Scripture: Jeremiah 31:
31-33
The Yoke That’s Light
Introduction
A Confirmation text
When the Protestant
theologian Paul Tillich was preparing for Confirmation, everyone in the class was
assigned to choose a meaningful scriptural text. Tillich chose, “Come to me,
all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my
yoke upon you… for it is easy and my burden is light” (Mt
Judaism: a religion of law
Years later, Tillich wrote an essay on his
Confirmation text and entitled it The Yoke of Religion. In it he makes the remarkable assertion (offensive
to pious ears) that the burden Jesus sought to lift from people’s backs was the
burden of religion! When Jesus said, “Come to me all you who labor and
are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest,” he was looking out at the
crowds upon whose shoulders the Scribes and the Pharisees (the religious
leaders of his day) placed an unbearable yoke of 713 major laws and a whole constellation of minor
ones. He berates them saying, "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees! You place
heavy burdens upon people's backs, and you don't lift a finger to help
them" (Mt 23:4).
The
New Testament constantly alludes to that unbearable yoke. An observant Jew had to observe the right way of washing hands before eating. He had to
perform the required ablutions over fruits and vegetables brought in from the
market place. He had to follow the orthodox procedure for the washing of pots, pans and copper
kettles (Mk 7:1-4). An observant Jew had
to observe a whole constellation of picky laws like paying tithes on the mint, cumin and dill in his herb garden (Mt
Islam: a religion of law
Six centuries later,
Mohammed came and imposed upon his followers five supreme laws, or as they’re sometimes
called, The Five Pillars of Islam. An
observant Muslim must observe the law of Shahada. That’s a personal profession of
faith that “there is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.” (Recently
a Muslim in
Christianity: a religion not
of law but of grace
Both Judaism and Islam are
religions of law. Both stress
laws and obedience to them. Both stress a connection between obedience to their
laws and God’s happiness, and both stress a connection between disobedience to
their laws and God’s displeasure. Judaism and Islam are more akin to each other
than they are to Christianity which, when it is faithful to its original inspiration and
very birth, is not a religion of law.
On the contrary Christianity feels quite uneasy with law. It’s even against law. As scholars
put it, Christianity is basically antinomian. (That’s a good Greek word meaning
`against the law.’)
How often have we been startled and even scandalized at
Unlike Judaism and Islam, Christianity, when true to itself, makes no connection between our obedience and
God’s happiness or between our disobedience and God’s displeasure. Unlike Judaism and Islam, Christianity
delights in telling the parable of the Prodigal
Son. A disobedient son grabs his share of the inheritance and takes off for
a foreign land where he goes astray and squanders his money on loose living.
But when he’s broke and broken, he is, nevertheless, received back into his
father’s house with open arms. The father even throws a banquet to celebrate this
antinomian son of his who was lost but now has been found (Lk 35: 11-32).
Christianity delights also in telling the parable of the Good Shepherd who leaves his ninety-nine
sheep to go in search of the one who has strayed. When found, he wraps it
around his neck and carries it safely back home. There he calls in his
neighbors to celebrate this antinomian sheep
that was lost but now has been found (Lk 15:4-7). Religions of law are short on parables about prodigal
sons and straying sheep.
At the end of the day, Christianity is not a religion of law but
of grace. Christianity’s God makes grace rule instead of law. That is
to say, its God rejoices more over the repentance of one sinner than over
ninety-nine just people. Its God prefers the Prodigal Son to the obedient one
who stayed home, prefers the tax collector to the picky Pharisee, prefers the
Samaritan heretics to the orthodox Jew, and yes prefers even the prostitute and
adulterer to their self-righteous judges (Hans Küng’s book Why I am still a Christian). Such a God of
grace sets Christianity singing its favorite hymn: Amazing Grace.
Christianity untrue
But Christianity can and
does at times betray its original inspiration, and it, too, can become a religion
of law. Catholics, for example, have laws concerning
marriage, divorce, artificial birth control, human sexuality in general and
homosexuality in particular. Catholics have laws concerning the ordination of
married men and of women, and laws about open Communion. In order to prevent
the celebrant from becoming a `loose canon’ the church has a whole
constellation of itsy-bitsy laws concerning the right manner of celebrating
Mass and the right procedures for distributing and receiving Holy Communion.
And yes, even an itsy-bitsy law concerning the right ingredient (wheat not rice
flour) that goes into making a valid wafer for Communion.
In his essay Tillich refers to this betrayal of our antinomian
roots when he writes about, "Christian people in Christian Churches
toiling and laboring away under innumerable
laws which they cannot fulfill, from which they flee, to which they return, or
which they replace by other laws" (The Yoke Of Religion). We all
know Catholics who have fallen away from their church and then have returned “to
make their peace with God.” We know
Catholics who have simply left the church for good or have gone in search of and
found a new religious yoke to place on their shoulders—like the yoke of Buddhism[1]
or Judaism or Islam.
The Law written on the
heart
In the first
reading today, the prophet Jeremiah has the Lord God saying, “The days are
coming when I will make a new covenant with the House of Israel. I will write
my Law [singular not plural] upon their hearts. Then I will be their God and
they will be my people” (Jer 31: 31-33). It seems as though the Lord God has
become fed up with the ineffectiveness of our 713 plus laws written on paper
and has decided now to write one Law only upon our hearts.
At the end of
the day, antinomian Christianity does have a Law after all. It’s different from
the law to pay tithes on mint, cumin and dill or to keep holy the Sabbath. It’s
different from the law to fall on your knees in prayer five times a day or to make
a pilgrimage to
With a powerful
parable Jesus tells us what that one Law is. Once upon a time a man was going
from
Then along came
a Samaritan (a half-breed Jew), who wasn’t very faithful in paying tithes on
mint, cumin and dill or in observing the Sabbath. In fact, he worshipped God in
a temple on
That Law makes us human beings--beings who are compassionate, magnanimous,
caring, sensitive and unselfish. When that Law is not alive and well in us, then we need 713 plus laws to make us act
as though we are human beings. But
when it is alive
and well, then we don’t need the 713 laws, for that one Law compels us to do everything
the 713 command and infinitely more. The Good Samaritan didn’t need a Good Samaritan Law written on paper to
make him stop. He had a Law written on his heart. It was alive and well in him,
and it compelled him wholeheartedly to stop.
Conclusion
The yoke
that’s light
The
law written on paper which bids us to pay tithes on mint, cumin and dill or which
bids us to use only wheat flour for the Communion wafer is rather ho-hum-ish. The
law which bids us to fall on our knees in prayer five times daily is rather
exhausting. But the Law written on our hearts which bids us to hoist the dead
weight of a victim unto our beast of burden and hurry him off to the nearest
inn for care and cure is neither ho-hum-ish nor exhausting. It is awesomely
refreshing and energizing. It writes our names in the Book of Life (
[1] As Islam has its five laws or Pillars, Buddhism
has its Eight Right Paths: Right Knowledge,
Right Aspiration, Right Speech, Right Behavior, Right Livelihood, Right Effort,
Right Mindfulness, and Right Absorption.