IT’S ONLY A YOKE
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
July 05, 2020
In modern English, unless we are speaking about breakfast
food or bakery items, the word “yolk” is not something we often hear. And it’s
spelled differently than the yoke of which we just heard Jesus speak in the
gospel. In fact, about the only time I’ve ever heard the word yoke – Y-O-K-E –
used is with reference to a kind of clamp that is placed on the shoulders of
oxen in order to facilitate farm work. The yoke keeps the team of animals
together and allows a farmer to steer them where he wants them to go.
But even that isn’t really a completely biblical sense of
the word. In the bible the word yoke means a burden of some kind – and there
can be many kinds. A yoke can refer to injustice or social oppression, or it
can refer to a personal responsibility of some sort. It’s usually inconvenient
and unpleasant, but necessary to take on.
I was doing a little reading about yokes in preparation for
today’s gospel (yes my life really is that peculiar) and I learned something I probably
should already have known, namely when oxen are fitted with yokes, they have to
be custom-made in order to fit properly. Otherwise, they will either not
function or they will injure the animal. This “burden” has to be just right.
There are good yokes and bad ones; those that crush and
those that help. The yoke of systemic racism crushes. The yoke of hatred and
violence is destructive. And many people are burdened by both. And there is a
yoke of sin into which all of into which all of us have been born. To recognize
how vulnerable, we are to such a condition is surely one of the great burdens
of life – it’s a painful yoke to bear. St. Paul speaks of it in the Scriptures.
And still another yoke that the Jews of Jesus’s time would
have been powerfully aware of was the yoke of having to know and serve God well
enough… so many laws, so much to have to learn, so many prayers, so hard to do
it right. A heavy load.
And into all this steps Jesus – both then and now – to comfort
us with a new yoke, a lighter burden, one that fits, one that we can actually
carry out with the help of God’s grace. It is still a yoke – still a
responsibility on our part, but it need not be either crushing or baffling. It’s
actually amazingly simple, he says; “Watch me learn from me, and then do as I
do.” As the Gospel today tells us, nobody needs to be particularly wise or
educated in order to accept that yoke, and in fact the so-called “little ones”
often understand it more naturally than the self-described religious experts,
and accept it more readily.
Be just, be honest, be fair, be generous, be kind, be
forgiving, be attentive to the needs of others. Nobody needs a PhD to figure
that out. Nobody needs to consult an expert to understand that.
That’s the yoke of Jesus that we are invited to welcome. It can
still be a burden sometimes, but it is a relatively easy one compared to the
alternative of trying to be clever enough in theology or canon law or churchy
piety. Look to Jesus; then follow him. “Take my yoke upon you,” he says, “and
learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart… my yoke is easy, and my
burden light.” The yoke fits just right.
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