Perspective: An Easy Yoke or a Heavy Cross?

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An Easy Yoke or a Heavy Cross?

And going a little farther, [Jesus] threw himself on the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want."

Matthew 26:39 (NRSV)

Your love it beckons deeply

A call to come and die

By grace now I will come

And take this life, take Your life

From "Marvelous Light" by Charlie Hall

One day, Jesus proclaims to a crowd,
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.¹

Some time later, Jesus begins to tell His disciples about the suffering He will have to face in the not too distant future.  One of His disciples objects to what He says, so He scolds him.  He then says to His disciples,
If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.²

How can Jesus invite weary souls to come to Him and trade their heavy burdens for something lighter and easier and then tell His disciples that anyone who wants to follow Him has to carry a cross?

There is nothing light or easy about a cross.  When Jesus tells His disciples about the suffering He will have to face in days to come, He means that He will have to carry a literal cross, the instrument of His own execution.  When the time comes for Him to pick up this cross, somebody else will end up carrying it for Him, perhaps because He will have already endured so much torture He cannot carry it for himself.³  It is only logical to assume that, if the journey of Jesus leads to suffering, then following in His footsteps will also lead to suffering.

Is Jesus trying to pull some sort of spiritual bait-and-switch scam, advertising one thing in order to sell something else?  That's what I started to think several years ago, when I felt that doing what I was supposed to do was becoming unnecessarily difficult.  I became angry, wondering why the easy yoke I was promised felt more like a millstone fastened around my neck.

I think Jesus' seemingly contradictory sayings force us to face certain realities about life.  When Jesus invites us to come to Him and trade the heavy burdens we've been carrying for something lighter and easier, He is inviting us to trade the life we've been living for the life we're meant to live.  Naturally, the life we're meant to live is better than the life we typically end up living.  At the same time, the world is not as it should be, so living the life we are meant to live will often mean going against the flow.  Going against the flow is never easy.

Following in Jesus' footsteps will mean carrying a cross, but Jesus is not the one who will lay the cross on His followers' shoulders.

If Jesus had come into a perfect world, He never would have been nailed to a cross, because He never would have faced any opposition.  Unfortunately He didn't come into a perfect world, so, when He stirred the pot, people weren't happy with Him.  Doing the right thing is difficult because of the resistance we face, whether it comes from the world around us or from our own inclinations.

As for me, catching glimpses of the life I was meant to live has brought me joy over the years.  The pain comes whenever I start to confuse what God invites me to do with what other people want me to do.

So why should we take Jesus up on His invitation if we know that it will lead to suffering?  Why shouldn't we spare ourselves the pain and just keep going with the flow?  Going with the flow never changes anything.  If we just go with the flow, we will never change, and we will never have any impact on the world around us.  Furthermore, we have hope, for we know that, though Jesus' journey included a cross, it did not end with a cross.  We can hope that goodness and justice win in the end and that new life lies beyond the crosses we face.


Notes:

1. Matthew 11:28-30 (NRSV)
2. Matthew 16:24-25 (NRSV)
3. Matthew 27:24-32

The photograph of the crosses was taken by Lubos Houska and has been been released into the public domain.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.