A hole.
Thank you for coming to my joke boat.
No, but seriously, that riddle is a fun one, because it plays on the idea that almost everything that you would put into a barrel would add to its weight. You can put a feather, or an ant, or a ballpoint pen, but all those things, whether large or small, would add weight to the barrel. A hole take the weight away, either by carving out some of the wood, or by letting all the contents drain out. And then you'll have a pretty angry cooper.
Carrying heavy things is no fun. Sure, there are some of you out there who genuinely enjoy going to the gym, and who like 'lifting,' but carrying heavy weights? Nah, not so good. It's less fun than you think it would be. Think of carrying a suitcase through the airport, or carrying heavy bags of groceries, whatever you'd like, and think about how not fun it is to deal with that. Carrying a load isn't fun. And the further you have to carry it, the less fun it is to carry that load. It can be an absolutely miserable experience, and as I said, the further you have to go, the less enjoyable it is.
So the prospect of someone exchanging a heavy burden for a light one is an attractive one. If you're pulling a heavy weight, and someone else isn't, their offer to swap with you is immediately appealing. And when Paul speaks about his burdens, he does so by speaking the truth about the human condition. And when he writes, you can feel his words right through the page even through the centuries. The good he wants to do is what he can't seem to manage, and the evil that he wants to avoid, is what he ends up doing almost exclusively. And if we're honest, which we typically are not, we can deal with that as being a core human truth. I've said it before, that something important for us to remember is that the Holy Scriptures are relevant year after year because they speak to the truths of our human condition through a spiritual lens. We have computers in our pockets and food in refrigerators, but it's still human beings eating the food and using the cell phones. When Paul talks about the nature of his sin, even though he doesn't want to do it, he's talking about something we all know, because we live it. that is, in our lives, we do things that we know are wrong, and that we don't even want to do. Do you think that everyone who steals a wallet full of money has convinced themselves of the objective morality of doing so? Or do you think that the possibility presented itself, and they went for it? When someone cheats on their wife, do you think that they have composed a moral and ethical reason for doing so, or do you wager instead that they went for the opportunity, and then will make a case for it later?
For in reality, the wheels of our ethical engine almost always turn on the fuel of our rationalization. That's what drives it. When you're pondering through what it is you did, do you do it by running your decisions through an objective standard, or do you do so run those morals through your decisions, starting with the conclusion and working backwards? Well, once you do the thing where you actually break it down vis-a-vis your objective standards, then you begin to understand the weight of what you're carrying with you. The way that Charles Dickens described it in A Christmas Carol was to have Jacob Marley's ghost tell Ebenezer Scrooge that the links of chain Scrooge saw on him were made by Marley in life - "Link by link and yard by yard." Scrooge had assumed that someone had placed those chains on him, but Marley assures him that had placed them on himself. And Marley also told Scrooge that Scrooge had a bigger and longer chain that Scrooge had made for himself.
From Paul, to Scrooge to you. It's no different, really. The human condition that has spanned thousands of years has not changed on this fundamental point - that we are making our own chains and forging them for ourselves. Mankind is our business, as they say, and we haven't done well at keeping up with said business. But it's bigger than that, of course. as the reality of good and evil tells us that there are good people, bad people, good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell. And if that's the case, and we're not letting the rationalization be our guide, then we're going to realize that we're not the good people that we know people should be. And this is where the Gospel takes over. When Jesus of Nazareth tells us to take his burden upon him and learn from him, we need to talk about how deep this goes. I know, it's the classic Gospel promise, that Jesus comes to take away your sins, and you already know that. But what have you done for me lately?
It's not just that Jesus comes to take away sins, which he does, but also that he comes to take other burdens from you as well. For if you think about your last few months that you've survived, you'll know something. Again, if you're honest. You'll know that you are people who have lived for a while with real, actual fear in your life. Genuine fear. Much more so than you normally have. You've been second guessing all your activities, wondering if what you're doing will kill you. Normally when you go to the CO-OP, you look for good deals, squeeze tomatoes, eat free samples of sausage, all that stuff, right? Well now, you don't do that, do you? You don't do the thing where you enjoy all those things, you have to go one way down the aisles, the staff are wearing masks, everything is wiped down, and even though all those things are there to keep you safe, they still make you afraid. And we've been questioning every interaction, every activity, every meal, every outing. When someone coughs around you, you're essentially terrified, and you almost leap away, no matter how many local cases there are. We're all doing this because we're afraid, mainly of death. And the fear of death is a healthy fear. But part of the exchange of burdens with Jesus Christ is the exchange of our fear of death with his emergence from the tomb. Do you think Jesus is afraid of death? The man who walked back out of the tomb, the one who strode confidently out of the grave? Jesus has moved through death, and was the one that death could not hold. Part of what we exchange with him is to give him our fear of death and to carry with us the assurance of the one who has returned from the grave by his sheer force of will.
But what if it goes even deeper than that? What if it goes deep underground? What if we're talking about one of the things that is complicated about the creeds, but that we desperately need to hear now - the fact that Jesus Christ descended into Hell....and rose again. After being killed, after being buried, after descending into Hell, Jesus rose again, and ascended. Any of us who understand what the penalty for sin should be, who may be questioning our salvation, should take seriously that line from the creeds, as well as the evidence for it in the scriptures. That Jesus descended into Hell, the place where you for sure don't want to be, and then was not there anymore. It's a wonderful part of our faith, that Jesus Christ died, descended into Hell, and rose again from it. And all that burden that you would feel upon yourself from fear of death, fear of Hell, fear of descent, fear of what comes after death, all that is what you can put plainly on the shoulders of Jesus Christ, and he will take them away. Because he's died, he's gone to hell, and it's old news for him. Let him do that for you. Let him die for you, let him go to Hell for you, and then the burden that you get to carry is the burden of life and resurrection. So that's what it is for you to exchange burdens with him: To swap your burden of fear of death, of Hell, and of all your sins onto the one who died and rose again already. What good news that is!
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