Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Text: Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Dear friends in Christ, grace and peace be with you this day.

Before a new pastor arrives, congregations often paint the office the new pastor will use.

My last interim position was unusual because there were two associate interim pastors on staff at the same time. The other interim left a few weeks before me, and after he left I watched his office get painted and freshened up in order to welcome the new pastor. During my last week, I had to move my stuff out of the office I used in order for it to be painted and organized for the second new pastor.

When an interim pastor arrives, the office usually hasn’t been recently painted. And that’s as it should be. My role is to pave the way for the next person, to help make sure the office is ready.

When I get settled into a new office as an interim, I get to see the old paint on the walls, the holes where the last pastor hung pictures, the faded places on the shelves where books were recently displayed. No one has had time to cover anything up. I begin my work during a time of full transition; an in-between place.

When I arrive on my first day in the office at a new interim position, there are often apologies because people wish they could welcome me like they would welcome a new pastor. Others are so distracted and overwhelmed by the transition tasks that they don’t have time to think about how to integrate me into the congregation. No one tries to show their best side because they’re too busy surviving. There’s no pretense because there’s work to be done.

A time of transition is a time of humility—both for the congregation and for me.

****

“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest,” Jesus says.

This invitation to discipleship comes after Jesus has called the disciples and sent them out, after he’s healed many and calmed the storm. In Matthew 11 John the Baptist returns to the narrative. He’s in prison and sends his disciples to ask Jesus if he is the Messiah. Jesus responds by naming his deeds—The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.

Jesus then talks about the differences between John and himself and how people have reacted to both of them. John is an austere man, who lives a restricted life in the wilderness—as Jesus says, neither eating nor drinking, and people call accuse him of having a demon. Yet when Jesus arrives, eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners, people accuse him of being a glutton and a drunkard.

Nothing is good enough, Jesus says. Theologian Debi Thomas writes, “We claim to be wise and discerning, but we don’t recognize the divine when we encounter it. God is always too much or too little for us; too severe or too generous, too demanding or too provocative. On our own, we have little capacity to discern what is good and right and holy and true.”

As Paul writes in our reading from Romans, “When I want to do good, evil lies close at hand.”

Discipleship commands humility.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” This beautiful invitation from Jesus asks us to identify ourselves as weary; it asks us to name our heavy burdens.

This invitation asks us to admit that we don’t have it all together, that we can’t handle everything on our own, that we don’t have all the answers. It asks for a softness, for an openness to learn from Jesus and to accept rest—and resting is sometimes the most vulnerable thing we do.

Jesus says, “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.”

As he so often does, Jesus uses familiar agricultural imagery. A yoke is a wooden piece that is often used to attach two oxen together around their necks and is also attached to a cart or plow.

Jesus offers a rest that involves true humility—when we take Jesus’ yoke upon us, we give up leading our own lives. We’re allowing Jesus to set our direction and to give us the work of the Spirit.

Jesus isn’t offering us a vacation or an absence of action, but a baptismal identity and a role. We find rest in knowing who (and whose) we are, being led by the Spirit.

***

When we are humbled by times of transition, we may be a little more receptive to newness. Sometimes we have to be humbled in order to open our hearts to something new. Often we have no choice.

Ann Lamott once wrote, “It is the worst thing on earth, this truth about how little truth we know. I hate and resent it. And yet it is where new life rises from.”

The chaos of transition leads us to rely on the direction of the Spirit. We don’t know what’s next—and sometimes we don’t even know what we want to happen next. We realize how much we don’t know.

There is no new paint to cover up the smudges on the walls. Transition forces us to see ourselves truly.

We like to believe we have it all together, that we don’t need the guidance of the Spirit, that we don’t get frustrated when God doesn’t fit into our expectations of what we think God should be like, that we don’t need rest or help, that we don’t need to put on our best face.

Often we aren’t at our best when we’re thrown into change, especially when we didn’t ask for it.

Yet change softens us. Interim ministry allows a congregation to take advantage of the ways change opens our hearts to new directions of the Spirit. There is opportunity in the transition.

There are two types of yokes—a single yoke and a double yoke. I like to think of Jesus’ yoke as a double yoke that allows us to share the weight of our burdens. We are not alone. We have each other and the Spirit as we move forward into a new future.

Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Thanks be to God! Amen.