Whenever I visit the University of Notre Dame, I park in the Grace lot when I visit Notre Dame. As you walk past Grace Hall on your way to the library, tucked in a little courtyard seating area, there is an obscure brutalist sculpture – angular and weighty. It is a bowed figure with a sorrowful face, carrying a heavy iron yoke. It’s called “Jeremiah,” after the suffering prophet, by sculptor Waldemar Otto.
“Jeremiah’s hopeless posture prefigures and makes plausible that suffering and astonished face whose penetrating gaze sees through shattered hope, through the humiliation of defeat and exile, through the heartbreak of infidelity and desertion, through death itself to the frontier of his and our homeland.” (1)
Is anyone else feeling the weight of life right now? Some days that yoke seems so heavy. And yeah, we all know we are supposed to “give it to God” because “his yoke is easy and his burden is light.” In reality, my guess is that most humans struggle daily with carrying more than they are meant to. I know I do.
So much is going on around us — not only in the United States, but all around the world. The age of instant information barrages us with stories of tragedy pretty much non-stop. And with that, there is a literal psychological strain from the 24/7 news cycle. Honestly, our brains were not designed to process this constant stream of information and the resulting emotion from viewing or reading about it. It’s as if we live in a constant state of alarm, and that releases stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol (fight or flight responses), which then causes anxiety and stress. It disrupts our sleep patterns and our overall mental and emotional health. Just recently, I was talking to a friend about how we were just not built to handle the mental and emotional weight of this. When I was young, I didn’t know about “all the stuff” happening all the time. We would see it on TV or in the newspaper, and things from around the world would often be days after the fact. Mom and I were talking about the shock of seeing President Kennedy assassinated on TV. Everyone I have ever spoken to who grew up in this era remembers where they were and what they were doing that day in 1963. This brutal act of violence (when you never saw anything like that on TV like you do now) left an indelible print on their young minds. Here in 2025, in the age of smart phones, social media, and news apps, it is literally non-stop. Even if I am an hour away up at the lake, I can tell you about an accident in my town as it is happening, because it is being live streamed by someone driving by. When we experience this stream, we honestly start feeling helpless — especially about the big ticket issues — political violence, wars, social unrest, etc. Because realistically, we think, what can we do about it? Because we are often so overwhelmed with the deluge, we lose the ability to be empathetic and compassionate. We lose our humanity. And you can see that played out in the comment sections of nearly any post on social media.
On September 10, I was at the dentist getting my tooth repaired and a temporary crown put on when I saw the alert hit my phone about the killing of Charlie Kirk. After my appointment, I got in the car, and like so many people, had the misfortune of seeing that horrific video of his death. It was so shocking to see a man die right there on a little screen in my hand, and it left me unsettled the rest of the day and night. That same day, there was another school shooting in Colorado — 53 so far this year. So far in 2025, there have been 381 mass shootings (defined as an incident of violence where four or more are shot) with 432 people dead and 1588 injured). Even as I wrote this, this morning a man drove his truck into a Mormon church in Michigan. Four are dead and eight injured so far. He also burned down the building and was killed by police. And this is just the US. The conflicts and killings in Gaza, Palestine, and so many places in Africa are horrific. The emotional weight of all this violence is significant.
Bob was speaking today on the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ famous teaching on “how then shall we live.” For years I have heard it referred to as the “Constitution of the Kingdom.” It was radical then and it is radical now because so much of it goes against the very fabric of how we (especially as Americans) were taught to react. Jesus challenged the cycle of violence with the opposite — love, compassion, and acts of service. So instead of retaliation … do the opposite. In our society today, leadership is often heralded as military might, or as a show of strength and power. In the way of the kingdom, it’s kindness, humility, and meekness. Fighting evil with evil was the old way. Jesus challenged us that our responses to those who mistreat us might feel completely foreign to our normal way of reacting — if someone asks for your coat, give them your shirt as well. Jesus said, “You are blessed if you seek to make peace.” He said that you are blessed if you seek righteousness, which essentially means virtuous living with others, God, and creation. “If Jesus’ followers would listen to his words, they would start seeing their enemies as neighbors and miracles of God who are worthy of love. All evil and every oppressor will ultimately be defeated, Jesus teaches, not with swords but with God’s creative, renewing love” (2).
At the time, there was an expectation that “the Messiah” was coming to sweep in and deliver the Jewish people from the hands of their Roman oppressors. “Not so,” Jesus said. He was coming to change the expressions of their hearts — which is infinitely more powerful. Grace, mercy, and, above all, LOVE which overcomes fear. Jesus said, “We are lights in the darkness; like a city up on a hill, it can’t be hidden.” The Apostle John said, “A light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.”
“Jesus’ teaching implies that the world won’t be fixed through the elimination of human enemies or through merely escaping our world for a better utopia in the clouds. God’s world—on Earth as it is in Heaven — will be transformed by changed human hearts” (3).
Truly, as Bob titled his sermon, this must be a “Revolution of the Heart” — our hearts.
So that sculpture I pass by on my walk to the library? Every time I see it I think, “Yeah, man, life is tough right now and that burden is heavy. Despite the burden and the current weight of the yoke… somehow HOPE prevails.” I guess we all have to learn to let go of some of these burdens. Turn off the news. Whatever we have to do. And in the midst of that — stay the course. Live above the fray. It’s not easy but I know despite the swirl of allllll the crazy right now, we have to take hold to this passage in Hebrews 6: “God has given us an unbreakable promise — and those who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls.”
Resources / Quotes
(1) https://al.nd.edu/news/latest-news/ottos-jeremiah-and-our-own
(2, 3) https://thebibleproject.com
https://massshootingtracker.com
https://gunviolencearchive.com
Excellent Josh!