Come to me

Zechariah 9.9-12 See now, your King comes humbly to you

Romans 7.15-25a I do not understand my own actions.
Matthew 11.16-19,25-30 Come to me and I will give you rest

 

 

Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

 

+

 

One of the accusations made against our faith, against Christianity, is that it is negative or pessimistic about the human condition.

 

In the case against Christianity St Paul is often held up as a convincing argument.

 

All the ills of the Church and any negativity about being human - body, mind and spirit - get pinned on him.

 

Yet St Paul’s vision of being human is entirely misrepresented.

 

St Paul retains the deep conviction that what is said in the Book of Genesis about the fundamental goodness of God’s creation is true.

 

That’s why he can be clear sighted about where things go wrong.

 

St Paul is such an acute observer of the way in which humanity, starting with himself, has the propensity to mess things up.

 

God saw his creation of human beings and declared that we, and all that he has made, are ‘very good’.

 

So, St Paul muses, ‘‘I do not understand my own actions’  to which, surely, we say, ‘I know what you mean’: for which of us really does understand our own actions?

 

‘For’ he continues, ‘I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate’ (v15).

 

The human propensity to mess things up. I recognise that in my life, fellow sinners: you might recognise it in yours too.

 

So St Paul is not negative about our being human but realistic and also sees that we are a mystery unto ourselves, let alone to others.

 

And he notices something else:

 

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. (vv21-23)

 

St Paul is expressing the deep desire of the followers of Jesus Christ: I want to lead a life that is virtuous and good and beautiful and true and sometimes when I am so close to living that life that I feel all the more acutely that I am not there.

 

In the face of this contemporary culture falls back into notions of self-improvement; if I want this enough I can have it, I can do it.

 

The culture believes in mind over matter; as if our mind and body are not connected – and therein lies one of the greatest fallacies and sources of unhappiness that we can have.

 

St Paul acknowledges this tendency when he says, ‘So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin’ (25b).

 

He knows that when we detach mind and body we live fragmented lives not whole and healthy lives, and that is a source of despair.

 

There is something unintegrated -disintegrated - about being human.

 

The path to integration and wholeness is the path of holiness about uniting the will of the mind and the actions of the body.

 

That is not to be pessimistic about being human but is realistic and with hope.

 

It is modernity and contemporary culture that is most pessimistic about human nature because it tells us that we are okay, when we know in ourselves that all is not okay; it tells us we are more connected than ever, when loneliness stalks and pervades society; it tells us that all we need to be satisfied is to be able to choose, irrespective of what our choice may be and however bad it may be for us or for other peoples’ lives.

 

In the face of the enduring human questions, ancient and modern, St Paul cries out, ‘Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?’

 

Who will rescue me; who will save me?

 

His answer: ‘Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!’ (v25a).

 

This is St Paul’s hope and ours: Christ is the Saviour, he will rescue us from this body of death, sin and contradiction, from the burden of our predicament of doing what we do not want to and failing to do want we know we should.

 

Our hope is found in placing ourselves in his love and finding peace and rest in him.

 

Here is our hope; in Christ who says,

 

Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11.28-30)

 

‘Come to me’ – that is a deep and gracious invitation.

 

‘Come to me you who labour’ - the laboriousness of the lot of men and women is part of our fallen condition (cf Genesis 3.16-19).

 

Life can be a slog and laborious.

 

‘Come to me you who are heavy laden’ - we are laden down with our human predicament, with sin and with the tension between what we think and what we do.

 

‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me’ says Christ.

 

His yoke is the cross: this is what he has carried for us; his death on the cross has broken the power of death and sin, powers which are the ultimate burdens that we bear.

 

‘And learn from me’.

 

The Christian life is all about learning to walk the way of the cross – a path we begin in baptism – shaping our lives after the example of Christ in which we find rest and tranquillity for our souls.

 

Today hear afresh the call, ‘come to me’, for in coming to him we find our life, our hope and our salvation.

 

In imitation of Christ, leading lives shaped by him, we will begin to have unravelled the conflicting powers at war in us; we will begin to see clearly the path set before us; and we will witness to his beauty, goodness and truth and our bodies will no longer be a body of death but a body of life.

 

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!