THE YOKE
Text: Matthew 11:20-30
May 22, 2005, Dave Philips
Gordon Gecko, the corporate raider and inside trader in the movie, Wall Street, addressing the stockholders’ meeting at a corporation he wanted to take over, says, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good, is right. Greed works, greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms: greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind, and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A.”
Ivan Boesky, convicted of insider trading in 1987, said the year prior to his conviction in a speech to the graduating class of the University of California Business School, “Greed is all right . . . . I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.” He was enthusiastically applauded for those words by the graduating seniors.1
The philosophy of men like Gordon Gecko and Ivan Boesky seems to be, “Blessed are the aggressors, for they shall get what they want.” Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
The popular idea of meekness or gentleness of heart makes us think of people who are mediocre and weak, people with no character who let others walk all over them and won’t stick up for their rights. The meek person is Caspar Milquetoast. The meek person is the loser. The meek person is spiritless, passive, like a chicken who runs to get out of the way when it sees you coming. Who needs meekness? Who in their right minds would want to be thought of as meek?
Jesus said, “I am meek and gentle in spirit.” We call ourselves Christians, that is, people who follow Jesus and are directed by his Spirit. If we’re serious about our faith, we need to understand what it is that Jesus is saying when he calls himself meek, and what he is encouraging us to do when he says, “Blessed are the meek.”
To find out what Jesus means when he calls himself meek and gentle, we must go back to our Bibles. Looking at the context of these words in our scripture lesson, we notice two remarkable things: in the first place, Jesus is calling himself gentle and humble hearted in almost the same breath as he is passionately prophesying doom for the cities where he has preached. “Woe to you Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum. It will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.”
This man who called himself meek and humble is the same man who threw the money changers out of the temple. What on earth does he mean calling himself “meek and humble” given the context?
The second thing we notice is that while Jesus is telling the crowds he is meek and gentle hearted, he is also telling them that no one knows God the Father but he himself, or anyone to whom he chooses to reveal the Father. Would you say that a person who makes such statements is self effacing or self assertive? Would you say that such a person has a high view of his destiny or a low one?
The meekness of Jesus certainly didn’t mean that he ran from danger, or had an inferiority complex, or had a low opinion of himself. He certainly had a very strong personality and a very high view of his own identity. On the other hand, when we read the context, we search in vain for any note of boasting or self-congratulation. What he says he is, he is. Here is a strong man, so strong that he scares us, telling us that he is meek and advising us that we’ll be unhappy unless we, too, are meek.
Then what is Jesus talking about when he calls himself meek? I once traveled to Lexington, Kentucky, and had the privilege of visiting Spendthrift Farms, one of the leading centers for the breeding of racehorses in the world. We were allowed to enter the stables where past champion racehorses were kept for breeding purposes. There I saw the great Nashua, one of the most spectacular racehorses of the 20th century. I’d never seen a racehorse up close before. I found this horse breathtaking: huge! Bigger than I had ever imagined, beautifully proportioned, muscular, spirited, and dangerous. At least I felt a real sense of healthy fear when I stood near this horse. No one had to caution me about how dangerous stallions can be. I sensed it instinctively. This was no carnival pony. This was a thoroughly awe inspiring horse, and I treated him with great respect. And yet in New Testament terms this horse could be called meek. If he had not been meek, he would have been useless as a racer.
The Green Bay Packers of the fifties and sixties were the quintessential football team, still being talked about years after their heyday. They were an alarming group of athletes. They ran over opposing teams like a mowing machine runs over a field of grain. They had such superstars as the arrogant Paul Hornung, and Bart Starr, the man with the golden arm who along with Hall of Famers Forrest Gregg, Ray Nitschke, and Jim Taylor captured five league championships in seven seasons—a record unmatched in NFL history. And standing behind the team was their coach, Vince Lombardi, Lombardi the terrible, Lombardi the scourge of all the coaches in the National Football League, the man who said, “Winning’s not everything, it’s the only thing.” And the Green Bay Packers, using the word the way Jesus used it, would be called meek.
How? How could a horse as powerful, as spirited, as dangerous as Nashua be called meek? How could a team as strong, as skillful, as electrifying as the Green Bay Packers under Lombardi be called meek? Because the racehorse and the football team, and Jesus, too, had this in common: they were awesome power under control. They were power focused, channeled. Behind the championship racehorse were hours and hours of patient training by his trainers until he was submissive to the will of the jockey. Behind the championship football team were hours and hours under the fearsome Lombardi until the players were willing to follow his instructions to the letter. Undergirding Jesus was the power of God brought into focus in this powerful man by the perfect obedience of Jesus, by his willingness to do whatever God, his Father, wanted him to do.
Come to me. Take my yoke. Learn from me. Notice the imperatives. The yoke implies brokenness. An animal that is unbroken is of no use to its master as Nashua would be worthless as a racehorse unless he was broken. A human being who is unbroken is of no use to God, even as Paul Hornung would be useless to Vince Lombardi unless he was broken. God wants broken people. Not people who are smashed, but people who are broken, broken in the same sense that a horse is broken: broken for usefulness. Broken for obedience. Broken so that the power God has given to each of us can be focused and channeled. Broken so that true humanity can be seen in us as it was in Jesus.
What the church needs today is this kind of brokenness, this kind of meekness. I don’t think we need any more wealth or any more prestige. I don’t think we need any more power or any more influence. I doubt that our pronouncements are taken seriously by very much of anybody. I doubt that the books we write or the sermons we preach are going to cut much ice with anyone, unless we are broken people, people who are responsive to the touch of the Master’s hand.
How does this work? Listen to the imperatives again. Come to me. Take my yoke. Learn from me. It works, first, when we admit that Jesus Christ is worth following. It works when we acknowledge that Jesus has the right to rule our lives. It works when we admit our need before Jesus Christ. We come as beggars, as suppliants. It’s not the needs that we can see on the surface of our lives, the so-called basic needs for love, recognition, and popularity, but the deepest of all needs. We need to realize that even if we had all of these other needs fulfilled: even if we were loved, were recognized, were popular, were doing something useful and wonderful with our lives, we would still be beggars without Christ. Acknowledging Christ’s authority over our lives and admitting our need before God, then, is basic.
Second, we have to submit to God. We have to bend to the yoke of Christ. There’s no shortcut here. The road to the resurrection leads through Calvary, not around it. We must have the mark of the Cross upon us. We must be under the yoke of Christ. We must be broken. Sometimes an experience of suffering will accompany this breaking.
Catherine Marshall, whose writings are so luminous with the spirit of Christ and have blessed so many people, went through a “dark night of the soul” late in her life. She seemed unable to bounce back from it. She was depressed, she was nervous, and she was impossible to get along with.
Her husband, Len LeSourd, confronted her. He told her he had figured out when her trouble began. “It all began,” Len told Catherine, “with the enormous success of [your novel] Christy. I watched the change in you. It was gradual over many months. The plaudits, the adulation, the bestseller lists, the movie sale, all heady stuff. [Your publishers began to tell you] you could do no wrong. That’s when the change in you really began. Deep down inside, you bought it. You began to think you could do no wrong. Every book you’d written, a major success. Magazines eager for articles. . . . It was at that point, Catherine,” Len continued, “that I began to feel the arrogance. Before the success of Christy you had what I felt was a delightful sense of inadequacy. Especially for one who had been so successful. . . . You needed God. Without Him you were incomplete. . . . Then after [you wrote] Christy you changed. Ask yourself, Catherine. Did you come to a point where you felt you didn’t need God anymore?”2
It was this confrontation that helped Catherine Marshall realize her arrogance and seek God once again. Soon after this her dark night of the soul came to an end.
The spirited horse submits to the trainers in order to become a racehorse. The spirited athlete submits to the coach in order to become a champion. The spirited man or woman submits to Christ in order to grow into a full humanity.
Third, having come to Christ and submitted to him, we must be willing to learn from him. This seems simple to the point of childishness. We’ve had our Sunday School lessons, after all. We know all the stories. What more is there to learn? Let me give you a clue: we need to learn not just the content of these Bible stories, but their reality in our experience.
Lee Whiston tells of Mary, a leading girl in the church, president of the youth fellowship, who told her pastor after the third session of confirmation class that she didn’t want to join the church.
“Why not?” he asked.
“You’ve been telling us that to join the church we should live as Jesus would. In our home we don’t live that way.”
“What do you mean?” asked the pastor. “What happens at home?”
“Oh, we lose our tempers, shout at each other -- sometimes scream,” said Mary.
“Is that the kind of home you want to have when you are married?” her pastor asked.
“No,” said Mary, “I want my home to be different. The kind of home you talk about in class.”
“Then why don’t you begin to live that way right now?”
Mary shrugged. “What can I do? I’m just one.” The pastor pondered for a moment and then said, “How do you go swimming?” Mary was an athlete and an enthusiastic swimmer, as he knew. “Do you put one big toe into the water, and then one toe of the other foot? Do you let the water creep slowly over your feet and ankles while you stand there shivering, hoping that someone else will come and join you?”
Mary was scornful. “You know how I go in swimming,” she said.
“Have you ever thought of living for Christ the way you go in swimming?”
That night when Mary got home, the first thing she said was, “Mom, may I help you with supper?” Her mother was immediately suspicious. What was the angle? What had Mary done wrong? Then after supper, Mary talked the older two children into helping her do the dishes so that their mother could rest. Now her father was raising his eyebrows. What on earth was going on?
Next morning Mary helped with breakfast, kissed her mother goodbye before rushing to the bus, and when her mother stepped into Mary’s rom, she nearly fainted. Mary’s bed was made, the dresser drawers were neat, and when she opened the closet, nothing fell out. Mary kept up this kind of behavior for several days.
Finally her parents couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. “Mary, what gives?” her father asked. “What have you done, or what do you want to do?”
“There’s no angle, Dad,” said Mary, tears springing to her eyes. “It’s just that I’ve been talking to the pastor about living with the spirit of Christ. I thought I’d try it -- and these have been the happiest days of my life.” Mary broke down and had a good cry on her father’s shoulder. In a few minutes he was acknowledging that he, too, had not been living as he should. The whole family was moved by a girl’s willingness to be taught by the spirit of Christ.3
There’s nothing passive about the meekness of Christ. It’s an active, assertive attitude. A cartoon shows an imposing tycoon leaving church and saying to his wife, “Well, if the meek are going to inherit the earth, they’re going to have to be a lot more aggressive about it!”
Absolutely right! Meekness isn’t weakness! Meekness isn’t passivity! The meekness of Jesus is power under control. The meekness of Jesus is submission to God’s wisdom. It’s all the wonderful spirit, all the wildness of the human being submitting itself to a wisdom greater than its own, coming to Christ, bending to his yoke, and learning from him so that we can be as spirited, as fearsome, and as wise as Jesus.
Someone said of a powerful Christian leader of the19th century, “He was humble as a child before God, and bold as a lion before men.” That’s a portrait of a Christian living under the yoke of Christ. That’s the way Jesus was. And that’s how we Christians, trusting Christ, following his example, guided by his Spirit, can experience the fearsome meekness of Jesus and change our world.