Getting to No¹
Matthew 11.28-30

Rev. Matthew M. Fry

As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Ever Present God, you are the creator of all that is, you are the sustainer of all that is; you are everywhere and in everything. Remove the scales from our eyes, so that we can see Your Presence all around us, and find you in our lives more clearly. If these words are not Your Word, may they be forgotten and come to naught. But if they be Thy Word, may they adhere to our hearts, forever transforming us from glory into glory, into the creatures you would have us be, Thou who art our Rock and Redeemer, Amen.

Hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in the gospel of Matthew. Listen for God’s Word for you today. Matthew 11.28-30.

28 "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 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. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

The Word of the Lord…Thanks be to God.

A few years ago I thumbed through a book in the bookstore called Getting to Yes.² From what I could gather, it was about changing win-lose situations into win-win situations so that everyone involved has an easier time “Getting to Yes.” I’m only somewhat sure about that, I only thumbed through the book. And there are times when I sit in the office and wish I had that book on my shelf. Not that I need the material. It seemed basic enough just with thumbing through. But sometimes seeing it on my bookshelf would perhaps be enough to cheer me up. Yes is such a wonderful word, capable of making us happy for a prolonged period of time, capable of changing life, just in its simple lone syllable.

“Yes, I’ll accept the job.”

“Yes, I will marry you.”

“Yes, I want to be baptized.”

At least part of the pleasure of saying yes is knowing that someone wants you – wants you to do something that you do well, wants you to be part of the team, wants to be with you. Saying yes is how you enter a relationship. It is how you walk through the doors into a new room. It is how you create the future.

Which may be why the word Yes is so seductive, especially in our can-do culture where the ability to do many things at high speed is not only an adaptive trait, but also the mark of a successful human being. Even while we complain about having too much to do, I’d bet most of us secretly harbor some pride that we are in such demand. We admire people who can keep even more balls in the air than we can. When they drop one, we instinctively avert our eyes. It’s like watching a train wreck.

And yet, at the same time, technology opens up more opportunities than ever to say yes. Messages from high school friends you have not seen in 20 years show up in your in-box. They Googled you and are eager to be back in touch. Political action groups want you to sign and circulate petitions for very good causes. The Neighborhood association wants to include your name in its letter to the commissioner. Friends want you to read their blogs, or they send you links to someone else’s. You cannot even sign on to Amazon.com without being shown the covers of some books that, given your previous purchases, you might well like.

For these reasons, and surely there are more, I have become interested in the spiritual practice of saying no. Perhaps some of it is my age. When I was 18, life was a wide open prairie, with all kinds of places to go and explore, and more than enough time for everything. Now I am something more like a small plot of fenced in land. The accommodations are still comfortable, but my horizons are limited. To bring in anything new means getting rid of something else. Saying yes requires saying no.

Or in other words, I am like our playroom. When the girls get more Christmas gifts, we have to then sit down and say, “Which toys are we going to give away, to make room for these new toys.” They never like the prospect of this, but we still want them to be able to open the door to get out of the playroom when they are done playing with the toys. Although, if they couldn’t…There might be something there.

I think getting to no is a spiritual discipline because it involves resistance, discernment, ego-evacuation and compassion, all of which are spiritual disciplines in themselves. Resistance most often has to do with declining the flatteries of a consumer culture. No, I do not need another watch. No, I do not need another pair of shoes. No, I don’t have to work seven days a week. Given how many times the culture shouts, “More!” or “Now!” I get lots of opportunities to practice saying, “No, less,” or “No, later.” Or, as the cartoon caption reads, “Never works for me. Does never work for you?”

Discernment involves understanding that I am rarely if ever called to say not to overtly and obviously bad things. Illicit sex and drugs never seem to come my way. I’m not really complaining, I’m just saying. Nobody has ever offered me the chance to invest in the so-called “sin” stocks. Instead, I am much more likely to be presented with choices between good things and better things, saying no to something as worthwhile as volunteering to serve on a Presbytery action committee so as to be able to spend more time with the ladies who share my address. This is much harder to saying no to bad things, since declining an opportunity to do good means taking a cut in my sense of my own goodness.

And that leads right into ego-evacuation, which is not the same thing as self-denial. Where self-denial involves saying no to something that gives me pleasure, ego-evacuation involves saying no to all oversized versions of myself, including those bolstered by my faith in my own importance. Saying no whittles me down to size, giving me daily opportunities to remember who is God and who is not. Facing other people’s disappointment in me lets some of the gas out of my self-image. This is no more pleasant than any other kind of evacuation, but it remains a good plan for avoiding disaster.

The practice of compassion has to go hand in hand with the practice of saying no. It took me a while to realize that damage to relationships was at the heart of my fear to say no. To say no to someone felt like saying, “No, you can’t share my Halloween Candy.” Yet damage to relationships was the exact result of my inability to say no. By saying yes to so many things, I couldn’t do any of them as well as I wanted to, and things I really wanted to do were put on the back burner for “someday,” which won’t come unless I make it.

Learning how to say no is how we clear space for a few carefully planted yeses to grow. Saying no to lesser gods is part of saying yes to God. Saying no to one thing is part of saying yes to another. I said yes to Melissa nearly 13 years ago. It will be 13 this March. For that yes to count, for it to stick, I’ve got to continue saying yes to her. Guys, we know this, right. “Yes Dear, whatever you say.” I’ve got to say yes to our relationship, more than to little things, everyday. That’s part of being a grown up, and part of being married, it is an everyday choice. If I say yes to even half of the things I could, I will turn my “Yes” to her, into a No. Getting to Yes includes getting to no. While saying yes may always seem more satisfying than saying no, both are sacred words in the mouths of those who want to get to God.