The Light Yoke of Christ

Introduction

A Confirmation text

When the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich was preparing for Confirmation, all in the class were assigned to choose a meaningful scriptural text. Tillich chose this one: “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you… For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Mt 11: 25-30). When asked about his choice, he was a bit lost for words, for as a young kid he was fairly happy and free of problems. Later he wrote that those words of the gospel resonate in the hearts of all ages, young and old. Everyone labors, and everyone is heavily burdened one way or the other.

Life itself is a burden. Growing up with all the hits and misses it takes before one finds one’s self is a heavy burden. Submitting one’s self to the whole process of getting an education in order to survive in this great age of technology is a heavy burden. Making a marriage work and raising kids you can be proud of in a world beset with so many distractions, addictions and temptations is a heavy burden. Saying goodbye and letting go through aging, sickness and death is, indeed, a heavy burden which no one escapes.

The heavy yoke of religion

Years later Tillich wrote an essay on his Confirmation text, and in it he singles out a strange sort of burden which Jesus lifts from our shoulders. He entitled his essay The Yoke of Religion, the burden of religion. Sounding offensive to pious ears, he writes, “The burden Jesus wants to take from us is the burden of religion. It is the yoke of the religious Law imposed on the people of his time by the religious teachers, the Scribes and Pharisee. Those who labor and are heavily laden are those who are sighing under the yoke of religious law. “

In his essay Tillich describes his view of the psychology behind our being religious. We humans know how limited and finite we are. We know how transitory and precarious life is. We know how dangerous and tragic life can be. That fills us with anxiety and restlessness which we try to overcome by being religious. So we accept dogmas and traditions which supposedly will free us from our anxiety and restlessness. We labor and burden under these yokes, but eventually get fed up with them and throw them off. But no one can live long in the emptiness of skepticism or unbelief. So we do one of two things: we return to the old yoke and take it up again with a kind of vengeance, with a kind of fanaticism or fundamentalism, and we try to impose it on others. Or we look for a new religious yoke to put around our neck, one more to our liking but yoke nevertheless.

In his essay Tillich summarizes everything when he speaks of "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).

That rings a bell for some of us who have experienced loved ones exchanging their yoke of Christianity for the yoke of Buddhism or Judaism or Islam.

Carl Brown’s book Religion and State, subtitled The Muslims’ Approach to Politics, is a heavy book to read but very insightful. He compares the three great Monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He makes the point that Judaism and Islam are much closer to each other than they are to Christianity. Both religions impose yokes and burdens. Both stress laws and obedience to those laws. Both stress a connection between God’s happiness and our obedience to those laws, and between God’s displeasure and our disobedience of them.

The yoke of Moses

Two century before Christ, Moses gave the Jews the Law. The rabbis seeking to ritualize God's presence in the smallest and most insignificant details of human life turned the Law of Moses into a corpus of 613 major laws and a whole constellation of minor rules and regulations—all to be scrupulously observed by the faithful Jew.

The gospels constantly allude to that unbearable burden. The people must scrupulously wash their hands before eating. They must not eat anything from market without first giving it ritual ablution. They must meticulously observe the correct washing of pots, pans, copper kettles, and beds (Mk 7:4‑5). They must carefully pay tithes on the mint, cumin and dill (Mt 23: 23). Then there were all those other countless do’s and don’ts concerning the orthodox observance of Sabbath, which always got Jesus into trouble (Mt 12:1-8; 9-14; Lk 13: 10-17). Jesus seeing how that mountainous heap exhausted the Jewish faithful cries out, “Come to me all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is a light.”

The yoke of Mohammed

Six centuries after Christ, Mohammed gave Muslims the Five Pillars of Islam—five supreme laws to be scrupulously observed by the faithful Muslim. There is the law of Shahada (a proclamation of personal faith that "there is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet." There is the law of Salat (ritual prayer five times daily). There is the law of Zakat (a fixed percentage for almsgiving). There is the law of Ramadan (the great fast). And the law of the Hajj (the once-in-a-life-time pilgrimage to Mecca). Sometimes listed as the Sixth Pillar or law of Islam is the famous Jihad: the obligation to spread Islam (which easily deteriorates into holy war).

The yoke of Jesus

So both Judaism and Islam impose yokes and burdens. Both stress laws and obedience to those laws. Christianity, on the other hand, when true to itself, has a different concept of religious law. At heart, Christianity is antinomian; it doesn’t like laws. It’s uncomfortable with laws. In Galatians Paul writes, “Christ has freed us from the curse of the Law” (Gal 3: 13). In another passage from Galatians he writes, "Christ has come to set us free from circumcision and the Law. So don't ever take up that yoke again" (Gal l5: 1). In Romans he expresses the same antinomian message: “A man is put right with God only through faith, and not by doing what the Law commands” (3:28).

When in the early church a dispute arises about whether gentile converts to Christianity had to be circumcised and submit to the Law of Moses to be saved, Peter addresses the assembly gathered in Jerusalem, affirming that it is belief in Jesus that saves, not observance of the Law of Moses. Then he makes a very frank admission saying, “Why place on the backs of gentile converts a yoke and burden which neither our ancestors nor we ourselves were able to carry” (Acts 15:10)?

Amazing grace

When Christianity is true to its quintessence, it preaches that God does not love us because we are good, because we have done the good works which religious laws prescribe; God loves us because God is good. When Christianity is true to itself, it preaches that God does not need our good works to feel good about us. It is we who need our good works to feel good about ourselves. We need them in order to become the human being we were created to be. When Christianity is true to itself, it posits a great disconnect between obedience to religious laws and eternal salvation. That’s what the Protestant Revolution was all about. The battle cry of the Reformation was “By Grace Alone.” Man is saved not by works, not by obedience to religious laws but by grace. The battle hymn of the Reformation was “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound!”

Grace was, indeed, an amazingly sweet sounding word for Luther. His Reformation was basically a war against the heavy yoke of religion. As a devout Roman Catholic monk he tried to put himself right with God by performing the many acts of religious piety: by praying, by fasting, by scourging himself, by giving alms, by going on pilgrimage. But at the end of the day, he discovered that the works didn’t work. After so much exhausting effort, he felt that he still was not right with God. That terrorized Luther.

Then in one great glorious moment of revelation and light (an event which historians find hard to pinpoint), he suddenly stumbled upon the amazingly good news that we are saved not by the good works commanded by religious laws; we are saved by grace. We are saved gratis-ly; it’s for free. We don’t have to work our heads off for salvation; it’s for free. For Luther the gospel is the good news that what we couldn’t do for ourselves that Christ did for us on the cross.

A terrifying God

That, indeed, was amazingly good news for him because it freed him from his “terrores conscientiae,” his terrors of conscience which he called them. It freed him from his terror of a God who would not love nor save him until he had exhausted himself with the yokes of religion. His amazing discovery was, indeed, a revolution, for it flew squarely into the face of the prevailing religiosity of the day.

Many of us have had the same terrorist experience of God as Luther had. Looking back on a half a century of priesthood, I see that I spent a lot of time and energy ministering to people whose God was a terrorist. Of course, I first had to get rid of my own terrorist God before I could be of any good to others. In those days people were terrified of God because they were in “bad marriages.” Terrified of God because of all their sexual thoughts, desires and acts. Terrified of God because they hadn’t gone to confession for ages or had hidden something in confession. Terrified of God because they were practicing birth control. Terrified of God because they were gay or lesbian. “Come to me all you who labor and are terrified, and I will give you peace.”

That same terror can still be heard in the words of Andrew Sullivan writing in Time magazine, June 17, 2002. “And for all its many faults, I still trusted the church, revered it. Even when it inflicted real pain, when it callously treated women as second-class Catholics, when it wounded good people in bad marriages, when it penetrated into the souls of young gay kids and made them hate themselves.“ “Come to me all you who labor and are terrified, and I will give you peace.”

Only one law on one tablet

Moses and Mohammed came with laws to put people right with God. Jesus, on the other hand, came with no laws to put us right with God. Law is very low on Jesus’ list. So he tells us the parable of the Prodigal Son who is lawless. He grabs his share of the inheritance and takes off to a foreign land where he squanders his money on loose living. But when he is broke and broken, he is, nevertheless, received back into his father’s house with open arms and full forgiveness (Lk 35: 11-32). He tells also the parable of the Good Shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep to go in search of the one lawless sheep which went astray (Lk 15:4-7). Law is very low on Jesus’ list.

Moses, the great lawgiver of the Old Testament, comes with two stone tablets in his arms on which are carved not only Ten Commandments but also a whole corpus of 613 major laws. Jesus, the new lawgiver of the New Testament, comes with but one tablet, and on it is written but one law: “A new commandment I give you: thou shalt love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 13: 34).

But that one law to love one another is unlike all the other laws. “Thou shalt love one another as I have loved you” is far different from “Thou shalt pay tithes on mint, cumin or dill” or “Thou shalt wash your hands when you come in from marketplace.” It’s far different from “Thou shalt fall down on your knees in prayer five times a day” or “Thou shalt make a-once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca.” It’s far different from “Thou shalt use only wheat flour and not rice for making the Eucharistic bread” or “Thou shalt go to Mass on Sunday.” Christ’s one law to love one another is unlike all other religious laws.

Bearing each other’s burden

Paul expresses that one law in these words, “Bear one another’s burdens and you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2). Christ enshrined that one law of his to bear each other’s burden in that mother of all his parables: the Good Samaritan: Once upon a time a man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho and was waylaid by robbers who left him half dead. Along came a Jewish priest and Levite both hurrying to Jericho on important business. They saw the poor man, but rushed right by. Along came a Samaritan who, though he was hurrying to Jericho for a very important business meeting, slammed on the breaks of his busyness and stopped to pour the oil of compassion into the poor man’s wounds. Then with great effort the Samaritan, a slight man, managed to lift the man’s dead weight onto his beast of burden and hurry him off to the nearest inn where he paid for his care and cure. “Bear one another’s burden, and you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

Well, the sun finally set that very busy day when everyone was rushing to Jericho. All made it back home that night. Everything went very well for the Jewish priest and Levite in Jericho that day. They got all their important business done there. But at the end of the day they felt uneasy. It was the uneasiness of people who are too busy to make a worthwhile difference on the highway of life. It was the uneasiness of those who live for themselves and never help another carry his burden.

Conclusion

The light yoke of Christ

On the other hand, nothing had gone well for the Good Samaritan that day. He had been late for his business meeting and didn’t get the contract he had been hoping for. But strange to say, when he finally arrived home late that night, way past midnight, he wasn’t a bit exhausted by the late hour nor by the failed meeting or even by the poor man’s dead weight. There was, in fact, a song singing in his heart. His heart was singing not because he had managed to make God happy by his good deed, but because he had made himself happy by becoming the human being he was created to be. And what’s more, he actually felt refreshed. That’s because the poor man’s dead weight which his slight frame had to hoist onto his beast of burden was the yoke of Christ, who said, “Take my yoke upon you, for it is easy and my burden is light.”