“The Unforced Rhythms of Grace”
Matthew 11:28-30
The Ten Commandments as reiterated by Moses in his
farewell sermon to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 5 are essentially the same as
those he brought down off
The Commandments in Deuteronomy closely parallel those
in Exodus, with one major exception: the rationale for keeping the
Sabbath. Exodus 20:11 says: “For in six days the Lord made heaven and
earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore
the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.”
But here’s how it reads in Deuteronomy 5:15: “Remember that you were a slave in the land
of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out with a mighty hand and an
outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded You to keep the Sabbath
day.”
There is no contradiction here. The Sabbath is a day set apart and
consecrated by God as a time of rest, renewal, and worship. God himself had rested on the seventh
day. His creation should do no less. For the Israelites, Deuteronomy 5:15 was a
reminder of their days of slavery, those awful days when their Egyptian masters
were quite literally working them to death.
Slavery had been a 24/7 occupation.
There was no day of rest. Now
they were free from all that. As a way
of remembering how precious Sabbath time is, and as a way of honoring the God
who had delivered them from
Centuries later Jesus had this to say about the
Sabbath as he responded to the Pharisees’ criticism of his disciples’ plucking
a few heads of grain in order to feed themselves on the Sabbath: “The Sabbath was made for [people], and not
[people] for the Sabbath.” Sabbath
is a day of renewal and re-creation, a day of remembering and worshiping
God. One of my favorite old hymns
describes it as: “O day of rest and
gladness, O day of joy and light…”
The Pharisees had, unfortunately, taken this day of
rest and gladness and turned into a day of smothering legalisms. No longer was it a matter of joyfully keeping
the Sabbath in order to praise and honor God.
It was no longer a day of “Thou
shalt,” but a day tied up and strangled by one “Thou shalt not” after another.
This positive and gracious Commandment of God had become a negative and
legalistic burden.
What was Jesus’ response to this burden and all the
others heaped on God’s people by the Pharisees?
Today’s text is a good example.
Once again I share with you from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase. “Are
you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me.
Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me – watch how I
do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of
grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or
ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me
and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
Recovering our lives - taking a real rest – learning
the unforced rhythms of grace – learning to live freely and lightly: this is
the yoke our Lord offers us. Not only a
day of rest and gladness, but a life of rest and gladness. A life of discipleship in which we are
dependent on God. A life in which God
does the heavy lifting, if we will but cast our burdens on him. A life walked side by side with Jesus in the
shared yoke of true righteousness.
No more keeping a lot of rules in order to get to
heaven or stay out of hell. No more backbreaking
religiosity. Simply accepting God’s law
as a gift and delight. Living in
disciplined freedom as we respond to God’s grace by loving him enough to obey –
and enjoy obeying – the true spirit of his law.
All this, as well as the Apostle Paul’s anguished
words in Romans 7, remind me of what Martin Marty said in reference to all the
Transactional Analysis bunk so popular in the sixties and seventies – that
whole business of “I’m OK, You’re
OK.” Dr. Marty said, “I’m not OK.
You’re not OK. But by the grace
of God, that’s OK.”
We’re never going to be perfect. None is righteous, no not even one, for all
have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. At various times in our lives we all join the
Apostle Paul in crying out, “I can will
what’s right, but I cannot do it… Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of
death?” Of course, he finishes that
thought with these words of joyous praise: “Thanks
be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Thanks indeed!
Thanks for the saving grace and unmerited mercy of God shown to us in
Jesus Christ; for our Lord’s freely offered invitation to take his light and
easy yoke of discipleship upon ourselves, the invitation to come away with him
and recover our lives. Thanks for not
having to be perfect. Thanks for
offering us an alternative to the arbitrary demands of the Pharisees of every
ilk in every age. Thanks for not having
to earn our salvation. Thanks for God’s
willingness to love us even on the worst of our “not OK” days. Thanks for
the gentle and humble ways of Jesus.
Thanks for taking away the exhausting burden of always having to prove
ourselves fit for the Kingdom, the exhausting burden thrust upon us by the
world and the Devil as they constantly tell us that we’ll never be good enough,
that we’ll never measure up on some hellishly impossible, humanly devised scale
of self- righteous religiosity.
Just as the Sabbath was created and commanded by God
for our benefit, so, too, is the whole law of God. His law is a gift, not a burden. He freely offers it to us. He does not impose it upon us. The law is there to assist us in maintaining
healthy, holy, and fulfilling lives. The
law sets for us the gracious boundary line by which God defines our
freedom. It is not intended to be some
razor-wired fence that keeps us imprisoned.
Keeping it is an act of love, not an act of desperation. It’s not a whip our Lord cracks over our
heads as he pushes us to do more and more, go faster and faster, and work
harder and harder. It’s a gentle yoke
our Lord shares with us.
But O how often we forget God’s gracious realities and
buy into the world’s damning alternatives.
If some sort of modern day Pharisee doesn’t come along and place the
heavy yoke of arbitrary legalistic demands upon us, we find a way of putting it
on ourselves. We condemn ourselves for
not being tall enough, short enough, pretty enough, wealthy enough, or even
religious enough. We spiritually and
emotionally beat ourselves up for not living up to mama’s or daddy’s or whoever’s
unrealistic expectations. We do run
faster and faster and work harder and harder in pursuit of some golden ring of
humanly defined OK’ness just to discover that it’s nothing but a piece of
cheap, tarnished brass.
Some folks get sucked into some cult in which they
sacrifice themselves in pursuit of some self-proclaimed little tin god’s approval. Others look for or get recruited into
churches where there are lots of rules and regulations by which to run their
lives, churches where the “shalt not’s” far outweigh the “shalts,” where either
right wing doctrinal purity or left wing political correctness is more important
than grace and forgiveness.
Such churches are run by modern day Pharisees who have
rigidly defined the Christian life in their own particular image. These are those supposedly good Christian
people who piously tell us how to dress, how to cut our hair, what books to
read, what music to listen to, what hymns are okay and what hymns are not, and whether
or not it’s okay to clap or sway or otherwise move during worship. These are
the mostly well-intentioned saints who tell us that there is only one real translation
of the Bible. Some of them even try to
tell us how to vote and what kind of schools to which we should send our
children.
The irony is that Jesus came not to abolish the law
but to fulfill it, to bring it back to what God intended it to be. He did not come to impose upon us one more
set of religious obligations or add another chapter to the rulebook. He didn’t
come to lay anything heavy or ill-fitting upon us. He came as God’s incarnate Savior through whom
we might recover our lives. He came not
to rigidly define every aspect of our lives, but to show us how to live in
accordance with the unforced rhythms of grace.
Amen.