The Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 5, 2020

Matthew 11:25–30

At that time Jesus exclaimed: “I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to little ones. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him. 

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves; For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

Although we hear many times of Jesus praying, the Evangelists tell us little of how or what he was praying.  And that is to be expected, since the Lord himself urges his followers to “pray to the Father in secret” (Matthew 6, 6), that is, privately.  Those verses in which we read the words of his prayers are precious to us.  We have a few of those words in the first half of this reading from St. Matthew’s Gospel.  The Son is not asking anything of the Father, which is what we typically do in our prayers.  Rather, he offers praise to him, praise which overflows his heart.  In these words we glimpse something of the life of the Holy Trinity, who “dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6, 16).  The prayer stands out in the midst of a loose collection of sayings, introduced only by “At that time”, which simply serves to separate what Matthew is quoting now from what he has just quoted. 

The Son praises the Father, “for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to little ones.”  On the face of it, this should strike us as an odd thing for which to praise the Father.  Would it not be more praiseworthy to reveal “these things” to the wise as well as to “little ones”?  Would it not have profited the world and increased God’s glory to have revealed these things to Aristotle and Plato, instead I gotta “hiding” these things from them? And what is praiseworthy about revealing them to the little ones at all?  The Lord Jesus is praising the Father’s marvelous providence by which he illuminates the world so that it might see his glory.  The Father does this in the way which best shows off his glory.  Now, when an artist sets about making a painting using the best possible paints and brushes, canvasses, and other materials, we praise the result and admire the painter.  But when another painter, using far inferior materials, makes a beautiful painting, we may admire the results, but we praise the painter, because working in this way under these conditions show off to greater advantage his tremendous skill.  That is, with the best materials available, we think, Of course this painter could make this beautiful painting.  But in the case of the painter with inferior materials, we think, What great skill this painter has, that he could do so much with so little!  And this is what the Father does.  If the Gospels had been written by men of the skill of Cicero or Vergil, we would expect wit and wonder intermixed, and a great story with a clear moral.  But the Gospels as we have them are largely unorganized, hampered by imperfect grammar, and filled with inexplicable parables and actions.  One of them, that of St. Mark, even seems unfinished.  But through all this, God shines forth all the brighter.  

As if to illustrate this point, after this prayer, without any introduction, Jesus is shown addressing his disciples.  A professional author would never have done this.  He would have prepared the way for these words, describing the scene and the occasion on which they were uttered.  But the way that Matthew writes brings us more directly before the Lord.  

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened.”  Jesus is in fact speaking to all the “little ones” who endure lives of suffering with little to look forward to, but are subject to disease, famine, war, natural disasters, and oppression by their fellow men.  These struggle day in and day out to make ends meet, and to live moral lives.  Tempted to envy those better-off, they quietly thank God for what they have.  Tempted to commit adultery and to enjoy a very fleeting pleasure, they recommit themselves to the spouses God has given them.  Tempted to steal or to lie, they turn away from sins which would give them, at best, a temporary advantage.

“I will give you rest.”  Jesus does not say, God will give you rest.  He pointedly says “I”.  Here again we see Jesus making a statement, a promise, that only God has a right to make, and which only God could fulfill.  We ought to wonder how his disciples or the crowd received this.  They would have tried to imagine what kind of rest this man of Galilee could provide.  Certainly, what Jesus says here would have unnerved more than a few of them.  It is one thing to follow a man whose teachings will make a person a better person, a happier person, but quite another when that man promises himself to do this.  The question would for his hearers is no longer, Are these valuable teachings? but, Who is this that can make such a promise?

“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me”.  The emphasis here is on “my” yoke as opposed to the yoke one is already wearing.  But what is this yoke, and how is it better than the one that I am already wearing?  “For I am meek and humble of heart”.  These words do not seem to fit here.  How do they relate to the “yoke” which he urges the people to change?  How does his character become a motive for this change, if that is what he is saying?  “And you will find rest for yourselves.”  Now what he says becomes confusing.  A “yoke” connects to a beast of burden to its burden; that’s the sole purpose of a yoke.  But here this man speaks of his “yoke” as providing rest.  “For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”  This is, of course, a contradiction, even a parable.  The Lord is speaking as much about himself as he is about as about what his followers can hope for from him.  Again, only God could speak in this way.  The “yoke” of the world is of course a hard one, and so the “yoke” which gives rest cannot be a yoke of this world but of another, and only Jesus can provide it.  He offers it as One who is gentle and meek, not as a taskmaster indifferent to the suffering of his beasts, and roughly setting it upon them to continue the day’s drudgery.

Still, the Lord’s yoke is a burden, although a light one.  Why is this?  We might think here of Jacob, who agreed to work for Laban for seven years so that he could marry his beloved Rachel. “So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her” (Genesis 29, 20).  The Lord Jesus sets before us an eternal heaven, everlasting bliss, continuous company with him.  The “yoke” of the Lord’s commandments is light indeed because of the love we have for him.