The Invitation

Matthew 11:28

“Come to me, all you who are weighed down and burdened. I will give you rest.”

Christ issues an invitation, one that is surprisingly universal--who isn’t burdened by something? who isn’t stressed? who isn’t overwhelmed? Go ahead, admit it. What is the largest section of books at the local Barnes& Noble? That’s right--self-help on everything from dealing with partners, to maximizing our professional presence (lest we get fired), to eating right, to sleeping, to dealing with our children, to dealing with our parents--shoot, to dealing with LIFE! Christ invites all of us to enter his presence. There, there will be rest.

Wouldn’t that be nice? To rest. To be. To breathe. No schedule. No bills. No coworkers. No people to deal with. No nothing demanding our attention, time, or work. Just rest.

But wait a moment.

The more we read the Gospel, we discover that Christ’s invitation comes with a catch. The rest may be there, but first there is all this stuff about self-emptying--”Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor,” he says. There is this stuff by loving your troublesome neighbor, the one who never says anything nice, the boss who makes your life hell, the gossipy woman who loves the shell the dirt on everybody, helping no one--”Love your enemies,” he says. “If someone demands you walk a mile with them, walk two.” 

Shoot.

Christ is like all the rest. Big promises, but with the inevitable catch that’s going to cost us. It’s not at all what it seems.

Yes, it is.

It is exactly what it seems. 

Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh commented, “The Kingdom of God is always there for us; it is we who are not there for the Kingdom of God.”

The Kingdom is not some far away heaven that we will have to die to attain; the Kingdom is that place of rest available here and now. It comes when we actually practice the art of self-emptying.

Let me give a real world example.

Traveling home from Boston, Alison and I had to pass through the necessary TSA checkpoints to enter the airport. In Boston, Alison ran into a snag. A determined knitter, she travels with her knitting bag as her carry-on item. She packed it tightly for our flight home, so tightly the security x-ray could not get a clear image of what was inside. So, the TSA agent pulled Alison aside and asked her to unload her bag item by item. We had a plane to catch. We had connections to make. We had so much to do. The normal response would be to get irritated. I mean, come on, Alison hardly looks like anyone’s definition of a threat. We might well be late because of some stupid overzealous security. But, Alison decided to look deeply into the moment. What do TSA agents do? They examine hundreds of passengers to be sure no more planes fly into buildings, killing thousands. If they miss the one passenger determined to be a murderer, it will be on them for the rest of their lives. That is pressure. They have to be vigilant all day, all night. They have to watch every single person as if every single person were the only person they ever saw. Suddenly, being on time mattered little. What mattered was helping this young woman do her job effectively. If we were late, there were other planes. If the agent did not do her job, thousands of people might be at risk--not from Alison, but from the person the agent decided not to check, no matter how innocent they appeared. Alison felt the weight on the young woman’s shoulders, so she helped her, relieving her, at least momentarily, from that burden. 

So, yes, there was a cost. We had to rush a little more to make our gate. We dealt with that stress, but what was that compared to the stress of keeping everyone safe? 

Christ asks us to lose ourselves in the effort to see everyone. See them. Listen to them. Deeply. Take the time to let them in. As we empty ourselves to everyone else, they become less frightening, less unknown, and less threatening. They become fellow travelers. We become a community. 

On the subway at rush hour in an overcrowded car, we confronted a blind homeless man trying to board with all of his stuff, a mighty pile of whatever. The passengers became a community, helping get it all and himself aboard, guiding him to the handicapped seat. They reprised the effort when he got to his stop. Did we alter the world? Did we radically change that man’s life? Who knows? We may well have. More likely, no, the world will turn, he will still be homeless and blind. Was it therefore fruitless? No, he was loved and met with compassion. In that moment, all was well and all manner of things were well. 

There was a cost, but no one cared. It was irrelevant.

That is liberation. We are freed from cost-benefit analysis. We are free to be. We are free to breathe. We are free. Our burden--usually one generated by fear of something--is suddenly gone, vaporized.

So, the invitation is before us. Yes, it is going to mean going in a different direction from where our culture tells us to go. It is going to mean leaving the altar of self. But as we enter the presence of grace, compassion, and health, we find that was no place to be anyway.

Accept the invitation.