My Yoke is Easy

Some of the verses in today’s Gospel are among the best known and loved in scripture. They were spoken by Jesus at a time of personal struggle. His message was rejected by the wise and influential of his time.

One translation of the Bible puts it beautifully, ‘Jesus quivered in the spirit and said, I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth for although you have hidden these things from the learned and the clever, you have revealed them to the childlike.’

The words were not spoken directly to us but as a prayer to the Father. It is a prayer of gratitude. He is grateful about the nature of his message. It is for the ‘childlike’; it is for the ‘child-hearted’. It is not for the worldy minded and those who are intellectual in the sense of being all head. His message makes little sense up in the head because it is a message that goes against the thinking and values of the world, and it confounds those who ‘know the price of everything and the value of nothing.’ . The message is not for the childish. To be childish is to be stubborn, to live our lives with footstamping rigidity. It suits the childlike. They embrace growth, discovery, newness. Those who remain childlike are always in the process of becoming, always incomplete. Adolescents always want to rush growth. Some adults want to halt it and stick to where they are comfortable; to what is tried and true.

The opening verses of the Gospel today were spoken by Jesus at a time of personal struggle. In the closing verses he invites us to come to him who are ‘overburdened’. Then he uses a beautiful metaphor: ‘my yoke is easy and my burden light.’ A yoke is a wooden harness by which the necks of the two oxen are joined so they can push a load together. Carpenters carve and tailor the yoke to fit each animal to avoid painful rubbing or bumping. Jesus knew what he was talking about when he used the metaphor. Joseph would have made them in his carpenter’s shop. It could have been the sign above the door: My yoke is easy. Meaning they rest easy on the animal, they are well fitting. The message of Jesus ‘fits us well’, especially when we are overburdened. It fits ‘well’ those who are ‘childlike’; helps us grow as children grow; helps us ‘find rest for our souls.’ That of course also makes it a message for the genius.
Real genius is the ability to discern the obvious.