The Lessons of Experience. July 09, 2023. The Reverend David M. Stoddart

 

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 

When Mo. Kathleen began her sermon last week by asking how many people like taking tests, I was tempted to raise my hand and say. “Ooh! Ooh! Me!” Not because I enjoy taking tests per se, but because I love doing well on tests. During my school days, if I aced an exam, it made me feel accomplished, as if I had actually mastered the subject I was studying. But what if the subject is God? I spent years in college and in seminary studying God, or rather, studying things that are at least somehow related to God. I took many classes in religion, theology, Scripture, and church history. I did well on many exams. I mastered the material: I even earned a “Master of Divinity” degree. Think about that for a second: Master of Divinity. As if! I came away from my formal education with a lot of knowledge, and knowledge is a good thing. But as much as I loved learning it, it left me hungry. There was something elusive in my studies, something that always seemed to escape me. I knew a lot about what other people said about God. I knew a lot about what other people thought about Jesus. But knowing about someone is not the same as knowing someone. And there is only one way to know God.

I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. As a young adult, I slowly came to understand what countless people have long understood, what anyone, even the most uneducated person can understand: we can only know God by experiencing God’s love. No amount of education, no degrees, fancy titles, or honors can substitute for simply realizing that we are held in God’s love, unconditionally and forever. I am reminded of St. Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the most influential theologian in Christian history. He authored many books, commentaries, and treatises, including tomes of theology so vast in scope that they were called Summas – they summed up everything. But Aquinas had a powerful and personal experience of God towards the end of his life, an epiphany that led him to stop writing completely. When asked why he refused to take up the pen again, he said simply, “All that I have written now seems like straw to me.” You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.

Now, I am a big proponent of education. We are continually called to learn more about the ways of God, ourselves, and the world we live in. As faithful people, we should be rigorous thinkers who use our minds to the best of our abilities. But all of that will only make sense when we are grounded firmly in the experiential knowledge of God. The starting point must be the experience of God’s love, mercy, and grace. When we are not anchored in that experience, when we become focused instead on ideas, concepts, doctrines, traditions, and rules, then a troubling thing happens: we become less concerned about being loving, and more concerned about being right. And when Christians become more focused on being right than on being loving, we get into lots of problems.

For example, the need to be right has for centuries caused Christians to twist themselves into pretzels trying to explain why a God of love would damn to eternal torment anyone who is not a baptized church member. The very idea of that is obscene, and the thinking behind it is preposterous, but people have advocated for it because we have to be right and that means other people have to be wrong. That has not only poisoned our relationships with people who belong to other religions or to no religion: it has poisoned our relationship with each other, as our long history of condemning and excommunicating each other demonstrates. And this need to be right also impacts the way we interact with the society around us. Just recently, we have all seen in the news that some of our fellow believers have decided that, in the name of Jesus, the One who loves and welcomes everyone, they will refuse service to gay customers just because they’re gay.

And then we read this Gospel passage today, and I hear Jesus saying, “Stop! Just stop! You’re so focused on proving that you’re right, so intent on finding ways of hurting each other. Enough.” It’s a heavy burden always trying to prove that we’re right, a heavy burden always trying to justify ourselves. And it is so unnecessary. And so Jesus says today, Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 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.

Those heavy burdens he is referring to are religious burdens, all the stuff we feel like we have to do, all the things we feel like we have to believe, to get it right and be okay with God. He says to drop all that and take on a light burden instead: know that God will forever love us and show mercy to us, and then be set free to love and show mercy in return. We don’t need to earn degrees in theology, we don’t need to be heroes of virtue. We just need to be humble enough, open enough, to receive the love God so freely pours out on every single one of us.

And Jesus will help us do that. It’s his yoke that we are called to take up. And a yoke by definition links us with another. His yoke is easy because he is our yoke partner and he’s shouldering the load with us. When we need help loving, he’ll help us. When we fail to love, he will forgive us. When we need to feel love, he will shower love on us. How do we know? Well, we can read about it in books or listen to other people tell us about it, but that’s all just second-hand knowledge. The only way to really know it is to experience it ourselves. And everyone here can. If we have already experienced that love, we can know it even more deeply. And if we’ve never experienced it, we can taste it for the first time. All we need to do is ask for it, ask for it sincerely, letting go of our pride and our ego and our need to be right. And then wait for Christ to come. Christ may come through another person; through a sudden inspiration; through an inward warming of our hearts; in any number of ways. But Christ will come to us, yoke himself to us, and lead us on the path that begins and ends in love. This is how we will not know about him, but know him — the only way to know him — through letting him love us.