In today’s New Testament readings, both Paul and Jesus point out that it’s a heavy burden indeed to live according to a system of reward and punishment. It’s not that the law is a bad thing. We need God’s law to show us the best ways for living in right relationship with God and our neighbor. For Paul, however, the problem with the law is that the law can identify sin but not prevent it. The law can’t make us do the things that it teaches us are right. If the law shows us what we’re supposed to do, yet can’t make us do those things, it puts us under a terrible burden.
Say there’s a dying man who goes to the doctor. The doctor gives him a prescription for a live-saving medicine. For the patient to live, he needs to take that prescription to the pharmacy, get the medicine, and swallow it. The paper prescription alone doesn’t have the power to heal him. He needs the medicine itself for that. The prescription from the doctor is like God’s law. The medicine, though, loving relationship with God--loving relationship with the God who freely pours out upon us the gift of life, the life that shines in the healing, saving acts of Jesus Christ. [1]
In living a life based only on obeying certain rules, then, we close ourselves off to much of the full and abundant life that Jesus offers us. Often, our obedience is based on an attempt to control our relationships, through controlling others and ourselves with rules. That’s what I was doing in my own unhealthy, perfectionist childhood. In reality, though, the loving relationship between parent and child, like our loving relationship with God, isn’t just about being obedient or following the rules. It’s about a loving exchange of gifts above and beyond rules and expectations. For example, parents want us to eat healthy food, but they still take us out sometimes for huge and delicious banana splits. Parents want us to go to bed on time, but they still host slumber parties for us. Like a child attempting to protect herself from the vulnerability of relationship, however, we anxiously concentrate only on obedience so that we can say to the parent (and God), “you must reward me because I did everything you said perfectly.” Living only by the rules is a form of self-protection,” like two-year-old Anne slapping her own hand. It cuts us off from any unexpected, unusual gifts of love and grace.[2]
How easy it is to become frozen like the people that Jesus addresses in the marketplace in today’s Gospel, closed off from God while using the rules to judge others. Frozen in what Paul Ricoeur calls a “logic of equivalence,” a “tit for tat” way of living that ignores unexpected grace, we have no way to cope with the wretched dilemma of our human failings. We can indeed feel as if we are yoked in slavery to desires beyond our control, bearing burdens that have become intolerable.
There is good news for us burdened sinners in the words of comfort that Jesus offers us at the end of today’s Gospel: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke, [my law of unexpected grace], upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” I can never hear these words about heavy burdens without thinking about what happens to me every time I travel to visit my family in Switzerland. I’ve traveled enough to know that it’s not wise to lug around too much baggage when you’re going to be moving around from place to place in Europe. In packing my bags, I usually exercise restraint in choosing clothes and other items that are light and practical. As I travel, however, temptation always gets the better of me. I’m not able to do what I know is right. I buy books and wine and chocolate and souvenirs galore, and “just one more jar of paté.” My bags grow fatter and heavier each day, until I’m in trouble. The weight of my baggage has become intolerable. Up the stairs, down the stairs, tripping on the escalator, hitting myself in the shins when pulling them, lifting them onto luggage racks and hoisting them on and off of trains, I begin to hate my baggage. I long to be free of it, just as much as I desire to keep the treasures inside. The baggage becomes an unwelcome part of myself, a weight around my spirit and a literal pain in the neck.
Indeed, in Romans 7:7, just before today’s epistle begins, Paul chooses “covetousness” as the commandment that he continues to break, as the sin that controls his actions. With all his talk of “the flesh” in these verses, it’s easy for us in 2023 to assume that Paul is struggling with some kind of sexual sin or lust. He’s not, though! For Paul, “flesh” doesn’t just refer to our physical bodies. It refers to the “powers and principalities” that govern our lives in this fallen world—systemic powers that destroy God’s creatures, powers that we would label today as corporate greed, disregard for creation, or exploitation of others. The sin that is tormenting Paul is a sin of plotting “to have, possess, or acquire in order to secure being and worth.”[3] How often our desire to secure being and worth leads to baggage as intolerably heavy as my suitcases in the subway. Possessions, unhealthy relationships, addictions, compulsions, enslavement to the ways of an unjust world …. What heavy baggage we all drag with us up and down the stairs, baggage that we just can’t let go of.
Jesus stops us on the stairs and offers us another way: the way of grace and loving relationship, rest in the arms of God. If we muster the trust and courage to hand Jesus our baggage, if we can just let go of all of the security and defenses that we have packed away inside, then our hands are free to hold out to one another, our legs are free to go where we are called to go, and our hearts are free to love. We can’t haul our baggage into the Kingdom of God; we can’t follow Jesus along the Way of Life if we can’t even make it up the subway stairs. To be free, we must follow—follow not just the law, but the gentle, humble way of Christ, the way of self-giving love that has no bounds. It is a risky way, not a secure one, but it’s a way without ulcers or self-recrimination. Jesus’ yoke of grace is light because it brings the only true freedom and the only true rest that we as human beings can ever know. As St. Augustine writes, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."
[1] Luke Timothy Johnson, Reading Romans (Smyth and Helwys, 2001), 119.
[2] Johnson, 120.
[3] Johnson, 121.
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