Give Me Your Tired…

There is a music CD that I’ve been listening to in my car for a few weeks now, by a wonderful singer/songwriter/prophet named John McCutcheon. I shared a song of his several weeks ago with the children. Well, this week John inspired me with a different song, the first one on the CD entitled, “Immigrant”. When you first hear this song, you think it’s about the Statue of Liberty, and the wonderful quote by Emma Lazarus which is memorialized in bronze at the base of the statue. The chorus goes like this:

When she says “Give me your tired,
Lord, you know I’m weary.
When she says “Give me your poor.”
She’s talking to you and me.
We are the huddled masses
Yearning to breathe free
And I never have lost sight of
What this journey has been for
See how she lifts her lamp
Beside the golden door

In some ways, the song is about that famous inscription on one of the most recognizable statues in the world. But the song is also about leaving behind everything a person knows and becoming a stranger in a strange land. This is what immigrates do. This is what our parents and our grandparents did. With very few exceptions, all of us have in some corner of our past, a person or two who took the big breath, the leap of faith, and left behind the familiar, the common, the comforting, and got on a boat or a plane and went off to seek something new and better. This is one of the things that make our country great—we are all immigrants. Some just emigrated more recently than others.

One thing I have learned, when talking to people who emigrated more recently, is that in the midst of learning new cultures, new languages, eating new foods, there is this overwhelming desire to keep hold of the familiar, the things that helped sustain that person in their homeland. Some families make sure that their children and their children’s children preserve the language of the homeland. Some make sure to pass down the recipes that were old favorites back home, and some seek out a faith community with other immigrant families—a practice which resulted in such wonderful places as this Church! There is that very human impulse to preserve the old in the midst of the new. Thus, we end up with a wonderful land filled with ethnic enclaves and neighborhoods where the old language can be heard through the open windows at night on a summer evening.

As invigorating as this blend of new and old is, it can also make you bone weary. Anyone who has ever tried to speak a foreign language in a strange place can attest. That process of hearing in one tongue, translating in your head, and speaking back in the other language taxes the brain, and can make you tired really quickly! It’s almost easier to let go of the familiar and immerse oneself in the new.

Many of us this week have been like strangers in a strange land. The language of grief, and shock, and sadness, and of loss and uncertainty has made us feel a little like immigrants. I feel like I had my citizenship test this week in pastoral identity. And yet, on Monday, I open up the Bible to the gospel lesson, and I read these words:

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

I read those words, and I read them again, and I closed up my Bible. For a moment, I vacillated between wanting to hug it and wanting to hurl it across the room. Those words are like a long cool drink to the thirsty. Except, in the midst of pain and anxiety, they can also look like a mirage in the desert: some shimmering far off hope that might not turn out to be a reality, but instead is more hot, dry, dusty sand.

Sometimes in the midst of my weekly study for sermon preparation, I learn something completely new and different. (Seems you can teach a middle-aged dog new tricks after all.) I was discussing this passage with some folks who are also in the preaching business. Many of them had opted out of preaching this, either because they had preached it too many times before, or they were in the middle of a preaching series, or they had other matters in their congregation that the Spirit needed to speak to this week.

When I was talking about this passage, the obvious image that comes to mind is the yoke—the piece of farm equipment that is put around the neck of beasts of burden to attach them to what ever it is they are needed for to pull—a plow, a wagon, etc. I had a pretty good fairly modern-day image of what a yoke looks like, because I had seen one up close on a water buffalo in China. The animal was pulling some sort of equipment from the rice paddy to the barn. The yoke in this instance was a large collar on the neck of one animal. The water buffalo was more or less on his own to pull the wagon, with the farmer just there to direct him on the path that led straight to the barn.

So, this was my image of a yoke. And my image of this passage was one of Jesus telling people to set aside whatever it was that they are carrying and instead take his yoke upon them, to carry his burden, with him standing beside them directing them. And I thought, “Well, that’s nice, but it won’t preach this week.” The things we are carrying this week are not the kind of burdens that can be easily set aside in place of a lighter load, even if we wanted to.

So right about this time in the discussion, my preaching friends corrected me: it turns out, that my idea of a yoke was a little different that the yoke Jesus is talking about. It turns out, in fact, that the farm animals and beasts of burden of the ancient near east were perhaps not the robust creatures we have today but were a it scrawnier, smaller, and were used for an extraordinarily high volume of work on the average family compound. Since these animals were weaker, and were not fed to be bulky, but fed just to be kept alive and strong enough to share the load.
So my image of the yoke was completely off! It turns out that the imager we should have instead is of a double yoke, with room for two to share the load. Jesus is inviting us to let him help shoulder the burden, to let him help carry whatever it is we are weighed down with, not inviting us to help him carry his burden.

Sometimes asking for help carrying the load is the hardest part. The way we bulk up our animals to be faster, stronger, to carry a heavier load reflects in some ways the way we try to build ourselves up. Think of how we name this holiday weekend: Independence Day. Yes, being relieved of the tyranny of a far-away government was a blessing, and yes I am grateful for the blessings of freedom and democracy, and yes I feel truly blessed to live in a land that has the potential to be the strongest land on earth.

And at the same time I wonder about this Independence that we are so proud of. I worry when I see myself and others trying to carry burdens around that were clearly meant to be shared.

The inscription the base of the Statue of Liberty reads:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With brazen limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, and her name:
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon hand
Glows world-wide welcome...
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

This wonderful land, this church, this body of Christ is not meant to be a place where we wander through our days, singularly carrying burdens that we were not made strong enough to carry, but is instead created as a haven for those of us who are truly weary, who were designed to carry a yoke built for two.

Those riding on ships from the east, coming to a new land to build a new life sometimes traveled under wretched conditions to get here. Unless an immigrant was wealthy, he or she traveled in steerage, where many did not survive the trip. (Think back to those images from “Titanic”). The sign of a new life was, for most of them, the sight of the Statue of Liberty in the harbor. That signaled a proximity to Ellis Island, and a whole new way of life. For many of them, it signaled an end to the journey. But it seldom signaled going it alone. Strangers in the strange land found others to share the load with. Those who survived and thrived in a strange place knew somehow to yoke themselves together.

The cross is, for us today the signal of home, the signal of an end to our solitary journey, the end of days spent carrying our burden alone, and it signals a new yoke: a shared burden.

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle, and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Come to me…thanks be to God.