Sermon on 4th Sunday after
Trinity - Clarendon Team Service during Coronvirus
Lockdown – Sunday 5th July 2020
Matthew
11:16-19; 25-30
May the words of my mouth, and the
meditation of all our hearts, be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord.
Amen
Those final words of Jesus in this passage are, I think, very familiar
to many of us and a great comfort at times when we are struggling with the
burdens of life and wonder whether we can carry them any further; perhaps just
as we have been feeling during this period of lockdown.
I have certainly turned to them
many times in my life when ever more burdens seem to have been loaded onto me
from work, family, church and just daily living. There was a saying where I worked for many
years – “when the going gets tough the tough get going” meaning that through
sheer determination we can ourselves get through the difficult times if we act
tough enough. The reality, though, can
be quite different. Often when we try
and do things ourselves, without the help of others, we can make a bigger mess
of things than when we started. I have a
box full of tools in my garage which I have had to buy in order to put right
the things I messed up through thinking I could do DIY in the first place. Jesus knew this and that he, through the
Father, could take the burden and that we could learn through his example. He, Jesus, tells the crowd, is gentle and
humble in heart and asks us to be the same. My yoke is easy (he has the Father
with him) and his burden is therefore light. Just in the same way I will leave
it to the removal men to shift the piano so too should we sometime leave it to
the expert – Jesus.
There is a story told of a woodpecker who, was tapping away at a pine
tree one afternoon when suddenly the tree was struck by lightning and was split
right down the middle from top to bottom.
The woodpecker looked at it in amazement for a moment and flew off. He came back later leading nine other
woodpeckers. Then, with a great deal of swagger and pride he turned to the nine
others and said “There it is, gentlemen, just like I told you” taking credit
for having split the tree with his beak.
He was not humble and had misled the others and went away with a false
sense of his own importance and ability.
Jesus tells us to be gentle and humble like him and recognize that God
can carry the heaviest burden – but we must also acknowledge him as our bearer
of it.
Jesus was at great pains to teach the elders and the Pharisees the
importance of humility and that we should accept God, not like our woodpecker
friend, but like infants – believing and trusting. We can get hung up not only on our own
importance but also by our attitude towards learning and knowledge. Like the
elders and Pharisees, we might know the law, we might know scripture, we might
read them every day but unless we look at them in simple terms their meaning
can be hidden because we are trying to see things beyond what they really are.
Jesus says “God has hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and
has revealed them to infants”.
How often have you heard the phrase “from out of the very mouths of
babes comes wisdom?” How often has a child said something to you which has been
so profound? So honest? That is what
Jesus is saying here. We often
over-complicate things, especially our faith.
Education is important, don’t get me wrong, but it is what you do with
that education and knowledge. How you use it.
Do you use it wisely? Do you act out what you have learned in scripture
or just add it to the list of things you store away in your cupboard of
knowledge for the pub quiz! Turn that knowledge to wisdom.
Our perceptions (often false) can also get in the way of our faith as
again Jesus illustrates at the beginning of the passage – ‘The Son of Man came
eating and drinking and they say “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of
tax-collectors and sinners!”’ Throughout the bible we see Jesus associating
with all sorts of “the wrong people” as far as the respectable elders are
concerned; but Jesus’s answer is again simple “wisdom is vindicated by her
deeds”. How many people chosen by God in
the Old Testament were “wrong-uns”? – Moses, a murderer, Jacob – a deceiver,
Rahab a city prostitute to name but three.
James in his epistle reminds us to show our faith by the deeds we do,
not that our deeds in themselves will lead to salvation but our deeds will come
out of the faith we have and the way we show it in the way we behave. That is exactly, I believe, what Jesus is
telling us in this passage. Be humble,
be faithful, think simply, relax and leave the heavy burdens to the one who
knows how best to carry them. After all, to do otherwise is only making our
lives all that bit harder.
Amen
149/01072020
