Romans 7.15-25a, Matthew 11.16-19, 25-30
Sutton Montis, Weston Bampfylde, Trinity 3, 6 July 2014
You may know that joke about the graffiti on the wall of a university toilet. It consists of three quotations:
'To be is to do' - Socrates.
'To do is to be' - Jean-Paul Sartre.
'Do be do be do' - Frank Sinatra.
Well, I think we could add to that list, that tongue-twister of a passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans today, where he says:
'I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ... I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.'
Now as we smile at the contortions Paul is putting himself through here, to describe his inner turmoil, we may also sympathise with him, very keenly.
'I do not understand my own actions,' Paul says. 'For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ... I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do'.
I can’t help myself, Paul seem to be saying. I want to live a virtuous, Godly life. I know what I should be doing to make that happen. But I always seem to end up doing the opposite instead.
Paul is burdened by his own failure to make the mark. I don’t know about you, but I can relate to that. I think we’re all burdened, to some extent, by our own shortcomings and failings.
That’s why some people still relate to the ancient language of the Prayer Book: ‘... have mercy upon us miserable sinners. Remember not, Lord, our offences...’ We’re down on ourselves, because we know that ‘We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done. And there is no health in us.’
‘Wretched man that I am! ‘ says St Paul, ‘Who will rescue me from this body of death?’
Well, thank God that Paul also has the answer to that question, and it’s a very positive one:
‘Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!’
It is Jesus who can rescue us from our deep sense of failure; it is Jesus who can undo our sense of wretchedness and replace it with a situation of wholeness. It is Jesus who, in his own words, is ‘gentle and humble in heart’, who will give us ‘rest for [our] souls’. It is Jesus who can unburden us, and lift from us the heavy load we carry.
But to understand how Jesus does this we need to comprehend the incomprehensible - why do we get ourselves in the state Paul got himself in? Why are we so burdened by our own shortcomings and misdemeanours?
Now, if I were to ask you to share what burdens you at the moment, or what burdens others you know or have observed in our community and in the world today, I expect that we would find between us those who are burdened maybe by the constraints of failing health, which limits what you can do for yourself and with others; others burdened perhaps by financial concerns, trying to make dwindling resources stretch further than they are able to go; others burdened by fears, maybe of loss or loneliness; or others burdened maybe by aspects of yourself which you don't like because others in the past have told you they dislike them. [1]
We carry all sorts of heavy burdens, and there are all sorts of reasons for those burdens. But I suggest to you today, that the key cause of our burdens is other people's expectations on us.
People expect us to stay healthy and strong for the sake of those who depend on us. People expect us to stay solvent and financially secure for the sake of those whose lives are wrapped up with ours. And we are burdened by those expectations.
People expect us to be useful to society by being in relation with others; and when we lose our job, or lose a partner, with whom we always used to socialise, and our social circle diminishes, we are burdened by our loss of status in the village.
And in our society there is also this thing about keeping up appearances. ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ is an extremely powerful force - what we desire for ourselves (houses, cars, a strong marriage, a successful education for our children, the clothes and gadgets which demonstrate our good taste and style) mirrors what those around us desire. We want what they want. And when we can’t get it, or don’t achieve it, we’re deeply burdened by that.
You begin to see where the burdens come from? ‘The good we want to do’ is determined by what others want, and what they want us to do. ‘The evil we don’t want to do’, our shortcomings and misdemeanours, are the things which we feel others are judging us on when we fall short of their desires.
Our desires are not, in fact, our own. And so we get more and more frustrated at not being able to straightforwardly act on our desires because they are not ours in the first place. We are in internal conflict with ourselves, because we live by illusory, inflated notions of ourselves. [2]
So in Romans 7 Paul is at war with himself in a conflict between pleasing God - in whose image Paul can become truly Paul, and pleasing others, which causes him to sin, by trying to be the Paul they want him to be.
We are always conscious of what others say about us: that is what shapes and forms us into the people we are. And we are burdened when others' expectations of us are impossible to fulfil. As Jesus noted when he asked:
'... to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces 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!"'
John the non-drinker, and Jesus the drinker - the crowd condemned them both: they couldn't fulfil the people's expectations because the people's expectations shifted according to their mood and to suit their interests at the time. Keeping up appearances is impossible in a toxic environment like this.
Our present generation also sounds like children in the marketplace calling to one another. They may say to us - you shouldn't be going to church, we know the way that church people really live, church is for hypocrites; and then in the next breath they will say - you can't close down that old church, it's a vital part of our village community, it holds our history, you've got to keep it open.
And we too, may be like children in the marketplace calling to one another. We may say - let the young people come, we long for more youngsters, we welcome them; and when they come we will say, keep the noise down, don't run around, don’t ask questions, do what we say.
We are all victims of the expectations of others and burdened by them; and we are all guilty of burdening others at times too. The good news is that Jesus wants to lift those burdens from us, and in so doing to give us the wisdom to live in such a way that we stop burdening others too.
To allow Christ to relieve us of those burdens and to take his light load instead, we must be willing to make our priority another set of relationships altogether: the completely loving, gracious, self-giving relationships between God the Father, Son and Spirit, which he wants us to share in. As Jesus says in today's reading, '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.' Jesus wants to reveal God to us, so that we can enjoy receiving and giving out our share of his gentle, humble, liberating love, the love he shares with the Father.
Jesus seeks to save us from our terrible burdens by leading us into a true desiring in the Spirit, into the non-rivalrous desire of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father. When we find ourselves living in the Spirit of such loving desire, we find ourselves truly becoming children of God. [3]
Jesus sees us differently to the way that others do. It’s liberating to know that despite what the Prayerbook says, Jesus does not regard us as ‘miserable sinners’, that our Lord is not inclined to ‘remember our offences’. He wants to unburden us from the weight we feel because we’re caught up in such damaging ideas about ourselves.
The good news is this: our God does not make hard demands on people - contrary to what we may have been told; Jesus wants us to be free from burdens.
The good news is this: our God does not control us by making us busy keeping up appearances - contrary to what we might have been led to believe; Jesus wants us to find rest for our souls.
The good news is this: our God does not impose on us - Jesus is gentle and humble in heart; his yoke is easy; his burden is light.
So if we are carrying heavy burdens, those burdens are coming from somewhere else; Jesus invites us to come to him to find rest.
Now please understand that I'm not saying that we should belittle our other human relationships so that we can strengthen our relationship with God, I'm not saying that we should ignore those things in us which clearly are sinful and need redeeming; I'm not saying that we should be so heavenly-minded that we're no earthly use; far from it. I am suggesting that if we place the greatest importance on what God thinks of us, above all else, and if we focus our desires on trying to live in response to his love for us, then we will become so liberated in our hearts that all our other relationships will experience a liberation too. Which will benefit them all.
‘Come to me... take my yoke.... learn from me...’ Jesus says.
We can do that, quite simply, in prayer. However we choose to pray. Whenever you feel yourself caught up in those damaging webs of desire and human expectations, come to him. However you choose to pray - alone with many words, or on the go, offering up the deep thoughts and feelings of your heart - come to him, you weary and burdened, and he will give you rest.
Let us bring such prayers into the centre of our lives. Let us pray, all the time. So that through all of life's situations we meet God in Jesus, just where we are. Let us unburden ourselves to him there. Let us learn to desire what he desires for us. And let us learn from the humble, gentle, teacher how to be less of a burden to others, how to help and encourage them to find rest for their souls in God.
Who will rescue me from this body of death?
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Notes
[1] This passage and other elements of this sermon come from an earlier sermon, Come to me all you weary and burdened, preached in Bratton Clovelly, Germansweek and Bridestowe, July 2011.
[2] Paul Neuchterlein, Reflections and Questions, Girardian Lectionary, PROPER 9 (July 3-9) - YEAR A, altered.
[3] Neuchterlein, as above.
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