Come unto Me

London, late September 1934

We can only guess when this undated sermon might have been given from its mention of Bonhoeffer’s visit to his friend Jean Lasserre. The two had met in 1930 while both were on scholarships at Union Seminary in New York and had shared deep theological discussions. Lasserre was pastor of a poor working-class congregation in Bruay-en-Artois, northern France, an area that had suffered greatly during and after World War I. He also engaged in street evangelism, in which Bonhoeffer had participated with him during his three-day visit.

Bonhoeffer refers in this sermon to a famous etching by Rembrandt titled “Christ Healing the Sick” (1642–1645) and to a poem by Friedrich Rückert that became the text for Franz Schubert’s song “My Sweet Repose” (Du bist die Ruh’). The four lines of verse at the end are the epitaph of Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855); this English translation was made from the somewhat free German version quoted by Bonhoeffer.

Matthew 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 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.

Since the day when Jesus spoke these words, there should no longer be anyone on earth who is so forsaken and alone as to say of himself or herself: Nobody has ever asked about me; nobody has ever wanted me or offered to help me. Whoever has heard these words of Jesus even once in his or her life and still talks that way is lying, is showing contempt and scorn for Jesus Christ and not taking his words seriously. For Christ was calling everyone who labors and is heavy-laden. His was not a narrow circle; it was no intellectual or spiritual-religious aristocracy that he gathered around him. Instead, he made his circle as wide as possible, so wide that no single person could say with a good conscience that he or she wasn’t being addressed, wasn’t among those who labored and were heavy-laden. This is just what is so amazing about this call: it really puts every human being in the embarrassing situation of admitting that they too are called and are meant, indeed, perhaps they in particular.

Those who labor and are heavy-laden—who are they? Jesus intentionally says nothing here that sets any limit. People are laboring and heavy-laden if they feel that way—in truth, including those who do not feel that way because they do not want to feel it. Laboring and heavy-laden certainly describes those men and women and children who outwardly have a hard lot in life and heavy work to do, those who, we might say, have been placed by chance into the dark side of life, into servitude and into outward and moral misery. I have seldom felt so strongly that I was among those who labor and are heavy-laden as in the mining town in northern France where I have just been on holiday. It is a joyless, driven, humiliated, abused, and soiled existence, which is inherited and passed on from fathers and mothers to children and children’s children. Wherever people experience their work as God’s curse on humanity [see Gen. 13:17–19]—there you will find those who labor and are heavy-laden.

But it is all too easy for us to see such people only among those who are outwardly poor. Jesus certainly searched for and found those who were struggling hardest and carrying the heaviest burdens, not among the poor but among the so-called rich. Think of the rich young man whom, it is said, Jesus loved, who “went away sorrowful” because he was not strong enough to follow Jesus [see Matt. 19:16­–22]. There is hardly a more depressing realization for a person than to see that, while outwardly having everything one could want, inwardly one can be hollow and empty and superficial; that all our possessions will not buy us the most important things in this earthly life: inner peace, joy of spirit, a loving marriage, and family life. How much unspeakable inner suffering, lives weighed down by the heavy debts that wealth brings, is found in the homes of those who seem so fortunate!

No, those who labor and are heavy-laden do not all look the way Rembrandt drew them in his “Hundred Guilder” picture—poverty-stricken, miserable, sick, leprous, ragged, with worn, furrowed faces. They are also found concealed behind happy-looking, youthful faces and brilliantly successful lives. There are people who feel utterly forsaken in the midst of high society, to whom everything in their lives seems stale and empty to the point of nausea, because they can sense that underneath it all, their souls are decaying and rotting away. There is no loneliness like that of the fortunate.

But even those who are so intoxicated with their busy lives that they do not seem to feel how alone they are, who do not think about whether they are laboring and heavy-laden, are actually so. It has the opposite effect for them, because at the bottom of their hearts they know or suspect that this is also their condition, but they are afraid to admit it. So they throw themselves even more madly into their supposedly happy lives and keep running away from every word that might speak the truth to them. They do not want to be considered as those who labor and are heavy-laden, but in Jesus’ eyes they are doubly so.

Everyone, all of you, is what it means. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy-laden. The latter words are meant, not as a limitation on who is included in “all,” but as a statement about them. Who would want to say, when Jesus calls, that this has nothing to do with them? Who would want to say they know nothing about the state of laboring and being heavy-laden?

When people come to the end of their inner strength and have become a burden to themselves, when they do not want to go another step, are afraid of the next hill looming ahead, are weighed to the ground by some kind of guilt, and feel betrayed and deceived by the whole world—then no words, no ideals or dreams one builds for the future will help. These people need only one thing: a human being who can be trusted completely, unconditionally; someone who understands everything, listens to everything, bears with everything, who believes, who hopes, who forgives all things [1 Cor. 13:7]—someone to whom one can say, “You are sweet rest and gentle peace, my longing, yes, and my heart’s ease”—someone in whose presence our sorrows are dispelled, our hearts open in love without words; someone who quietly takes away our burden and all the strain and anxiety and thus redeems our souls from their bondage in this world.

But who has someone like that? Where can such a person be found? This is the miracle above all miracles, that everyone has and can find such a person, that this person himself is calling us to come to him, inviting us, and offering himself. This person who is our rest, our peace, who refreshes and redeems us, is Jesus Christ alone. He alone is fully human, and in being truly human is also God, and Redeemer, and peace and rest. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Everything depends on this “I”—not as an idea, not as a word, not as a preacher, but I, Jesus the human being, who knows each one of us, who has suffered and struggled though everything that we have to suffer, the human person Jesus, our Redeemer.

There are two possible ways to help someone who is bowed down under a burden. One can either remove the entire weight of it, so that from now on the person has nothing to carry anymore, or one can help carry it, so that it becomes lighter and easier to carry. Jesus does not go the first way. Our burden is not taken away. Jesus, who himself carried his cross, knows it is part of being human to carry our cross, to shoulder our burden, and that only with our burden and not without it will we be sanctified. The burden that God has laid on someone’s shoulders, Jesus will not take away. But he lightens our load by showing us how better to carry it.

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me . . .” A yoke is itself a burden, a burden added to the weight of the other burden, but it has the peculiarity of being able to lighten the load. A burden that would otherwise crush a person down to the ground can be made bearable by using a yoke. We know this from pictures of people carrying water with a yoke over their shoulders, and of draught animals with a yoke that makes it possible for them to pull heavy loads without experiencing pain and torment and without injuring themselves. Jesus wants to put us human beings under such a yoke, so that our burdens will not be too heavy. “My yoke,” he calls it—for it is the yoke under which he learned to carry his burden, his load, which is a thousand times heavier than any of ours, because it is all our burdens together that he is carrying. “Take my yoke upon you” means “come with me under my yoke”—yoked together with him, so that we can no longer pull away, and with all those who want to be yoked together with Jesus—yoked together until the day when the yoke will be lifted entirely from our shoulders.

“Learn from me . . .” see how I carry this yoke, and do it the same way. “Learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart.” This then is the yoke he carries, his gentleness and lowliness, and it is the yoke that we are to take upon ourselves, which Jesus knows will help to make our burdens light. To be “gentle” means not to kick against the goads, not to rebel against the burden, not to bump against it and rub ourselves sore, but to be quiet and patient and carry the load that has been put on us, knowing that it is God who lays the burden on us and will help us to go on. “. . . gentle and humble in heart.” To be humble means to give up one’s own will entirely, not to try to get one’s own way, but to be happier when the other’s will is done than when mine is done. To be humble means to know that we are servants of God, and that it is the servants’ job to carry the load—but it is also to know that we have a good master, who will some day lift the load from our shoulders, after this burden has sanctified and humbled and purified us.

Whoever will bear this yoke, and learn from it, receives a great promise: “. . . and you will find rest for your souls.” This is the end, this peace is the last, although we experience it already here under the yoke of Jesus, yoked together with him in gentleness and lowliness. But only at the end, when every burden falls away, will we experience the longed-for perfect rest.

As we look ahead to that blessedness, as we hope for our release from toil and guilt, we can already hear Jesus saying, today, “. . . For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light . . .” Woe to anyone who plays games with these words, making it seem that Christ’s cause is an easy one. The person who really understands what it is about is the one who shrinks back in horror from the seriousness and the dreadfulness of the cause of Christ, who does not dare to approach it for fear of what it means for our real lives. But once someone has grasped the meaning of Jesus Christ and his will for us, then we must certainly say to that person, go now to Jesus himself, take his yoke upon you, and you will see that everything, everything changes, that all your fear and horror disappears, and that all at once, for the person who is with Jesus, it is true: “my yoke is easy . . .”

In conclusion, there is still one question remaining between us, which we have to call by its name so that it will not confuse us. Some say: Jesus is dead . . . how shall we go to him . . . how will he comfort us, how will he help us? What else can we answer but this: No, Jesus is living, living here in our midst. Look for him, here or at home, call to him, ask him, beg him, and suddenly he will be there with you, and you will know that he lives. You cannot see him, touch him, or hear him, but you will know that he is there, helping and comforting you, and only he. And you will take his yoke upon you and be joyful and wait with longing for the final rest in him.

A short while yet, and it is won.

Of painful strife there will be none.

Refreshed by life-streams, thirsting never,

I’ll talk with Jesus, forever and ever.