Lighter Burden
July 9, 2023 + Lectionary 14 + Sixth Sunday After Pentecost +Pr. Michelle Sevig
Bishop Kevin Strickland, a former member of Holy Trinity before he was elected bishop of the Southeastern Synod, teaches a Bible Exploration class for adults in Atlanta every year. On the first day of class, he asks the participants to name their favorite Bible verse and he says their answers have never varied over the years he’s worked with them.
And so I’ll ask you, “Quick, what’s your favorite Bible verse? Or what one you have committed to memory, if any?” And I recognize not everyone does. That’s OK.
Is it John 3:16 - “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life”? Or maybe it's “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” Or, “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for you are with me.” (Psalm 23) Or “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13)
Those are the top three, he gets every year. But in a sermon for the 6th Sunday of Pentecost, he suggests that we should commit today’s scripture from Romans to memory, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
It seems to me that of all the verses in the Bible, this one expresses a universal statement of our human dilemma. We are in bondage to sin. We cannot free ourselves. We have tried, but we cannot free ourselves. We are simultaneously saints and sinners-people who want to do good, but don’t-- people who want to avoid evil, but we can’t.
I don’t know many people–religious or secular- who cherish the word sin. Most people prefer that we don’t dwell on it or talk about it all. But there was someone in our congregation who once told the pastors we didn’t talk about sin enough (or at all). Well, today is your day!
Maybe we avoid talking about sin because we’re focused on the good news of God’s love. Or because we associate it with guilt, shame, and punishment. And far too often faith leaders have emphasized certain sins over others based on political or cultural biases. Some of us grew up hearing and believing that dancing, drinking beers, playing cards, and having sex before marriage are serious sins always to be avoided at all costs. But we never heard anything about the sinfulness of abusing God’s creation, harming our non-Christian neighbors, or accruing wealth at the expense of others, or racist, sexist, and homophobic systems that harm us all.
Ignoring sin, not naming it, and pretending it doesn’t exist does not make it go away. As theologian, Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, “Abandoning the language of sin does not make sin go away. Human beings will continue to experience alienation, deformation, damnation, and death no matter what we call them. Abandoning the language will simply leave us speechless before them, and increase our denial of their presence in our lives. Ironically, it will also weaken the language of grace, since the full impact of forgiveness cannot be felt apart from the full impact of what has been forgiven.”
We are both beautiful and broken, made in God’s image, but enslaved to something that actively wars against our efforts to do good and be good. Sin is not about whether you had an extra donut when you should have had a piece of fruit. It’s not about doing a bad thing. It’s not about making mistakes. Sin is that gravitational pull away from God, away from the divine image in whom you were created, away from the goodness, love, and peace that is the very essence of God. To use the word sin is to understand that we need Jesus to be more than a good role model, a life coach, or a mentor. We need Jesus to save us from ourselves and draw us back toward the One who created us in their image.
Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber puts it this way: “No one is climbing the spiritual ladder. We don’t continually improve until we are so spiritual we no longer need God. We die and are made new, but that’s different from spiritual self-improvement. We are simultaneously sinner and saint, 100 percent of both, all the time.”
When Paul was writing to the Romans he didn’t have the Lutheran concept of sinner/saint in his back pocket, but he was grappling with it daily. Fully understanding that he was living in the grace and love made known to him through Jesus and yet also aware he was not fully living up to the expectations he had for himself as a fully forgiven, redeemed child of God, confessing, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
Paul may have been weary, constantly preaching, teaching, and being a model leader to the emerging Christian communities. I imagine there were many times he felt like he was not meeting their expectations or his own.
We too know what it’s like to live in a weary world. To have our lives burdened with worry, to feel like we are not meeting our own or others' expectations, when we are not doing the things we want, but are doing the very things that we hate–not loving our neighbor fully, not caring for the earth, not honoring the sacredness of all of creation.
Jesus says in the Gospel reading from Mathew today, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Another great Bible passage to memorize. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Notice that the offer of a lighter burden is not extended to the powerful and the seemingly self-sufficient. It is offered to the weary and the burdened. It is offered to those who recognize that they just can’t make it on their own, no matter how hard they try. It is offered to those who, like Paul, long to be delivered from forces too terrible to wield or manage. The promise is offered to you–sinner and saint–to be yoked to the one who sets you free from the burden of worry of being enough or doing enough to be good enough. You are enough because through Jesus your sin is forgiven and you are set free to live in the world forever yoked to the one who makes your burden lighter.
