The things that we carry
Have you ever noticed how much stuff folks tend to drag around with them?
I don’t mean just physical stuff, although there’s that. Today I’m thinking about emotional stuff - frustration, failure, worries, guilt, anger, resentment. Old wounds. Especially old wounds.
I know people who are in their eighties who are still dragging around hurts from their childhoods - a mean sibling, a parent's sharp words. Maybe you do, too.
I know people who run companies or are nurses or lawyers or teachers who still carry around the crippling burden of their parents' divorce or a child's failure or a rupture at their church or some other thing that wasn't their fault or that they cannot fix. Maybe you do, too.
Some of us assume responsibility for nearly everyone and everything and carry that responsibility around as if our lives depended on it. Some of us can’t let go of our feelings of guilt. Some of us secretly believe that we and our stuff are holding up the whole world. And we can't let go or everything will come crashing down.
And if we end up carrying our leftover hurtful junk into new relationships, well, people just have to understand, right?
But Jesus says, come to me all you who are weary from carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.
That sounds really nice, doesn’t it?
Except some of us actually find that hard. Like me. I find it hard. I am not really used to setting something down and letting it go when I don't know what else to do. I tend in my anxiety to either try to run away or try to fix things that are not mine to fix.
But this is part of the salvation story. God knows we are heavily laden. God knows that there are things that happen in our lives that are hurtful, unfair, and just not right. God knows we carry secret worries, carry the weight of the world, carry burdens and hurts and fears of every kind. God knows that we are upset that the fabric of our community has been torn, that we’ve been through a trauma here.
So Jesus says, lay that down. Leave it with me. It’s going to be all right. All is going to be well, even if it doesn’t feel that way right now.
And yet we find it so hard to let go.
In the great mid-1980s movie The Mission, Robert DeNiro plays a character who is carrying profound guilt and shame from his life as a slavetrader and murderer. He is offered a chance to do penance and find sanctuary in a Jesuit mission. The only way to the mission, though, deep in the South American jungle, is by scaling a sheer cliff that is also a massive waterfall.
He attempts to make the harrowing climb while carrying on his back a huge sack of clinking silver, his old armor and weaponry, a sack of stuff that he thinks will protect him, but really it threatens to overwhelm him as he climbs painfully upward through the rushing water. All that stuff keeps pulling him backwards and he nearly falls to his death. But he couldn't trust that what he needed would be there for him at the top and so he grimly hung on until one of the Jesuit brothers threw the sack into the water below.
And yeah that was just a movie, but that scene is forever seared in my brain, a frightened but determined human being trying to climb a waterfall while carrying a big bag of heavy, but useless, stuff.
Of course we have our reasons why we drag our burdens around. It feels impossible and even irresponsible to let go of them. Maybe we secretly believe we should stagger on, nobly, under what we believe are our crosses to bear. Maybe we believe these things are somehow going to protect us,
that they are our armor or the weapons we can use to keep fear at bay.
And yet Jesus in his compassion and wisdom invites us, saying, come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.
What a good thing for us to hear today.
So. Are you dragging something around that you need to let go of?
Guilt for something you didn't even do, or maybe guilt for something you did do but even though you made restitution or apologized you can't stop punishing yourself? Sorrow for something you couldn't stop from happening, couldn't fix, couldn't make better, but you can't let go of because you've assigned yourself the role of keeper of the flame? Responsibility for someone else's behavior or addiction or feelings or growth?And frustration that they’re not doing what you think they should be doing? Anger you can't let go of because you think letting it go will let the person you're angry at get off the hook, even though the only person you're hurting by hanging on to it is you yourself?
Hurt feelings, embarrassment, anxiety, all of life’s what-ifs and if-onlys - the list goes on, doesn't it? We drag all these things around with us. We let them take up space within us, we hold on tightly to them as if they are precious instruments of salvation. Maybe we've been carrying them so long we don't know what to do without them.
But it all makes our hearts and souls heavy. So heavy.
I’m new here and we don’t know each other yet but since I’ve got you as a captive audience, let’s go over what we do know.
We do know that Jesus is our savior, that God is always with us, that the Spirit leads us into all truth. The Bible tells us so. And we know that as doers of the word we all come together to hear the Word.
And so let’s really and truly hear what Jesus is saying to us today. Let’s let Jesus give our souls some rest. Let’s let Jesus be in charge of salvation, Let God be in charge of the universe, Let the Spirit give us strength to lay our heaviness down and be free from its power over us.
Letting go does not mean sweeping things under the rug. It means naming those burdens, being honest about our pain and our frustration as well as our joys, and taking responsibility for our part in it all, so that you, and I, and this whole community can over time find healing and peace, and grow into what God made us to be - free, and whole, and fully alive, a reflection of God's own unfettered glory.
Comments