Trusting our intuition
"Law" and burdens
Pr. 9A (Track 1) Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67, Romans 7:15-25a, Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30.
“My yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Mtt. 11:30) has long been understood as a criticism of the Pharisees for making Law/Torah observance difficult. In this view, Jesus wanted to relieve people either of the burden of the Law/Torah or Pharisees’ legalistic interpretations.
Today, many Biblical scholars are challenging that view. They say that Jesus was a very observant Jew whose interpretations of the Law/Torah1 were rigorous. Sometimes Jesus criticized the Pharisees because they were not rigorous enough.2 And the “yoke” of Law/Torah was always understood to be a gift and blessing, and never undesirable, let alone a burden.
So how do we understand that verse? Maybe Rebekah’s decision in the first reading can help.
Abraham’s servant had been sent to find a bride for Isaac. He went with tradition-based instructions and reliance on prayer. Both things helped. Tradition got the servant to the right place, and before the servant finished his prayer, Rebekah appeared. Delighted, the servant was bringing her back to Abraham and Isaac’s home. While enroute, Rebekah spotted Isaac. Without knowing who he was, she just knew he was someone special. She had an intuitive sense about him, and she decided to trust it.
We can trust our religious intuition. It was shaped by a tradition which, despite a wrong turn now and then, surely does convey what we believe are core truths about God and Jesus. Even without a deep dive into the latest scholarly tome, our religious intuition can tell us that Jesus would not have demonized or disparaged the extraordinary tradition which formed him, which he preached and which still helps us to understand his identity and mission.
We carry some heavy burdens in our lives. God’s presence can lighten, ease or even remove some of those burdens. May the notion that Jesus would have us despise the Law/Torah or Jews be a burden which is completely and everywhere removed.
Peace.
We may think of “law” as a simple list of statutes or commandments. Biblical law [Torah] was more complex than that. Statutes were “mixed in with narratives, poetic song, and ritual instruction, all intended to be read side by side. Biblical law often blends legal categories and presumes links to other biblical narratives for sense-making. No other people in history, as far as [we are] aware, have done anything like this with their laws. Though there are interesting examples of Mesopotamian judicial trials in narrative form . . . nothing similar to the Pentateuch in kind, shape or breadth exists. This blending caused legal scholar Jonathan Burnside to land on his ‘broad and flexible’ definition of biblical law: ‘An integration of different instructional genres of the Bible which together express a vision of society ultimately answerable to God.’” Johnson, Dru. Understanding Biblical Law: Skills for Thinking With and Through Torah. (Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, MI. 2025) at 10.
Adela Yarbro Collins believes that Matthew criticized the Pharisees because they were part of the hierarchical religious leadership with which Matthew’s community competed for power and influence. IOW the issue was less Torah interpretation than it was hierarchical authority. Collins, Adela Yarbro. “Polemic Against the Pharisees in Matthew 23” The Pharisees. Ed. Joseph Dievers & Amy-Jill Levine. (Wm.B.Erdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI, 2021) 148-169, 168.
I am preaching on the 12th, so no post next Friday. SermonStarts will be back on Friday, July 17 for Proper 11A.