Romans 7.15-25a; Matthew 11.16-19, 25-30
One of the great images of Independence Day is the Statue of Liberty, hand raised in the air, holding a torch as a beacon of light and hope. At the statue’s base are memorable lines from the poet Emma Lazarus, words of invitation and welcome. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me; I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
Our immigrant ancestors took up that invitation. To a degree, they found that promised welcome here. I am regularly moved by conversations I have with Uber drivers—often immigrants from places like Nigeria, Iraq, and Somalia—and how they describe both the hope that drew them here and the life they have found. It keeps me from being cynical.
But living up to that promised welcome has been complicated. The Ellis Island museum near the Statue of Liberty hosts an oral history project with recordings online of various immigrant experiences. Included is the remembrance of a man from Denmark who came here as a 24-year-old in 1923. He describes the life-long challenge to fit in. “You hate to think of every time I opened my mouth, they know I’m a foreigner, and I don’t like that.” Given what he experienced, he said, “I wouldn’t move…If anybody would have said, ‘I’ll give you the money, and you can take the boat back to Denmark,’ I would have done it any day in the week.”
Not everyone has found the welcome promised by Lady Liberty. A prayer in the Book of Common Prayer recognizes both the promise and the failure. “We thank you for the torch of liberty that has been lit in this land. It has drawn people from every nation, but we have often hidden from its light.” Yet the statue, with its promise and invitation, stands.
Today’s gospel offers an invitation from Jesus that sounds like it could’ve inspired Emma Lazarus. “Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.” Jesus invites people from, to use a phrase from the book of Revelation, “every tribe and language and nation” to come to him. John Calvin wants us to pay particular attention to the word ‘all’ in Jesus’ invitation so that no one thinks the door has been shut or that the welcome isn’t for them.
Jesus welcomes everyone, especially inviting people who are struggling, finding life to be hard, feeling overwhelmed. Katherine Parr, widow of Henry VIII, found great comfort in Jesus’ words. She said these words are gracious, show the mercy and goodness of the Lord, “give me courage, make me bold, and stir up my faith.” These words, she said, met her needs with “alluring power.” Alluring power. Those words captivated her, drew her in. Alluring power. “Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.”
St Paul knew that same alluring power of Jesus in his life. In today’s reading from Romans he asks, ‘Who will rescue me from my troubles?’ His answer? “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” In Jesus Christ, Paul is given welcome and rest. In this passage, Paul speaks very personally. In just ten verses, he uses the words ‘I’ and ‘me’ 35 times. Even so, I don’t think Paul is speaking about his own particular experience when he says, “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” He’s speaking universally about something at work in all of us.
I once heard a friend say, ‘I don’t want to go to the doctor because I might find out something is wrong. But the longer I wait, the more likely my health will get worse.’ Now this friend wasn’t talking about himself; he was actually quite mindful of his health. Instead, he was talking about a mutual friend and reflecting on a common human experience: avoiding the doctor even when we know we should go. When Paul says, “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do,” he’s not talking about himself alone as much as he is puzzling through one of the more common aspects of human behavior: our ability to know exactly what we should do and yet not doing it—the times we’re a mystery even to ourselves and our own behavior baffles us. And so Paul asks, ‘Who will rescue me from my troubles?’
This theme, the puzzling disconnect between God’s good desires, even our good desires, and the inability to live up to the things we know are right, is the experience of parents everywhere who ask their children to do something and then watch them do the exact opposite; it’s the experience behind every one of our good, but failed, intentions from keeping up with the laundry to keeping away from sins. But the greater theme through the biblical story, and in our own lives is, as Paul today points us to, God’s faithfulness beyond and above human failure and sin. Beyond, above, and present within the world and in our lives is Jesus Christ who says to each and to all, “Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.”
Chad Bird, in his book “Night Driving: Notes from a Prodigal Soul” names any number of the burdens we carry with us—moral, physical, emotional, financial, and more—all the contradictions of our lives. Maybe you, like me, will find yourself in what Bird says. He says, “We carry the heavy silence from last night’s fight after the kids were tucked into bed. We carry sharp words that ripped through the one we vowed to love and cherish. We carry the silence of a marriage in its death throes. We carry these burdens to Jesus. We carry our desire for someone, anyone, to notice us, talk to us, show us we have value just for who we are. We carry our failures, including our second wedding ring—or, if you’re like me, third—and along with it, the stubborn hopes of ‘this time it will last.’ We carry a picture in our wallet of the daughter who cut us from her life three years, four months, and two days ago. We carry our regrets about the past and fears for the future. We carry all these things to Jesus, and much more, each Sunday when we come to church.”
We, from time to time, find ourselves among the wretched and tempest-tost described by Emma Lazarus. But will the burdens we carry shut the door on Jesus’ word of welcome? No. Chad Bird says, “Standing within the walls of God the Father’s house, is Jesus. He is Jesus of the broken and the broken-hearted, Jesus of the lonely, the weeping, the ill, and of all dying hopes. He is Jesus for the outcast and ashamed, the sinner and the sinned-against. And he is embarrassed by none of them. He came not to call the righteous but sinners. They are welcome in his church. Church is not a place for those who have no problems, never do wrong, but a holy place where the least and the lost, the hurting and wounded, are given life.”
Bird knows the alluring power of Jesus’ word. And as for us who find that we have failed in living up to the good words of our promises, Paul both asks and answers for us today, ‘Who will rescue me from my troubles?’ “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
“Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.” Notice that Jesus does not say, ‘Go to God and receive these promises,’ but “Come to me.” And in his words, we sense quite naturally that we are being drawn to God. “The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down,” says today’s psalm. “The Lord restores my soul,” says Psalm 23. In Jesus, the riches of God’s grace are opened for you and given to you—the breadth, length, height, and depth of God’s love for all who struggle or carry too much; the fatigued and overwhelmed; the tired, poor, wretched, tempest-tost; for you in the wearying contradictions and complications of your life.
The weight of the world, and the human propensity to fall short of our goals—to say nothing of failing short of God’s desires—takes away our strength. Yet the power and grace of Jesus carries that burden for us. This is the alluring power of Jesus to show you the mercy and goodness of the Lord, to give you courage, make you bold, and to stir up your faith in small steps of obedience. Then when you ask the same question that St Paul today asks, ‘Who will rescue me from my troubles?’ you will hear the same answer given to us all. “Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.”
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