"Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." -- Matthew 11:28
A good deal of attention has been devoted to the Evangelical wing of the church. Evangelicals, it would seem, are everywhere, not only preaching on street corners and in bus terminals, but also making their appearance on the covers of national news magazines, when they are not spilling out of our television sets. Reformed sinner Charles Colson can be seen standing side by side with reformed sinner Eldridge Cleaver, as together they intone a hymn. Evangelical churches flourish while mainline churches decline. A poor but honest millionaire peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter, who feels such a personal relationship with us all, tells a press conference how he formed "a very close, personal relationship" with Jesus Christ. And not long ago I walked through a reception line at a wedding only to be greeted by a middle-aged woman dressed in an impeccable suit bearing what seemed to be a diamond-studded pin on her lapel forming in capital letters, for all the world to see, the words "born again"--a term which is fast replacing "superstar" as the great honorific appellation of our time. No doubt this lady was one of the millions of reclaimed people in this country who like to read what Gore Vidal has called "those first-person confessions by washed-up celebrities who have found God."
Now Evangelicals, at least in this setting, present an easy target. With their concentration which amounts to a fixation on personal piety and conversion experiences, their idolatrizing of the Bible, and their general inability to distinguish Jesus Christ from the American flag (although in some quarters this is changing), they represent much which could be criticized, and much which has been criticized. There is one point, however, which has usually been overlooked. Although I respectfully believe that Evangelicals have much to teach us about the disciplines of our faith, I also believe that they often display in an especially dramatic way a classic form of heresy. Paul faced this heresy at Corinth. It is the heresy of those who believe that the resurrection has already happened, that the life of the redeemed is one of unrelieved blessedness which removes them from the sufferings of the world. Evangelicals typically represent a variant of this heresy, but it is one which is widespread throughout the church, not just the Evangelical wing. For who would not prefer a theology of glory to a theology of the cross? Who would not rather have a theology of success than a theology of brokenness? Who would not like to hang onto the promise but to forget about the shadow which attends it?
'Come to Me'
All you who labor and are heavy laden.
Our text this morning is a piece of the theology of the cross. It is not addressed to those who glory in their spiritual life. It is not addressed to those who are inflated--and that includes all of us--about their own accomplishments, whether spiritual or material, intellectual or social, vocational or private. It is not addressed to those who are impressed with the adequacy of their own success. "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like white-washed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead human bones and all uncleanness" (Matthew 23:27).
No, the message of our text this morning is really addressed to others. It is addressed to those, not only outside the church but also within, who labor and are heavy laden. It is addressed to those who are defeated--and in a much deeper sense this too includes all of us--and who have reached the end of their rope. It is addressed to you who no longer harbor any illusions about yourself and your accomplishments--to you who know that when all your pretenses are stripped away, you have nothing left but your own brokenness. It is addressed to you who can no longer lie to yourself and who can no longer hide behind false forms of security, especially "religious" forms of security. It is addressed to you who know that you stand in solidarity with all other persons, within the church and without, a solidarity of need and of suffering.
The message of our text this morning is really addressed to you. For you, too, stand under the shadow of the cross.
Come to me.
Who is it who addresses this strange message to you? Who issues this audacious invitation? Who dares to strip away all your pretenses in order to call you with such a strange and improbable offer?
It is the one whose cross throws the shadow in which you stand. It is the one who emptied himself. It is he who has borne your griefs and carried your sorrows, he who was oppressed and afflicted, but who opened not his mouth--who was cut off from the land of the living and stricken for the transgressions of his people. It is the one who stands before you and who shows you his hands and his feet, the one who says, "I am he." And therefore it is the one who is believable when he tells you, "I am gentle and lowly of heart."
Jesus Christ is the one who knows that we labor and are heavy laden, and he is the one who has the right to issue the audacious invitation. He is the one who knows our plight, because he himself has borne our plight. He is the one who dares to strip away our pretenses, because he himself has suffered under our pretenses. He deigns to call us with such a strange promise and such an improbable offer, because he himself has labored and was heavy laden. Jesus Christ has the right to make this promise, because he has paid his dues, no, because he has paid our dues. In his book, The Vast Majority, A Journey to the World's Poor, Michael Harrington gives us this reflection on his encounter with the unspeakable suffering of the masses in Calcutta:
They finally led me to think blasphemies about Christ. Though I left the Catholic Church long ago, I have always had an affection for Christ--which is to say the Christ of the Catholic Worker, of the Sermon on the Mount, of compassion and gentle love. But now I want to curse him. Who is he to set up his anguish as a model of meditation for the centuries? He was crucified only once, that is all. If you assume that he was God, which I do not, then you can say that he must have felt a terrible psychological loss as they nailed his divinity to the cross. But only one time; only for a matter of hours.... In Calcutta, I think, people are crucified by the thousands everyday, and then those who have not died are crucified again and again and again. If he were half the God he claims to be, he would leave his heaven and come down here to do penance in the presence of a suffering so much greater than his own, a suffering that he, as God, obscenely permits. But he does not exist.
Michael Harrington has devoted his life to the struggle to overcome poverty and injustice, and I have learned more from him about our society and our world than from any other living individual. But there is one thing which he does not yet know. He does not yet know that Jesus Christ has made the sufferings of the world his own. He does not yet know that it is false to drive a wedge between Jesus Christ and all those who labor and are heavy laden. When he encounters the unfathomable misery of the poor and the forgotten, he feels--and who has not felt this way?--that it is necessary to reject and even to blaspheme Jesus Christ and to take up the cause of those in so great a need. But Michael Harrington does not yet know that it is impossible to reject Jesus Christ is this way. He stands in a classical tradition of atheism which finds human misery and Jesus Christ to be incommensurable. He understands the secular meaning of the cross, but not the ultimate meaning of the resurrection. He does not yet know that just as Jesus Christ's suffering encompasses the suffering of the world, so Jesus Christ's resurrection provides the horizon of hope for the world. He does not yet know that in taking up the cause of the poor he has also taken up the cause of Jesus Christ. This does not make Michael Harrington an "anonymous Christian" or a covert member of the church. But neither does it simply make him an atheist, as he would suppose. As one who would try to have hope without faith, he stands in a contradictory position. He is an atheist for the sake of God.
Come to me.
What is it that Jesus Christ wants us to do? What does this crucified one ask of us? Doesn't he want us to imitate him? Aren't we called to follow him, and to take up our cross daily? Doesn't he want us to lay down our lives and to lose them for the sake of the gospel? Aren't we called to heal the sick, to give sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed, and to preach the good news to the poor? Doesn't he want us to present our lives to him as a living sacrifice?
Yes, he wants all these things and more. But first of all he wants something else, and without this something else all our strivings are like the grass which withers and the flower which fades. Without this something else all our would-be obedience in the world is in vain. Jesus Christ wants us to come to him, and he wants us to keep on coming to him. For apart from him we can do nothing. Apart from him we are but noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. Apart from him we remain nothing but those who labor and are heavy laden.
That is why he simply bids us to come. In the first instance, and in the second and the third, he simply asks for nothing more. Come! The door is open and the banquet is prepared. Come! For all things are now ready. Come! For I have turned to you that you might turn to me. Come! For I have emptied myself to make you full that you might do the work of my kingdom. Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, for the time of justice is at hand and the day of peace is drawing nigh. Come! Come again and again. Don't worry about anything else for now, for the course of the world is in my hands. Simply come to me, and everything else will follow.
Come to me!
And I will give you rest.
It is the Risen Lord who is speaking now, for only he can give us rest. "Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?" (Acts 26:2). "God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it" (Acts 2:24). God would not abandon his soul to hell, nor let his Holy One see corruption (Acts 2:27). Nor would God raise him up while leaving us behind. "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through the Spirit which dwells in you" (Romans 8:11). "Lo, your king comes to you, triumphant and victorious is he...because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your captives free from the waterless pit" (Zechariah 9:9,11).
What does it mean when it says that he will give life to our mortal bodies? What does it mean when it says that our king will come to us, triumphant and victorious, to set us free from the waterless pit? What does this, the promise of all scriptural promises, mean? What can it possibly mean to those who labor and are heavy laden?
It is a great mystery, but it means that Jesus Christ will give us rest. It means that his rising from the dead is, for all who stand under the shadow of the cross, the beginning of the joy of the sabbath. It means that the God who raised him, the creator of heaven and earth, has now imparted to us the rest with which he rested on the seventh day. Jesus Christ will give us rest. He will give us, and all who are captive in the waterless pit, the rest of the new creation, the sabbath of the kingdom of God. He will give us the peace which passes all understanding, the rest of the resurrection from the dead.
The rest which Jesus Christ will give us is a present and not just a future reality. He gives us rest by giving us himself, and he gives us himself when we come to him. He does not wait to give us himself, but shows us that he has already done so on the cross. When all is said and done, he does not reproach us for our sins, but he opens wide his arms. He calls us to abide with him as he abides with us, for to abide with him is rest.
But now someone will say to me, Wait just a minute! This sounds like a theology of glory all over again. An inflated theology! A theology of success! He will give us rest! What good will that do for all the suffering we have seen and experienced? What kind of pious clap-trap is this?
Well, it is nothing other than the piety of St. Augustine when he said, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee." The shadow of the cross reminds us that our hearts and our world do not rest in God, even as the resurrection promises that our hearts and our world will indeed so rest Jesus Christ will give us rest, the rest that has come and is yet to come. This means that St. Augustine's saying can be glossed to read, "Our hearts are restless, because they rest in thee." When freedom draws near, our chains begin to ache all the more. When we come to Jesus Christ as those who labor and are heavy laden, we indeed receive the rest which he will give, but we know at the same time that the final resurrection has not yet occurred, that something more, much more, is yet to come. When we receive the rest that he will give us, the rest which only he can and does give, we are not only released from our burdens. At the same time, as those who know the hope of the resurrection, we are thrown back into a new and deeper solidarity with the groaning of the whole creation. Having tasted the first-fruits of the Holy Spirit, we strain restlessly toward the day when the groaning of the world will cease. When Jesus Christ gives us rest, when we come to him again and again and he relieves us of our burdens, he replaces them with his burdens, which, because they are his, are light. When Jesus Christ gives us rest, he equips us to be his servants and the servants of his kingdom. When he gives us rest, he therefore intensifies our deepest longings for justice and peace. He does not give us a rest which removes us from the sufferings of the world. He gives us a rest which places us it solidarity with those sufferings. He gives us that restless rest which causes us to pray again and again, Thy kingdom come! He gives us that rest which will not be rest until he comes again in glory.
Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Sisters and brothers, we live in evil times. The time is coming and now is when darkness shall cover the face of the earth. The time is coming am now is when militarism is out of control, when there are wars and rumor; of wars, when there are famines and when there is torture, when ecological disaster is impending, when the struggle against racism and sexism is subsiding, when politicians make promises they cannot keep, because the very structure of our economic system prevents them from keeping them, when this apparatus of national security has become the greatest threat to national security, and when there seems to be little hope for our children and our world that the world can be stayed from destroying itself. We know what we must do in our capacity as witnesses to the kingdom of God, but we also sense the dreadful limitations which impinge upon what we can accomplish. In the dark days which have fallen upon us and which lie before us, let us hold fast to the confession of our hope, to the light which we have received, let us be unceasing in our prayers to God and our work for; better world, and let us never forget, even in the worst of times, the meaning of the great promise which is given us:
Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Let us pray:
O God, you to whom every heart is open and to whom al desires are known, grant this day that we might come to your Son, Jesus Christ. Turn us to him who labored on our behalf, and exchange our burdens for his. Fill us with that rest which only you can give, and renew that restlessness within us for your will to be done on earth. Save us from despair, and take not your Holy Spirit from us, until that day when you establish your kingdom with power and glory, and we worthily magnify your name through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
George Hunsinger, editor of Karl Barth and Radical Politics, was a PhD candidate in Religious Studies at Yale University when this article appeared. This is the text of a sermon Mr. Hunsinger delivered on July 2, 1978, in the Church of Christ at Yale.
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