Life in the Yoke

Matthew 11:28-30

The yoke must first be taken, grasped and lifted up.

The yoke means so much more than rabbinical teaching, a system of theology and religion, with its laws. It does not mean culture, nor a school of thought, neither a system of teaching - though Jesus makes a comparison here with other rabbis. In fact, he makes a contrast. He calls into question and undermines the whole rabbinical school and how it indocrinated and treated its pupils. He redefines the relationship between pupil and master, teacher and taught, and turns it upside down.

The yoke is not the written code; the yoke is His yoke, it is the one He wears for He learned obedience from what He suffered as He performed the will of His father.

Submit and yield to me, as I yield to the Father.

He only asks of us what He Himself has performed to perfection, that He would perfect it in us.
The yoke is His Cross, the wooden and splintered beam that sat so seemingly heavy across His shoulders. How could such a yoke be easy and light? How could the true Rest and Shalom spoken of here come by wearing a yoke, a burden? His statement is full of irony and contradiction.

I have been before you and born what you will bear, and more.

A yoke must be grasped with both hands and, in so doing, other burdens of our own are dropped: our self-interest, our own dead weight of self, like a cadaver - the body of sin. Old yokes of expectation go by-the-by and the impossible, demanding written code, like a black hole, is dropped to drift in space. The weight we carry is the self-life like Jacob Marley's chains; it is the slavery to sin and our desires, imprisoned to be tortured by Satan on a whim, for apart from Christ we are owned by Lucifer - this is the weighty burden; anything else seems light by comparison which makes us candidates for chasing any yoke that promises freedom.

He who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is not worthy of Me.

The yoke we take is the Lord's and not our own. We have made an exchange; we have changed identities and slipped away into another man's skin. We have hidden ourselves in Christ; the old has gone the new has come. The self has not been simply hidden to survive - but annihilated. This is the liberation, the light and easy yoke. We have taken Christ and clothed ourselves in Him as Him with Him. To live is Christ for He is our Righteousness and our Wisdom and our Redemption. To live for Him and not self permits the sigh of reclining in Christ and doing away with self-dom. Only the Cross is severe enough to strike the death-blow once and for all. To grasp this yoke is to unite oneself with Christ and to state that the way of the Cross is the only way. We become Christ - or should I say, "like Him".

My food is real food and my drink is real drink.

Then this wooden and sculptured beam of weather-proof timber is shaped for each shoulder and sits perfectly like an aching foot in a bespoke orthotic in a shoe. Rest at last! Comfort for our sufferings. Side by side in rhythm and in step feeling the yoke tug and pull whenever a step is mistimed. An unspoken reciprocal empathy ensues. Imperceptible communication. The inner and outer lives begin to synchronise. We experience what the other feels, the other thinks. We become one. It takes all of the concentration of our effort, not in large movements but in the subtlest minute proprioception. We sink into a reverie of breathing and wordless being that is a being of His Word, its embodiment and incarnation.

Deep calls to deep.

And transmitted down that smooth yoke? A teaching and a learning. There is always a lead oxen who sets the pace. We learn what it takes through that practise in each step along the way: the inward leaning and disposition, that attitude and response - His nature, the nature of the One who labours alongside us, for He is in the yoke too and we must and can only join Him there.

If we are to do what He did, we are to live as He lived. If we are to partake of His divine nature then we must come under that disciplined yoke that He impart and we learn the nature of His divinity.

The burden is the temporary service performed, which in time will be replaced by another, but the concentration of the mind is not in the burden but in Him who it is done for and with.
When you enter the yoke, you enter the Rest.

I am humble and gentle in heart.

Covering shame with identity

Shyness is a natural trait of the introverted. Those that look inward at themselves and withdraw from others are self-conscious in ways others are not. This is indeed natural but it is a hindrance and a barrier to all relationships. It is ingrained into us; it is provoked into us by pain and suffering, to make us aware of ourselves, and this is what the world would want us to be: self-aware, nursing our grievance. This is anathema to God's dealings with us. Shyness, withdrawal and self-consciousness bring isolation and separation; despair and depression follow hard on their tails.

The Lord would have us as unconscious as a weaned child with its mother, but how do we get there?

Realise where you are: wounded and bruised by all the pinching and prodding of those around you; you are carrying in your flesh your own suffering - not His, licking at your wounds like a dog. Him who was crucified naked, who scorned the shame thrown at him, off whose back slid insult after insult, Him who made mud with His spittle to rub into eyes, who walked upon water, who drove out the money changers - was not a self-conscious man but an obedient man, constrained by His zeal for the glory of God, . . . but we are touchy over our own 'glory'.

However, we cannot throw on extroversion on a whim like something learned at a seminar. We cannot act or mimic it, and we defnitely cannot draw upon God's power to help us throw off this hurt so that we may walk into freedom.

All the while we conceive of ourselves as separate entities from God we will never be one with God. How could we ever in our own selves unite ourselves with God? We continue to step out of ourselves and look at ourselves, reinforcing that separation, that isolation, that self-consciousness. A mirror has its uses but it is not for self-contemplative gazing. Where did this separation arise from? Where did this isolation come from? The first ever self-conscious act by a human being on the planet was for Adam and Eve to cover their nakedness. The first ever technology was created in pursuit of saving face: they sewed fig leaves together and made covering for themselves rather than waiting for their master to give them a proper covering. We rush ahead and make for ourselves coverings to protect ourselves from shame.

Separation is born of sin. Adam and Eve hid: they withdrew. He only asks that you come. The covering He would provide would come from the slaughtered lamb that he has killed before you and skinned in front of you. It is still warm, and we cannot reject its warmth and shelter because of how it was won. It was willingly done! Clothe yourselves in Christ therefore. This is now your identity. He is our hiding place; we are hid with Christ in God. When the shame comes, where will you hide and where will you be found? But be sure, while there is still a self to be hurt there is still a self. And there is only one way to deal with self: the Cross. How could we ever expect to enjoy the benefits of resurrection without its necessary predecessor: the death of self.

The introverted among us seek refuge within and build defences without. The extroverted are not exempt either. Our individuality, our separation from others is marked by our bodies and our clothes, our affections and affectations. While others retreat into fantasy and sensual confort, others advance aggressively to mark themselves out with tattoos, with achievements, with loudness. But its me! It is you, it is not Christ. It separates you from your beloved. While there is still a You, an individual, you will always be separate and distant from God though you might trumpet otherwise. 

How else do we see our inidviduality? With our clubs and our societies, with our identifties and affiliations, with our possessions and our positions, with our labels and our tastes, our likes and our dislikes. In short, it is the politics of identity, we are a black box to the outisde world with labels upon. God would abolish this to delve into the personality and the soul of a human, the state of his being moment by moment in a live and unbroken relationship with Him.

The dividing wall, the barrier of hostility has been torn down in His flesh and made the two one, not just humanity but God and His image bearers. Come to Him, do not hide, in you individuality, in your assertions of self-dom. Take on His yoke; it is easy and light. Take on Him. Clothe yourself in the light that Adam and Eve lost when their eyes were opened. For the two will become one.

He will be with you until the very end of the eage.