Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Jesus invites everyone who labors under crushing burdens to come to him. He calls out with an offer of rest. Note that Jesus doesn’t promise that he will fulfill the goals I’m toiling to achieve. In fact, he offers an exchange: to rid me of trying to carry the burdens of life by myself and instead to take on his yoke. He uses an image of being harnessed to a plow like an ox or mule. There are many times that work feels like that – plowing through the mud, pulling hard, no creativity, just trudging forward from one urgent demand to the next. But Jesus is getting at something different here because he calls it his yoke and, somehow, it is easy and the burden is light. What does this mean?
In agrarian times, farmers often yoked together pairs of oxen to work the fields. Jesus might have used this image to explain that he works alongside me, just as he humbled himself to enter our world as a man 2000 years ago. Yet the text doesn’t explain if he was referring to a double yoke or possibly another common configuration, the single yoke. Since Christ is my master (John 13:13; 15:20), I prefer to interpret his words more like a wise and kind farmer who guides me in the work he has planned for me to do. Jesus’ yoke is easy and his burden is light compared to the loads (self-caused or otherwise) that I try to take on myself. If I rely solely on my own faulty wisdom and wits, I am like a mule alone in the rain, dragging an unmanned plow erratically across the furrows, repeatedly catching and jerking in rock-infested soil. It’s a picture of misery.
Jesus is not a crushing taskmaster. He wants me to learn from him, from his gentleness and humility, so that I find rest for my restless soul. Am I letting him decide my priorities and pursuits? Or am I still pushing myself toward goals he doesn’t care about, that don’t matter in the long-run, and that, in fact, destroy my life? Jesus’s listeners might have been trying to live for the Pharisees’ approval, but I can be just as foolish trying to carry burdens he never intended me to carry, like trying to make a name for myself, or get rich, or gain power and prestige, or impress my boss. These yokes and burdens always prove in the end to be grueling, oppressive, and merciless. But Jesus offers me his yoke which has proved, again and again, to bring rest for my soul.
Father, I don’t want my life to be shackled by self-caused toil and unnecessary burdens. You know I need rest for my soul. Please show me where to focus my energy and what you want me to complete this week. I accept the requirements and expectations you place on me because I want my work to please you. And I know your presence is with me all the way.