplication! With earnestness, we must seek the Lord. “At night my soul longs for you and my spirit in me seeks for you; when your judgements appear on earth the inhabitants of the world learn the meaning of integrity.” The psalmist testifies to God’s mercy for us. His experience of this mercy gave him confidence that God “will arise and have mercy on Zion, for it is time to pity her. For her stones are dear to your servants, and her dust moves them to pity … He has regarded the prayer of the destitute, and not despised their prayer.” And “from His holy height, from heaven He beheld the earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoners, to release those doomed to die.”
The gospel tells us that Jesus is the embodiment of God’s mercy. He who assumed our humanity understands our struggles more than anyone else. In His compassion, He invites us saying, “Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened and I will give you rest.” Such an invite cannot be rejected because we are exhausted and frustrated with our lives. Indeed, His words are so consoling to those of us who are so tired of life and its drudgery. But how can this promised rest be truly ours?
The condition to share in the rest of Jesus is that we shoulder His yoke and learn from Him, for He said, “I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” What does it mean to shoulder His yoke? Some scholars suggest that the yoke Jesus was referring to is a double-yoke that is placed over the neck of two oxen so that together they help each other to plough the field. So when Jesus tells us to shoulder His yoke, He is asking us to carry our yoke together with Him. He will supply us the grace, that additional strength to carry our crosses and burdens in life.
Alternatively, this yoke is sometimes understood as Jesus Himself carrying us on His shoulder, like the man who saw only one set of footprints in the sand and thought that God had deserted him in his hour of need, only to realize later that those footprints were not his but the Lord’s. This is of course an inspiring way to see Jesus assisting us. Such an interpretation has its validity because the gospel tells us that Jesus carries our infirmities in His body.
I would prefer to believe that this yoke that Jesus is asking us to carry is a reference to our sharing His mind and His heart. When we enter into the mind and heart of Jesus; His compassion for the poor and the suffering, especially for sinners, and His love for His Father, then we can appreciate why Jesus did not mind undertaking so much sufferings upon Himself. Simply because Jesus is the Compassionate One! He loves us so much that there is nothing too heavy for Him to carry. When there is love in whatever we do, no suffering is too much, because love makes the suffering tolerable and even joyful. Within this context, the claim of Jesus that His yoke is easy and His burden light makes more sense. Consequently, to carry the yoke of Jesus is to see everything through His perspective.
Such a change of heart and mindset requires, first and foremost, humility. If Jesus could empty Himself of His divinity and suffer for us unto death on the cross, it was because He “is gentle and humble of heart.” His humility enables Him to be identified with us in our humanity. His gentleness comes from His solidarity with us in our fight against sin and temptation. Therefore, if we are going through intense struggles in our personal life, especially in dealing with our sins, particularly that of pride and insecurity, be assured that that God is compassionate and He is patient with us in our growth.
With humility, we can also recognize that our sufferings and struggles in life are part of the whole process of growth in spiritual maturity and freedom. As Isaiah exclaims, “Lord, you are giving us peace, since you treat us as our deeds deserve. Distressed, we search for you, Lord; the misery of oppression was your punishment for us.” Jesus Himself learnt obedience through suffering. If we find ourselves unable to come out of our misery or our sins, it is because we have not yet come to the point of realization that we must let go and let God take over. Until then, the Lord is waiting for us to come to the point where we, like the woman with child, writhe and cry out in labour but conceive nothing! When we see the futility of our reliance on ourselves and on our human ability, then we will at last seek Him who is the mighty Saviour.
Through our sufferings too, we will also come to a situation of wanting to give up our sins of pride and unbelief. Only when we decide to give up sin and the idols in our lives, especially our ego, then God will listen to our prayers for aid. For only “the path of the upright man is straight, you smooth the way of the upright. Following the path of your judgements, we hoped in you, Lord, your name, your memory, are all my soul desires.” More often than not, it is our sins that lead us to the situations we are in, hence it is only through our brokenness that we can come to the utter submission of our lives to Him. And when we accept the crosses in our lives out of love for others, or for our purification, then the burdens we carry become light and liberating. No longer will we see them as something negative, but they become the means to authentic love and freedom.
Written by The Most Rev William Goh