The Ties that Bind

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, July 5, 2026
Matthew 11:16-30

    “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest,” Jesus says.  Ahh, rest.  It is July, summer, time for needed rest, vacations, relaxation.  And what burdens are we bringing to Jesus so that we can rest, so we can lighten our load?  It’s HOT.  The anxieties and worries of everyday life can seem unending – from the little things, like making sure the cleaning out of the fridge and the laundry is done in addition to packing before a vacation, to larger things like health concerns, conflicts in families, concerns about our country or what’s happening in the world.
    Jesus knows our burdens. He knows they are heavy.  He invites us to come to him, and lay those burdens down, this morning.  In our children’s sermon, I talked about how a yoke is used on oxen for carrying things – when two oxen are paired together, it makes the load lighter to bear, because there are two, not just one, animal pulling the weight.  In Jewish teaching, followers of a particular rabbi were invited to metaphorically yoke themselves to their teacher, and of course the most important yoke was to the Torah or the teachings of God in the first five books of the Bible.  A yoke does not indicate complete rest – there is work to do as a disciple.  There is work to do in following Jesus in this world today.  There is work to do as citizens of this great country to make it better and build on our past history that we celebrate this morning.  There are many souls out there burnt out, stressed out, yearning for rest and not knowing where to turn.  Jesus invites us to yoke up with him, to tie ourselves to his leading and teaching, so that the load we are carrying might be light.  Jesus invites us to consider what other things we might be tied down to, and to let those things go, lighten our burdens and tie ourselves instead to him, for his yoke is easy, and his burden is light!
    This weekend, we of course have been celebrating Independence Day.  It’s a big one, 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence!  The United States was a great independence experiment for Europeans.  The concepts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were pretty new, stemming from Enlightenment thinkers like Thomas Paine and John Locke, AND Ben Franklin and others learned a lot from the native peoples already here, especially the Iroquois conference, which was basically a joining of six nations under a democracy with an oral constitution.  Prior to American independence, for most colonists, an individual was always responsible to someone else– the king, the landowner or lord, the master for enslaved people.  There was not really much of an idea of individual or personal freedom.  This weekend, we are celebrating that this great American experiment, on the whole, has actually worked, and we thank God for the freedoms we enjoy and the people whose service to our country from the beginning until now make this freedom possible.
    However, Jesus curbs our celebration of PERSONAL independence a bit today, inviting us to be yoked to him, instead of on our own.  If we are free, why ever would we want to be tied up with someone else?  Why would we join ourselves to Christ?  Well, Jesus has just reminded us of our burdens.  Even as we celebrate our independence as Americans, we know there are people out there who are not really free – human slavery and trafficking still exist.  We ourselves may be caught up in fears about finances or work stress or an addiction we’ve been struggling to overcome, or simply the “keeping up with the Joneses’”.  Taking the yoke of Christ upon us is admitting we’re better off with Jesus walking alongside us helping us with our loads than trying to pull these burdens all by ourselves.  The freedom we celebrate in a democracy binds us to one another as fellow Americans, so that we care for the well-being of others, our neighbors.  In fact, we also know in celebrating our history that this great American experiment would not have worked without the thirteen original colonies binding themselves together to create these United States.  Most importantly, Christ binds us to one another in Christian love, so that we cannot truly rest until we know that the needs of our neighbors are also met in this struggle to do the work of Christ together.
    About a month ago, on what seems every year to also be a very hot day, our kids had their annual field day at school.  It makes me very happy that they still do the basic field day games I am used to from my childhood – gunny sack races, tug of war, water balloon throwing.  And the three-legged race.  Can you remember what it feels like to run in a three-legged race?  It is burdensome to try to run with your leg attached to someone else’s leg.  You have to agree on a pace.  If you are not communicating well and working with each other, you will probably fall down, and you certainly will not go fast.  But if you get your groove going together, it can be quite fun! 
    I have seen videos of dads doing a three-legged-race with their small child.  The dad usually cheats and picks up his kid, so they go running to the finish line – their height is just too different to really do the three-legged race without the dad carrying the kid.  To truly be freed in Christ, we ironically join ourselves to him with that easy yoke and light burden.  The prophet Zechariah calls this being “prisoners of hope” in our first reading for this morning.  We are captives/prisoners of Christ who is our hope – we would rather be tied to him than prisoners of our own minds, prisoners of our sin that we cannot free ourselves from.  We have tied ourselves to the Lord who is ready to pick us up when we get weighed down with our burdens and help us run with perseverance the race.  Of all of the choices I have in where I can place my allegiance and what I can tie myself to, I bind myself to Christ, who makes the work lighter, who carries me and my burdens when I can no longer go on myself, who gives me hope.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.