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RCL Proper 14A [i]
5 July 2026
Saint Helen’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
Editing matters.
For most of my career I have been an editor of theological journals, liturgical texts and graduate students’ papers. Most readers of books and essays are unaware of the importance of editors. We read the printed word differently with an eye to clarity of expression so that the reader has the best possible experience.
Some years ago, when I was in the midst of a particularly difficult editing task, a colleague suggested that I read Lynne Truss’ book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Her book begins with a joke: ‘A panda walks into a bar, eats some peanuts, pulls out a gun and shots into the air. Then he leaves. The bartender, quite rightly disturbed by this, chases the panda, stops him and says, “What was that all about?” The panda pulls a copy of an encyclopedia article out of his shoulder bag and reads the following: “A panda eats, shoots and leaves” ’. The presence of a misplaced comma between ‘eats’ and ‘shoots’ explains the panda’s behaviour. Remove the comma and you have a gentler description: What do pandas eat? They eat shoots and leaves.
Over the past several weeks, we’ve been listening to Paul’s wrestling with a question that has theological significance: What makes a Christian a Christian? And grammar matters.
Faith before works
Paul has been writing to a community that he has never visited and that is being wracked by disputes about the relationship between Jewish law and practice and the influx of non-Jewish believers in Christ. Some people seem to be saying this: If you behave in such and such a way including following Jewish law and practice, then you are a Christian. Paul sees this as an impediment to the inclusion of non-Jewish believers. Paul turns the sentence around and says this: If you believe in what God has done in Jesus of Nazareth, then you will follow in the ways taught and embodied in Jesus.
Paul understands that how we live our lives has greater integrity when it is rooted in what we believe, what has become beloved to us. Actions do matter to Paul, but actions that are not fuelled by our choice to be disciples of Jesus can lead us towards judgementalism and self-righteousness rather than love of neighbour.
We find this understanding of the life of discipleship in the baptismal covenant we proclaim and re-affirm at every baptism and confirmation. It is a covenant that reminds us of the danger of separating our love of Christ from our actions that arise from that love. It is a covenant that seeks to empower us to keep judgementalism and self-righteousness at bay.
· We persevere in resisting evil because we know that often fall into sin and need to repent and return to the Lord.
· We love our neighbours as ourselves because Christ comes to us in them.
· We strive for justice and peace because we recognize how we so often fail to respect the dignity of every human being.
· We strive to safeguard the integrity of God’s creation because this fragile earth is our island home and failure to care is a form of self-harm.
But it is not by doing these things that we become Christians. It is because we are Christians that we do these things. The wellspring of discipleship is the image of God found in each one of us.
An easy yoke and a light burden
It is this way of reading Paul that helps me understand what may be behind one of Jesus’ sayings that I have always struggled to understand. Last week you heard me preach on the centrality of love of neighbour in our walk of faith and how difficult that love is, especially in our highly partisan and siloed world. So it is that I have always struggled to interpret these words of Jesus: “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon 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.” [ii]
If I look at this passage from the perspective of Paul’s opponents in Rome, then there is no easy yoke nor light burden. Trying to love my neighbour, to be forgiving, to work for peace and justice, to care for the earth become a to-do list that becomes overwhelming. I remember when a classmate of mine was bemoaning all that he had to do in the coming months. Another classmate told him to remember that God never gives us more than we can bear. My friend responded, ‘Well, God has seriously over-estimated my ability!’
But if I look at this passage from Paul’s perspective, then the yoke does seem easier and the burden lighter. It is not the list of my accomplishments that matters, but how my love of Christ and choice to be a disciple fuels whatever efforts I make to manifest the life of the Spirit in my everyday affairs. The yoke is easy because I am yoked to Christ and to all who believe in Christ. The burden is light because I do not carry it alone; With Christ and with you we carry a burden of compassion, joy and open-handedness rather than an onerous burden of unending drudgery.
Chesley Harmon, a pastor of the Christian Reformed Church in Langley, writes, “In our cultural moment, judgementalism is being sold to us as good judgement. . . . As we become so entrenched against one another, . . . we become more and more judgemental without actual information. I wonder how many of us are aware of how wearying it is to carry such a way of being in the world. Jesus’ way of compassion and curiosity may seem hard to follow, but it turns out to be much lighter a load.” [iii]
Trusting the editor
My friends, editing does matter. How we word our faith and then write it in the daily conduct of our lives matters. What gives me hope and confidence is that there is an Editor at work whose wisdom exceeds my own. Sometimes all we can do is recite the alphabet of faith and trust that the Spirit will fashion the Word from the letters. At that seems to me to be an easy yoke and a light burden to bear.
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