I would like to start today with a quote attributed to the great theologian David Bowie

I would like to start today with a quote attributed to the great theologian David Bowie

“Religion is for people who fear hell. Spirituality is for people who have been there…likely because of religion.”

For most of my life I have struggled with religion, especially Christianity.  I started going to church as a youth and the more I learned about Chrisitan Religion the more difficult it became for me to reconcile the God who is love with the God many Christians teach. 

That didn’t stop me from becoming a professional Christian, (I was a minister in Restoration Movement Churches) where I learned more about what I was supposed to believe…and the more I learned the more I realized how dramatically different their teachings were from the loving Jesus I read about in the Bible.

It seemed to me that Religion, Christian or otherwise, has more to do with controlling people then it does with love or acceptance.

Throughout history, institutional Christianity has accomplished great good through compassion, education, healing, and service, but it has also caused unfathomable harm through coercion, exclusion, physical and emotional violence, and alliances with worldly strength solely to build church or individual power.  

Christianity as an institution and many individuals in the name of Christ, have perverted the gospel…acknowledging these failures instead of perpetuating the gaslighting that religion is about love is an act of repentance and truth, and a trusting that the Spirit continues to reform God’s people.
Late in my ministry I started a study on Mathew 22 that began a slow but radical transformation in what I believed.

Mathew 22 is where Hebrew Teachers of the law tried to trick Jesus and asked him “what is the most important passage in our Holy Writings” Which they called the law and the prophets. 

³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 

³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. 

³⁹ And the second is like it:

‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 

⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

This, for me, is transformative.

It meant that everything we teach about what the Bible says, must fit through this lens.  The lens of Love.  If any teaching used a lens that taught some were not loved or accepted then then their literal translation was wrong. If their moral interpretation taught that some were not loved or some are not accepted then they have translated it wrong. If their interpretation based on a hierarchal lens taught that some were loved and accepted and others where not then their interpretation was wrong.

Jesus said the entire Bible must fit through this filter of Love God and love other—ALL others, because all are adored by God. This is the lens through which the richness and beauty of scripture must be viewed.  Or we get it wrong.

The elders of the church I worked in did not agree. They argued that misogyny was loving, that accepting only those that looked and acted like them was really what love required. Though they would never say it this way, they firmly believed that hating others was how the Bible wanted them to live, because they didn’t understand what Jesus meant when he said that all scripture must fit in this love God love others lens.

So, in 2011 I left the Church.

In 2016 I left religion and moved toward Spirituality, because the things I saw Christians espousing caused me to realize they were ushering in a hell on earth.  A hell filled with misogyny, bigotry, avarice, and deceit. They had perverted Jesus’s teaching of Love God & Love others by embracing hate and calling it love.  

I wanted nothing to do with them, but I still longed for the Jesus I knew.  The one who insisted that our understanding of scripture must fit through love. Love that embraces the outcast, the hated, the marginalized, the oppressed.  The widow the orphan the foreigner.  Love that pleads: “Come to me all you who are weary and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for my burden is easy, and my yoke it light.

I left religion and its desire to control and I came to a spirituality focused on the love Jesus offered.  I took up his well-fitting yoke and I am still learning his love today.

“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for my burden is easy, and my yoke it light.”

As comforting as these words are they have often been misunderstood.  Some have claimed that it means, if we truly follow Jesus our lives will become easy and if we don’t, we will be burdened with our sin, but that does not fit the lens of Love God & Love others.

In his excellent book, Better Ways to Read the Bible, Zach Lambert talks about how many read the bible through myopic lenses.  Like the “literal lens” that is based on scriptural inerrancy, which perverts the intent and truth of scripture by insisting the bible is black and white and there is no room for gray in the Christian interpretation of the Bible. Through a literal translation, many believe this passage teaches that life for a faithful follower of Jesus will be easy, but that CANNOT be what Jesus means. Because–

• Jesus carried a cross.
• The apostles suffered.
• Faithful Christians throughout history have endured persecution, poverty, and loss.
• Christian discipleship has never been painless.

The key to understanding this beautiful proclamation, filtered through love is found in Romans 8:

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, ² because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life has set me free from the law of sin and death. 

³ For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, 

God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.

And so he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the law but according to the Spirit.”

In this foundational passage Paul is describing two ways of living: one under the burden, and condemnation of the Law (the Old Testament understanding that so many insist on bringing over to our New Testament reality) or the other: a new life under the freedom of God’s grace provided by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and defined by love

That is the good news. 

We no longer have to follow the law because we are now under Grace. 

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.

Interestingly, in the first century, a yoke could be more than a wooden beam for oxen. It was also a familiar Jewish expression for a rabbi’s teaching. To take a rabbi’s yoke meant embracing that rabbi’s interpretation of Scripture and way of life.

Jesus invites His hearers to leave behind every false understanding of God and to take His yoke instead. The yoke that is defined by Love God & Love others.

The Greek word translated ‘easy’ is chrēstos. It can also mean kind, good, gracious, or well-fitting. Jesus is not promising an effortless life. He is saying that His yoke is kind, it is good, it is gracious, it fits because He bears the greatest weight. The crushing burden of guilt, sin, and condemnation that was the requirement of the LAW has already been carried to the cross.

The Law reveals our need; the Gospel reveals our acceptance.

Friends have long spoken of the Inner Light—the living presence of Christ who continues to teach His people. Jesus calls us into a living relationship rather than merely another religious system.

When the world is frustrating to us, we may be tempted to wear the yokes of anger, fear, outrage, and self-righteousness.

Christ calls us to something different. We no longer need to prove ourselves right before God or anyone else, because we are loved, and so are they. Our identity rests securely in love. Freed by the Spirit, we are able to love our neighbors, speak the truth with humility, forgive generously, and seek peace.

So when Jesus says, ‘Take my yoke upon you,’ hear Him inviting you to exchange a heavy burden for one that is lighter and one that fits.

• Lay down the impossible burden of saving yourself.
• Lay down the injustice of this world
• Lay down our fear of tomorrow
• And  Receive instead the gracious, well-fitting yoke of the Savior who has already carried the cross.
• Walk with Him.
• Learn from Him.
• Trust Him.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  

Thanks be to God.  

Amen

Queries:

• What burdens am I carrying that Christ has not asked me to bear?
• How is organized Christian religion like the “yoke” of the Law? 
• How has organized religion done good in the world?
• How might loving others be an easy burden?