Sermon Notes — August 10, 2025
Matthew 11:28-30
August 10, 2025
“Take It to the Limit”
Rev. Dr. Mary Beth Bernheisel
One of the good things about moving into a new season of life is the opportunity to learn more about oneself. Maybe it’s not so much a good thing all the time – maybe it’s more of just a thing. But one of the things that I have long suspected about myself that I am now learning is true is that I function better when I’m busy. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll always be glad to complain about being busy, but what I am learning in this new season of life – and by season I’m really talking about having two children who are no longer in high school and being two weeks from an empty nest – what I am learning in this new season of life is that stretches of unscheduled time in my life are not my friend.
This became very clear to me earlier last week when I started experiencing this low level anxiety – a little fluttering in my stomach that I couldn’t connect to anything – some existential restlessness, just feeling a bit untethered. And then it hit me – for the first time in fourteen years I do not have a kid going back to school the first week of August. My brain didn’t consciously register this, despite the fact that I’ve looked at a jillion back to school pictures on Facebook. My brain didn’t register it, but my anxiety did. No band camp, no filling the family calendar with football games and band contests and robotics competitions. Just weeks and weeks of unhurried, unscheduled time. Which sounds great in theory, but my poor anxiety said, No! Where is the schedule? Where is the hurry? Where is the frantic zipping back and forth from one place to another? How are we supposed to get anything accomplished with all of this unscheduled time?
I get it. That sounds silly. But apparently, as I’m learning, my self has gotten so used to being tied to a schedule that I have forgotten what to do when there is no schedule. If you’re diagnosing me right now, you can tell me later.
Why is Mary Beth sharing all of this, you may ask? Well, I’ll tell you.
Last Thursday, as I began writing my sermon in earnest, I pulled this book off of my shelf, hoping that it would offer some insight into today’s text from Matthew. It’s called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, published in 2019, and the author is John Mark Comer, a nondenominational pastor from Portland, Oregon. It’s an easy read. I highly recommend it.
In a nutshell, Comer’s thesis is that hurry – or perhaps we could call it hustle, or maybe even grind – hurry is the enemy of an abundant spiritual life.
Hurry is the enemy of an abundant spiritual life.
I thought about this for a long time in relation to myself. I thrive on hurry, on dashing from one thing to the next, no time to waste, no time to slow down. So perhaps this season of not being in a hurry is, for me, an invitation to something new. It would seem that I am at a place in my life where I don’t need to eliminate hurry – it’s been eliminated for me simply because I have entered into a new season. So rather than finding a way to fill my schedule, perhaps this invitation is to use my time in a different way. Maybe even, oh, I don’t know, use it to learn how to be more like Jesus who, if we’re paying attention, was never in a hurry, never had a schedule, and still managed a pretty effective ministry.
I have said all this not to tell you more than you ever wanted to know about me, but to encourage all of us to consider the kind of life that we intentionally want to create. And Jesus, as you might guess, has some things to say about that.
Will you pray with me and for me?
Since it’s a short text, I hope you’ll humor me by listening to it again. But this time, I invite you to close your eyes, relax your shoulders, maybe put your feet on the floor, unclench your jaw, breath deep into your belly, and hear Jesus speak to you:
Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’
Some of you have arrived today physically tired – for lots of us it’s the end of the first week of school and that transition from summer to school can be brutal. Perhaps you’re caring for someone who needs your help and attention. Maybe you just couldn’t sleep.
Some of you have come today with a weary soul – you feel off-kilter in some way. Something’s not quite right and you can’t put your finger on it. Or perhaps something’s not right and you know exactly what it is but have no idea what to do about it. Maybe you’re feeling disconnected from God, from yourself, from what’s most important. Maybe you’re struggling to figure out what’s most important.
Jesus’ invitation this morning is for you.
There are days, months, entire seasons of our lives when we become acutely aware of our limitations. Our physical limitations, our emotional limitations, our spiritual limitations. And while the world around us wants to convince us that limits are for losers and rest is only for people who are weak, Jesus’s invitation assures us that he knows that we cannot do it all, we cannot endure it all, we cannot handle it all. We are limited people who are nevertheless loved and cherished by a limitless God.
Let’s dig a little deeper into the text, and we’ll begin by making sure we’re all on the same page.
In Matthew 11:29 Jesus says – and he says this mostly to his disciples but we know there are other people around who are listening – Jesus says:
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.
This is a yoke: (Yoke picture displayed)
This is a yolk. (Egg yolk picture displayed)
They are not the same.
A yoke – Y-O-K-E is a wooden frame used to connect two working animals, like this. (Picture of animals connected with yoke.)
When the animals pull something like a cart or a plow, the yoke distributes the weight between them.
For people in the time and place of Jesus, the word yoke had another meaning similar to this one, a play on words if you will.
You might remember last week we talked about how rabbis often lifted one or two laws out of the 600-something laws that God gave to Moses, and used those one or two laws to interpret all the rest. Well, every rabbi had students – the word rabbi literally means teacher – and every rabbi was responsible for teaching his students how to interpret the law and – this is key – how to apply the law to everyday life.
In Luke chapter 14 we read about Jesus getting crossways with the Jewish religious leaders because he heals a sick man on the Sabbath. The religious leaders aren’t brave enough to actually confront Jesus–they just sort of stare at him so that he knows they disapprove. And he says to them
If one of you has a child – or an ox – that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?
First of all, I love that Jesus puts a child and an ox in the same scenario, but the point is that these are the kinds of things that Jewish rabbis would talk about and debate and discuss. What do we do with a law that says that we are not to work on the Sabbath, but then a kid falls into a well?
The interpretation of the law – as well as the application of the law – that was unique to each rabbi and his students was called their yoke. It was the responsibility – the burden, if you will – that the rabbi gave his students. The yoke described how they were to obey the law.
But what does that mean for us? We’re not rabbis. We’re not rabbinical students. Most of us can probably name ten but likely not more than 20 of the 600+ laws for which the Jewish people were responsible. And while those things may all be true, what is also true is that we are followers of Jesus, and that gives us a particular responsibility to represent Jesus in the world. That is our burden. That is the yoke that Jesus places on us.
But what does Jesus say?
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me…for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
We can mix our images a little bit and imagine that Jesus and I actually share a yoke, like the oxen share a yoke – you can imagine that you and Jesus share a yoke, or we can imagine that our whole congregation shares a yoke with Jesus. And as we’re walking along with Jesus, working with Jesus, loving the world with Jesus, we’re learning from Jesus. We’re learning from Jesus how to be gentle and humble and to move through the world like he does. Eugene Peterson translates it this way in The Message
Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it.
When we accept this invitation from Jesus, to come to him and let him share the burden with us and to learn from him two things happen.
First, we begin to realize – and maybe the realization comes slowly – that Jesus knows and understands our limits. Jesus knows that we get worn out. Jesus knows that we try to do everything ourselves until we can’t and then we end up in a sad heap. And Jesus just says, come back, let me live this life with you. Let me help. Also, perhaps don’t try to be a superhero. Don’t try to be God. That’s my job.
I experienced a spiritual drought of enormous proportions after my dad died in April. In the last few weeks of his life I felt the unmistakable presence of God with me – with me and him – all the time. Every moment was truly sacred. I burned up the road between Dyersburg and Nashville what felt like every other day, and on those trips every bit of my head space and heart space was engaged in something akin to prayer. Every moment in a hospital room or in the hospice room felt like prayer and I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Holy Spirit was right there.
And after he died my spirit was exhausted. I wasn’t mad at God, but I felt like we needed a break from each other. There were times that I would try to pray and just end up saying, “We have spent too much time together lately. And to be honest I didn’t really enjoy it.” And slowly but surely I am starting to recognize the gracious beckoning of Jesus to join him again.
Jesus recognizes our limits and understands them, and constantly calls us back to him. And that is grace.
The second thing that happens when we accept Jesus’s invitation to come to him and share life with him, is that we begin to learn how to live like Jesus. Here’s the thing. I want to wake up tomorrow morning and be just like Jesus. I want to do all the things that Jesus does – I want to get up early in the morning like Jesus did and relish spending time alone with God. I want to look at every single person with the eyes of Jesus and see the divine image of God in them. I want to truly love my neighbor as myself, even the people that I don’t like.
But that takes practice. It takes discipline, just like everything else that we want to be good at. Do you remember the book by Malcolm Gladwell called Outliers? It was the book where he stated that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert – ice hockey, cello, or whatever else. Well, it turns out that Gladwell’s theory has been debunked…sort of. What we know is that there is a lot more that goes into becoming an expert than 10,000 hours of practice. Genetics play a part, innate talent, apparently the 10,000 hours is a ball park figure. But what the author of the original study said is that it’s not just practice that makes an expert. It’s deliberate practice.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.
Practice doing the things that I do.
Becoming like Jesus takes more than just waking up one morning and deciding to be more like Jesus with an iron will and fierce determination. That would be like waking up one morning and deciding that I was going to play the guitar like Harry Robinson out of sheer will power.
What Jesus invites us to do is to walk beside him, watch him, learn from him, to do the things he does. To practice being like him, or as Dallas Willard would say, to do what Jesus would do if he were in our shoes.
That means that if I want to relish in waking up early and spending time with God then I’m probably going to have to set an alarm on many a morning and slog my way outside to my porch and practice spending time with God until it becomes natural. If I want to see the divine image in every person I’m going to have to put down my phone and look people in the eye and listen very well and even imagine my heart softening.
Whether we find ourselves in an unhurried season or in a season where we need to intentionally slow down and pay attention, the invitation remains the same. To share life with Jesus. To walk beside him and learn from him. To put our limited selves next to our limitless savior and experience what a life of spiritual abundance can be like.
Thanks be to God for such an invitation into such an abundant life.