Gospel Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
We know from the gospels that Jesus loved children – he often held them up as examples of how things should really be. ‘Let the little ones come to me, for of such if the Kingdom of heaven’. Unless you become like children you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven’. Remember too that Jesus often healed children – they were important in his ministry.
Like in today’s Gospel, I think that this has much to do with simplicity. Children have a way of seeing things as they really are, unencumbered by what they ought to think or say, unworried by what is proper or polite. And really there is nothing more touching than watching children when they are engrossed in play. Not that it is all sweetness and light – there is nothing much worse than looking after children who are quarrelsome and fractious – they can be very tiring. I suppose the same applies; children can abandon themselves to being dreadful just as easily as they can to being adorable – they can do both wholeheartedly and with all their energy. I think of how exausting it must be for those parents caring and educating their children at home during the lock down, despite the joys of having your children nearby.
On the day about which our gospel reading is written, Jesus, had probably watched a group of children at play. First they played funerals with all their heart with all the wailing and misery they could muster. Then they played weddings with a similar amount of joy and gladness. I can almost see them – and there, sitting in the shade of a tree watching them is Jesus – smiling and laughing. But perhaps there was someone there who just wouldn’t play – ‘I don’t want to play funerals, I want to play doctors and nurses and if you won’t play, I won’t be your friend. And I don’t want to play weddings – I want to play fire engines etc.’
For Jesus this rang bells: I suspect that he experienced some of the religious leaders of the time as similar to a child on an off day – nothing you do will make any difference. If someone is determined to be grumpy, nothing will stop them. If they won’t play, they won’t play, and even if you do just what they ask, they will still be miserable. John came and fasted and was abstemious and they thought him mad. Jesus came and enjoyed life and they thought him frivolous. They wanted the game playing their own way, by their chosen friends, in their place and under their instruction – otherwise they would take their bat home and refuse to play!
For me, it is Jesus’ perception of the Spirit of the law which has so much appeal. It was this which gave him joy in life – the joy of a child at play. The religious leaders of his day were a fairly miserable lot – always waiting for people to make mistakes so they could score points and look good. They must have been fairly insufferable. There is a great freedom in not being bound by such trivia – in being able to see what is really important and what is simply social conditioning and nonsense.
I think this is what Jesus was getting at when he said his yoke was easy and his burden light. It wasn’t the thrust of the law he was rejecting, but the nitpicking detail that had grown up around it. In his time, people were bound in minute detail by what they could and couldn’t do – every detail of their lives was burdened by rules and regulations. It was this that Jesus railed against – for often in keeping the letter of the law, the Spirit of the law was lost. So he healed people on the Sabbath, he plucked ears of grain as he enjoyed a walk in the sunshine, he touched people who were untouchable and talked to people who should have been beneath him, had questionable friends and threw traders out of the Temple because they were exploiting people – the list is a long one.
This is Jesus’ easy yoke, his light burden. But yoke it still is and burden it still is. We, Jesus’ followers are not free to do as we like – we are bound by the Spirit of the law, and if you think about it, this can be as demanding as the letter of the law. We know we often fail to live by the Spirit of the law. This is partly what Paul is talking about in today’s Epistle to the Romans – I think he almost ties himself in knots trying to explain. He is talking about the law and the Spirit, and about our failure to be able to live completely by either. We always fail, but in the end our life is a gift of God, not something we construct ourselves. So, once again, there is the freedom to live life to the full and, at the end of the day, the freedom not to take ourselves too seriously!
Amen
Rev’d Dr. Anne Morris
Vicar St. Oswald’s, Knuzden