A homily for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 9, 2023
Zec 9:9-10, Rom 8:9, 11-13, Mt 11:25-30
It’s been said there are two kinds of jobs, the ones you bathe before and the ones you bathe after. I’ve held both.
It’s also been said that we learn more through our fingers than we do through our eyes and ears, and I agree.
I earned my college degree over four school years, Labor Days through Memorial Days, but I gained my real education over five summers and one winter, eight hours after high school graduation through eight months after college graduation.
I was educated by a manual labor job, in which I showered at the end of the workday. At least, on days I wasn’t dog-tired.
There’s something liberating about a job that taxes your muscles — of which I had hardly any — a job you can leave behind at 4:30 and not think about until the next morning.
There’s something eye-opening about a job where you work with all different kinds of people, especially people whose lives are nothing like your privileged, sheltered own.
There’s something humbling in a job that reminds you how dependent all of us are on essential workers, an epiphany I had decades before COVID.
There’s pride in workmanship (sorry; I couldn’t find a gender-neutral term for it), whether you’re a semi-skilled ditch digger scraping dirt off new curbing so the asphalt will adhere to it or a master union electrician wiring a complex office building on the cutting edge of AI and other 21st century marvels.
As long as any of us are giving it our all, as long as any of us are using the gifts and talents our Creator gave us, we have good reason to be proud. The kind of pride that does not goeth before a fall, by the way.
And that’s the wonderful reassurance Jesus gives us in the passage from Matthew’s Gospel today.
We’ve all seen memes and inspirational posters etc. supposedly reassuring us that God never gives us more than we can handle. Lately, though, I’ve seen a marvelous rebuttal: God gives us whatever we need to handle whatever crosses our paths, no matter how massive.
And whenever we take a minute or two to inventory ourselves — which we should do often — we’ll realize how deeply true that is.
Each of us is a Central Jersey-size warehouse of treasured wealth, seen and unseen.
Not to be missed in that inventory is the presence of Jesus sharing the load.
“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”
Over the years, many of us have heard or read this passage and gotten hung up on the “yoke” and “burden” parts. “Oh, man, do I really have to pull another plow or tote that barge and lift that bale? Really?”
The yoke part, especially. Yet another heavy load on our already aching shoulders, right?
Except a proper yoke is not a solo mechanism. It spreads the load among at least two. And Jesus is a partner to each of us in this yoke-sharing. The Son of Almighty God, Emmanuel, God With Us, fully divine while fully human, is pulling in the same direction with us.
Pulling his burden. His light burden.
The burden of spreading his Word and cajoling everyone in the known universe to obey his law: Love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.
If we know ourselves well enough, we’ll know how to do it to the best of our abilities. It may be a stretch to call the joy we’ll feel while spreading the Word a bit of pride in workmanship, but for now, let’s go with the expression.
A random act of kindness.
A moment spent just being with someone.
A major endeavor, like a clothing drive or a community garden or a beach cleanup or a day of planting trees.
Sharing our wisdom.
Being the beacon that leads others to our Messiah.
Those burdens indeed are light.
Yes, we may feel joy and pride as we achieve what we are called to do, but that’s more than pride. That’s Jesus delivering the rest he promised.
And after we rest up a bit, let’s get out there and do some more, because the need is great, and God has given each of us what we require to help lighten the burdens that our sisters and brothers are carrying in their lives.
Shouldering a yoke is a team effort, after all.
