Sunday Sermon: The Wrong Burdens

Everyone has to carry a burden, but which one will you choose?

Drawing from Matthew 11, this is an honest sermon on the burdens we carry, the freedom we chase, and the one yoke that's actually light — an invitation to trade self-rescue for rest. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated. Now, it's a small town, but on the off chance, anyone doesn't know me yet. I'm the new curate here, Luke, and Aaron is on vacation. Father Aaron's on vacation. So I will be preaching and uh officiating the services for the next couple weeks. Looking out, I'm pretty sure I know almost every one of you, but you never know. One of the things you'll learn about me in my sermons is that I like to start my sermons with jokes, often not very good jokes, but it's my understanding that Canadians are very polite people. So maybe we'll at least get some polite laughter out of you guys. So, get ready. Here it is. Why do hikers who are going through the mountains laugh so much? Because mountains are hill areas. I know. It only goes downhill from here, guys. We're still on the honeymoon period. Ah. All right. That does actually, if you can believe it, kind of connect to the homily. So I want to start today by telling you a story from my life. So some years ago, I served as a chaplain with the National Park Service down in Isle Royal National Park. Some of you have heard me talk about this. I loved it. It was a very formative experience. So I go on about it endlessly. Isle Royal is an uninhabited island off the coast of Thunder Bay. There's your Canadian geography in Lake Superior. And it's not mountainous, but it is very rugged terrain. So I got it into my head while I was serving out there that I was going to go on a backpacking trip. Backpacking is kind of a combination of hiking and camping. You know, you get a backpack, hence the name, you put your tent, your sleeping bag, all your gear into that backpack, and then you go and hike a couple kilometers out into the woods and you camp there. And then maybe you do that for a couple more days. And so I was kind of a city guy at this point in my life. I had never been backpacking before. And so I got the heaviest tent you can imagine, the heaviest sleeping bag you can imagine, a Bible, a large Bible, a prayer book, a bunch of other stuff I didn't need, and like half a liter of water. So not very much. If you know anything about backpacking, you know I was going to get myself into trouble if I went out there. I was lucky though, because I had a friend who was a park ranger, who was an archaeologist who spent basically her whole summer out in the bush backpacking around, carrying her supplies with her doing archaeology work. And she took one look at my bag, because she was coming with me, and she said, Luke, we are going to repack that bag right now, because I am not carrying it and you out of the woods when you collapse from exhaustion. And she stripped the bag down and repacked everything. She took out the Bible, if you can believe it. She was a Christian, a very intense Christian, but she said, you don't need the Bible, just use the app on your phone. And we went out into the woods like that. And you know what? I had a great time. We had a really great trip. We got to see the northern lights over the bay, uh, kind of ruined a little bit by the light from Thunder Bay, but it was a great time. And I still enjoy backpacking to this day. Now I'm telling you this story because there's a moral to it. And the moral is this: if you hitch yourself to the wrong burdens in life, you put the wrong things in your pack, there's a chance that things will go disastrously for you. So that's a cute story about backpacks, right? But we can bring this into our larger lives. Everyone is carrying a pack throughout their life, metaphorically, of course. And everyone has been sold promises about what that pack is going to do for them. Uh some people put pretty dark things in that pack, you know, drugs, alcohol, uh, gambling, addictions, video games, uh, all of these things that can really eat you up if you let them have you. Uh maybe some of you know people who have struggled with it, these things. Maybe you've struggled with these things. I know I have. I've seen and I've struggled with it myself. And so these are kind of grotesque, ugly things that everyone knows are bad. But there's more subtle ones too. Things that seem productive on the surface that are maybe more common amongst churchgoers. You could have your work that you put in your bag, you can have your relationships, your partner, your family, your children. You can even have your religion that you put in your pack that can start to suffocate you. And I know you're hearing this, right? Like, what? The preacher saying religion could be bad for me? Yes, it can. All these things can be bad for you if you approach them the wrong way. Your work, look, we all know a workaholic, right? And we see how that treats them. Your family, your relationships, I mean, it's good to have a family. I advise you to have a family and to have relationships. But if you make your spouse your everything, you won't have your spouse forever. I'm not saying they're going to leave you, but one of you is going to die at some point in time. Oh, but I live for my kids. Okay. Well, that can be a good thing. You should live for your kids to a certain extent. But we've all seen a suffocating parent, right, who is who's running their children's lives and who is just micromanaging it. And either that child is being smothered and hates their parent and is going to push them away, or they're just getting sucked completely into that parent's life. But your religion, you know, surely religion's okay. Well, if you make religion your all-in-all, there's two things that will probably happen to you. Option number one in making religion your thing is that you will be really, really good at being religious. You'll go to church on Sunday, you'll do the proper fasts, you'll not do the thou shalt nots, you will do the thou shalt, and you'll get so puffed up with yourself. You'll look out at the rest of the world, all those people who don't show up to church every Sunday and who do all the thou shalt nots, and you'll think you're better than them. And you know what? They'll know it. And they'll hate you for that. And you'll deserve it because you're being kind of arrogant. The other option, by the way, that that's the you fulfill all the requirements option. Option two is that you'll try your hardest to be religious, and this is what happens to most people. You just won't measure up. That persistent sin will keep coming back. Uh you'll keep sleeping in on Sundays, and you'll eat yourself up for not being good enough. You'll hate yourself because you just can't measure up to what your religion expects of you. The common thread in all these burdens that you can put in your back is that they all promise you one thing. They promise you freedom. They promise you escape. If you work enough, you can have freedom from want. If you surround yourself with enough relationships, with enough family, you can have freedom from feeling unloved. If you're religious enough, you get freedom from guilt. And if you get far enough into a bottle or uh of alcohol or pills, you get freedom from everything, right? That promise of freedom is a lie, which you can probably guess, right? So that's a lot of heavy social commentary. But what does the Bible have to say about all this? Because it does have good news. Here's a promise right now. You're just meeting me. I promise every sermon I ever preach to you will have good news in it. If I don't ever, find me after church and give me trouble about it. So, what does the Bible say about this? We have it right here in our passage from Matthew today. Uh the exact text is Come to me, all you who 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. Beautiful words, right? Heard them a thousand times. They're they're just great. It's worth reminding ourselves what a yoke is. Maybe not all of you are city guys like I am. Maybe some of you grew up on farms. But for anyone who didn't, a yoke is a wooden implement, a wooden beam that you hitch onto an animal's back. And then when you hitch it onto that animal's back, they are stuck on one burden, one thing that the animal is pulling, that they have to carry along with them. You've taken away their freedom of choice. The animal has been yoked to one burden that they have to pull. So what Jesus is offering us is not that he will remove all burdens from our lives. It's not escape everything. Jesus is swapping all those burdens of the world out for his burden. Not the burden you choose, not the burden I choose, but his burden. But this is still a really interesting kind of counter-cultural idea, isn't it? I mean, in the West, the West, I mean Canada, America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, so on and so on. Freedom is our number one thing, right? The right to choose what we do with our lives. You do you, Boo. Go out, live the life you want to leave. The worst thing you can say to a person in the 21st century West is, hey, you know, that thing that you like, what you're doing, the path you've chosen, you're on the wrong path. You can't say that to people. I mean, it it's it's people. Freedom is at the core of what we want and who we are. I think this speaks maybe particularly to the North. I haven't been here very long, so tell me if I'm wrong, but I get the impression that self-reliance is kind of a virtue up here. This idea that we can, you know, take care of ourselves. We're out here, far away from everyone else. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. I've been here a month, like I said. But there's this countercultural framing here that Jesus gives us that no, you're not going to figure it out on your own. You cannot make your own choices. You need me to come in and show you how to do things. You need my yoke and my burden. So why is that? Why can't we take our own burdens? Why is our freedom actually something that'll get us into trouble? There's two reasons for that. Reason number one, why choosing your own burdens will get you in trouble, is because every burden you can choose is a form of self-rescue. It's your attempt to rescue yourself through work, through family, through religion, relationships, through the darker things. And here's the problem with trying to do things on your own. You're not good enough. I'm not good enough. None of us are good enough, actually. We're not strong enough, smart enough, wise enough, holy enough. And here's the thing. That's okay. That's normal. That's how the world is. None of us is good enough. I mean, we're we're we're all we're adults, mostly in this room. I do see a couple kids in the back there. Uh, but really, we're all just big kids flailing around in an ocean, a world with a disease called sin that's way too big and difficult and scary for us to take on on our own. Imagine you have a drowning person, maybe out there in the slave river, or well, that's a little dramatic. Let's imagine in the municipal pool over there. Someone is drowning in the municipal pool. If someone's out there in the middle, what do you say? Do you shout out, hey buddy, try harder? You can do it, save yourself. No, no one does that for a drowning person. That would be crazy. What you do is you get a lifeguard or you throw them a life preserver. You get something else to aid them. And we're all like that drowning person. We can't do it alone. Which brings us to reason two, why Jesus is what we need, why we need his yoke, why we can't do this ourselves. Why we need Jesus in particular, and not your work, not your family, not your relationships, not the newest TV show on Netflix. Uh why you need Jesus is because he is a person. He's not a program, he's not a system, he's not even a life preserver. He is a human being, a divine person that you can have relationship with. Think back to my park ranger friend who helped me out with my backpacking near disaster, right? I could have looked up online a list of things to bring with you backpacking. In fact, I did. I just didn't pay much attention to it. You need a person, someone you can interact with, someone who can come in and show you, yes, this, no, not that. Uh, you can't just do it on your own. You need Jesus. You need someone who can come in and say, here, John, or here, Anna, Molly, or whoever, come here. Let me readjust your pack. You know that thing you've been holding on to lately. Really don't need it. Let me take on the load. Why don't you carry this instead that I have for you? Why don't you try thinking about this instead? Just like a drowning person needs a lifeguard, just like I needed a park ranger, we all need a person. We need a perfect person who loves you so much he would die for you. Jesus. Now, what does it mean to actually, you know, live that life? Well, that's a really big question. And maybe a sermon for another day. We're just talking about the burdens we're carrying right now that we shouldn't have with us. So here's my application for you to help deal with those burdens you're carrying. So, firstly, I want you to think of a person in your life whom you love, whom you can speak openly to, ideally, if not a Christian, some kind of intentional spirituality in this person's life, someone you respect, someone who is thinking well in their life. So close your eyes, five seconds, think of who this person is. Now, once you have this person in your mind, and by the way, if you can't think of someone, you can always think of me. Maybe you don't love me yet. That's fine, we'll get there. But you know, you can always talk to me. If you see me in the Northern store, you're always welcome to come up and bother me. So you've got your person in your life, maybe me, maybe someone you love. Uh, and now I want you to ask yourself this question What burden am I carrying? What's actually running my life? What am I trying to rescue myself with? What burden do you have? No, you've got your person, you've got your burden. Sometime this week, I would recommend Monday, because you're gonna forget about it if you try to do it later in the week. Uh, go talk to that person about what it is that you're carrying. Just let them know. It doesn't need to be a big dramatic conversation. Just have a conversation. Uh, the scriptures tell us that if we talk about what we're struggling with, that is the first step to dealing with it. Proverbs 28, 13. I've got it written down for you. Here's the proof. He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will find compassion. I didn't write that. There's the proof. Whoever wrote Proverbs wrote that. You would think they would have taught me that at seminary, right? And just because I wouldn't ask you to do something that I wouldn't do myself, I'll tell you. For me, my burden, it's pleasure. You know, I I seek after pleasure. It's a real struggle for me. Uh, food, candy, sleeping in on Sunday. Um, really, I desperately want to sleep in most Sundays, but it is by the call of the Lord Jesus Christ that I wake up every Sunday morning for church. Um, you know, that's really been my burden in life. And I I've struggled with it seriously, with darker things in my past, the kind of stuff clergy aren't supposed to struggle with. Yeah, if you're thinking about it, I've probably been there. And, you know, by the grace of Christ, it gets easier and easier. But you know, we're all works in progress, right? There's nothing to be ashamed about. Everyone you meet, not just you, everyone in this room is carrying some kind of burden. And every burden we choose for ourselves promises you freedom, but it will not actually give you freedom. It only will add weight and break you down. Jesus is not asking you to carry more. He's asking you to trade your burdens for his yoke and his burden. And he's doing that because he's a person who you can trust, who loved you enough to go up on a cross and die for you on your worst day. And I think that's good news. There you are. There's your good news for the day. Amen.