Serija "Poziv" - 1. Dio - Poziv

Uvod

Dobra večer, dear spectator. My name is João Relić Macedo, I’m a theologian and pastor, originally from Portugal, and this weekend I will be your host as we continue this series about the life of Jesus. The overall title for the weekend is “Poziv” and we will be largely focusing on a very famous invitation from Jesus. I would like to start our study tonight precisely by reading that invitation, which we can find in the book of Matthew, chapter eleven (11), verses twenty-eight (28) to thirty (30). Matthew eleven (11), verses twenty-eight (28) to thirty (30). I will be reading from the Suvremeni Hrvatski Prijevod. The text says the following:

Tekst

28 »Dođite k meni, svi koji ste umorni i opterećeni, i ja ću vas obnoviti. 29 Uzmite moj jaram na sebe i učite od mene, jer ja sam krotkog i poniznog srca, pronaći ćete odmor svojim dušama. 30 Jer, jaram koji vam nudim lagan je i teret koji je od mene lako vam je nositi.«

Propovijed

In England, people tell a funny real story about a couple who, a certain day, got an invitation. I’m not sure that this is something common here in Croatia, but in England and in America, it is quite common to invite all of your friends over when you purchase or rent your house. Well, this was precisely one of those occasions. Some of their friends had just purchased a house and they were inviting them to come over and celebrate the purchase. And, in the invitation, there was an interesting English sentence: “bring your own dish,” which can translate to Croatian more or less as “bring your own plate.”

At first, the couple was surprised that their friends were asking them to bring their own plates to a party. But then they thought: “oh, our friends must still be unpacking the things they are bringing over from their old house. So, they must not have unpacked the plates and cutlery and that’s the reason why they’re asking us to bring our own plates.”

So, on the day and time of the party, the couple knocked on the door of their friends’ new house, with plates in their hands. And it was with an horrified sense of surprise that they understood they were the only ones in that party that had brought their own plates. The problem is that the sentence “bring your own dish” can be translated as “bring your own plate,” yes, but it can also be translated as “bring your own food.” And this was what their friends had meant. The invitation wasn’t for a lunch their friends had prepared that was gonna be served in the plates the guests had brought. It was an invitation for a zajednički ručak in which everyone brought their food to share with the other guests.

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Whenever we receive an invitation, it is important for us to understand what exactly is being said in the invitation, so that we don’t end up misunderstanding what we were invited to. In the text we read a couple of minutes ago, Jesus makes an invitation to each of us. And throughout this weekend we are gonna precisely try to understand what is he really inviting us to do.

So, I think it is important that we look into the text and try to understand what this invitation is all about. And, in order to do so, I would like today to highlight a few aspects of this text. The first of those is the concept of a jaram.

For those of you who maybe have never worked on the field, you may be asking yourselves what is a jaram. Well, a jaram is a wooden beam that is used to connect a pair of animals, normally oxen, as they carry some kind of a heavy burden — either a cart or some ploughing tool. It is something that supposedly distributes the heavy weight equally by the two animals and that helps them pull together.

In biblical times, the jaram was often associated with the idea of submission to someone else’s rule or obedience to another person’s authority. The theologians in Jesus’s time, for example, would often associate the jaram with obedience to God’s Law — or at least obedience to their interpretations of God’s law. So, when Jesus here invites the disciples to take his own jaram upon themselves, he is inviting them to submit to his own authority rather than the jaram offered by the theologians of the time. And when Jesus suggests that his jaram is an easier than the jaram put on the people by the theologians, he is implying that obeying Jesus’s rule is not an heavy job, but a light one. This is the first point.

The second point has to do with Jesus’s concept of humility. Try and think about the most humble person you know. Is it maybe someone who probably doesn’t speak a lot? Is it someone who probably doesn’t need a lot of things to be happy? Is it someone who, quite often, avoids confrontation or even allows other people to use them as a doormat?

Quite often, when we speak about the humble Jesus, this is the kind of humility we have in mind. Jesus as the lamb who humbly volunteers to go to the slaughterhouse without even the slightest complain. The Jesus who is willing to submit himself to everything and everyone in order to show all of those around him the love, patience and grace of God.

But at the same time, the type of humility he seems to be demonstrating in this passage is something else slightly different, right? As I just said, it seems like he is contrasting his teachings with the teachings of the theologians of the time and saying: I have a better, lighter yoke for you to take on than the one they are offering. Well, I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t seem like something the most humble person I can imagine would do very easily. Someone humble would try and put themselves above the established religious authorities of the time? I highly doubt it. We will come back to this at some later point during the weekend, but this was the second point I wanted to mention here today.

The third and last point I want to mention today is connected to the main point of this story. The wide majority of today’s theologians agree that, in this text, Jesus is addressing the subject of the Sabbath. They see, for example, a connection between Jesus’s use of “rest” here and the text of Exodus, chapter twenty-three (23), verse twelve (12), which says: “Šest dana obavljaj svoj posao, a sedmog se dana odmaraj. Tako će se odmoriti tvoji bikovi i magarci te se tako okrijepiti tvoji robovi i stranci.” They also see connections between this text and the two stories that come immediately after it, which are closely connected to the the issue of the Sabbath observance.

Now, as you probably know, Jesus and his followers were Jews. They understood the Sabbath as a day of rest and not of work — a day to remember God as the creator of the world, to rest from all the work and to worship God. But, throughout the years, the Jewish theologians had burdened the Sabbath with more and more requirements, rules and regulations. Just to give you one example: it is said that, on the Sabbath, observant Jews could not take more than a certain amount of steps, otherwise they would be considered to be breaking the Sabbath.

So, in summary, it is quite likely that, in the passage we read a few minutes ago, this strangely humble Jesus is saying: do you know all of those religious regulations? Especially the regulations about the Sabbath? Those things that the authorities call the jaram? Those requirements and rules that you find quite oppressive? Well…don’t worry. My teaching on this is quite different than theirs. I have a lighter, easier jaram for you. And if you want to rest, all you have to do is to put my jaram on you instead of theirs. This is the invitation that Jesus was extending to his disciples on that day.

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This is also the invitation that Jesus is still extending to each and every one of us, still today. I am still a young person, and I don’t yet have many years of experience in ministry. But I can already tell you that there are a lot of people out there who have problems precisely because of these burdens. How many people have struggled over the centuries with the burden of religious observances and rites that they don’t understand? How many people have struggled with the burden of guilt? How many people have struggled with the constant reminder that they are not enough? To those, Jesus is saying here: “Dođite k meni, svi koji ste umorni i opterećeni, i ja ću vas obnoviti.”

Now, dear spectator, I don’t know exactly where you are right now. Maybe this invitation is not for you. Maybe you never had to struggle with these issues. But maybe you are sitting right there at home and you are thinking to yourself: I could do with some help. I would like to have my burdens removed from me. I would like to find someone else who could help me carry them. Well, if that is your situation, I think that this invitation is for you. It is to you that Jesus is saying: “come to me, and I will give you rest.” “Come to me, and I will release you from your guilt.” “Come to me, and I will release you from the burden of religious rituals.”

If that is the case, I would like to pray for you today.

Molitva

Dear God of the light yoke,

Today we come to you to ask you that you may help those of us who are struggling with guilt.

That you may help those of us who are struggling with the burden of religious rituals they hardly understand.

May your Holy Spirit rest on each of them and touch their hearts,

May they be able to listen to the invitation you are extending to them,

And may they be able to take your light yoke upon them.

May you show them what they need to do

And may you guide them to the freedom they need,

The freedom that they can only find in you.

I pray for this

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Zaključak

Today we only dove a bit into some of the implications of this invitation. Tomorrow and on Sunday, we will learn a bit more about how this passage is connected to the two stories that follow and what are some of its implications. We will go a bit more into Jesus’s teachings on the Sabbath, and we will explore a bit more Jesus’s strange type of humility. So, if you wanna learn more, please do not forget to connect to our channel tomorrow, at the same time. May God bless you and…see you tomorrow!