Proper 26
Micah 3:5-12; 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13; Matthew 23:1-12
I.
I would imagine that most of you know a few Pharisees in your life.
We recognize them, don’t we?
We know them by their boasting.
Maybe it’s that department head or your boss or the spouse or the mother or the father-in-law. We see them boasting. We see them making their claims for the best seats at the table, and we’re a little jealous.
We’re a little jealous of what they have. They flaunt what we don’t have, or what we think we don’t have.
Think of the burdens you carry. Think of a word to describe that burden. We’ll call it a “burdensome word.”
What is your burdensome word?
Is it the word acceptance? Is it the word success? What about loneliness? What about being needed? What about defeated? What about victim? What word sums up your burden?
Let me ask you: what amount of effort are you putting in to silencing those burdensome words?
Are all of these efforts to serve your burdensome word, are they making you confident? Are they making you successful? Are they making you less lonely? Fulfilled?
Burdensome words are like the Pharisees. The do nothing to relieve our load. Instead, the only make demands.
II.
In today’s gospel, Jesus is again arguing with the Pharisees. He affirms their spiritual and moral authority. He tells His followers to listen to them:
“Do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.”
Jesus tells His disciples that they are not to be this way, and neither should we.
The Pharisees are in love with what is right, but they’re also in love with the benefits derived from being respected teachers of religion. They put burdens on their congregations but do nothing to help them.
This illustrates an important point. The word that burdens is not the word that comes from God.
In contrast to the Pharisees, Jesus tells His disciples:
“Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
This is the path of humility. True teachers of the word of God are to follow the path of humility, so much so that Jesus even forbids them the honor of being called “rabbi” or “teacher.”
Instead, Jesus says:
“The greatest among you shall be your servant.”
III.
But we can’t serve others if we’re too busy being jealous of them, if our burdensome words are always ringing in our ears, always reminding us of what we don’t have.
What if, instead of helping carry another’s burden we’re actually jealous of them? You might say you want that salary. You might say you want that body. You might say you want that promotion.
But can you bear the burden of it?
Our burdensome words, our jealousy of other people’s burdens, blinds us to God’s work in us.
IV.
Do you remember the Aesop fable about the dog with the bone, goes to the bridge and he looks down and he sees his reflection in the water, and he sees a dog with a bone, and he wants that bone, and he opens his mouth, and he loses his bone, and the image in the water vanishes.
The dog’s covetousness prevents him from keeping what God has already given him.
Paul gives us a counter example of this kind of covetousness in today’s lesson from Thessalonians. He writes:
“We worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God.”
In other words, Paul didn’t charge for his brand of religion. The gospel doesn’t add to our burdens, it lightens them. The gospel doesn’t give us more burdensome words. It gives us the Word incarnate, Jesus Christ.
V.
That is the good news for Christian believers and for the whole world. Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 2:13:
“We also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.”
That word tells us that Christ humbled himself to become a man. He was obedient unto death. Matthew 23:11:
“The greatest among you shall be your servant.”
Who was the greatest to ever walk this earth?
Jesus Himself. And the Church, following her Lord, must also take the form of a humble servant. The Church must take the form of a community of humble service.
We are to bear one another’s burdens, not be jealous of them. Amen.
Preached on November 5, 2023 at St. Peter’s Lithgow, Millbrook, New York.
Burdensome Words