The Lutheran Hour
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"Invitation and Promise"
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Text: Matthew 11:28
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Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Today a risen Savior, the conquering Christ says to all who will hear, “Come to me all who are weary and burdened.” The living Lord says, “come and I will give you rest.”
Emma Lazarus wrote it. Most children of the United States have heard parts of it. Nevertheless, on this Fourth-of-July weekend, it bears repetition. “It” is entitled, The New Colossus, and it reads this way:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame, “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “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!”Today, those powerful words are part of America’s collective consciousness. It has not always been that way. The poem was originally published in a small collection of writings which was sold to raise money for the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal. Both the book and the poem were quickly forgotten. Years after the author’s death the verse was rediscovered by Georgina Schuyler and, eventually all fourteen lines of the sonnet were placed over the main entrance to the Statue of Liberty. (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ CAP/LIBERTY/lazarus.html)
As I read the Statue’s famous words, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” I am struck how similar those words are to those of Jesus: “Come unto Me all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” Here we have two powerful invitations. One from a country; one from God. Here we find ourselves recipients of two gracious opportunities. The first comes from a country to whom God has truly given, how did the poem say it, a “golden door.” The golden door opens across a country upon whom the Lord has bestowed grand storehouses of fresh water, seemingly limitless forests, plains and hills of fertile soil, abundant resources whose use is only restricted by the scope of our vision.
Populated by people who have been drawn here from every land; our nation has been filled by the tired and the downtrodden, the sad, the subjugated, and the sorrowful souls who had dedicated themselves to a search for freedom. Our immigrant ancestors desired a land where they could begin again; where they could personally advance themselves without the hindrance of class or an imposed social structure. They longed for a place where they could dream dreams and their children could aspire to accomplish anything they could imagine. By God’s great design we have been given a land filled with folks who are devoted to democracy, who love liberty, and are willing to fight in the defense of freedom.
Lest it be left unsaid, ours is a grand experiment, untried in all the centuries of human history. Ours is an experiment which has given birth to a nation filled with promises, potential, possibilities, and the pursuit of happiness. It was in the opening years of our nation, or so I’ve been told, as Benjamin Franklin was concluding a stirring message on the values and guarantees of the Constitution, a heckler stood up and shouted back, “Them words don’t mean nothin’ at all. Where’s all the happiness you say we’re guaranteed?” Franklin smiled and correctly replied, “My friend, the Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness; you have to catch it for yourself.”
Franklin understood. He knew that although the brilliant ideals of our Constitution – and the future poem of the Statue of Liberty – may extend an invitation to the poor, the tired, the huddled masses; the end result is going to be in their hands. An offer to those who are yearning to breathe free; our nation can open her arms to the wretched refuse of humanity, the homeless, the tempest tossed; but she does not have the ability to promise them happiness for their hearts, contentment for their consciences, and rest for their worn and weary souls.
Sir Alexander Mackenzie is one of many Canadian heroes. Mackenzie, a part-time fur trader by profession and an explorer by temperament, led an expedition across Canada. Beginning 11 years before America’s Lewis and Clark began their trek, Mackenzie managed to make the journey from Lake Athabasca to the Pacific Ocean. It was a magnificent and momentous accomplishment. On the other hand, an earlier attempt to find a river route to the Pacific proved itself to be a monumental failure. In 1789, straining with their paddles, Mackenzie and his men managed to conquer a waterway that emptied, not into the Pacific, but into the Arctic Ocean. Remembering the struggle, in his diary Mackenzie called it the “River of Disappointment.”
It is quite possible that you, my friend, are also, in your life, navigating a river of disappointment. You have struggled valiantly, haven’t you? You have strained against obstacles too many to count, odds too great to calculate. Every time you seem to make some progress the current, or an unseen obstruction sets you back. Happiness is not yours; the possibility of rest seems removed and remote. You look for help and can’t find it. You want to hope but find it fading. What is your river of disappointment? How is your bankbook, your allowance, your retirement account? Are you flush with cash, or do you find yourself floundering financially? Money, or lack of it, might be your river of disappointment. Are you loved? Maybe love is too strong a word. Is love too much for you to hope for? How about if I asked, “Are you appreciated?” Maybe that’s still too big. How about, “Are you remembered or respected?” Being remembered, that’s a river of disappointment for many of the elderly. Being respected is a river of disappointment for those who are young.
What is your river of disappointment? No, I’m not saying that you talk about your river of disappointment. Most of you travel it alone and try not to burden those around you, or let others notice, but the river is there, isn’t it? Is it a business that is floundering or failing? Is it a job where you are unappreciated? Is it a deal that fell through? Is it children who are worrisome or wandering? Almost everybody listening to my voice today, if they are honest, will confess to having traveled a river of disappointment. And there is no person, no program, no nation, not even the strongest nation in the history of the world that can reroute your river. You are like Abraham Lincoln, who after his failed 1858 race for the Illinois Senate, commented, “I feel like the boy who stubbed his toe: I am too big to cry and too badly hurt to laugh.”
So, what is to be done? Is there anything that can be done? There is. Trust me. During the years of the depression, Ira Yates was no different than the other ranchers and farmers in west Texas. Unable to scrape out a living, he was in danger of losing his home place. Ira spent his days watching his sheep. He spent both days and nights worrying about what would happen to him and his family. That all changed when an exploratory crew from an oil company told him there might be oil on his property. They dug a well. At a shade over 1,100 feet, they struck oil. I mean they struck oil. The first well produced 80,000 barrels a day. Other wells were more than twice that size. Decades later the government determined just one of Ira’s wells would be able to produce 125,000 barrels of oil on each and every day. That’s a lot of oil; that’s a lot of cash. And Ira owned it all. Ira hadn’t done a thing to change his situation. Still, Ira was moved from being a pauper to being rich as a prince. Might I suggest the same might be true for you? No, I’m not saying you have oil on your property. I’m not encouraging you to hire some wildcatters to sink an exploratory well in your backyard. I’m not even saying, at the end of this message you are going to be a millionaire. I am saying that although your days and nights are filled with worry, by God’s grace, you are rich. You have, in Jesus Christ, a wealth that is beyond belief.
Earlier in my message I said that we had two invitations. I’ve spent some considerable time talking about the invitation of a nation. Now, I love my land, and wouldn’t change citizenship for the world. Nevertheless, I, like Benjamin Franklin, recognize that our country has limitations. It does not have the ability to give our hearts happiness or our souls rest. When it comes to these things, we are on our own. We have to carry our own burdens; we are still yoked to our own sorrows and shortcomings. We still must navigate our own rivers of disappointment alone.
Unless – that’s a big word – unless we hear that second invitation. This invitation comes not from a president or prime minister; it comes from the Son of God. This is what He said, “Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Did you listen carefully? Jesus makes a promise that no country can, with a clear conscience, give: “I will give you rest.” Now, the Statue of Liberty may extend an invitation to the poor and huddled masses, but that’s all it can do. It can’t guarantee anything after people pass through the golden door. But God’s Son, Jesus Christ, goes way beyond giving an invitation. He makes a commitment: “Come to Me, and I will give you rest.” And that isn’t the end of His promise. In the next verses He says, “If you get yoked to Me,” we might say, be hitched up to Him, we will find, through Jesus, our burdens are light.
I know one couple who, in Jesus, found Jesus’ promise was true. They were talking, and I mean that, they were talking about their financial difficulties and the wife sort of sighed, “I hope the day is going to come when we’ll be rich and not have to juggle our money around this way.” Her husband, smilingly, took her hands in his and said, “Darlin’ we have the Lord; we have each other; we have our health; we have two beautiful children; and our house is a happy one. We are rich, maybe some day we’ll have money!” That’s what happens when you have Jesus, when you have learned from Him; when you have been yoked to Him. You find you can deal with the burdens which had been so distracting, so disastrous, and so discouraging.
Yes, I know that sounds impossible. But I’m telling you the truth. No, Jesus is telling you the truth. Jesus is inviting everyone who is weary, which means all of us, to come to Him. Weariness is a condition of the heart, the conscience, the soul. Weariness comes to most of us through worry. And Jesus is promising to take our worry, put it into perspective and give us rest.
This is how it works. All of us worry. As sinners, we ought to worry. As sinners, we’ve done things wrong. We’ve sinned against God and the life that He wanted to give us has disappeared. Because we have sinned, our days, our lives, our futures are all out of whack. We start out trying to do something good, something kind, and we get sidetracked. We try to do what’s right, and we end up doing something wrong. We can’t help ourselves. That’s the way sin has rewired us and short-circuited us. We know life ought to be better; that we ought to be happier, but it just doesn’t happen. We feel that we shouldn’t hate each other; that we shouldn’t be jealous, envious, or greedy, but we are. We worry that we are the way we are. We worry and get weary.
That’s where Jesus comes in. God, our all-loving Triune God, knew that it was impossible for us to change ourselves. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t be perfect, we couldn’t live, think, act, or speak perfectly. Because of our imperfection, our rebellion against God, we had to pay the proper penalty: eternal damnation. You see, I was right when I told you you had cause to worry. Eternal damnation is a very long bit of unpleasantness. Now, rather than seeing us suffer that way, God took matters into His own hands. Actually, He put things into His Son’s hands. He said, “Jesus, I want You to pay the penalty for humanity’s rebellion.” Unbelievably, unexplainably, Jesus did exactly that. Jesus did what needed to be done.
Jesus left heaven, all the comfort, all the glory, all the honor, all the respect that He deserved, and became one of us. He had to be one of us, otherwise He couldn’t pay our ransom price. Jesus became one of us, and was born both true man and true God. He had to be God, otherwise, He couldn’t do the things that had to be done. Jesus was born in the Judean town of Bethlehem, lived most of His life in another city, Nazareth. From cradle to cross, to grave, to resurrection and beyond, Jesus did everything right. He fulfilled every law that we had broken. That’s major. He resisted every temptation to which we have consented. That’s just as essential. With stories and parables, He told people how they ought to live, and what ought to be important and of high priority. He got close to those who were considered to be unclean; He reached out to those who were untouchable; He healed those who were hurting. He cared. He showed us just how much God cared about us.
Now for having done all this, you might think that people would applaud and appreciate Him. They didn’t. They hit and hurt Him. They lied about Him, laughed at and leered at Him. They struck Him and spit at Him and scourged Him. They condemned Him and they crucified Him. Jesus knew it would happen. He knew it had to happen that way. Before He had ever been born, God’s holy writers had said it would happen that way. He could have escaped; He chose not to. Instead, He took your sins, my sins, all sins, with Him to His cross. There, as He hung on nails, suspended between heaven and earth, He erased every wrong and evil that we have ever committed; He wiped out every transgression we have ever contemplated, considered, or done.
Jesus died for you. You didn’t deserve it. You didn’t earn it. Like Ira the oil man, you were given a Godly gift. When Jesus came back to life three days after He had been murdered, He showed to all the world that God had accepted His sacrifice. That is why all, who by the Holy Spirit’s power are brought to say, “Jesus, my Savior, be merciful to me a sinner,” can be sure He is. Faith that Christ has been your substitute means that your sin is gone, your worries, your weariness, also can disappear. As Jesus said, “I will give you rest … the burden is light.”
Years ago I read about an elderly lady who lived alone. Partly crippled, she relied upon the good will and help of her neighbors. Although she had little to record, each day she kept a diary. Eventually she died. It took a number of days before anyone noticed. When the police looked through her diary, they found, not surprisingly, little of interest. Near the end of her life, as one day followed another, she wrote only three, pitiful words on each page. She wrote: “no one came.” This Lord ’s Day I want you to know that someone has come to save you. I want you to know that same someone has invited you to come to Him. That’s the invitation your Savior Jesus extends: “Come to Me all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” Amen.
LUTHERAN HOUR MAILBOX (Questions & Answers) for July 3, 2005
TOPIC: Jesus’ Resurrection AppearancesANNOUNCER: Now, Pastor Ken Klaus answers questions from listeners. I’m Mark Eischer. Today, a listener in Wisconsin wants to know, “Why did Jesus, after His resurrection, appear only to His disciples, and not to His enemies?
KLAUS: Good question, one that a lot of sincere believers have asked. I think we can approach the question from a number of different ways, Mark. The truth is, Jesus didn’t appear just to those who were believers and His disciples. In fact, before sunrise on that first resurrection morning there wasn’t any such thing as a believer.
ANNOUNCER: In fact, those women who went to the tomb that morning were going there to anoint Jesus’ dead body. They weren’t expecting to meet a risen Lord.
KLAUS: Exactly! Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene. She was crying, because she believed the gardener had moved the Savior’s dead body. She wasn’t a believer. The disciples, well they had kept themselves locked away because of fear of what might happen to them. They weren’t at Jesus’ grave that resurrection dawn. They weren’t believers. When the ladies told them that Jesus had risen, they discounted what was told to them. Even after Jesus appeared to most of the disciples on Easter night and they shared the news with Thomas who had been absent, he didn’t believe. These doubters became believers only after they had seen the resurrected Lord.
ANNOUNCER: What’s the second way of answering this question?
KLAUS: That’s to confess that there would have been no purpose in a risen Jesus to show Himself to His enemies, such as the chief priests, the elders and scribes. Our listeners will remember that before Jesus’ crucifixion, Jesus’ enemies pretended not to understand His prophecies about what would happen to Him.
When they appeared before Pilate and asked for a guard at the tomb, they showed that they had understood all along. They knew Jesus said He was going to rise from the dead. Matthew tells the story this way: “Sir,” they said, “we remember that while Jesus was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’”
On resurrection Sunday these religious leaders were among the first to know what had happened. The guards reported the earthquake, the angel, and that Jesus wasn’t in the grave. That is why these leaders bribed the guards, said that they would run interference if the procurator questioned them about what had happened, and gave them a story to be used in place of what had really happened. So, Jesus didn’t have to show Himself, they knew He had risen from the dead.
ANNOUNCER: Which takes us to the third answer.
KLAUS: It does, although it may be a little off track. The secret to this answer is found in Jesus’ story of the rich man and Lazarus. Many of our listeners know that story already, but for those who don’t, here is a brief synopsis. A rich man lived his life in a selfish way. Without faith in the Savior, he died and went to hell. There was a poor man, a beggar by the name of Lazarus. Lazarus, knowing Jesus, went to heaven. The rich man, suffering in hell, says:
“I plead, send Lazarus to my father’s house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not come to this place of torment.” Well, the rich man is told, “Your brothers have Moses and the Prophets; let your brothers listen to them.” Well the rich man is not about to be put off, so he replies, “No, please, if someone from the dead goes back to them, then they will repent.” And finally he is told, “If people don’t listen to Moses and the Prophets, they are not going to be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” (see Luke 16:19-31)
What I’m saying, Mark, is these priests, these high priests, knew Moses and the Prophets. They had made a life’s work out of studying them. But they didn’t listen to them. They weren’t convinced from the Old Testament that Jesus was the promised Savior.
ANNOUNCER: And if they weren’t ready to listen to those prophets, they also weren’t ready to believe, even when Jesus did rise from the dead.
KLAUS: You’ve got it, Mark!
ANNOUNCER: How would you sum all this up for us today?
KLAUS: The disciples didn’t believe at first. Jesus’ resurrection turned them from doubters into believers. The Jewish leaders had all the information they needed to believe, and still refused to repent and believe, even when confronted with the truth.
ANNOUNCER: It’s really not much different today. People will still make up all kinds of excuses to explain away Christ’s resurrection.
KLAUS: Sometimes people refuse to believe God’s obvious truth.
ANNOUNCER: Thank you, Pastor Klaus. This has been a presentation of Lutheran Hour Ministries.