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The Yoke

February 21, 2026

Isaiah 58:9b-14| Luke 5:27-32|Psalm 86:1-11

Isaiah’s Old Testament words for today first confused but then fascinated me:

If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall arise in the darkness
and your gloom shall be like the noonday.

If you remove the yoke from among you… Whoa! How can a yoke—a heavy wooden harness whereby a team of brute oxen can be led to pull immense weights—be communally removed? In my 75 years of fervent Roman (not Anglican) Catholicism, a yoke was a personal burden of suffering, at best to be shared with Christ on the cross. So too Google initially explains that New Testament usage of “yoke”: 

“My yoke is easy and my burden is light” is a well-known quote from Matthew 11:30 in the Bible, where Jesus offers rest to those who are weary and  burdened. This metaphor contrasts the heavy, legalistic, and restrictive religious burdens of that time with a new way of life based on grace, love, and partnership with him.” 

Although I then confined any cultural reference to Judea B.C. and not USA A.D., how else could our nuclear family have survived much less thrived birthing five babies in six 1960’s pre-pill years? 

Yet more strangely, Isaiah then describes that communal yoke: The pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil.  But I’d learned as a child that anything bad has to be somebody else’s fault (surely not mine). How grateful I am now for a young-nun 5th grade teacher’s response to my whispered report of who’d been talking during her absence from the classroom: she just stared at me. Thus I began to wonder why.

“Pre-Vatican II,” an early-1960’s source noted succinctly, “[Catholic] religion was all about saving my own soul and to hell with the rest of the world.”  Thank God, I think I caught on. Near 60 years ago, I equipped our EG house with a big toy chest (my grad school steamer trunk) that made cleanups a cinch, plus a 15 ft. telephone cord and a 30-cup coffeemaker to keep me in touch with the rest of the world’s needs. Best of all, 10 years ago I joined St. Luke’s lovingly non-judgmental community. Isaiah was right: 

If you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
Then your light shall arise in the darkness
and your gloom shall be like the noonday.

Marie Hennedy