by M. Doretta Cornell, RDC
The Gospel reading for today contains one of Jesus’ most well-known sayings:
“Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” (Matthew 11:25-30)
I have heard, meditated on, and prayer with this saying for many years, but never connected it with the Fourth of July. This morning, however, Father Joseph Dietz posed some connections that prompted these reflections.
Jesus’ words invite everyone who is weary and burdened to find rest in him, in God’s loving embrace, and in taking up his way of compassion. Jesus, by his life among us, shares in our human woes and struggles, and so offers his compassion for us. In this compassion, we will find peace, he promises, both within and after our struggles. Strengthened by his compassion, we are called to live by the same standard of embracing all who suffer.
For the Jewish people hearing him at the time, Jesus' words offer an alternative to the Roman Empire’s occupation of their homeland. In God they will find their strength, in living God’s law of love and care for each other.
This is hardly easy, simple as it sounds, but it is a far cry from the daily presence of the foreign army in their cities and towns, the oppressive taxes supporting the opulence of far away Rome or financing the very army occupying their lands. In addition to the daily presence of the soldiers, the people faced imperial threats such as being forced to choose death or worship of the emperor instead of God, or of a levee dragging their sons off the join the army.
Beyond our personal and local sufferings, we have lately come to know of a new group of suffering people on our horizon (and tv screens): the growing tide of children sent alone and poor to our borders. The numbers of these unaccompanied children have swelled from 6,000-7,000 a year before 2012, to 24,668 in the 2013 fiscal year. This year, almost 60,000 unaccompanied children are expected, most from our southern neighbors.
The burdens of this increase are many and great:
- those of these children, alone and far from home;
- those of the organizations, federal and local, struggling to provide immediate shelter and future care for the children;
- those of the children’s parents, so desperate to move their children out of poverty and violence that they send their children on this hazardous journey;
- and those of the people living in the border cities and towns, unable to cope with the influx of children needing so much.
In our American tradition, we have a saying that echoes both Jesus’ words and the situation of these children: Emma Lazarus’ poem, written to raise funds for the Statue of Liberty, that symbol of our Independence and the compassion that our liberty imposes on us toward others who are in the situation our nation was formed to replace:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
So Jesus’ invitation to respite and peace has echoes for our Fourth of July celebrations of our Independence (and, as I wrote last year, our Interdependence) and our freedom, which, in spite of our flaws as a nation, still stand as a beacon of hope to those laboring in oppression and yearning to be free.
Do we have the compassion to open our hearts and arms to meet the challenge Jesus poses to us, and Emma Lazarus echoes?
Thanks to Father Joseph Dietz, of The Church of the Magdalen, for his prayerful reflections, which I have rather freely adapted here.
