The Stations of Life: A Lenten Journey- February 21, 2008
February 21, 2008
Passage:Matthew 11:16-30
‘But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market-places and calling to one another,
“We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.”
For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, “He has a demon”; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!” Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.’ Then he began to reproach the cities in which most of his deeds of power had been done, because they did not repent. ‘Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, on the day of judgement it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum,
will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades.
For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that on the day of judgement it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom than for you.’ At that time Jesus said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’
I recently watched the movie, Persepolis. Based on a graphic novel, it tells the true story of Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian woman who grew up during the latter days of the Shah, the Iranian Revolution and the Islamic Republic. As you watch the film, you see how the women went from wearing whatever they wanted to headscarves. Parties were banned, as was alcohol. One of the more comicly abusurd scenes is when Marjane is in college studying art. She along with her classmates are painting a portrait. Normally, you would expect the student painting a nude, but because this was Iran under the Islamic Republic, the woman was wearing a full chador, which covered her entire body.
"Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens..." In an essay entitled "The Yoke of Religion," theologian Paul Tillich explains that Jesus statement was that he would bring us easy lives, but that he would bring freedom from the heavy burdens of religion. He writes:
The religious law demands that he accept ideas and dogmas, that he believe in doctrines and traditions, the acceptance of which is the condition of his salvation from anxiety, despair and death. So he tries to accept them, although they may have become strange or doubtful to him. He labors and toils under the religious demand to believe things he cannot believe. Finally he tries to escape the law of religion. He tries to cast away the heavy yoke of the doctrinal law imposed on him by Church authorities, orthodox teachers, pious parents, and fixed traditions. He becomes critical and skeptical. He casts away the yoke; but none can live in the emptiness of mere skepticism, and so he returns to the old yoke in a kind of self-torturing fanaticism and tries to impose it on other people, on his children or pupils. He is driven by an unconscious desire for revenge, because of the burden he has taken upon himself. Many families are disrupted by painful tragedies and many minds are broken by this attitude of parents, teachers and priests. Others, unable to stand the emptiness of skepticism, find new yokes outside the Church, new doctrinal laws under which they begin to labor: political ideologies which they propagate with religious fanaticism; scientific theories which they defend with religious dogmatism; and utopian expectations they pronounce as the condition of salvation for the world, forcing whole nations under the yoke of their creeds which are religions, even while they pretend to destroy religion. We are all laboring under the yoke of religion; we all, sometimes, try to throw away old or new doctrines or dogmas, but after a little while we return, again enslaving ourselves and others in their servitude.
The same is true of the practical laws of religion. They demand ritual activities, the participation in religious enterprises, and the study of religious traditions, prayer, sacraments and meditations. They demand moral obedience, inhuman self-control and asceticism, devotion to man and things beyond our possibilities, surrender to ideas and duties beyond our power, unlimited self-negation, and unlimited self-perfection: the religious law demands the perfect in all respects. And our conscience agrees with this demand. But the split in our being is derived from just this: that the perfect, although it is the truth, is beyond us, against us, judging and condemning us. So we try to throw away the ritual and moral demands. We neglect them, we hate them, we criticize them; some of us display a cynical indifference toward the religious and moral law. But since mere cynicism is as impossible as mere skepticism, we return to old or new laws, becoming more fanatic than ever before, and take a yoke of the law upon us, which is more self-defying, more cruel against ourselves, and more willing to coerce other people under the same yoke in the name of the perfect. Jesus Himself becomes for these perfectionists, puritans and moralists a teacher of the religious law putting upon us the heaviest of all burdens, the burden of His law. But that is the greatest possible distortion of the mind of Jesus. This distortion can be found in the minds of those who crucified Him because He broke the religious law, not by fleeing from it like the cynical Sadducees, but by overcoming it.
Religion, any religion, can become a burden to us. Iranian society, as depicted in Persepolis, was incredibly burdensome, shakling the people to conform and stripping away any freedom. Many people have made Christianity into something that is more about following rules than about freedom.
In Jesus' day, people were living under the law. Clean people here, unclean people there. The law was given as a way to show to the world a people living under God, but instead it became a burden that crushed people. When Jesus comes, he starts disobeying the law. He reaches out to the unclean and heals them. He raises the dead. He speaks with Samaritan women. He shows a life "above the law" one where people, not dogmas, matter.
Christ comes to bring us freedom, freedom from the bondage of sin and the bondage of the law. In Christ, there is freedom.
May it be so.
God in Christ, it is so easy to lose sight of what is important. We place our faith in rules when you ask us to love one another. We try to make others toe the line when you ask us to care for the poor. Forgive us, and help us to remember to live in freedom and not fear. Amen.
Dennis Sanders is the IT/Communications Specialist for the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area. He is also an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
