Let Go and Let God

Sermon based on Matthew 11: 20 – 30

Many of you know that I am a trainee local preacher and I am now half-way through my studies.  However few of you will know that this is my first time leading worship in an evening service.

To prepare for an evening service I knew that I would preferably need to use the second service scripture readings from the lectionary.  Something I haven’t done before. I anticipated that the scripture readings for a second service may not be as well-known and I knew that I wouldn’t have the support of preacher guidance materials, such as Roots, that gives help and suggestions, as they only cover the first service of the day.  So I prayed that the scripture readings wouldn’t be too obscure and that they would be relevant for a ladies service.

Well imagine my despair as I read the New Testament lectionary and it started off with the heading ‘Woe on Unrepentant Cities’.  By the time I was half way through the scripture reading, I could feel the panic starting to kick-in.  I couldn’t see anything relevant for tonight!  My anxiety became tangible as I felt my heart starting to race. But then I finally came to the last 3 verses:

‘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.’

Three powerful verses that will strike the heart of most people here, but especially women. The message and promise is the same for both men and women but statistically women are more likely to suffer from depression, to feel burdened.

According to the Mental Health Foundation:

• 1 in 4 women will require treatment for depression at some time, compared to 1 in 10 men.
• Women are twice as likely to experience anxiety as men.
• Women are more likely to have been treated for a mental health problem than men. A staggering 29% of women compared to, a still very worrying, 17% of men.

These last bible verses were the answer to my prayer to bring a relevant message to a ladies service; they were also the ironic answer to my panicking about the sermon; and it is a message that I am sure many of you, including me, have clung to over the years. ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.’

Many of us know this message so well but the challenge is not do we know the message, but why on earth are we not consistently following it?  What is stopping us? Why would someone not want to take on a lighter burden and find rest for their soul?  It’s a ‘no brainer’, as my kids would say! Who wouldn’t want to live such a life?  But so often we know that we don’t.

To unravel this mystery we need to go back and listen to what Jesus was saying and why.

Jesus was, and still is, inviting us to come to him.  ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens’. This message is simply an invitation and it is one of the most welcoming and generous invitations ever offered, as accepting the invite brings the gift of rest for our souls.   It is an invitation for everyone, it’s completely inclusive and it’s an invite to come just as we are, with all our burdens, to Christ.  Whether or not we feel worthy within ourselves, worthy enough to come into his presence, is irrelevant. We are all invited to come and be with him, spend time with him and learn of him.

Jesus could see in the crowds that day, as he can still see in us today, all the heavy burdens that we are carrying. He can see that we are trying to be good and do the right thing but we are carrying unnecessary burdens on ourselves. His burden is light and he wants us to instead find rest in him.

So what are these burdens? 

We can look first at the religious burdens that were placed on Jews at that time, when they were bogged down with rules and regulations. The Jewish law with all its commandments, them listening constantly to a voice that said :’You shall not.’,  meant that the rules enforced by the Scribes and Pharisees were hard to bear and were a heavy burden.

Jesus was speaking to people who were desperately seeking to find God and desperately trying to be good but they were finding the task impossible. So Jesus revealed the truth, God’s lighter burden, when he shared with them the two greatest commandments – to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ and ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself. ’Gone was the burden of all the rules and regulations.

The lighter burden that Jesus promises is a life where we get back to basics and simply live a life of inclusive love for our God and for everyone. Our only burden should be to love God and to love one another.

The weary search for God also ends with knowing Jesus. It is a basic human instinct to search for meaning and purpose in our lives and as spiritual beings we search for an understanding of the spiritual side of our existence. In knowing Jesus, we see what God is like. God is revealed through the Son. Gone is the burden of searching for God.

We can also look at this invitation more generally and reflect on all the burdens we carry around with us.  Trying to be the best person we can be, the best at work, the best mum, the best friend.  We live in a society where we are encouraged to live the perfect happy life but we are also constantly reminded by the media that we aren’t living up to society’s idea of perfection.  Even from a seemingly unselfish angle, we try to be people pleasers, saying yes perhaps too often, and at times burning out in the process under the burden of taking on too much.

Jesus sees our pain and he starts by pointing it out to us by using a yoke for illustration.  Often we are unaware of the scale of our predicament until someone points out the obvious to us. Jesus lived in a farming community so he used the yoke, the wooden beam on the neck of an ox to carry it’s heavy load to illustrate the point. I wonder what would he would use to illustrate the point to us here today, to help us visualise the enormity of the issue and the joy of his promise? Perhaps a massive rucksack, like the one my daughter is using for her Duke of Edinburgh award, that looks enormous and weighs down heavily on her back.

Can you visualise yourself with this massive rucksack on your back? The full weight of all the unnecessary burdens we carry.

So we know the promise of the invitation, the gift of finding rest for our souls if we accept the invitation and we can visualise our unnecessary burdens, but what next? How do we walk the talk?  Because this bible passage is just a nice quote unless we put it into action. The Message translation of this bible reading says ‘Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.’  We simply need to keep company with Christ.  We need to learn from him, both from his written word in the Bible and by inviting the Holy Spirit into our daily lives, the Living Word. We simply need to keep company with Jesus and learn from him to find rest for our souls.

By spending time with him we are spending time with someone, whom we have just read, is ‘gentle and humble in heart’. Imagine what that looks like.  Imagine yourself as gentle and humble in heart. Is that a person who is anxious and carrying heavy burdens? No.  Does it seem feasible to you that you could be gentle and humble in heart like Jesus? Jesus showed us the life we are all capable of living if we coexist with God.

Jesus, whilst on earth, was fully human, like us, so we too with God’s help can be gentle and humble in heart.

How do we rid ourselves of our unnecessary burdens? How do we leave only his lighter load in our rucksacks when we follow him on life’s journey?  To leave only the need to love our God and to love one another.

Many of our burdens are put on us by other people. So first we need to focus on being God pleasers, rather than people pleasers. Pleasing God needs to be our number one priority. Now this does not need to be mutually exclusive. We can both please God and please others. However the big difference is that we are only accountable to one and not to many, and our focus stays on God.

Trying to make everyone happy and being accountable to everyone is extremely stressful, so let’s just be accountable to God.  Make a promise to God that you will be a God pleaser.  That may still mean that we make people happy on our journey but we are focused on being accountable to God.

Secondly, try to look at our existing list of burdens from another angle. Look at them through Jesus’ blood stained, rose-coloured spectacles of Love. Love makes even the heaviest burden light. Choose our attitude to our burdens. We are blessed with free-will so that we can choose our attitude to every encounter and challenge in our lives. Choose love.

There is an old story which tells how a man came upon a little boy carrying a still smaller boy, who was lame, upon his back. ‘That’s a heavy burden for you to carry,’ said the man. ‘That’s no’ a burden,’ came the answer. ‘That’s my wee brother’.  A burden that is carried in love is always light.

And we mustn’t forget the love that we receive back from our friends. A quote from Ecclesiastes says, ‘If one falls down, his friend can help him’. Our friends can help us bear our sorrows and pick us up when we fall. They can also offer us counsel and perspective.  Even the wisest of people and world leaders need to surround themselves with counsellors to help them make decisions and carry the burden.  The ultimate friend of course is the friend we have in Jesus.

Finally, there is an expression ‘Let Go and let God.’ Let go of all our anxieties and simply let God, within us, do the work.  Stop acting like we know better and what is good for us.  Leave our egos behind and simply give every part of our lives over to God.  Every part. Submit ourselves and our lives to God. Not just on a Sunday; or when we remember; or when things aren’t going according to our plans. Always ‘Let go and let God’.

God’s purpose for us is far greater than our limited understanding and most of our frustrations come when we feel that we are not living a life on track and on purpose.  If we simply ‘let go and let God’, he will lovingly reveal to us our God given purpose. We heard earlier from the book of Proverbs, ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding.   In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.’  If we ‘Let Go and Let God’, no matter what happens to us each day, we know that we are living a life on track, on the right path and on purpose.

So let’s think about my ironic panic about preparing this sermon and why I shared the story of my panic. Let’s think how I could have had applied these ideas to quash that heavy burden and avoid that panic and anxiety.

First, to be a God pleaser rather than a people pleaser. All services are an offering of worship to please God. To produce a sermon that would please every one of you would have been too much of a burden. To be a God pleaser and a people pleaser is not mutually exclusive, so hopefully I’ve pleased some of you with this sermon today but, and the big but, is that it doesn’t have to be and shouldn’t be my priority or purpose to please you all. We are to be God pleasers.

Secondly, the attitude of love. I could have looked at the hours taken to produce this service as a chore, a burden. However instead I chose to look at it as a gift of love, an offering of my time and skills to God. A blessing that I have the faculties to prepare it – hands to write it, eyes to read it, speech to share it. Also the help from friendship.  My friend and mentor, Chris Robinson, has always offered me counsel whilst I’m training and he will kindly read through my sermons and give me guidance. He would have helped me to bring a relevant message to us all tonight, if I’d have asked for his help.

And finally, rather than panic, I should have just ‘let go and let God.’ Ironically he did anyway! His purpose for this service was always going to be greater than my ego and limited vision. Thank goodness.

So we need to be God pleasers, chose an attitude of love and ‘let go and let God.’

All of this is possible if we accept the invitation; if we learn of and follow Christ; and with the power of the Holy Spirit working in and through us. If we ditch the unnecessary burdens out of our rucksacks and carry only Christ’s lighter burden of love, we will find rest for our souls. Amen