Walking With Jesus
On the rest that only Jesus provides.
This sermon was offered on July 5, 2025 at St. Brendan’s Episcopal Church. The readings for the morning can be found here.
Several years ago I walked the final 100 kilometers of the Camino de Santiago. Some of you may be familiar with this pilgrimage. There is a network of paths than span across Portugal, Spain, and France that lead to the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, where James the Apostle is traditionally believed to be buried. Pilgrims have been making this journey for centuries, and I have had the privilege of walking the final stretch of the most popular route twice.
When you are on the Camino, your top priority for the day is walking. I have found all of life’s other distractions are able to melt away as I focus on putting one foot in front of the other. It is a simple rhythm, and I have found it to be deeply meditative and spiritual. Like many of us, I thought that if I planned well enough and packed lightly enough, I could avoid unnecessary hardship.
I have not camped much or even hiked so in order to take this trip I needed to get some new gear. I went to the store to try on special backpacks, I went to the running store to get fit for new shoes. I did all sorts of research into what to pack, I even read that you should travel as light as possible, some people even cut the plastic stick part of their toothbrushes off to keep things light. Apparently every ounce adds up! I researched bandaids, socks and walking poles. I wanted to make the journey as easy as possible.
Then the time of the walk began! I was walking with a friend and we did alright for the first few days, and then things got a lot tougher. We were tired and blistered. We opted to spend a few euros and have our bags shuttles for us so we could travel lighter. We spent all this time preparing for the trip, trying to make our lives easier, and it hadn’t turned out the way we hoped. We thought we were making our lives easier by researching, but then my friend got covid and we had to throw our carefully planned details out the window. It was still a great trip but it did not end the way we imagined.
We spend so much time trying to make life easier. We prepare, we plan, we organize, we save, we buy the right things, and we hope that somehow we can avoid hardship. Sometimes those things help, but they will not save us.
Our society offers us many ways to rest although most of them require us to spend money. We often label them as “self care.” Oh a massage, or an ice cream cone, or a vacation will offer some sort of relief. And it does! But it is often temporary. But they are not always available to us and they cannot save our souls.
Jesus sees us trying to carry it all and says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
These words are good news to anyone who is trying to make it through another hard season, and maybe this is where we find ourselves this morning. Maybe you find yourself exhausted by the heat. Maybe you are tired of another depressing news cycle. Perhaps you have caregiver fatigue, as you manage the health of your loved ones. Or maybe you are facing your own health concerns right now. There are so many things that weigh on us as heavy burdens.
We often approach Jesus hoping for a hammock, but instead he offers us a yoke. A yoke was a wooden beam placed across the shoulders of two oxen so they could pull a load together. It was hard work but sharing it made it a little easier. This yoke is learning his way of life.
He says his yoke is easy, but this does not mean it is effortless. Jesus calls us to this service, but it is not like the other type of work we are familiar with in our lives. That’s why he uses this language of work to describe it. Is Jesus saying we have to earn our rest? No. The yoke isn’t the price we pay for rest. The yoke is the way we experience rest. Rest doesn’t come after following Jesus, it comes in following Jesus.
Yokes were often used to connect a younger, less experienced ox with a stronger, older one. Together, they shared the work. Jesus likens our walk with him as that of a yoke because he has already taken the weight from us in taking on the yoke that only he could bear, the burden of sin and death. Through the cross and resurrection he reveals that he can carry the heaviest thing, and even the worst thing does not have power over him. He bears these burdens for us and so now we do not have to carry them on our own.
If you were to ask me when I was the most rested, I might say the Camino. Physically I was exhausted , but mentally I felt clear, unburdened by the daily grind. Set apart. There are times in scripture where Jesus gets away to be alone, to recharge and renew. But this is not the model he offers for daily life. In daily life he is surrounded by challenges! He is often surrounded by crowds who all wanted something from him. And yet we are told he is well rested. This is because he knows there is a deeper truth than what those around him offer. He knows that by following the ways of God, he will be led to God, who is the very source of the love, peace, justice, and mercy that we so desire. It is not a life of absent of hardship and suffering, but it is the knowledge that these things do not win. Christ has overcome even death itself, and because he has, neither suffering nor fear nor death will ever define us again.
Every morning I woke up and knew I had several hours of walking ahead of me. I prayed that the road would be gentle and that my shin splints wouldn’t appear, but I knew there would be challenges ahead. Following Jesus doesn’t mean that the road becomes flat. This is not what Jesus promises us. Instead, he offers himself. He walks alongside us and bears the weight we cannot carry ourselves, showing us a different pace than the world has to offer. Step by step, he leads us to the kingdom of God. Yoked to him, we find our source of strength and life. Amen.