There is no suggestion from Jesus that there won't be a yoke and there won't be a burden. We set our sights on God in Christ, who calls us to walk in his ways and to carry his light into the darker parts of the world and even the darker places of our own lives. When we align our lives with the life of Jesus of Nazareth it is as if we take on the mantel of his calling, we are 'clothed with Christ', we live for him and with him and in him. When we share in the broken bread of communion we become the body of Christ. 

We are tied to Christ and we bear the expectation of living for him. There is a yoke and there is a burden. 

Too often too many people seek to make things better for others by denying the other's painful experience or downplaying the feelings those experiences leave behind. In other words, we are too good at colluding with a kind of kindness that isn't very kind. 

True kindness is honest and sits with the pain and hurt that others feel rather than seeking to dismiss it or move on from it. It's totally understandable why we do this: we don't like the pain that we feel coming from the other person, we want to make the situation better, we want a life that is more comfortable than the one we experience in those moments of discomfort. We are, with the best will in the world, acting as if there is no yoke and there are no burdens.

Whilst it is totally understandable, it is not what Christ calls us towards. Rather, we would do well to accept the yoke and the burden. Only then, when we allow the yoke to sit on our shoulders, when we lean into the burdens we see, know and feel, then it will begin to emerge that, as Jesus says, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light". 

The Christian faith is not about taking away the pains, troubles and difficulties of life; nor is it about making our own way through life on our own for our own. The Christian faith calls us into community, names us as The Body. When we can inhabit that truth we begin to understand more the paradox of faith: the more we lean into the yoke, the more comfortable it sits; the more weight of the world we carry, the lighter the burden becomes.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. 

Dan Tyndall

7 July 2023