Come Unto Me, Ye Weary

William Chatterton Dix, 1867

I have sometimes thought that Jesus was the loneliest man who ever lived. Not by disposition, certainly, though he often went up into the mountains alone to pray. He knew the power of silence, not an absence of sound, but a presence, active, full, like deep water. It was just that no one around him understood him, not even his closest friends. If you want what in my experience is the most sensitive literary portrayal of this man who could probe the deepest recesses of the human soul, but whose own townsmen never really knew him, even though he lived among them for thirty years, go to Riccardo Bacchelli’s The Gaze of Jesus, which I recently translated into English. Be prepared to read one of the greatest religious novels of the last two hundred years.

Our Word of the Week, island, and its relation to my family name through a great grandfather who lived alone, has made me think about where you go when you feel that you don’t mean much to anyone in the world. I could not feel that way when I was a boy, because I had my family, as strong as an oak and as true, and we were surrounded with aunts and uncles and cousins (39 cousins, as I’ve often noted, 20 of whom lived in my small town). But at school I was lonely, and if it weren’t for nine or ten very close friends I made during my first week at Princeton, people who shared one entryway to our dormitory, that college would have been four years of almost impenetrable darkness. It wasn’t all the fault of other people, though, and had I looked more carefully, I might have found that others had the same clutch in the heart that I had. Maybe I could have helped them.

So the words of Jesus that inspired our Hymn of the Week have always been to me as a sure and firm center to human life and to all things in the world. He has just raised his hands to heaven and praised the Father, for having hidden the deepest truths from people who think they are wise, but revealing them to the simple. Then he says, “Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am meek and gentle of heart, and you shall find rest for your soul. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

It’s the same Jesus who tells his disciples to let the little children come to him, “for of such is the kingdom of God,” and when the disciples are grumbling about who is going to be greatest among them in the kingdom, Jesus takes a small boy and sets him in their midst, and gives them a lesson in what that greatness really is. Many people came to Jesus. Some were sick in the body; some were sinners longing for forgiveness; some were idly curious; some were seeking a political or military leader; some were searching for God. I don’t doubt that Jesus came to mean all the world to many of them. Think of Mary Magdalen at the tomb, weeping freely, because she thought that somebody had taken the body of Jesus away. Think of poor Peter, weeping bitterly after he heard the cock crow. Think of John, the beloved disciple, hardly more than a boy, standing with Mary the mother of Jesus at the foot of the cross. But to whom in the world could Jesus go?

Yet he calls us, always. He came not to draw life from us, but to empty himself, and in so doing, to give us life, and that in abundance. It is the secret of love itself. That’s what moved the prolific and intelligent hymnodist, William Chatterton Dix, to write this week’s hymn, reaching through sorrow to the sure call of Jesus. We tend to fret, to worry, to feel that no one can really the pain we feel, and even Martha the sister of Lazarus was ready, as Dix says in a very fine poem, “Patience,” “to think of many a bitter thing to say,” while all the while “true Love stands by so meek, / Waiting to lift anew the drooping head.” As the hymn today says, his is a “love that cannot cease.” If we come to him, he will not turn aside. Why, he has anticipated us. He is at the gates.

"Come unto me, ye weary,
And I will give you rest."
O blessed voice of Jesus
Which comes to hearts oppressed!
It tells of benediction,
Of pardon, grace, and peace,
Of joy that hath no ending,
Of love which cannot cease.

"Come unto me, ye fainting,
And I will give you life."
O cheering voice of Jesus
Which comes to aid our strife!
The foe is stern and eager,
The fight is fierce and long;
But Thou hast made us mighty,
And stronger than the strong.

"And whosoever cometh,
I will not cast him out."
O welcome voice of Jesus
Which clears away our doubt!
Which calls us, weary sinners,
Unworthy though we be
Of love so free and boundless,
To come, dear Lord, to Thee!

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