Yokes, Burdens and the heaviness of discipleship .......

When a priest approaches the Altar s/he does so in a solemn and prayerful manner. This is because s/he knows that s/he is privileged to be called and invited.

Depending on what vestments are worn there is a prayer for each garment that the minister adopts before approaching the Altar.

When I place the stole around my neck I recognise that symbolically I am taking upon myself the Yoke of Christ, like a beast of burden I take the weight of the yoke on my shoulders and so I kiss the stole in thanks that I have been gifted this burden which comes with the promise of Christ in the Gospel, that it will be light.

I have to say that it has not always felt light.

There have been, indeed there are, times when the burden of ministry, of the yoke of Christ has felt very heavy.

Conducting the funeral of my cousin’s baby daughter. Conducting the funeral of my wife’s step-brother’s son who had committed suicide. Conducting the funeral of my wife. Conducting the funeral of my son. There have been times when ministry, when the yoke, has felt very heavy indeed.

And not only is ministering in such deeply personal situations heavy. 

There have been times when I have been called to the bedside of dying parishioners and waited and watched with them as they took their last slow breath.

There was the time when I sat with a parishioner with dementia, he had been the Headmaster of a private school, his wife was out visiting a friend. When he soiled himself I had to clean him. 

Ministry comes in all forms and brings many challenges, it may not be particularly pretty, it may not always be like the movies, but as Thomas Merton says, when one is lying broken and beaten by the roadside and another leans over to bathe his wounds then the presence of God is made known there.

There was the time when I was called to the hospital to pastor, to calm and to ease the burden of a drug addicted young man whom I had befriended when he was homeless, who had lived in my house with my family and who had been found face down in the gutter with an overdose that threatened to claim his life.

As we sat and I held his hand and offered prayerful consolation I felt his deep pain and unease pass from him to me and as I absorbed his pain felt him relax and become more at ease with himself.

Ministry is heavy.

John the Baptist came preaching repentance and calling people to baptism but was rejected as a demon.

Jesus came preaching the good news of the kingdom but was rejected as a glutton, a drunkard, a sinner and a friend of tax collectors. 

There is a story told of the Lecturer of Bolton Parish Church who was invited to preach at the installation of a new Vicar of the Parish.

He chose his text from Matthew 11 verse 3, when John’s disciples asked Jesus:

 “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”

It can often feel like that. Congregations can spend long vacancies praying for a priest to come then when you do, and as you make your presence felt and begin to make changes there comes a sense that they are praying for you to leave.

And that resistance to change, that sense that ‘we have always done it this way,’ which never quite takes account of the fact that you personally may never have done it that way for perfectly good reasons, can also be quite heavy.

In this Covid world where truth is often hard to discern from briefings offered by politicians who seem to have little commitment to truth. 

Where every piece of advice can subjected to misinterpretation. 

Where there are, it seems different laws for the privileged than for everyone else. It is important to stress that truth does matter. It is the starting point for us to live fruitful lives.

The idea of a yoke relating to the beast harnessed to the plow is the obvious idea that arises from these words of Jesus but the word yoke can be understood from rabbinic literature as obedience to the law. In order to obey the Law it is essential that you know the law. 

So we bear the yoke of Christ not only to pull the plow but to learn from and conform to Jesus’ teaching that we are called to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves, so as I kiss my stole I do so in acknowledgment that as I learn and mature in my walk with Christ not only should I come to know God but more importantly I should, by my faithfulness, be known by God and it is that knowing which makes the burden light. 




Comments

  1. Kate Swindlehurst5 July 2020 at 02:54

    A moving exploration of the weight of service, care, concern, commitment - I hadn't thought of the stole in terms of the yoke of a beast of burden. Interesting, thought-provoking...


















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