There are certain things which we all
know are true. A catastrophe can strike. We can develop a severe
illness, or Alzheimer's disease, or have a stroke or heart attack or
cancer. In a moment our whole future would change and not for the
better. We all know that our world is pretty fragile. If North
Korea fires a nuclear missile, we might end up at war with China, and
our life style would definitely suffer. Our government seems
fragile. Even before our current president, people were defying the
law of the land and getting away with it. It's happening even more
now. When the law breaks down, it won't be long before some other
form of power takes its place; and that probably won't be a good
thing.
None of us like to think about these
things, because we really don't want our lives to be disrupted. And
yet, we know these things are true.
Jesus talks about how The Father has
revealed things to the little ones that he has hidden from the wise
and learned. And I think Jesus is getting at just what I was talking
about. Those of us who are wise and learned get that way because we
want to control our lives. We want to understand everything, because
understanding is the beginning of control. And unfortunately as we
learn more and more about how the world works, and as we find that we
can to a certain extend control our lives, we begin to think deep in
our hearts that we can control everything – even though we know we
can't. But maybe a better way of putting it is that we live as
though we are in control; we live a lie.
Jesus speaks of little children but
was extending that term to the people who followed him. They were
mostly poor and lived from day to day. They all lived close to
catastrophe and death. Roman soldiers would confiscate their crops
leaving them to starve. You never knew when you might get leprosy
and get kicked out of your community. If you were a woman there was
a pretty good chance you would die in childbirth. And you knew that
you had no control over your life, whether you lived or died. And
oddly enough, when you lived knowing those things, you lived like a
little child; you enjoyed what you could; you valued your friends and
relatives over possessions. Since you had very little it wasn't that
hard to part with a little so that someone else might get a bite to
eat; after all, you knew that someday the shoe would be on the other
foot. Those with nothing, even today, seem to find inner peace and
inner joy more easily than those with a lot, the wise and learned.
Jesus looks at us like a loving mother
looks at her child. She sees her toddler stumble and fall, or try
desperately to do something that he can't do. She looks at his
frustration and anger, and listens to his cries – such heartfelt
cries – over little things that don't really matter. And she holds
out her arms to gather her child to herself and comfort him. That's
what Jesus promises us – if we hide ourselves in him, if we put our
trust in him instead of ourselves, we will finally be at rest. If we
are in Jesus,deep nothing can really harm us, and knowing that means
that whatever happens, the fact that we have come to Jesus reminds us
that deep down nothing can really harm us.
Jesus goes on further to say that his
yoke is sweet and his burden light. In parts of the world, they
still use cattle to pull plows. Left to their own devices, cattle
live kind of random lives. They spend most of their daylight hours
grazing, because it takes a lot of vegetable matter to keep a cow
going. And if you've ever watched a rodeo, you know that one thing
that really irritates cattle is having someone try to ride on your
back. So cattle that are trained to pull a plow have to go through a
major conversion. They have to submit to wearing a yoke and pulling
a plow. But there is a reward; they are given much more nutritious
food – grain, corn, and so on – and they are cared for,
sheltered, kept well, because for the farmer, he had to purchase the
animal and train it. But what about freedom? You might say. I would
venture that cows trained to pull plows and cared for in a humane
manner are probably not at all concerned about that.
Jesus says we are kind of like those
cattle. If, instead of pursuing our own foolish goals – more
money, more power, more security, more stuff – all of which eat
into our time and instead of making us more free, gradually chip away
at the little freedom we thought we had, and we become slaves to our
stuff. If on the other hand we accept Jesus' yoke, work for Jesus'
goals, carry his burdens, we find that he is doing most of the heavy
lifting.
All of us know how fragile life is;
how everything we love can disappear in a heart beat. But we live a
delusion; we live as though that isn't the case. And living a lie
always takes a lot of work. Today Jesus calls us to step into
reality and begin living the truth – begin making all our decisions
knowing that everything in this life is transient, and in the end
can't do anything to bring us what we truly want. If I want inner
joy, than I have to turn away from what substitutes for joy in my
life right now. If I want to have real security, real permanence,
then the only way I can do that is to rest in Jesus, because he has
those things. And if I want a life of real meaning, of real
consequence, then in some way I have to allow him to lead, to point
me in the right direction, knowing that when I am domesticated, life
will be a lot better, here and in the next world.
