The King's Yoke

Two hundred and forty-four years ago this weekend, fifty-six men signed a document in Philadelphia that declared America’s independence from Great Britain. They did so for a variety of reasons, but in short, they all agreed it was no longer desirable to be subjects of the British king, especially because of the great burdens that came with it: taxation, oppression, and a fundamental inequality of persons.

Fast forward a couple centuries, and the project those Founding Fathers began is still being worked out. Throughout our nation’s history, we have seen how political parties, social movements, and individual persons all have a view about how the United States of America can more equitably deliver on its desire for justice and freedom for all. And these debates and moral causes continue today, whether it’s in relation to issues of structural bias and racism, or to the needs of working families, or to a more just system of immigration, or to the defense of the lives of our most vulnerable persons, unborn children in the womb. In these or in many other ways, freedom and justice for all is still an incomplete reality.

While all of that is important, and important to talk about, today’s Gospel invites us in a different direction: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” We tend to think of freedom in the way that the American founders did: independence, self-government, the right to pursue one’s own ideal of happiness. While those things can have their place, Jesus points out that what we really yearn for is freedom at a much deeper level: freedom from the burdens of worry and sorrow, freedom from the oppression of sin, freedom from the tyranny of death. We desire peace, in the end, a peace that no earthly power can give. But Jesus can: “Peace I leave to you, my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give it to you.” Or as we hear in today’s Gospel, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me… and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

Christ and the Penitent Sinners (1617) by Peter Paul Rubens

It might seem strange that Jesus speaks of a “yoke” and a “burden” when promising rest, peace, renewal. To be yoked, like an ox, to something – even something easy – doesn’t sound very liberating! This image though was used in the Jewish tradition to speak about the things we are attached to. Each of us has something we are committed to, something we serve – our families, our work, the causes we believe in, etc. Our “yoke” therefore is whatever we live in service to. In first century Jewish thought, it was best to live not under the “yoke of the world” but under the “yoke of the Lord.” To serve God, to live oriented toward and attached to the things of heaven — that was not oppression, but true freedom.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus applies these images to himself. The “yoke of the Lord” is his yoke; to serve God is to serve him. We all must be attached to, devoted to, oriented toward something, and Jesus says let it be him. Why? Because it is in service to God that we find true meaning and true freedom. The cares of this life – even good causes, and good things – ultimately cannot fulfill us and sustain us. They may give us love for a time, or fulfillment for a while, but ultimately they pass away and leave us wanting more. It’s far better to strive to serve the one who can grant us true and lasting peace, who can fulfill what we most deeply yearn for. In the end, that is Christ alone, the Son of God, for only he can lead us to the Father and eternal life.

To receive his rest, Jesus asks us to submit to his yoke, his burden. What is it? To conform ourselves to him – to align all of the elements of who we are according to Him and the Truth that he gives, and nothing less. Our world, our society, and even our nation has enshrined the idea of self-determination, of living life in the way that we want to. But true freedom comes not just from independence, but from living in service to the Truth – to Him who is Way and Truth and Life. It’s foolish to think we can create our own happiness or that we can find meaning by defining it ourselves. In contrast to the world, the follower of Christ must ask himself: “My values – are they those of Christ? My way of life – is it in accord with his Truth? In what way do I need to take up the yoke he offers? How do I need to change so that I may serve him better?”

Jan van Scorel, Entry of Christ into Jerusalem [triptych, detail] (c. 1526)

Friends, in the end, true freedom depends less on the events in this land a couple centuries ago and much more on what happened in the Holy Land a couple millennia ago. Jesus today urges us to bear his yoke, to live in service to him, to define ourselves in light of his Truth. He does so because, as the prophet Zechariah says, he is the true King, the One who rode humbly into Jerusalem on a donkey, who submitted himself to the yoke of the Cross in order to make our burden light. And one day, the King will return, this time in glory, to grant to his true and loyal subjects the freedom, the rest, the peace that only he can give.