Sermon for Sunday, July 5, 2026

July 5, 2026

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30


Our Gospel today has bits and pieces that we’ve often heard out of context, like verse 28: "Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Doesn’t that verse fill you with yearning? At last, a person who can help us figure out a way to shed our heavy burdens! Surely then we’ll get the rest we’ve been needing!


But then there’s that problematic ending: “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Wait! There’s a yoke involved in this getting rid of our heavy burdens???!


You probably don’t need me to paint the paradox. We’re in a little church in the country—you’ve probably seen a yoke, that device designed to keep oxen in line and moving together instead of moving in different directions—all the better to get a field plowed. All well and good—but that doesn’t mean we want a yoke around our necks. Especially not if we don’t know who will be on the other side of the yoke.


A yoke does tether one animal to another, but it also reduces the work load for each animal.


Thinking of reduced work loads takes me back to 8th and 9th grade, where I went to some wild parties in my youth—no, not those kinds of parties. I had a friend with Type 1 diabetes, the kind that one is born with, the kind that can be so difficult to manage and make being a kid so hard. Every 3 months, she hosted a party, complete with sleepover afterward. We slept over not because we had drunk so much that we couldn’t drive. No, we were 13-15 years old. We weren’t driving.


We also weren’t drinking. Our friend was allowed one party every 3 months. For 12 hours, she could eat whatever she wanted, every treat she couldn’t have in ordinary life when too much accumulated sugar could kill her. On party night, we all brought our favorite treats and stayed up as late as we could, far after midnight, gorging on sweets. We went home sick with sugar and lack of sleep.


We were teenage girls, so we all tried to spend the intervening 3 months also not eating sugary treats. I wish I could tell you that we did it because we wanted to support our friend. Sadly no. We were all hoping to lose weight or have clearer skin. We supported each other in our desire for healthy eating habits regardless of the reason why.


Yes, I often think about what might have been different, had we been obsessed with another project, say writing novels or learning another language. It does make me sad the way that diet/appearance culture invaded our lives in that way, and I feel sad that this diet/appearance culture has now infected young boys, along with all of us really. It’s not just pre-teen girls who are going to extremes to meet the culture’s beauty standards, and it’s not just here in the U.S.


Our reading from Paul (Romans Romans 7:15-25a) might be the obvious place to go next, Paul’s letter about the body not obeying the mind, when the mind wants us to do good, but our bodies have other desires. But if you’re like me, you’ve had decades of this kind of body shaming beaming in at you from so many directions. If you’re like me, you’ve had quite enough of body shaming.


Instead, let us return to that band of teenage girls at a slumber party so that they can gorge on sweets, both for the joy of gorging on sweets and to support their friend, who needed to be careful most of the days of her life. When I was at those parties, I remember saying, “This must be what heaven is like! We can eat whatever we want and calories don’t count!” I don’t think I was wrong, but I think I was wrong about the reason. Absolutely I think that Heaven involves all the treats. I am willing to bet that God never cared about the calories, but only about our long term joy.


Jesus came to tell us that the Kingdom of Heaven is already here. Does that mean that we can eat like teenage girls at a slumber party now? You don’t need me to tell you the answer. However, there are other ways that the Kingdom of Heaven is like that slumber party.


I am always thinking about the symbols and metaphors that Jesus uses, how they may be unfamiliar if we didn’t grow up on a farm, like today’s yoke metaphor. Let’s use the teenage slumber party to see if we can update the yoke image that Jesus uses in this Gospel.


If I said that a life following Jesus is like a slumber party of teenage girls too young to drive and too law abiding and responsible to drink, many people would say, “No thank you.” Popular culture has a lot to say about mean girls, but much less to say about responsible and supportive communities. A group of teenage girls can be a force for pain and a source of pain. But they can also be a fierce support group. And that group can accomplish far more than one young teenage girl working alone to preserve her life.


That’s the nature of groups, of people who yoke themselves together. Like those children in the marketplace at the beginning of the Gospel, this metaphor of the power of teenage girls has a message for us. We can do more yoked together than we can ever achieve alone. At the very least, it makes our burdens lighter.


I think of writer’s groups I’ve been part of, and how we each accomplished more in the years that we met than I have since. I think of the running groups and other groups of athletes that do more as a team than they would alone. I think of the groups of campers that I hear each week, singing as they walk up and down the hilly trails, singing to support each other as they make their way through each day.


But Jesus isn’t giving us a message about the value of teamwork. Jesus reminds us that if we yoke ourselves to him, we’re working in alignment with something even more powerful than a group of teenage girls, an artist’s collective, or a running club. We’re transforming ourselves into a stronger force, plowing new fields for the kingdom of God.


Some will still try to pull in opposite directions, but yoked together, we won’t ignore the messages that God has for us or the messengers, like John the Baptist, or Jesus himself, who have been sent to us. We will learn from them and our souls will find rest and find our burdens lighter.


If we have heavy burdens, and who among us does not carry heavy burdens, Jesus invites us to put them down. We put them down by sharing them. Jesus invites us to yoke ourselves to him, and then, unlike Paul, we can find our body, mind, and soul working as one, one joined to the Divine, all of us together, yoked to our desire to do good, along with the ability to see that desire through because of the yoke that keeps us all enjoined and connected to God.