Memorial of St. Benedict, Abbot
One of the recurring laments in higher education is that the job market is terrible, and that getting a teaching position at a university is nearly impossible. That is certainly a huge fear among graduate students today, and for good reason. It was also the fear in the mid-1990s when I was in graduate school.
I remember well people warning me that I would likely spend years earning my PhD only to never get hired into a permanent teaching position. As you can imagine, hearing that “wisdom” over and over (which I did) had a tendency to inspire a fair amount of anxiety in me and my fellow students.
Of course, I took this “wisdom” seriously. Others certainly knew better than I did what the jobs situation in higher ed was. Given their dire warnings, I thought I better take a minute to reconsider my chosen trajectory. And so I did. What came to me was this: while the world of higher education could certainly reject me and, thereby, dash all of my hopes to teach rhetoric to college students, it could never take from me what I learned in the process of earning my degree. In short, the vagaries of higher ed could take my dream but not my soul.
I was reminded of this moment in my life when I read the text from Matthew for today. In it, Jesus names certain expectations he has for his disciples. And they make for a tall order. Jesus calls the disciples to preach the Good News, share the radical truths that Jesus has been teaching them, and proclaim Jesus the Messiah. Moreover, they are to do all that loudly and publicly.
Of course, Jesus knew (as did the disciples) how dangerous it was to preach on behalf of what theologians call God’s “upside down kingdom” (as its logic of excessive grace and love undermines the competitive and violent logics of the so-called “right-side up kingdom.”) And that danger remains today for anyone who thinks Jesus meant it when he said that those who follow him will serve the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the imprisoned, the sick. Now, as then, epithets always come on the heels of telling “Jesus truths” like those.
So, here’s my question: Given how dangerous it is to preach and live the Gospel (which Jesus and his disciples all knew), why does Jesus say in the Matthew text we read last Sunday that “my burden is light” (Matt 11: 30)? Was he joking? In denial? A masochist?
I think not. I think his point is this: follow me and, yes, you will likely be rejected. But if you give your life over to God’s Kingdom of love and grace and all the miracles that go with that, then the burden will, indeed, be light. Maybe even as light as a feather.
May our faith outstrip our fear. May we go with joy into the world preaching Jesus’s Good News. And may our burden, thereby, be light. Amen.
—Susan Trollinger