“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, 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.”
(Matthew 11:28-30)
In the first of these Still Small Voice meditations, Young Tae shared his journey of tears with the founding of POIEO, tears of both pain and joy. One of the words that marked his meditation was the Greek word kopos, meaning “hard work,” “labour.” In the passage from the Gospel of Matthew cited above, we find the same word, except in the verb form, kopiaō, meaning “to work hard, to labour, to become weary.” The passage is the famous one where Jesus invites all those who are “weary [because working hard] and burdened” to come to him. What a comforting word of invitation—one that we all need to hear from time to time.
We can assume that daily life in Jesus’s day was not always easy. On the contrary, while rulers and nobility might dress in purple and live in palaces, most of the population eked out a barebones existence working by the sweat of their brow, whether as farmers, domestic servants or franchised slaves. For them, Jesus’s invitation to come to him must have sounded incredibly comforting and hope-inspiring. It’s not that Jesus promised to change their work schedule, shorten their hours or give them better pay. What he did promise them was “rest for [their] souls,” understood as freedom from life-destroying anxiety.
But in addition to inviting people to “come” to him, Jesus also called on them to “learn” from him. In the Bible, the word to learn is actually a discipleship word. This is clear from the fact that “disciple” and “learner” both come from the same Greek root words, mathētēs, “learner,” manthanō, “to learn.” To learn from Jesus was to listen to his teaching, to follow in his footsteps and imitate his example. But far from Jesus being a harsh taskmaster, he was instead a teacher “gentle and humble in heart,” someone committed to building others up rather than tearing them down.
But that was not all. Jesus also invited his followers to take his yoke upon them. Probably what we should emphasize here is not simply the word yoke but “his yoke.” Everybody is under some kind of yoke, some kind of obligation in life. As Bob Dylan once sang, “You’ve got to serve somebody.” So what was so special about Jesus’s yoke? He tells us: it was “easy,” or more literally “kind.” It was kind to the skin because it was well fitted. We remember that before Jesus was a preacher and teacher, he was the son of a carpenter, a craftsman who had learned to make the best yokes in the village, whether for oxen or people. He was, in effect, an artist, committed to creating the best possible product for his clients. Therefore, the load strapped from the yoke would actually feel “light.”
It is likely that what Jesus was contrasting here with his yoke were the heavy burdens the Pharisees and teachers of the law were inclined to put on the people, namely, their many regulations on how to live in strict obedience to the Law. But Jesus’s call to discipleship was different. He was not a hard taskmaster. On the contrary, he was “gentle and humble of heart.” This meant that Jesus’s “yoke” did not consist of a long list of do’s and don’ts, but rather was an invitation to practice a simple faith and loving neighbourliness.
As artists, we are called to that kind of faith, taking on Jesus’s well-crafted yoke, perfectly fitted for our particular situation. Responding positively to his invitation, we too will find his yoke to be easy and his burden light, perfectly suited for our individual gifts and personality. As a bonus, we are promised “rest for our souls,” the kind of rest we all need.
