Don’t you just love the very name of this service, “The Blessing of the Backpacks?” And even just the word backpack. Maybe it’s the former English teacher in me, but I like the perfect balance of those two words forming a compound noun: the back that carries, and all that we pack inside.

The backpack, after all, is one of our most ordinary, ubiquitous and yet absolutely essential objects. Every student has one. And while fabrics and designs have changed, backpacks really haven’t changed much since I was a student. Then as now, they go back and forth between home and school every day. They get dropped on floors, stuffed under desks, hung on hooks, left in cars, forgotten beside the kitchen table after breakfast.

And yet, a backpack carries a whole school year. There are the things we expect to find inside: books, pencils, folders, planners, lunches, maybe a laptop. And then there are the other things. The telling things. The crumpled paper that was very important three weeks ago. A half-finished snack. A rock found at recess. One smelly sock. An object whose origin no parent can decipher. Children carry a lot in their backpacks.

But of course, the things our children carry to school, especially these first few weeks, aren’t limited to what we can see. They carry excitement. Curiosity. Hopes about who their teachers will be, who they will sit beside, who they will eat lunch with. The pride of understanding something that once seemed impossible.

But they carry worries and anxieties, too, the ones we carry with them and through them and sometimes for them every single day. Will I make friends? Will I do well on the test? Will I be good enough? 

We see it every morning at carpool as we greet our students, help them and their backpacks out of the cars and send them through the school gates. And the truth is that we adults come through those doors carrying our things, too. We all arrive carrying something.

So what does today’s scripture carry for us?

In Deuteronomy, Moses tells the people of Israel to take what matters most and carry it with them: “Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.” Teach them to your children. Talk about them, carry these words with you. Psalm 78 lifts that same idea. We are told to pass what we have learned to the next generation, so that they, in turn, might pass it to theirs.

And Paul says to Timothy: “Continue in what you have learned.” Keep carrying it. Don’t leave behind the wisdom, faith, and truth that have formed you. These readings understand education as something much bigger than the transfer of information.

That is where today’s Gospel speaks so beautifully to the beginning of a school year. Jesus says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” I wonder whether there is any invitation more important for our students and children, or for those of us who care for them, to hear.

Because ours is a culture very good at adding to the weight of our backpacks: Achieve this. Master that. Get straight A’s .Build the résumé. Make money. Be successful on society’s terms or, worse, by social media’s standards. And almost without noticing, we can teach children that life is primarily an exercise in accumulating accomplishments. We keep putting things into the backpack until eventually we wonder why it breaks our backs.

Jesus offers another way. Not a life without effort. Certainly not a life without challenge. “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,” he says. There is still work to be done, but the burden is shared. We were never meant to carry everything by ourselves. And maybe that is one of the deepest purposes of a school community: to carry this weight together. 

So perhaps the beginning of a school year is a good time for all of us to think about our backpacks and hold them more dearly. What are we carrying? What are we asking our children to carry? What can we finally put down? And whose burden might we help carry?

Because the great promise of our faith is not that our backpacks will always be light. There will be difficult days. Disappointment, mistakes, moments when all of us wonder whether we are enough.

The promise is that we do not carry those things alone. God gives us one another. Teachers, parents, friends, colleagues, and neighbors. Communities like St. George’s Episcopal School and St. George’s Episcopal Church. People who, sometimes without ever saying so, reach over and take hold of one of the straps, yoking our lives to theirs. There is the example of Christ, who says, in so many words, give that to me: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens.” 

So when we bless backpacks today, we are blessing much more than fabric and zippers. We are blessing everything those backpacks represent. The questions yet to be asked. The mistakes yet to be made. The friendships yet to begin. The challenges yet to be faced. The knowledge yet to be discovered.

And we are blessing, too, the enormous community of people who will walk beside them. May our children carry with them the things that matter. And may they know that, however heavy the backpack becomes, there will always be someone willing to help them carry it. May we be those people for one another.