Swept Up

 

for the September 9 Chapel Service at MTS

Swept Up

Luke 15:1,10 · Proper 19, Year C

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”¹

So I'm doing something this fall I've never done before. This week I registered to attend the reunion at Vanderbilt Divinity School. I started there 38 years ago and earned my MDiv in 1990. I've been texting with old classmates this week and have been reflecting on those professors who, when I was a mere lad, shaped me in ways that even now I'm only coming to understand. It’s possible you’ll hear me wax nostalgic a little during this sermon.

Let us pray: Of all the words spoken today, may it be your living Word that remains. Give us the grace to receive it, and the charity to let all the other words slip away. Amen.²

You’re known by the company you keep.  Isn’t that the sage advice of fables, philosophers, the scripture itself, to say nothing of momma? 

What are we without our reputations? 

Shoot, what are we with them?

Jesus is eating again. That’s how this starts.

It always starts with a grumble. Not a loud one. Not the kind that splits the room, but you hear it. You know what those 'church whispers' sound like, don't ya? It’s amazing how audible self-righteously indignant whispered consternation can be. A raised eyebrow. A slight shake of the head.

“He’s eating with those people,” apparently, and people notice.

What Jesus does next isn’t at all random. It has purpose.  Meaning.

It’s a response to the kind of murmuring that always shows up when God does something disorienting to those convinced they know who God is and what God wants. Luke places it squarely in the context of table fellowship and holiness codes. The text says Jesus 'welcomes sinners and eats with them.' In Luke’s Gospel, that’s not just a description, it’s an accusation. Because in Luke, to eat with someone is to declare them part of your community. That’s why it’s dangerous.

Now, Jesus could’ve scolded them. Could’ve quoted a Psalm or two. Could’ve drawn a line in the dirt like he does sometimes.

But instead?

Instead, he tells stories. And not neat little fables. They’re stories that don’t quite sit right. Stories that mess with your categories.

Stories that don’t let you stay where you are.

“Let’s see,” he says, …” have you heard the one about the shepherd who had a hundred sheep and one goes missing?” 

 

It’s easy to judge whether or not he was any good at it by leaving ninety-nine perfectly fine sheep to search for one lost, little lamb.

But that’s not even the scandalous part of the story.  He actually finds the darn thing, throws it over his shoulders, gathers his friends and throws a party.  Weirdo.

And then there’s the one about this woman. Loses a coin. Lights a lamp. Sweeps the floor. Crawls around on her hands and knees.

You’d think she’d pocket it and move on.

But instead, she calls her neighbors. Throws a party. For a found coin? What is going on?

David Buttrick was my homiletics professor.  In Speaking Parables: A Homiletic Guide he writes:

“Parables are not illustrations. They are acts of speech that can overturn the world of hearers, dislodging fixed assumptions and evoking the new world of God’s reign.”³

The stories Jesus tells are not about what’s rational.  The math doesn’t work.  But grace never concerns itself with such things. It’s not about accounting. It’s about recovery.

Dr. Buttrick was a towering figure to us newbies in his class, not just intellectually but in his presence. Most often, he’d amble into the classroom just as we were due to start, if not a couple of minutes past start time. And we knew better than to scurry or wonder if he’s going to show up. He’d wear the same red plaid shirt and khakis, always had a Styrofoam (it was the 80’s) half-full cup of coffee that had been on the burner so long it could have been mistaken for molasses, with the smoke of the just extinguished cigarette swirling into a halo above him. His voice was gravelly, his eyes mischievous. And when he said something that undid our tidy theologies (which he did a lot), he seemed to take no small amount of glee in doing so.

In his New Testament Rhetoric and Homiletical Theory class, I remember him addressing this story by asking, not as a throwaway line, but as a charge:

“If the sheep follow the shepherd, why didn’t they go with him?”⁴

Why didn’t they?

That question stayed with me. Still does.

I guess if we play faith safe, spending more time doing cost/benefit and SWOT analyses than holy boldness, we'd never go.

We'll hold down the fort. Keep the books. Wait for the one to come crawling back.

But the Gospel isn’t about waiting. It’s about going. About joining God in the search.

And what’s this story again about a woman tidying up to find a lost coin?

This isn’t just about finding something that was lost. It’s about whose hands are doing the finding. About where the Spirit chooses to move. In kitchens. In basements. In everyday acts of grace.

Maybe she lit that lamp because those ten coins were all she had to live on. Maybe the floor she swept wasn’t her own. Maybe she had already lost too much in life to risk letting this go.

 

In this light, her action is not only practical, it is courageous.

Faithful. Political. And holy.

I think about Joretta Marshall, who was unquestionably the professor who formed me most in the field of pastoral care and the theological impetus that drives it. She was my professor, field ed small group facilitator, if she offered a course, I took it, and someone for whom I have deep admiration, affection, and respect. I have continued to learn from her over the years.

Marshall insisted that pastoral care is never abstract but always particular:

“Pastoral care is attentive to the uniqueness of persons and their stories, and to the contexts of community and culture that shape their lives.”⁶

In that spirit, I would say: to offer care is to notice what is usually ignored — the unspoken grief, the unswept floor, the lost thing that matters deeply to the one who lost it.

When we sweep with intention, light lamps with hope, or refuse to stop searching, we’re not just tidying up. We’re practicing presence. We’re proclaiming what others might dismiss is, in fact, holy.

She doesn’t wait for grace; she partners with it.

And when she finds what was lost? She throws a party.

That’s the scandal, isn’t it? Not just that God finds the lost. But that God’s response to the finding is lavish!

No doctrine check. No backstory exam. No Enneagram analysis to explain why someone does what they do (spare me, please!).  Just pure unmitigated joy.

Now, as we all know, there’s another story in this chapter pulled from Jesus’ “Lost and Found” story bin. You may have heard it, but that’s for another day. The thing about parables is less about figuring out the answers to what they mean and learning to pay attention to the questions they ask. 

So, I have a few for us to ponder.  Where are you in the story? Where is God? Are you the ninety-nine? Are you under the couch, covered in dust? Are you grumbling in the corner, arms folded?

In our comfort, the way of Jesus can be discomforting, can’t it?

Perhaps you're part of a community like MTS, caught in a liminal season —a place between what has been and what is, with what will be not yet clear. But even here, we are called to embody our vision: to center scholarship that listens deeply, piety that seeks God in the dust, and justice that joins the search. Maybe the call right now isn't to have every answer, but to stay open to the stories that unsettle and reshape us.

What are we going to do? Stay put with the ninety-nine? Light a lamp, sweep the floor, and step into the search with God?

Maybe it’s time to get up off our 'Blessed Assurance,' and go after what matters to God.

Because this much I know: God is seeking. God is sweeping. God is rejoicing. And when the lost are found, you best believe the next thing you hear is the sound of God — swept up with laughter.

Footnotes

1.  Luke 15.1-10, NRSVUE.

2.  David Lowes Watson.  A prayer he often used before preaching.

3.  David Buttrick, Speaking Parables: A Homiletic Guide (Louisville: WestminsterJohn Knox, 2000), 13–14.

4.  David Buttrick, New Testament Rhetoric and Homiletical Theory, class notes, 1989.

5.  Joretta L. Marshall, Counseling and Pastoral Care (Nashville: Abingdon, 1998).

Unbent

Obviously I don't preach much any more.   I can think of a handful of times since I retired.  

I'm starting my second year as steward of the chapel at MTS.    

It wasn't a job I applied for, it just landed in my lap.  

Things like that happen in a place where there's many tasks but few laborers. 

It's really been a gift, though.  

It touches the worship/liturgics side of me that has been largely dormant since retirement.  

Crafting liturgies.  

Presiding the Table.  

Collaborating with faculty and guest preachers to create a worship encounter of meaning.

Sing a little?  (I've largely lost the voice, but let's make a joyful noise, shall we?). 

Setting the space as needed.  

Have mercy, I did all that every week for 33 years.  And it's indeed fulling.

This year I've found that the opportunity to preach is one I'm taking up when the schedule (I send a spreadsheet out to my colleagues asking them to claim a chapel or two to preach) isn't filled.   

And so, I've started working again on crafting homilies using the lectionary cycle as a guide.  As a Lectionary preacher most of my career, I'm finding this revisitation with these texts interesting, familiar, yet profoundly challenging.  I am not who I was when I've preached these texts previously.  Not at all.  And being out of practice from the rhythm of preparation and the practice of preaching I had once honed, these initial efforts feel earnest, but clunky.  

I'm not preaching this text any place but here.  It may be as much for me to put stuff here as I exercise atrophied homiletical muscles as it is anyone to read it.  But here goes:  

Unbent

Luke 13:10–17  + The 14^th Week of Pentecost Year C
Rev. Dr. Jonathan L. Jeffords

---

Luke 13.10-17  (NRSVUE)

¹⁰ Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. ¹¹ And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. ¹² When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” ¹³ When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. ¹⁴ But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured and not on the Sabbath day.” ¹⁵ But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it to water? ¹⁶ And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?” ¹⁷ When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame, and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things being done by him.

It may not seem so, but rules are not the problem.

At their best, rules are gifts.
They give shape to our life together.
They guard against chaos.
They show us how to honor God and our neighbor.

I think of John Irving’s novel The Cider House Rules — and the film adaptation with Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, and Michael Caine. In the story, the orphanage run by Dr. Wilbur Larch, played by Michael Caine, has its own bedtime ritual. Every night, as he tucks the children in, he says tenderly:

“Good night, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.”

It’s a rule — a ritual — spoken again and again, not to crush but to lift.
Not to keep the children down, but to remind them of their dignity and worth.
That kind of rule is a gift.

But later, when the children grow up and work in the apple orchards, they find another set of rules — nailed to the bunkhouse wall by owners who never lived there. The rules tell them what they can and cannot do. Most of the workers can’t even read them. Here are a few of those rules:

1. Please don’t smoke in bed.
2. Please don’t operate the grinder or press if you’ve been drinking.
3. Please don’t go up on the roof to sleep. (No matter how hot it gets.)
4. Please don’t go into the cider house after dark.
5. Please don’t eat in the cider house.
6. There should be no smoking in the cider house.
7. There should be no drinking in the cider house.
8. There should be no playing of cards in the cider house.

After hearing them read aloud, one of the men laughs and says, “Those rules ain’t for us. We didn’t write them.”

That’s the difference:
Some rules bless us.
Some rules bind us.
Some rules lift us into freedom.
Some rules keep us bent low.
And rules can be oppressive.
Sometimes they bless us.
Sometimes they bend us down.

Now, think again of the Ten Commandments.
Given at Sinai, they weren’t arbitrary restrictions.
They began with freedom:
“I am the LORD your God, who brought us out of the house of slavery.”

This Decalogue defined the identity of God’s people.
They reminded Israel — and showed the world — who God is,
and who we are called to be.

Walter Brueggemann, one of the most influential Hebrew Bible theologians of our time, whom we’ve just most recently lost,  puts it this way:

“Rather the commandments, each and all of them together, constitute a picture of what a counter-community of neighbors might look like.”¹

But as time went on, ten became many.
Through interpretation, application, and expansion,
the covenantal words of freedom multiplied into hundreds of detailed, case-by-case rules.

Michael Walzer, American political theorist and professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study warns:

“The crowding of detailed, case-by-case law upon covenantal law is one way of turning the law of liberation into the law of burden.”²

Or to put it plainly:
When the Ten Commandments — given as covenant, as words of liberation — became surrounded by hundreds of detailed rules, something shifted.
The law of freedom began to feel like a law of burden.
The very gift meant to set us free could, in its weight, bend us down.

Not for nothing, but making it a law for them to be displayed in schools and government buildings is pretty much the opposite of their purpose.
How is it possible that we’ve made an idol of the very thing that says, “yeah, don’t do that.”

We all know people who live by the rules.
We take them seriously.
If we have to follow them,
then so does everyone else.
That feels fair.  That sounds right.

Others among us respect the rules,
but we’ve learned there are moments when rules don’t help.
Moments when the rule bends us down instead of lifting us up.
And when that happens,  something has to give.

And sometimes it’s more than that.
Sometimes rules are manipulated,
weaponized,
used to retain power.
To keep us small, silent, bent down, and that’s where our text finds us today.

Luke is the gospel of the least, last, lost.

From Mary’s song to the women at the tomb, Luke shows us:
the lowly lifted,
the outsider brought in.

This story falls in chapter 13, as Jesus journeys to Jerusalem.
He’s just told parables of seeds and yeast — God’s reign growing quietly, powerfully.

And then this:
On the Sabbath, in the center of worship, a woman long bent down stands tall.

Luke’s message:
The reign of God will not wait for permission.
It will not be held back by rules that keep us bent low.
It breaks in — here and now.

The kingdom of God looks like the bent ones standing tall.

That’s the tension we carry into today’s Gospel.
Because sometimes keeping the rules honors God.
And sometimes keeping the rules obscures God.

Jesus is teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath.

And there — almost invisible — a woman.

Bent over.
The Greek says sugkuptousa (soog-KOOP-too-sah) — “completely bent together.”
Not just stooped.
Her whole life folded in on itself.

For eighteen years.
Staring at the ground.
Watching the world at knee level.

And then — Jesus sees her.

He calls her forward.

Every eye turns.

And he says:
“Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.”

The word is apolelysai (ah-po-LEH-loo-sai) — “loosed, untied, released.”
The same word used for untying an ox or donkey on the Sabbath, something that first hearers would react with their version of “Aw, Snap!”.

If we’ll break our rule to show mercy to an animal,
why not break it to show mercy to her?

He lays hands on her.
Immediately — she stands tall.
And she praises God.

The synagogue leader protests:
“There are six other days for healing. Not today.”

And here’s the thing: he isn’t trying to be cruel.
He believes he is honoring God by honoring the rules.
He thinks he is protecting the Sabbath.
In his own way, he is doing what he has been taught to do.

But in his zeal for the letter, he misses the spirit, and as a result, how he holds and honors the very laws he’s defending bends his viewpoint. So, he can’t see the freedom God is bringing right in front of him.

The Sabbath is liberation.
The Sabbath is mercy.

So when Jesus heals — he isn’t breaking Sabbath.
He’s fulfilling it.

I think about the poignant scene in the film Hidden Figures.

Katherine Johnson — one of NASA’s brightest minds — bent under segregation’s rules.

One day her boss confronted her:
Harrison: “Where do you go every day?”
Katherine : “To the bathroom, sir.”
Harrison: “For forty minutes a day?”
Katherine: (bursts out)
“Yes, sir! There are no colored bathrooms in this building. I walk half a mile just to relieve myself.
My uniform, my heels, and a string of pearls I can’t afford.
And I drink coffee from a pot none of you will touch.
So excuse us if we have to go to the bathroom a few times a day!”

That’s what unjust rules do.
They bend us down.
Wear us out.
Tell us we don’t belong.

And what did Harrison do?
He grabbed a crowbar.
Smashed the “Colored Ladies Room” sign with the line,
“Here at NASA, we all pee the same color.”

He broke the rule — because the rule itself was unjust.
And Katherine stood tall.
Her brilliance shone unhindered.

That’s what Jesus does in the synagogue.
That’s what he still does for us.

It's hard not to miss: her liberation is not a one-off.
She is one of many women Jesus lifts, honors, and frees from the tyranny of religious and cultural restriction.
In Luke, he welcomes Mary of Bethany to sit at his feet — an act of liberation, since women were not permitted to sit as disciples at a rabbi’s feet, but Jesus affirms her as a true disciple (Luke 10:39).
In John, he reveals who he is for the first time to a woman, and a Samaritan woman at that(John 4).
He heals the woman with the flow of blood (Mark 5:34).
He defends the woman who's a stones throw away from calamity for being caught in adultery, while letting the self-righteously indignant know "I see you." (John 8).
He honors the woman who anoints him (Mark 14:9).
And in Luke’s own Gospel, it is women who remain at the cross and who are first at the empty tomb.

The pattern is clear: Jesus bends human-made restrictions so that women — and all the bent ones — know they have value, dignity, worth, agency.

Sadly, the self-righteously indignant still proof text scripture to keep women bent.  You know, when you use the Bible as your preferred weapon of choice to abuse women, to abuse any body, there's a special place in hell just for you!

As feminist theologian, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza reminds us:

“The patriarchal use of biblical texts has served to legitimate oppression and must be critically dismantled so that the Word can be a source of liberation and empowerment for women and all marginalized peoples.”⁴

This is why we cannot be satisfied with rules that look holy but leave people bent over. The liberating Word of God calls us to discern when law lifts us into life, and when law obscures God’s mercy. That is our work as the church.

Friends, this is the Gospel.

The same Jesus who saw her — sees us.
The same Jesus who loosed her — looses us.
The same Jesus who straightened her back — can straighten ours.

Because God’s very nature is to break the rules that keep us bent.

That liberating Word calls us not only to receive freedom but to practice it. If women have been bent low by distorted uses of scripture, then the church is called to proclaim again that Christ sets them free. If unjust rules have silenced voices, then the Spirit urges us to lift those voices high. The work is not finished until all of us — together — can stand tall.

It’s the same spirit that moved in Rosa Parks.
When the rules told her to move,
she stayed seated.
She was unbent.

She's reported to have said,

"I had no idea that history was being made. I was just tired of giving in.”⁷ 

She did not act alone.
She was part of a community, tired of being bent down,
who rallied around her courage.
Her single act of resistance sparked a movement that said,
“We will no longer be bowed.”
And in that act of defiance and faith,
we found the courage to stand tall together.

We need some more Rosa’s and Katherine’s today, because there’s an ill wind blowing.

So too today, when we resist rules that obscure God, when we embody mercy over regulation, when we declare with our lives that all are made in God’s image — then we live as the unbent people of God.

So this Sabbath — stand tall.
Lift our heads.
Be unbent.

And then go.
See the ones bent low.
Break the rules that bind us.
Stand with them until we stand tall.
And let our whole life be praise.

In the name of the Father,
and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

---

·       

           John Irving, The Cider House Rules (New York: William Morrow, 1985); film adaptation The Cider House Rules (dir. Lasse Hallström, 1999), starring Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, and Michael Caine. Quoted lines from film script.

      Walter Brueggemann, The Ten Commandments: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997).

·       Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 56.

·       Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983), xv.   

·       Hidden Figures, directed by Theodore Melfi (2016), starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, and Kevin Costner. Quoted dialogue from the film.

·       Rosa Parks with Jim Haskins, Rosa Parks: My Story (New York: Dial Books, 1992).

 

 

Still Standing, But Barely

Preached in Hamilton Chapel at MTS at the first gathering of faculty and staff for the new academic year, 8/12/25

Still Standing, But Not Alone

Hear a reading from Matthew 11, where Jesus says: 

“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, 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.”

I know what you’re thinking -

 “Preacher, it’s our first day together and you start with weary?

Weary already?  

Maybe it’s not weary already, maybe it’s more like already weary.

Because weary is real.

It accumulates. 

Quietly. 

Incrementally. 

Relentlessly.

Weary wears you out.  

Ever been so weary you can’t sleep?

Truth is, short of the other side of glory, we all carry some level of it.

And if you haven’t yet, you will.

We usually don’t want our weariness to show.  

Something about a strong disposition, intestinal fortitude, stiff upper lip, and all that.  But despite our best efforts to mask it, weary has a way of slipping out. 

The million miles away stare.  

The sigh we didn’t mean to let out so loudly when one more person knocks on our office door.  

Or maybe it’s the tersely worded email we send to the wrong people.

But we tough stock folks.  

So when someone asks us how we are, you know how we do?  What do we say?

“Fine.”

Or, being from the 901, as I’ve been since high school, “You good?”  “Yeah, I’m good.”

I wonder, when we say something that doesn’t match what’s true inside,  are we being untruthful on purpose?  I don’t think so.  We’re just not ready to wear our weariness in front of people who might not be able to handle it.

Ever hit the wall of weariness and it hit back?  I did many years ago, With all due respect and appreciation for Ms. Winfrey, I was not living my best life. 

Before therapy. 

Before treatment. 

Before realizing that being in care giving vocations is not that same as receiving care for self and you’re a crisis away from saturation…

You know what this is, right?  It’s the sponge that can absorb and hold water up to a point, after which even one tiny, little drop is too much, and it’ll start dripping.  It’s that state of being that no matter how much you can carry, how much you can absorb, there comes a point when one more thing, and it doesn’t matter what it is, is one thing too many. 

Yeah I didn’t realize it, and I did meltdown.   

But I remember in my strained logic that I wasn’t going to lie when people asked how I was, and I surely wasn’t going unload how I was on them, so, I came up with an answer that was true - ish.  

 “How are you?”  “Still standing.”

Sometimes shaky. 

Sometimes leaning.
If still standing is all you got, there’s a good chance you’re weary.

So yes. 

We start this new academic year as we begin again, … already weary.

New semester.  

Some new faces. 

Same institutional worries.  

Same ache.

We’re here in ministry, together, grateful to be part of the mission of this place.

But we weary.

Tired and hyperextended. 

But still standing.

Wobbly legged from wondering what it all means, what are going to do, and who are we going to be.  

But still standing.

So yeah, we start with weary.  

And I want you to hear me say this morning that it’s ok to be weary, cause I know somebody who wants to walk in the weary with us.  

We’re not the first to be weary. Hardly.

Earlier in Matthew 11 even John the Baptist—
 the forerunner, the womb-leaper, the prophet, the baptizer—
  sends word from his prison cell:

“Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”

That’s not doubt. 

That’s prophetic burnout.  

That brother’s weary.

And Jesus doesn’t rebuke him.
 Doesn’t shame him.
 Doesn’t question his faith.

He sends back a word:

“Tell John what we see and hear—
 the blind see, the lame walk, the poor have good news preached to them.”

Even in weariness, the Realm of God comes into being. 

Even when we can’t feel it.
 Even when we’re too tired to notice.

To the cities that saw who Jesus was —
 but wouldn’t change.
 To the people who experienced grace—
 but didn’t respond gracefully…

“To you, Chorazin…, Bethsaida…” Capernaum” 

Jesus would like a word. 

”Woe.”

Because as unbelieveable as it seems some folks can experience grace, mercy, and love lived out and not be moved by it, changed by it, willing to turn around, willing to go beyond the minds they have about who they are and who God is to embrace a new way of knowing God and neighbor.    

No, some folks are far more willing to follow Jesus on their terms than follow him on his.  What’s that old line from Jonathan Swift, “we have just enough religion to hate, but not enough to love one another.”  

Some folks ?  Maybe any of us.  All of us. 

Woe, indeed. 

And then Jesus pivots from prophetic pronouncement to invitation.  “Come to me, all who are weary”

And the word here uses — kopiaō —

doesn’t mean “kinda sleepy.”
 It means: spent.
 Exhausted.
 Soul-tired.

It’s the kind of tired we earn.
 The kind that seeps into our bones.

That’s where we are now.

 A seminary community still standing.

Staff and faculty.
 IT, and the business office.

Admissions busting their tails.

Stewards of our buildings doing all they can with very little, to say nothing of our Dean and President.

We wear a dozen hats.
 Sometimes all in the same day.

It’s wearying.  

But we are still standing— and next week, students will come…new students who picked us as the place to explore God’s call on their lives will walk in here for the first time.  And students of long standing, some of whom we’re just trying to get out of here will come back…

But we’re weary, already.

And we’re supposed to form leaders in the way of Jesus
 while also remembering how to breathe?

And into all of that—

 Jesus says:

“Take my yoke upon you…”

Now, wait a minute.  That might sound like more work.

 I’m not trying to take on more.

But in Jesus’ world, the yoke is a partnership.

A shared burden.   A fitting burden.  One with distributed weight.
 One we don’t carry alone.

This isn’t about quitting the work.
 It’s about rediscovering why we said yes to it.

This isn’t about escaping the burden.
 It’s about remembering who carries it with us.

So let’s come.

Let’s come with our syllabi and our sighs.
 Let’s come with our mission and our mess.
 Let’s come with our theology and our therapy.

Let’s come with our honest selves.

Not to quit.

Not to hide.

But to rest.

To yoke up with the One who is gentle,
 humble, present.

Still standing.

But thanks be to God, not alone.

Amen.