Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 6A – 5-7-2026 – Mt 11.28-30

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upo4n you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

In a hospital emergency room, you’ll sometimes see a family or a friend hand over a tremendous burden that they can’t carry any more. They’ve brought their sick one to a place of help; carried them in with all the strength of their loving hope and faith and pain. But once the staff at the hospital take over the burden of care from them, they collapse. Shocked, exhausted, relieved, they dissolve in tears; retreat into nervous waiting. They’ve done all they can; now they wait and hope. Maybe someone will sit with them and put a comforting arm round their shoulder. That’s where Jesus is today:

Jesus asks us to bring our heavy burdens to him. In return he offers us his yoke. His yoke does what it’s made to do. It helps work get done: it gives direction and spreads the load so we can do the work set before us. But it does much more. The image I have in mind for his yoke is Jesus’ arm around our shoulder. He faces the same way we do, so we don’t have to carry our heavy burdens alone any more. Bad things that happen to us are not God’s judgement on us. So let’s drop that burden. How can I believe this?

For me, the answer is in the Manger of Bethlehem and on the Cross of Calvary: in a baby made a refugee through no fault of his own; in a gentle person who lived to love people and ease their pain, yet suffered pain himself – in fact was tortured to death. If someone as good as Jesus could suffer as he did, then the manger and the cross say suffering is where God is in solidarity with us in our pain. The manger and the cross also tell me that Jesus wasn’t the type to seize control and forcibly fix things. He came to be with us; one of us. He became entirely like us. So he came to give us peace with who we are; to set us free from within our vulnerability.

So we aren’t measured by our utility or quality. Jesus knows our reality: our being human – and loves us for it. Being mortal is a condition which means that suffering is inevitable for us. And into that condition, Jesus comes to bring healing – not an end to suffering; not a demand that we become what we’re not, not a cure – just healing. He puts an arm around our shoulder, and faces our pain with us. Where we are burdened by hurt, isolation and fear, his yoke is compassion, his yoke is willing companionship, his yoke is hope for a new start. And we’re called to be like him, wounded healers.

Wounded healers? An industrial chaplain in Victoria talked about two women in two work-places who’d lost loved ones. They started helping other bereaved people to move towards healing and wholeness by staying with them in their time of suffering. This ministry worked because the women offered care out of their own experience of suffering. Their care was real; they had true compassion. So they could be Christ to the people they supported. If you imagine you’re too damaged to give pastoral care, think again. And if you feel strong enough to care for the whole world, think again.

There’s a community dimension to healing. Jesus called a Church into being; not a bunch of super-spiritual hermits. When Canon Jim Glennon was interviewed on a radio programme, he described the importance of community to faith wonderfully.

If [people] are drawing on the healing ministry of the church, it isn’t just their faith, it’s the faith of the people who are believing for them. Jesus said, ‘All things are possible to one who believes.’ He said where there wasn’t healing, it was because of little faith. But he said the responsibility for faith lay with those who prayed from the outside. The Bible says, ‘…Is any among you sick, let them call the elders of the church and let them pray over them, anointing them with oil, and the prayer of faith will raise up the sick person. Community!

When a healing ministry happens in a church, it’s a reminder that we’re all together assuming care of the people who receive that ministry: that we share each other’s griefs; share each other’s burdens. And that’s real. That sharing brings healing.

I’ve talked about the image of Christ’s arm around the shoulder of someone who suffers. Here and now, it’s our arms that are called to offer that solace and solidarity. And there’s another side of that as well. Jesus told people to bring him their heavy burdens so he might take them and replace them with his easy yoke. Our role is not just to bring our burdens to Jesus, but also to encourage people who are terribly weighed down to bring their burdens to him as well. In practical terms, as Christ’s agents now, that means you and I are the ones called to this healing work of his.

You know how we talk about seeing Christ’s face in each other. Today I think we also have to see Christ’s shoulders in each other – ready to bear those burdens that a person needs to hand over when they cannot bear them any longer. And also Christ’s arms in ourselves; offering his easy yoke of compassionate solidarity.

We are the body of Christ.  Amen