Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

           I think we all know the uncomfortable feeling of being burdened.  Weighed down.  When burdened, we feel sluggish.  When the weight is lifted, there is an added spring in our step.

           I love the Boundary Waters.  It is one of my favorite places to visit.  I regret I have not been able to get up there in a while.  Laurie and I have made a couple of trips.  Just the two of us.  Last time we were there, it was hot.  Very hot—and dry.  There was a fire ban.  We had to use a cook stove instead of a campfire.  Fishing is fantastic in the Boundary Waters.  The scenery, at times, is breath taking.  Clean water.  I even enjoy the portaging.

           What I don’t enjoy so much is the carrying of stuff over the portages.  Especially on one of those very hot days—like the days Laurie and I encountered on our last trip there.  Hot, humid, and sticky.  You throw a heavy pack on your back.  Or a canoe on your head.  And just start lugging.  And the sweat gets into your eyes, and there is that burning sensation.  The mosquitoes are buzzing all around—just looking for a place to land.  And they find one somewhere on your skin.  And you can’t swat it because you might drop the canoe.  Or you can’t swat it because you can’t reach it because your arms are restricted by the heavy pack.

           I’ll bet a few of you have been in that situation.  And then you reach the end of the portage and you can’t drop the load fast enough.  You plop down to the ground for some welcome relief.  I believe one of the greatest feelings is the feeling that comes with having a heaviness lifted from us.  The feeling of being unburdened.  There is a lightness to it.

           Of course, not all burdens come in the form of a heavy pack or canoe.  I believe one of the heaviest of all burdens to bear is the burden of expectations.  You know, people expect things of us.  Those expectations can get rather heavy.  And if the expectation just happens to be

perfection…well, that is the heaviest of all.

           Consider today’s text.  Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened—or heavy laden—and I will give you rest.  That is a rather popular verse of Scripture.  We can all quote it.  We’ve heard it many times.  This is a great word from Jesus—a word of rest.  Yet, these words are found only in Matthew.  Mark, Luke, and John chose not to include this invitation.  Now, I suppose we should not get too hung up on that minor detail.  After all, Jesus spoke many words.  They all could not be put into one book.  As John said at the end of his Gospel, Jesus did many other things as well.  If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.

           But I do think Matthew may have included this teaching by Jesus for a reason.  See, he wrote his Gospel to Jews.  His purpose in writing was to demonstrate for his Jewish readers that Jesus was the promised Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of God, the Son of Man.  The Kingdom of God—or Kingdom of heaven as it is called in Matthew—came to be among us in the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  Jesus and his ministry were a

fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.  For this reason, Mathew liberally quotes from the Old Testament.  Matthew also wrote about how many Jews, especially the leaders, failed to recognize Jesus as the promised Messiah.

           The law was big among those Jewish leaders—the Pharisees and scribes and teachers of the law.  Strict obedience to the law was the goal.  One was made right with God through the law—obeying the law.

           The everyday, common person back then looked up to the Pharisees and other religious leaders.  They appeared so righteous.  It appeared as if they were the only ones who could obey the law.  The common person struggled.  And the teachers of the law made obedience more difficult with the things they taught.  They added stuff.  For example, the commandment about honoring the Sabbath as a day of rest.  Pretty straight forward word from God.  Take a day for rest and renewal.  Well, the Jewish leaders developed a list of things that could and could not be done on the Sabbath.  That list included over thirteen hundred do’s and do not’s.  That was just on one commandment.  And they taught their lists and interpretation of the law as if it were the law itself.  So obedience became all the more difficult.  The law was becoming a burden.  That was the burden Jesus wanted to lift.

           We began by reading verses sixteen through nineteen in this eleventh chapter.  I love these four verses.  In them, Jesus compared his generation to children sitting in the marketplaces.  He talked about those not dancing to the song of the flute, and those not mourning to the sound of a dirge.  You know what he was saying?  He was saying there was just no pleasing some people.  He elaborated.  John the Baptist did not eat or drink.  And there were those who said he was demon possessed.  Jesus, on the other hand, ate and drank.  And he was called a glutton and a drunkard.  Yes, there is just no pleasing some people.  And no matter what the common person did in that day, there was just no pleasing the religious leaders.  Their attempts at obedience were never good enough.  They

just could not live up to expectations.  And so they wondered if they could ever be right with God.

           It was specifically to them Jesus issued the invitation to come.  Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  He was talking to those who had grown weary in their attempts to live up to the expectations of others—those expectations of obedience.  Jesus gave the invitation to learn—not from those teachers of the law—but from him.

           So what does this mean for us as we seek to follow Jesus?  It means a lot.  This is a rich passage.  But I would like to lift up one thing.  This passage teaches us that our discipleship is to Jesus—and not to some code.  We follow Jesus—not a set of rules and regulations.  We are bound to Jesus—and not weighed down by other’s expectations.  We seek to please Jesus—not some other person.

           Allow me to ask, Have you ever experienced the burden of trying to live up to another person’s expectation of who they thought you should be—or their expectations of doing what they think you should do?  Yes, we have experienced that.  Feels kind of heavy, doesn’t it?  How about another’s expectations of what a follower of Jesus should be and do?  That’s even heavier.

           Let me come at this from another way.  I will confess that I have this image of what a Christian person looks like—and how he or she should act.  And I have actually sat in judgment on a brother or sister in Christ because…well, you know.  Then I have to ask myself who I think I am.

           Jesus was inviting men and women who had become burdened by the expectations of the Pharisees—burdened by their many attempts to obey the law in order to get right with God.  Jesus was inviting them out of that and into a life of grace.  And that’s the invitation to us.

           You read about it in my first newsletter article.  We will hear a lot more about it the next several years.  Grace.  I am big on grace.  This does not let us off the hook as far as obedience goes.  I do not want to leave anyone with that impression.  But that is not how we get right with God.  So we can lay that burden down.  It is because of grace as shown us in Jesus that we are made right with God—through our faith.  It is by grace you have been saved through faith; it is the gift of God, not works…. 

           Laurie and I have raised children.  Now we are into this grandparent thing.  It is great.  Granddaughter Angie.  It was not long ago when we had to discipline her for the first time.  That was tough.  She made a paper and crayon mess on the floor.  No big deal.  She was told to clean it up.  She refused.  Then we got into the kind of big deal territory.  She was told if she did not clean it up, she would have to take a seat.  That time out thing.  She refused.  She sat.  She pouted.

           But that whole obedience and discipline thing does not define our relationship.  You see, not long after she was born, we started doing with her what we did with all our children.  The how-much-does-Daddy-love-you thing.  Angie, how much does Grandpa love you?  And she would—and still does—stretch out her arms and say, “This much.”  And my response has always been, “Oh, way more than that!”  And so she knows what all my children have known.  They may mess up, but they are always loved way more than that.

           That’s the kind of relationship I believe Jesus invites us into with our heavenly Father.  Yes, we obey.  But we know that we are always loved way more than we know.  And knowing we are first loved…well, that ought to lighten the load a bit, and put an extra bounce in our step.

           Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.