DO WE GET THE YOKE?

Following Jesus is not always easy. But, then, we have never expected it to be. Nor did Jesus ever say or promise that it would be. In fact, he said that if we wanted to be a follower of his, we would have to carry some crosses – about which, as we have all discovered, he was not whistling Dixie, as they say. Sometimes it has been a really tough road to hoe and more often than we would like it to be.

Even so, Jesus also said that in following him “the yoke would be easy and the burden light” (Mt 11:30). My guess is that that has not always been true for anyone of us over the years. My other guess is that many, at this moment in time, find the burden of being a Christian anything but light and what seems a yoke around our necks to almost be choaking us to death. And it isn’t fun; not in the least!

If you are like me, what makes the burden, if not light, at least a whole lot easier to carry, is when we understand what Jesus meant by the yoke. When I think of a yoke in agricultural terms (and as I think Jesus was certainly alluding to), it is an instrument that fits around the next of the ox pulling a plow, but not one neck or one ox but two. When two are pulling the plow together, the row (and the road) being hoed is much easier. It doesn’t mean that it will be a piece of cake, but only that it will be easier.

And isn’t that what we have found over the course of trying, as best we could, to live out our faith? When we tried to hoe the road all by ourselves, it was always much more difficult than when we allowed someone else, some others, to, as it were, share the yoke with us. What does not need to be said, but I’ll say it anyway, Jesus has always been on the yoke with us, not to pull the load for us, but to help make it less burdensome.

That is what a Christian community is all about: each one of us pulling our share of the responsibilities of doing what our faith calls us to do, but doing it together, yoked together. Again, that does not mean the task will be very easy but it will be easier. For if we think that the task ahead is impossible, we will never even begin to tackle it. But if we know that we will have help, we will do what we are able to do.

There will always be difficult times in our lives, the result of our own selfishness and that of others. In fact, we are living in these times right now. When we stand back and look at what is demanded of us to love one another as God loves us, it almost seems overwhelming, if not impossible, a yoke too difficult to pull and a burden that is too heavy to bear. But if we pull together, as difficult as that task is, the field will be plowed and the seeds will be planted and with the grace of God and the strength of the Holy Spirit to help and support us along the way, the harvest will come. That is God’s promise and that it the truth. Believe it!