Sunday, July 4, 1999
I WILL REFRESH YOU
Rev. Linda Carder

PSALM 145:8-14

MATTHEW 11:16-19, 25-30

Yes! I am back home! It is absolutely wonderful to be home again in the Washington, D. C. area. It is delightful to be reunited with old friends and to have time with family more often. As we begin to know one another, worship together and plan together, my soul is nourished. I thank you, the members of Christ Congregational Church for bringing me back and I thank God that I am home again.

Friday it really sunk in that I was home. My family and I attended the Folk Life Festival on the Mall. Yes! This is what one does around the fourth of July! We took in all the sites, sounds and smells. We complained about the heat. We felt sorry for the exhibitors from cooler climates who were, we believed, suffering more that we were. We drank lemonade, ate watermelon and offered the seeds back to the earth in less than graceful modes.

One of the exhibits from New Hampshire featured yoked oxen pulling various items around within the fenced area and weaving through various designated areas. Next to that was the man who carved the yokes with a display of various kinds of hand made yokes. Never one to with hold from an opportunity like that, I mentioned that I would be preaching about a yoke today, and sure wished that I could bring a real yoke to church with me. This was one of those moments, I was sure, when the person I had addressed could reply: "0, I'm sorry, I am just a volunteer. I can't help you with that." The exhibitor was busy, and there were no pictures. So here I am without a yoke.

This was not my first experience with yoked oxen. When in Honduras in 1987 with Jim, Lois and others we were treated to a similar exhibition and were even allowed to sit on the plow and pull the reins. But we were under no illusion that we were controlling the oxen. Another person walked along beside the oxen jabbing them with a rather large stick, often right between the eyes. Force seemed to be necessary.

But Jesus tell us that his yoke is easy and the burden is light. Then he tells us that if we are weary and heavy laden we should come to him for rest. No pounding with a stick here. These words and many of the Psalms like that. They are comfort to the weary, the frightened, those who are ill, struggling or lost. We can rest in, fight for life with, and find hope in a God who is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and promises that we can come and we will be given rest. Or that we will be refreshed by this loving God. What welcome words for God's overburdened, stressed out government workers who carry the burdens of the world on their shoulders!

Psalm 145 is a creation Psalm. It assures us of the majesty of God's rule. It assures us that creation holds together because of God's faithfulness and there is equilibrium, coherence and reliability.

But the Matthew passage is another matter all together. The last few verses, 25-30 are a break from the heavy demands of discipleship. And it puts discipleship into the context of revelation and grace.

In the verses preceding verses 25 - 30, indeed the whole chapter, Jesus has been upbraiding certain Galilean cities in which his mission failed. He tells them they just do not get it. What they do not get is that Jesus is offering an alternative to the those who are burdened by the religious law or legalism. He is offering a faith that that has to do with love, acceptance, forgiveness, and grace. All that is required is that we follow him. That we be disciples.

Discipleship means more that listening to his teaching. Disciples must learn not to just think but to do. They must become Jesus' apprentices, not pupils. This gives the metaphor of the yoke more force. Because then the yoke is not just something Jesus imposes, but one he wears. He is our yoke mate.

It was interesting to me to discover that the word that has been translated as "easy" in the phrase, "My yoke is easy and the burden is light" is really the root word for our word, "kind." The phrase might better read, "My yoke is kind and the burden is light." That means it will fit well, not chafe or rub. This insists that we pay serious attention to the fact that he is gentle and humble at heart. It brings us up short when we try to make a faith in Jesus one of harsh legalism.

Just as I was leaving the Iowa Conference I had the opportunity to lead a workshop around a book entitled Stealing Jesus, by Bruce Bawer. In it he makes the case that we are living in a similar time as that of Jesus. As he develops his thesis one begins to see many similarities between the religious legalism of Jesus' day and the Christian fundamentalism of our time. He states that many mainline Protestants are a part of what he calls the "church of love." That is, a people who try to follow Jesus, welcoming all to the table and trying in anyway we can to break the chains of oppression and to bring about justice and peace.

The United Church of Christ has a powerful but sometimes hidden history of doing just that. I have recently been in ministry with some wonderful people who were and are an important of our story. They are members of a small membership church in Tabor, Iowa, a small town in southwest corner of the state, very near the Missouri State line. I loved going to that church. They were a party waiting to happen. And they were always involved in some new ministry.

Their church was started well before the civil war by a minister they called Father Todd. Ministers graduating from seminaries here in the east, had the opportunity to go into the mission field and start churches in Iowa. Those who signed up for this ministry were called the Iowa Band. They went to places along the Mississippi River and the Missouri River where people were settling. Houses were going up quickly. But there were few roads and no bridges. The prairie grasses were so high that a man riding on a horse would be unseen by those very nearby. There mission was to gather people for worship and build new churches. And they did. They also built Grinnell College.

Father Todd was a part of that band. He and many of his colleagues were anti slavery activists. It was a part of their faith. Missouri was a slave state. These ministers were instrumental in assuring that Iowa would be a free state. Father Todd and his church members became part of the Underground Railroad. It meant that they had to be heavily armed. It meant that besides their daily work of turning over the prairie sod, not an easy task since it had never been plowed before, they risked their lives at night to transport slaves to the next Congregational Church at Lewis Iowa, where the slaves were hidden again before the next leg of their journey. Father Todd hid the slaves in the parsonage basement. Church members fed and clothed those hiding there to ready them for their next part of their journey.

Risky, unpopular business. Not all Christians agreed. In fact, we killed each other over that topic. But for those Congregationalists who accepted the yoke there was rest and relief. There was rest and relief in the lives saved. There was rest and relief in experiencing Christ in the person of another. There was rest and relief in the togetherness, the community, the closeness felt by those who were caring for the least of these. And while the burden of discipleship was great, the yoke was kind. For the yoke was being shouldered by love and faith, compassion and openness. This kind of ministry is not foreign or strange to us here at Christ Congregational Church. We could spend a great deal of time listing the various ministries here that are filled with love, compassion, justice and peace making.

But now you have gone out on a limb. You have called me here to help you develop a youth and young adult ministry. This is one of the most difficult ministries in the church. And notice I am using the term youth ministry rather than youth group. Many do not know anything about youth ministry other than their own experience of it in the last ice age. Times have changed. The lives of youth today are drastically different from ours. And while we cry and tear at our hearts over the Littleton, Colorado tragedy, and we want to "save our youth" we do not know how to do that. So we assign one person to work with youth, and let them do it for us and hope for the best. We may not even pray for them.

Well take a good look folks. You are probably not going to find me doing any rock climbing or deep sea diving. But some of our youth will want to do that. Our youth are very intelligent and curious. Many of you have explored, and have experience in, the very things one or more of our youth are interested in; things I have no clue about. I can not do it alone. And it is your ministry.

I know it is frightening. But you can learn how to talk to and how to listen to one of two you that a time. you can pray for them. You can team with other people to provide experiences they would not have otherwise. And above all, you can share your faith with them. They will be confronted by other young Christians and they will want to know what we believe and why. And they will want to know why you live the way you do. Share your faith with them. And Jesus will indeed be in the yoke with us. And we will indeed be refreshed. We will be refreshed as Bill, who is an introvert and will never show up at youth group, will because he trusts us will let us know when a friend is on d~rugs and help us help the friend. We will be refreshed as we watch Amanda keep a crowd of children spellbound with her stories, knowing she has had no colon since she was five and is in and out of the hospital the way we are in and out of the grocery store. We will be refreshed with Terry who was sent home from the first Regional Youth Event he attended because of his behavior. Now he is one of the most popular youth leaders at Regional and National Events. The stories of such youth will go on and on and we will be refreshed. We will not all be happy. Some will complain. Some will be disappointed. But we will be refreshed. We will be refreshed by a God who works through youth as well as adults. We will be refreshed by Jesus who shoulders the yoke with us and makes the yoke kind.

Back to Table of Contents.