The Commandments Are Not Burdensome
Sermon
Sermons on the Second Readings
Series II, Cycle B
In the Exodus story, Moses leads the Israelites out of Egyptian captivity and takes them to the mountain in Sinai. There he calls them into a commitment to Yahweh, the mountain and sky God who secured their freedom. Knowing that raw freedom would prove to be a disaster, Moses and Yahweh work out ways they must live. We know these rules as the Law, one of the scriptural glories, blessing all that walk in the heritage of the Hebrew experience. The Law for them and for us today, is one of the gifts of God, for it tells us that reality is structured so that living by these commandments brings life and joy in our faithfulness to the Law.
Yet it is clear that the Law is also troublesome; for we would rather disregard it, choosing to live on our own terms, and according to our own desires. A young adolescent, living with her grandparents, became behaviorly impossible. She was abusive to her grandparents, who offered her a home away from the troubled marriage of her parents. However, she crossed the line of their generosity when she told them, "I don't care how anyone tells me how to live my life. I'm not going to listen to any of your advice, either!" The grandparents shipped the granddaughter back to her mother and father. It was clear that this young woman was out of touch with reality, for living as we please is courting serious disaster.
Reality Is God-shaped
The Bible declares that reality shapes itself around the purposes of God. These God-shaped purposes are built into the way things really are. They are not up to referendum or recall, as if we could decide which laws are operative, or not. Like our inescapable drive to concede our need for food, sleep, and exercise -- these godly structures are there, regardless of the way we feel about them, something our granddaughter has not yet admitted.
Modern science insists that certain realities exist apart from our knowledge or submission to them. Folks in Dayton, Ohio, are familiar with the story of two of its most famous citizens -- Orville and Wilbur Wright. Early on, the Wright brothers wanted to discover the means of powered flight. They built gliders trying to understand the inexorable givens that would enable them to fly. They poured over the information gathered from the experiments of others. Their most important breakthrough came in discovering how to "warp" the wings of their gliders so that they could stabilize their craft in the air, and when they added an engine to their glider on an early December day at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903, they flew. Their struggle was mastering the given realities of aerodynamics. Their dream of flying forced them to take into account these physical realities. In the process, they did better than all the others who shared their same dream.
The Bible tells us there are also spiritual realities driven by the purposes of God. Humanity takes no poll on our preferring such realities or our rejection of them. God has ordained them without asking if we would find these congenial. Saint Augustine's famous line says we are made for God and we are troubled until we make our peace with this. Following Augustine, we can say that we are made for love, for justice, and for peace. A lot of evidence confirms our love-shaped existence. Modern psychiatry tells us that psychological well-being is grounded in our ability to love, meaning that we must live beyond our own immediate needs and comforts. Finding the richness of life means that we put ourselves out for someone else. Structured for justice, we organize our larger life together in our families, in society, and in the world. Things are right when we see that a rough fairness determines the way we live together. In addition, who in our violent world will seriously question the inescapable godly demand for peace? Domestic violence and political violence both cry out that we live in a peace-determined universe, not its violent counterpart.
But All This Seems So Burdensome
The biblical record and human history tell us that we are a bit like that granddaughter we mentioned. Living according to these godly givens is burdensome. So often we want to be free of the realities that seem to be unpleasant restraints. "Do your own thing" was part of the youth rebellion. However, the young people were only uttering what is in all our hearts. We want to be left alone. Today, many protest the burdens and obligations of government. Others today are unhappy about making marriage commitments, caring for neighbors, or other obligations. For many, burdens of obligation seem be a heavy load.
However, it is not long before we make the painful discovery that denial of the spiritual realities of godliness, or of the rightful claims of others upon us brings far greater burdens. Jacob offers us an example from the Hebrew Bible. Jacob desired the blessings that belonged to his brother, Esau. He contrived with help from his mother and his own cunning to deceive his father into giving him that blessing. Soon the burden of his deceit was greater than conceding the blessing rightfully belonged to Esau. Understandably, Jacob became fearful of Esau, and it troubled his days and nights. He fled the country and lived with his Uncle Laban in another country. Even there his ambition for wealth entangled him with his uncle. In short, the burden of wanting his selfish way became difficult. Finally, this heavy judgment drove Jacob to risk returning to his family and attempting reconciliation with Esau. Lesson: refusing to follow the ways of God is always more troubling than the burdens themselves.
If we read between the lines of the Zacchaeus story in the New Testament, we find the same thing. Zacchaeus wanted to secure his life by becoming rich at the expense of his own people. Taking the job of collecting taxes for Rome, he learned the art of increasing the taxes owed, and putting the difference into his own pocket. He grew wealthy from this larceny but it pushed him away from those from whom he collected the taxes. We can assume that his burden of inner discontent made him climb up into that tree to catch a glimpse of Jesus who had just come to town. When Jesus invited himself to Zacchaeus' home for lunch, it became an opportunity for Zacchaeus to shed his heavy burden. Under the righteous aura of Jesus, he confessed his sin and declared he was ready to make restoration of any wealth gained by fraud. Jesus then pronounced Zacchaeus among the saved -- meaning that Zacchaeus' inner burden of guilt and unease lifted.
The prophets of Israel had the same message but on a larger scale. Their message was that in allowing injustice and unrighteousness they were poisoning the life of the whole nation. The burden was taking a toll on the nation. The prophets warned this would bring the judgments of God upon themselves. They said there would come a day when the wrath of God would descend upon them and destroy their national existence. Living as a people against the ways of God would bring them terrible consequences. Their sense that the ways of God were too burdensome for them, made the prophets insist that their present discomfort would be nothing compared to the painful and shattering day of God's judgment.
Today our nation must listen to this prophetic message. All too easily, we neglect the needs of the poor and the powerless. Quality schools are denied to those caught in the poverty of our inner cities or in many rural areas. Adequate health care is nonexistent for many at the lower end of the socio-economic scale. Our justice system puts a heavier burden on minorities and those with little means for arguing their case before the courts, and filling our prisons with many of those same people. Extravagant salaries and benefits go to a minority of managers in our corporations while most employees struggle in meeting their basic needs. Political office has become the prerogative of the wealthy while common people cannot afford its costs. Armies comprised of men and women of poor or modest means fight our foreign wars. The tax code favors the rich over and against those in the middle- and lower-economic brackets. Minorities of race, gender, and sexual orientation face the denial of basic rights, sometimes embedded in a legal system, or sometimes in official policy. Our media provides escapist entertainment of sports, mindless sit-coms, ethical free sexuality, violence, all consumer driven values -- without a glance at the moral traditions of Western society.
Our national unease comes from our disregard for the reality of God's justice and righteousness. Today, America, for all our wealth and power, is not a happy place. We have opted for an irresponsible freedom and a frantic chase after the gods of security, wealth, individualism, and immediate satisfactions. We abuse the environment without any sense of violation. In those prophetic words, we have "sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind ..." (Hosea 8:7). We are likely to experience later what a terrifying price we have paid for abusing the ways of God.
The Commandments Are Not Burdensome
Now we are ready for our text: "The commandments are not burdensome." Well, of course they are at one level. We cannot eliminate all those words about cross bearing from the New Testament. "Take up your cross and follow me," Jesus tells us. Following the ways of God in the pattern of Jesus does demand something from us -- we must agree to suffer. We suffer as we care about those we love in our immediate family and among our friends. When difficult times come to others we are not only pained, but we also sense a call to help them through difficult moments. This places a burden and a demand on our time, our energy, and our inner calm. These things cover up our placid "chirpiness" about our wonderful life, and how happy we are as Christians. Instead, we sense that a heavy load comes down upon us.
Alternatively, if we give ourselves to work for justice, against hunger, for better schools, or for protecting the environment, we discover that we suffer two distinct burdens. One is the personal cost. Our own private agenda must step aside in significant proportions to our larger task. This is a burden. The other one is how many will not understand our passion for these matters. Some will wonder, or even ridicule our drive to care for something other than our own ease and enjoyment of life. This, too, is a burden.
Yet after all of this, the text is correct -- "the commandments are not burdensome." Perhaps it is something like the distance runners who tell us that at the point where they think they can no longer stay in the race, they get their "second wind." Out of their costly investment of effort, they are empowered to complete the race. Running is no longer a burden for it now has become a flow of energy. We might understand this in thinking of a concert pianist. Our pianist devotes hours and hours of burdensome practice of scales and exercises. They take upon themselves a high price and burden. However, in their concert they experience a moment when this entire burden becomes the gift of spontaneous freedom as they play the music of the composer for the benefit of the audience. Artists and athletes often call this gifted experience as performing in a "zone." In a zone, the artist or athlete performs with a marvelous flair, so that it doesn't seem like playing as much as a freedom to exhibit the God-given powers of human witness to realities of music or a sport. Everything moves from effort to an effortless moment.
Our text suggests something like this. When we give ourselves over to the ways of God and dare to take upon ourselves all the demands that this will put upon us, we discover that suddenly they cease from being burdensome. The Jew claims the Torah, the Laws of God, to be such a blessing beyond their burdensomeness, becoming a deep joy and delight. A couple of very familiar scriptures will bear us out. Jesus said that when we take up the cross and follow him, we would find our lives. The burdens of cross bearing become our deep sense of really being alive. The other scripture is from Paul who speaks of a peace of God, which goes beyond all understanding. Paul says that in all our sufferings for Christ, we will find an inner peace of joy and feeling like a sense of well being, canceling out all the trouble and pain we endure in our commitment to Christ and his ways. Our challenge is to discover as 1 John says, "The commandments are not burdensome."
Yet it is clear that the Law is also troublesome; for we would rather disregard it, choosing to live on our own terms, and according to our own desires. A young adolescent, living with her grandparents, became behaviorly impossible. She was abusive to her grandparents, who offered her a home away from the troubled marriage of her parents. However, she crossed the line of their generosity when she told them, "I don't care how anyone tells me how to live my life. I'm not going to listen to any of your advice, either!" The grandparents shipped the granddaughter back to her mother and father. It was clear that this young woman was out of touch with reality, for living as we please is courting serious disaster.
Reality Is God-shaped
The Bible declares that reality shapes itself around the purposes of God. These God-shaped purposes are built into the way things really are. They are not up to referendum or recall, as if we could decide which laws are operative, or not. Like our inescapable drive to concede our need for food, sleep, and exercise -- these godly structures are there, regardless of the way we feel about them, something our granddaughter has not yet admitted.
Modern science insists that certain realities exist apart from our knowledge or submission to them. Folks in Dayton, Ohio, are familiar with the story of two of its most famous citizens -- Orville and Wilbur Wright. Early on, the Wright brothers wanted to discover the means of powered flight. They built gliders trying to understand the inexorable givens that would enable them to fly. They poured over the information gathered from the experiments of others. Their most important breakthrough came in discovering how to "warp" the wings of their gliders so that they could stabilize their craft in the air, and when they added an engine to their glider on an early December day at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903, they flew. Their struggle was mastering the given realities of aerodynamics. Their dream of flying forced them to take into account these physical realities. In the process, they did better than all the others who shared their same dream.
The Bible tells us there are also spiritual realities driven by the purposes of God. Humanity takes no poll on our preferring such realities or our rejection of them. God has ordained them without asking if we would find these congenial. Saint Augustine's famous line says we are made for God and we are troubled until we make our peace with this. Following Augustine, we can say that we are made for love, for justice, and for peace. A lot of evidence confirms our love-shaped existence. Modern psychiatry tells us that psychological well-being is grounded in our ability to love, meaning that we must live beyond our own immediate needs and comforts. Finding the richness of life means that we put ourselves out for someone else. Structured for justice, we organize our larger life together in our families, in society, and in the world. Things are right when we see that a rough fairness determines the way we live together. In addition, who in our violent world will seriously question the inescapable godly demand for peace? Domestic violence and political violence both cry out that we live in a peace-determined universe, not its violent counterpart.
But All This Seems So Burdensome
The biblical record and human history tell us that we are a bit like that granddaughter we mentioned. Living according to these godly givens is burdensome. So often we want to be free of the realities that seem to be unpleasant restraints. "Do your own thing" was part of the youth rebellion. However, the young people were only uttering what is in all our hearts. We want to be left alone. Today, many protest the burdens and obligations of government. Others today are unhappy about making marriage commitments, caring for neighbors, or other obligations. For many, burdens of obligation seem be a heavy load.
However, it is not long before we make the painful discovery that denial of the spiritual realities of godliness, or of the rightful claims of others upon us brings far greater burdens. Jacob offers us an example from the Hebrew Bible. Jacob desired the blessings that belonged to his brother, Esau. He contrived with help from his mother and his own cunning to deceive his father into giving him that blessing. Soon the burden of his deceit was greater than conceding the blessing rightfully belonged to Esau. Understandably, Jacob became fearful of Esau, and it troubled his days and nights. He fled the country and lived with his Uncle Laban in another country. Even there his ambition for wealth entangled him with his uncle. In short, the burden of wanting his selfish way became difficult. Finally, this heavy judgment drove Jacob to risk returning to his family and attempting reconciliation with Esau. Lesson: refusing to follow the ways of God is always more troubling than the burdens themselves.
If we read between the lines of the Zacchaeus story in the New Testament, we find the same thing. Zacchaeus wanted to secure his life by becoming rich at the expense of his own people. Taking the job of collecting taxes for Rome, he learned the art of increasing the taxes owed, and putting the difference into his own pocket. He grew wealthy from this larceny but it pushed him away from those from whom he collected the taxes. We can assume that his burden of inner discontent made him climb up into that tree to catch a glimpse of Jesus who had just come to town. When Jesus invited himself to Zacchaeus' home for lunch, it became an opportunity for Zacchaeus to shed his heavy burden. Under the righteous aura of Jesus, he confessed his sin and declared he was ready to make restoration of any wealth gained by fraud. Jesus then pronounced Zacchaeus among the saved -- meaning that Zacchaeus' inner burden of guilt and unease lifted.
The prophets of Israel had the same message but on a larger scale. Their message was that in allowing injustice and unrighteousness they were poisoning the life of the whole nation. The burden was taking a toll on the nation. The prophets warned this would bring the judgments of God upon themselves. They said there would come a day when the wrath of God would descend upon them and destroy their national existence. Living as a people against the ways of God would bring them terrible consequences. Their sense that the ways of God were too burdensome for them, made the prophets insist that their present discomfort would be nothing compared to the painful and shattering day of God's judgment.
Today our nation must listen to this prophetic message. All too easily, we neglect the needs of the poor and the powerless. Quality schools are denied to those caught in the poverty of our inner cities or in many rural areas. Adequate health care is nonexistent for many at the lower end of the socio-economic scale. Our justice system puts a heavier burden on minorities and those with little means for arguing their case before the courts, and filling our prisons with many of those same people. Extravagant salaries and benefits go to a minority of managers in our corporations while most employees struggle in meeting their basic needs. Political office has become the prerogative of the wealthy while common people cannot afford its costs. Armies comprised of men and women of poor or modest means fight our foreign wars. The tax code favors the rich over and against those in the middle- and lower-economic brackets. Minorities of race, gender, and sexual orientation face the denial of basic rights, sometimes embedded in a legal system, or sometimes in official policy. Our media provides escapist entertainment of sports, mindless sit-coms, ethical free sexuality, violence, all consumer driven values -- without a glance at the moral traditions of Western society.
Our national unease comes from our disregard for the reality of God's justice and righteousness. Today, America, for all our wealth and power, is not a happy place. We have opted for an irresponsible freedom and a frantic chase after the gods of security, wealth, individualism, and immediate satisfactions. We abuse the environment without any sense of violation. In those prophetic words, we have "sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind ..." (Hosea 8:7). We are likely to experience later what a terrifying price we have paid for abusing the ways of God.
The Commandments Are Not Burdensome
Now we are ready for our text: "The commandments are not burdensome." Well, of course they are at one level. We cannot eliminate all those words about cross bearing from the New Testament. "Take up your cross and follow me," Jesus tells us. Following the ways of God in the pattern of Jesus does demand something from us -- we must agree to suffer. We suffer as we care about those we love in our immediate family and among our friends. When difficult times come to others we are not only pained, but we also sense a call to help them through difficult moments. This places a burden and a demand on our time, our energy, and our inner calm. These things cover up our placid "chirpiness" about our wonderful life, and how happy we are as Christians. Instead, we sense that a heavy load comes down upon us.
Alternatively, if we give ourselves to work for justice, against hunger, for better schools, or for protecting the environment, we discover that we suffer two distinct burdens. One is the personal cost. Our own private agenda must step aside in significant proportions to our larger task. This is a burden. The other one is how many will not understand our passion for these matters. Some will wonder, or even ridicule our drive to care for something other than our own ease and enjoyment of life. This, too, is a burden.
Yet after all of this, the text is correct -- "the commandments are not burdensome." Perhaps it is something like the distance runners who tell us that at the point where they think they can no longer stay in the race, they get their "second wind." Out of their costly investment of effort, they are empowered to complete the race. Running is no longer a burden for it now has become a flow of energy. We might understand this in thinking of a concert pianist. Our pianist devotes hours and hours of burdensome practice of scales and exercises. They take upon themselves a high price and burden. However, in their concert they experience a moment when this entire burden becomes the gift of spontaneous freedom as they play the music of the composer for the benefit of the audience. Artists and athletes often call this gifted experience as performing in a "zone." In a zone, the artist or athlete performs with a marvelous flair, so that it doesn't seem like playing as much as a freedom to exhibit the God-given powers of human witness to realities of music or a sport. Everything moves from effort to an effortless moment.
Our text suggests something like this. When we give ourselves over to the ways of God and dare to take upon ourselves all the demands that this will put upon us, we discover that suddenly they cease from being burdensome. The Jew claims the Torah, the Laws of God, to be such a blessing beyond their burdensomeness, becoming a deep joy and delight. A couple of very familiar scriptures will bear us out. Jesus said that when we take up the cross and follow him, we would find our lives. The burdens of cross bearing become our deep sense of really being alive. The other scripture is from Paul who speaks of a peace of God, which goes beyond all understanding. Paul says that in all our sufferings for Christ, we will find an inner peace of joy and feeling like a sense of well being, canceling out all the trouble and pain we endure in our commitment to Christ and his ways. Our challenge is to discover as 1 John says, "The commandments are not burdensome."
