'Jesus said to the crowd, “To what will I
compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling
to one another,
‘We
played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not
mourn.’
For John came neither eating
nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and
drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax
collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”
At that time Jesus said, 'I
thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these
things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants;
yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over
to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one
knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal
him.
Come to me, all you that are
weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 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. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.'
--Matthew 11: 16-19, 25-30
As some of y’all know, I am a theatre kid. I even had dreams of going to New York and
being an actor. I went to New York, but
well, things turned out differently. One
of my favorite musicals is Steven Sondheim’s Into the Woods. At one point the character of the witch
sings her lament for the sorry state of things at a particular point in the
show, and it all comes down to, as she sings:
No matter what you say, children won’t listen. No matter what you know, children refuse to
learn. For in the show, so many characters, especially the children, always do
the opposite of whatever someone suggests.
Children won't listen.
It’s not often you’ll hear a preacher say this, but Jesus
has something in common with the witch.
When he looks around at his generation and tries to come up with a
comparison, Jesus likens the people to children who don’t listen, or learn, or
who always have to be contrary, no matter the situation. One group of children says to another, “Let’s
play our flutes at a wedding,” but another responds, “We don’t feel like being
happy today.” So the first group
suggests again, “Let’s mourn together at a funeral,” but that second one quips,
“We don’t feel like being sad today, either”
No matter what is suggested, they do not want to do it, no matter the
situation, they find something complain about.
This is how the folks’ in Jesus day responded to the
prophets in their midst. First came John
the Bapitzer, living in the desert, fasting and isolating himself from the
busy-ness of others. They said he was
mad to cut himself off from the world, that he had a demon. So then Jesus comes, not forsaking the world
but mixing with it. He eats and laughs
and spends his time sharing with all sorts of people. And the response to him is that he’s a
party-goer, a corouser, a friend of all the folk that decent people wouldn’t
have anything to do with. So John’s
self-denial is madness, and Jesus’ sociability is immorality. Like children, folks find grounds for
criticism regardless of the situation. No matter what
Jesus or John say, they won’t listen, and no matter what Jesus and John know,
they refuse to learn.
That contrarian attitude isn’t just a symptom of children,
of course,, but plenty of adults are filled with it now, just as back
then. Most all of us know someone like
that, someone who will disagree with every position we take, someone who
refuses to listen to anything we have to say.
The plain truth is that when people don’t want to listen, they will
easily find an excuse for not doing so.
They don’t even try to be consistent in their criticisms; they will
bicker about the same person or the same institution regardless of the
situation. If people are determined to
make no response, they will remain stubbornly unresponsive, no matter what
invitation is made to them. So grown men
and women can still very much be like those children bickering with each other,
or the folks who flat out refused both John and Jesus.
It’s as though bitterness is always in their hearts. Jesus dealt with such bitterness on a regular basis. So did Saint Paul, who articulates such a struggle in the seventh chapter of his Letter to the Romans:
"I do not understand my own
actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I
do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no
longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing
good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I
cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is
what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but
sin that dwells within me.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do
what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost
self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind,
making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I
am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus
Christ our Lord!"
--Romans 7: 15-25a
Though he uses the first person singular pronoun “I” most scholars agree
that that word is actually a reference to Israel as a whole. I do not understand my actions. I do not do what I want, and I do that which
I hate. Why? Because of the bitterness in people’s hearts,
or as Paul put it, the indwelling of sin in people’s hearts. The Law—Torah—had been established to help
Israel be the people God wanted them to be, but even Torah could not keep sin,
bitterness, anger, jealousy, hatred, from entering people’s hearts. That sin led folks—including Paul himself—down
some pretty dark and terrible paths.
That sin is what led many of the people to whom Paul wrote to act like stubborn children, to push
John and Jesus away; and it is that indwelling sin that keeps stirring up those
contrarian attitudes in us even today.
What can be done? Do
we just blame it all on sin? No. Paul will go on to unpack this passage later in Romans, reminding his audience that while sin may be indwelling in us, so is the Spirit; that is to say, so is
love and life and the ability to listen to and learn from each other.
We have a term for this called imago dei—image of God. Humanity is the imago dei. All of us.
We are, by our very nature, good.
We are the image of God, which means we have in us the Spirit of love
and the ability to listen to each other, to create and restore, as we all move
on this quest for salvation. John and
Jesus both invited people on this quest, but folks chose to pay closer
attention to the indwelling sin than the indwelling imago dei. But now, all these years later, we have the
chance to be different, to say no to the indwelling bitterness and yes to the
imago dei. We have the chance to listen
to each other. We still may not
understand our actions, and we may still from time to time do that which we hate; after all, the struggle against sin
is an ongoing on. But, as Paul says,
thanks be to God for Jesus Christ! Some of you may remember the last line from today’s Gospel as the Comfortable Words
from the old Prayer Book: “Come unto me,
all ye that travail and are heavy laden and I will refresh you.” Come to Jesus if you want to see what the
imago dei looks like. But know that he
didn’t just give us an example to look at, he gave us an example to live into
each and every day, an example of not only seeing the imago dei in each other
but in ourselves. It is the invitation
to be Christ-like ourselves, that is the grace Jesus has given us all, grace
that not only saves us from our
indwelling sin but empowers us to embrace our own imago dei and live and love
like Jesus himself.
Children will listen
Deep down there is a desire in all of us to reject the bitterness, the contrary attitudes, the sin. There is a desire to listen, to learn, and to see the imago dei in one another. I wonder if that’s the key to this whole thing: seeing past the bitterness in our hearts and focusing on the image of God that dwells in one another. Perhaps if we did that we could truly listen, learn, and transform the world
