Video of the Divine Service is here. The sermon begins around the 22:30 mark.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

What do we do when it looks like the Gospel is unsuccessful? “At that time” Jesus began to say these words. At the time when Jesus was talking about all the places that had rejected Him, though He had done powerful signs there. He said Woe to Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum. It might look like His word and His work are unsuccessful. So what do we do when so many reject Him? When so many do not repent? When so many do not believe Jesus? Is the problem in the Word? Or in the Gospel? Maybe we should trade out all that old stuff for whatever might appeal to people.

But Jesus is not worried. Jesus doesn’t even seem to think there’s a problem. He says, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and understanding.” This is God’s will, that if you come with your own understanding, your own wisdom, your own reason for what you will believe or accept; your own works, your own self-righteousness, God hides the things of Jesus from you. Instead, to little children, to infants, God reveals the things of Jesus. That is, to those who know they have nothing to bring, nothing to give God, no righteousness or holiness of their own to offer, because it’s all gift: every day, every moment, every breath; it’s all pure gift. Infants bring nothing of their own; they have to have everything given to them. To those God reveals Himself.

And He does this in Jesus. Jesus alone reveals the Father, so if you will not find God in Jesus, then He will be hidden from you. No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. We don’t really like any of this, because it means that everything depends on God, and not on us. So maybe God won’t choose to reveal Himself to us. Maybe Jesus says something like, “I will choose to reveal the Father to you, but not to you.”

But then Jesus says, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden.” You. Jesus chooses to reveal the Father to you. You are the dear little one to whom God reveals Himself. “I will give to you rest.” In this world, so much gets piled on top of us: responsibilities, burdens, the weight of trying to live, trying to raise children, trying to make ends meet, trying to serve the ones whom God has put right in front of you. And those responsibilities never end. There is always more. And you have to carry all that. To you, carrying all those responsibilities, compounded by your sin and the sin of those around you, to you Jesus says, “Come to Me. I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, that I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

Jesus is repeating His own word through the prophet Jeremiah, in chapter 6: Thus says Yahweh, stand by the roads and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it, and find rest for your souls (6:16). Here is God offering the people of Israel the good way, in which they might find rest, and the people say, “We will not walk in it.” So it goes, as long as this world endures. Jesus, the Way, stands in front of us, and says, “Learn from Me, learn My way of humility and lowliness; learn who I am for you.” And people continually say, No, I would rather follow my own way, look anywhere and everywhere else, like Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum.

But not you. Here you are, to learn from Christ, to learn that He is lowly and humble, that He is your King and that He brings salvation. Humble, riding on a donkey into Jerusalem, He brings the life of God to the cross, dies, and then gives that divine life in His resurrection body. By the covenant of His own blood, He releases prisoners from the waterless pit of their slavery to sin. He did not consider equality with God something for Him to grab and take for Himself in His body. He humbled Himself, taking on the form of a slave, the form of our slavery in our flesh to the law of sin, and becoming obedient even to death on a cross. By this humility, He teaches us who He is, and gives Himself to us as we are joined to His death and resurrection. Learn from Me, and find rest for your souls.

He says His yoke is easy and His burden is light, but we should not confuse those words for the idea that as soon as we become Christians, or no matter how long we are Christians, our lives will be easy, we will be free of struggles and burdens, and everything will go well for us. This is not absolute ease and comfort in this world; the yoke of Jesus is light only from the perspective of Him, only from the perspective of His eternal life. “Easy” here might be better understood as “good” or “kind.” As St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians, “We do not lose heart” in the midst of all the wearisome changes of this world, all the burdens, all the sin and death; our outer nature is daily fading away, but our inner nature in Christ is daily being renewed. And this light and momentary affliction—and every single thing in our lives is included under “light” and “momentary”—is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory that is beyond all comparison. Everything is light and easy from the perspective of the weight of eternal glory in Christ, in the resurrection, when all things will be put right. So we do not lose heart.

Even when we feel the struggle in ourselves most acutely, most directly; when we feel the battle between the Spirit of God, whom we have and who causes us not only to know what is good and right, but gives us the desire to do it, and the flesh, which does not do willingly the things of the Spirit; especially then, we can easily come to the same conclusion as St. Paul: Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Who will give me rest from all my heavy burdens? Who will give me rest when I am weary? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord! He has chosen to reveal Himself to you, every time you hear His Word. Every time you eat and drink the Body and Blood of Christ, He gives you His own rest, until the day when the eternal Sabbath rest encompasses you—which means you have safety, finally, from all your enemies, from your own sinful flesh, from your obsession with yourself, from tears and grief and mourning, from the sins of those around you; from the devil, who never gives up the attack; and from death, which always seems to win: Jesus has won for you rest for your body and soul, and you will see it. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV). Amen.

— Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 7/7/23