‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’
Matthew 11:28-30

We have been busy lately. I am not quite sure why. It doesn’t seem like we are doing anything more than before. However, we seem to be running out of time. This might appear to be a good thing. Being busy can give us the impression that we are important. However, it is easy to fool ourselves with activities. Jesus was not a busy man. He took time to be with people. He never forsook an opportunity to be with someone even when there were many things which needed to be done. He also took time to be alone with God, to reflect on what He had seen and heard.

This week was a full week for us. I was tempted to take time off from reflecting on this week’s events so that I could keep on doing things without thinking about them. These verses from the gospel struck me. They are profound words but at the same time, they are also familiar words. Those who grew up with the 1928 Book of Common Prayer (I am talking about the U.S.) would remember these verses cited from the gospel. Usually this verse is quoted immediately after our general confession. They were part of the “comfortable words”. They are indeed spiritually comfortable words. They are meant to speak to our innermost being. They are supposed to bring relief to our souls. The same relief that St Paul sought when he wrote these words;

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! Romans 7:21-25

The apostle reflected on the wretched state of humanity. Not wretched in the manner of being decadent or perverted but the inner toil which torments and makes us even hate or despise ourselves.

If I were to use a scripture to define our missionary work among the homeless young people, I would use this verse from the gospel. It expresses perfectly the good news. Jesus came to relieve us of this burden that we bear. Perhaps homelessness makes it more difficult for people to guise this burden. Our young people don’t carry a burden which is uncommon to the rest of the world. They carry the same unbearable burden as the rest of us. They just don’t have the luxury of hiding it like us. We can hide our burden with busyness or various activities helping us to forget the battle within our souls.

The verse invites us to look deep into our hearts and ask what are these burdens that Jesus wants to release in us. It is definitely not the burden of suffering in this world. Jesus promised suffering, pain, and rejection in this world. He emphasized many times in His teachings that the values of the Kingdom of God are not only incompatible with the values of this world but they are also despised by the world. He is not talking about relief from the burden of sin and guilt. There are churches which believe that once we become Christians, we are free from guilt. Guilt helps us. One of the most endearing hymns, a little overused albeit, “Amazing Grave” conveys a sense of guilt of sins committed in the past. The notion of the heaviness of sin committed made John Newton, the blessed composer of the hymn, deeply appreciates grace. Our guilt also reminds us that we have no room in our faith in Jesus to ever take the position of the Pharisee in the parable who believed that he was better than the tax collector. Guilt reminds us that we come into the presence of God through grace and nothing can be said of our own personal merit.

I would like to pause here and remind ourselves that this is a profound text. Therefore, there are layers of Truth waiting to be discovered for those who venture to uncover its depth. I limit myself from the perspective of our ministry to the homeless. I will address the burden I see that our young people carry which is also something I see in myself. In many ways, whenever we reach out to our neighbor in the Name of the gospel, we find a mirror reflecting our own image. Like our Lord reminded us in the Sermon on the Mount,

You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye. Matthew 7:5

We cannot heal others confidently unless we have allowed the healing power of the gospel to transform us. Healing is a lifelong process. The more we reach out to the other in the name of the gospel, the more we discover of His healing in our own lives.

One of the greatest spiritual burdens our young people carry in their souls is the burden of proving their worthiness to the world. In other words, they want to find a reason to prove to the world that they have a right to exist. This can be proven positively or negatively. Unfortunately, the world is not a gracious place for people who are born in unfortunate circumstances like our young people. They are given a limited space in society. Either they are forced in live out their existence in an invisible manner or they assert their existence in a negative way through crime and violence. The ones that choose the former slowly slip into an existence of “non-existence” where substance abuse becomes their major comfort and eventually carries them towards physical and mental breakdown and subsequent death. Those who choose crime are also eventually brought to the path of death through violence or imprisonment. Both groups seek to become someone in this world. It is something deeply spiritual. They are looking for the same thing which all of us desire and want. They want to be considered a relevant being to someone. They want to be Loved. To be loved is to be in a relationship. Without relationships, the words of the gospel do not become the Living Word of God. They become like the Law, according to St Paul, which is dead.

Of all the apostles, perhaps, St Paul is the one who understood this the best, or at least, expressed it. He was burdened with the desire to be someone in this world. He became a member of the strictest religious sect and even adopted a violent stance against all those whom he perceived as a threat to his existence. Finally, he encountered the One who relieved His yoke. He realized that he was persecuting the very One whose Love affirmed his own personal worthiness in this world. This encounter gave St Paul the boldness to write these words,

But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

Our sins and errors did not hinder Jesus from loving us to the point of giving up His life for us. We were and are so important for God that He would sacrifice His only begotten Son to die for us. The knowledge of this eternal Love gave Paul the confidence to leave all that he knew behind and take up the yoke which Jesus gave him. It is the same yoke our Lord offers to us. This yoke is the yoke of Love where we testify of the unconditional Love of God that God pours out so freely into this world.

When we first started in this ministry in the mid nineties, we carried an unnecessary burden. We carried a burden to prove to the world that we were doing a meaningful work. Unfortunately, everything was vague about this. We weren’t sure even what exactly constituted a meaningful work. Then later on in Life when I was ordained a parish priest, I met an older parish priest who had a successful ministry for many years. He was successful but he never was a priest of a large congregation. To the contrary, his congregation never grew in numbers. However, there was something godly about him which touched people profoundly. He recommended one important thing. He said, “Just love and enjoy the people God puts in your life.” These words relieved a yoke that I was carrying in my soul. God wants us to become His agents of Love in this world. However, before we can step out into this world, we need to take the log out of our eyes. We need to know first that we are loved unconditionally by our Good Shepherd. Only then we can go into the world with a yoke that is easy and light. It is the one simple thing people are seeking in the world. We can testify with utter confidence that Jesus loves and accepts them unconditionally. The way we testify to them is the same way Jesus testifies to us. His life is the living proof of His Love. He died for us while we were still sinners. In the same way, we learn to love those whom God has placed in our lives and one day their eyes will be opened to see One who freely gives a yoke which is easy and light.