My grandfather, Arthur Henry Dawson, ploughed fields in East Yorkshire over a century ago. He had nothing but a pair of horses and a single-furrow plough. It was slow, unforgiving work. It was said that ‘a good man with a good pair of horses’, going flat out from dawn, could turn over perhaps two or three acres in a long day. The word “acre” was originally defined by exactly that: the area a basic team could plough in a day. Arthur would have rested his horses every half hour or so, because they simply could not sustain the load for longer. Man, beast, and plough all worked at the pace of what flesh and strength of both could bear.
Travel to the Wolds or the Vale of York today and you will see something Arthur could scarcely have imagined. Modern arable tractors commonly run to 300, 400, even 600 horsepower, with the largest specialist machines exceeding 900. Viewers of Clarkson’s Farm will recognise the type: Jeremy Clarkson’s own Lamborghini tractors have run from around 270 horsepower up to 340, one of them famously sporting “48 gears and 188 buttons” – a far cry from a leather rein and a spoken command. A single plough mounted behind can turn six or eight furrows at once. The tractor can cover in an afternoon what once took a team of horses the best part of a fortnight! The machine bears the weight now; the driver’s task has shifted from endurance to supervision and oversight.
Our Gospel reading for this coming Sunday turns on a single piece of farm equipment: the yoke. “Take my yoke upon you,” Jesus says, “for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” A yoke was the wooden crosspiece laid across the shoulders of a working animal, often shared between two, so that neither bore the strain alone. Fitted well, it made hard labour bearable. Now let’s be clear – Jesus is not promising that we will be liberated from work. But He is promising that the load will be properly fitted, and that he will be pulling alongside us, taking the major share.
That promise sits inside a wider passage about trusting God’s timing. Jesus has just noted how John the Baptist was criticised for being too austere, and how Jesus himself was criticised for eating with sinners – “this generation” finding fault with both extremes. Rather than defending himself further, he gives thanks: the Father has hidden the deepest things from “the wise and learned” and revealed them instead to “little children.” God’s pattern of working does not run along the lines we would design ourselves. It is hidden, it unfolds at its own pace, and it is received by those willing to be taught rather than those who think they have already mastered it.
That is not so different from what Arthur knew about ploughing, or what any farmer in one of today’s vast tractors still knows: the soil yields in its own time. No amount of horsepower hurries germination. The machinery has changed beyond recognition, but the patient cycle of sowing, waiting, and trusting has not. Our passage asks us to bring that same patience to our life with God – to stop straining at burdens we were never meant to carry alone, and instead to come to the one who offers an easy yoke and rest for the soul.
This coming Sunday we’ll be pairing this passage with a man who seeks a wife for his master’s son in Genesis 24 – if you can it would be good if you could read the story beforehand how Rebekah is discovered by a well. It again proves that God’s pattern of working does not run along the lines we would design ourselves, especially in the way the servant goes about it. Wonderfully both these passages speak to us today in our modern world. I hope you’ll take the time and make it a priority to join me at St Mary’s at 10.00am when I’ll try to make all this clear or clearer!
Every blessing,
Revd Paul