Below is the sermon I preached in the churches of the Wheatland Parish Sunday, July 3.
Our reading from Matthew has one of the most popular and comforting verses in the Bible in it. “Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” That’s a really wonderful thought. We all get weary sometimes. Sometimes it feels like our whole lives involve carrying heavy burdens. It seems like it would be so wonderful to just get a rest from that.
In fact, I’ll bet most of us can even picture what that would look like. Maybe it involves lying on a beach somewhere. Maybe it’s going to your favorite fishing spot. Maybe you’re with friends or family, or maybe you’re all alone. Whatever it is for each one of us, I’ll bet we can all imagine what it would be like to let go of our burdens and simply be able to rest.
Well, we’re going to talk about that, but first I want to talk about what Jesus said right before that verse. This was also in our reading from Matthew, but we tend to skip over this one. Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”
Let’s think about that. It seems like kind of an odd thing for Jesus to say, and an even odder thing for the Lord to do. “You have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”
The “things” Jesus is talking about are God’s great gifts to us of love and forgiveness and salvation. Why would God hide those things from the wise and the intelligent? After all, most of us consider wisdom and intelligence to be pretty valuable. Even the Bible speaks favorably of them in other places. When King Solomon asked God for wisdom, God was so pleased at with Solomon that God not only gave him wisdom, but also great wealth and honor. We’re told that the whole purpose of the book of Proverbs is to help us gain wisdom. Isaiah said that the spirit of God is a spirit of wisdom and understanding.
So, with all that, why would God hide knowledge of the Savior, knowledge of God’s love and forgiveness, from the wise and the intelligent, and reveal it to infants? It seems like it should be the other way around. With all that the Bible says about wisdom being good, you’d think God would favor the wise and the intelligent most of all.
On the other hand, though, what groups of people would’ve been considered to be the “wise” and the “intelligent” in Jesus’ time? It would’ve been the Pharisees, right? The Pharisees, and the Sadducees, and the scribes, people like that. Maybe some of the Roman officials, too, although they did work for the government, so maybe not. Any way you look at it, though, the “wise” and the “intelligent” were all the groups who were fighting against Jesus. They were all the groups trying to stop him, the groups ultimately responsible for having Jesus killed. That’s who the “wise” and the “intelligent” were, and that’s who knowledge of the Savior was hidden from.
I wonder, though, if that knowledge was really hidden from them, or if they simply could not see it. Think about who these groups, these Pharisees and Sadducees and the rest, really were. They were the rule-keepers. The way they looked at life was that God had given us a whole big long set of rules, and that the way to get to heaven was to follow each one of those rules to the letter. They were rules that had a good basis—they were based in the Ten Commandments and the law of Moses—but over time, there were more rules added. There were interpretations and policies and rulings, and pretty soon those simple ten commandments became more complex than the IRS code. There were so many rules that no one could even remember them all, much less follow them all. Yet, this was what the “wise” and “intelligent” people said you had to do if you wanted to follow God and get to heaven.
Think of the burden that would be. Think how hard it would be to have to do that. Think of how tired it would make us. To have to constantly be watching everything we do, to make sure we never did anything wrong. To have to constantly wonder and worry about whether we might be doing something wrong without even realizing it. To think that if we messed up somehow, even if it was by accident, God would punish us for it.
Think what our view of God would be like if we believed that way. If your view of God is simply as an enforcer of the rules, there’s no room for forgiveness. There’s no room for salvation. There’s no room for love. That’d be quite a burden, to worship a God like that. It’d make me pretty tired to try to serve a God who was watching my every move, waiting to see if I’d made a mistake and needed to be punished.
Yet that’s what the “wise” and “intelligent” people believed. Now, understand, these Pharisees and Sadducees were not evil people or anything, at least not intentionally. Despite what they did to Jesus, they really meant well. They were trying to follow God. They just did not know how to do it. They did not understand.
That’s sad, when you think about it. Jesus offered salvation to them, but the offer was hidden from them. It was not hidden from them by God; it was hidden from them by themselves. They could not see it, because their view of religion would not allow them to see it. They were carrying this huge burden, not because God wanted them to, but because they had placed it on themselves.
God wanted them to let go of the burden. God wanted them to take their burdens off of themselves and enter into the rest that Jesus was offering them. They’d have been so much happier if they’d been able to do that, but they simply could not. Instead, they were stuck, weary from the burden they were carrying but feeling they had no choice but to keep carrying it.
It seems to me that’s what happens a lot of times in our lives. Not always, maybe, but a lot of times. A lot of our burdens come not from God, but from ourselves. We get worried and upset about things that are important to us at the moment, but that are not all that important in the grand scheme of things.
God does not want any of us to have to carry heavy burdens. God is not sitting in heaven hoping to catch us doing something wrong. God did not create us so God could have someone to punish. God created us because God loves us.
That’s why Jesus was sent to earth--to let us know about the great love God has for us. Jesus said that the key to heaven is not following rules. It’s showing love. Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. The second greatest is to love others as we love ourselves. If we live in love, the rules will take care of themselves. That’s why Jesus said the key to salvation had been hidden from the wise and the intelligent--there was no room in their rule-keeping for love.
That’s also why Jesus said it had been revealed to infants. Think about how infants live. Babies don’t put a lot of burdens on themselves, do they? They’re not real concerned about keeping the rules, either. Sometimes their parents might wish they were, but they’re not.
What do babies understand? Love. Babies understand love. A baby knows when it’s loved. A baby can feel love. A baby can sense love. And, a baby can give love.
That’s what God wants us to understand--love. God wants us to understand how much God loves us. God wants us to return that love to God. Then, God wants us to understand how to give love to others. After all, that’s really the best way we can show how much we love God; by giving love to all the people whom God created.
Wisdom is a good thing, and we should all try to be wise. Wisdom, though, is not everything. Our faith is not a problem that we have to solve. It’s not a puzzle that we have to work out. Faith is dependent on love, and we cannot approach love by trying to figure it out. We need to approach love with acceptance and trust, like a baby does. If we can do that, we’ll find ourselves automatically returning that love, without even thinking about it, just like a baby does.
If we can rely on God’s love, we’ll find ourselves giving up those heavy burdens. Then, we’ll be able to enter into that rest that we want so much. It’s a rest that’s perfect, because it comes as a gift from God.
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