Matthew 11:16-19, 28-30
16 “To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others:
17 “‘We played the pipe for you,
and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge,
and you did not mourn.’
18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ 19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.”
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, 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.”
Matthew begins the story recorded in chapter 11 with John the Baptist in jail. John sends his disciples to ask Jesus if he really is the messiah: “Are you the one we’ve been waiting for or will another come?”
John is suffering. He’s been imprisoned for his confrontation with the king. He’s facing the death penalty. No doubt he’s depressed and dismayed, especially about Jesus, who he announced to all as the messiah they had been waiting for who would bring scorching justice to the world and turn the world upside down making things radically right. But Jesus has come with a different sense of justice and of what life means in the New Community of God that doesn’t include the blazing actions of justice that John expected.
What do you do when God doesn’t answer your prayers the way you think God should answer them? Do you despair and give up hope? That’s what’s happened to John, I think.
Jesus says to John’s disciples. Reassure John, God is at work just as you expected. "Go back and tell John what's going on: The blind see, The lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the wretched of the earth learn that God is on their side. If that is what you were expecting? Then count yourselves most blessed!"
Jesus goes on to praise John as the prophet foretold in the scriptures who would blaze a pathway for the messiah. People followed John out into the desert to hear his preaching and to repent of their sins and turn their lives back toward God. John came with a message and a manner that caused many to think of him as simply a wild-man, a joke, someone who was too strict and too limited in his outlook on life. He called people to fast and to give up their wealth and ease and get serious about living life as God’s word ordered. Seemingly there is little joy in John’s outlook.
Then Jesus says that the people are being very childish as opposed to childlike. Yes, we all need to have faith like a child in God, but none of us need to act like a selfish child in carrying out our faithful words and actions. Both Jesus and John are criticized by the people and the religious leaders. John is said to be too restraining, Jesus too liberal.
So Jesus tells the parable of the children. Children in that society, like our own, would make the celebrative situations of their society into play-games, especially make-believe weddings and funerals. Some see here gender differences as well as children’s behavior. The boys would play the flute and dance as men were expected to do at weddings in their society. The girls would play at weeping and screaming in grief like women did at funerals. But when the boys wanted to play wedding the girls wanted to play funeral. When the girls wanted to play funeral, the boys refused and wanted to play wedding. Nobody could agree on what to play. And so there was little joy.
Jesus says that the people couldn’t accept his style of ministry anymore than they could accept John’s. They say that Jesus drank too much wine. He eats too much. He goes to too many parties. He hangs out with the wrong kind of people. He doesn’t break the rules, but he stretches those rules so near to the breaking point they might as well be broken. Such was the criticism of Jesus. John’s interpretation of scripture was too strict. Jesus too liberal. John wanted everyone to weep and repent and give up all the luxuries of life. Jesus wanted people to celebrate God with joy! Both Jesus and John were rejected by society. No one therefore gave either of them or their message the real consideration demanded.
Jesus identifies his ministry and message with John’s, but there are important differences. Where John’s restrictive style belongs to the waiting period before the messiah comes, Jesus’ celebrative style belongs to the time of fulfillment when the messiah has already arrived. The time for the funeral is over. It’s time to celebrate. Let’s have a wedding, a party of joy and hope! Enjoy the life that God has blessed you with! Enjoy God’s presence in your life! Celebrate God’s power and activity in your life! Look for the good. See the blessings! Take a new perspective on life!
Jesus isn’t just fond of dinner parties, he employs the concept of the final dinner party when all the world’s people come to celebrate with God in the great dinner party that will usher in God’s New Community. No one will be left out of that party. So, Jesus says, let’s begin the party now! Why? Because God is here now! Emmanuel. God with us! The Messiah has come to be with all people. Why weep any longer?
Jesus even employs the dinner party of joy and celebration when he institutes what we call the Eucharist, what we usually refer to as communion. The word Eucharist means “Thanksgiving” and needs to retain the grand sense of joy which then makes sense of Christ’s death and resurrection.
Too often we approach communion as if we are at a funeral remembering the life and death of a dear beloved family member who will no longer be with us. We like playing funeral. We think it should be quiet and reflective and we frown at those who make unnecessary noise and talk during communion. But is that what Jesus really wanted us to do? Wasn’t it supposed to be more like a celebration of the resurrection, of the return to life of the beloved child of God? “Remember me” he said to them. But are we to remember him dead and gone, or alive and present with us now? Crucified or resurrected? I submit to you that for far too many years most of us have concentrated on the death and we have forgotten the resurrection. We remember Jesus dead and on the cross instead of alive and living, present with us even today as the living spirit of God among us. It’s time to stop playing funeral and start the celebration! Emmanuel! God is with us!
Jesus is a realist. He understands that it is hard for us to live the life of God’s New Community with the kind of joy we should when we face so much that brings us down in life. He criticizes the Pharisees and religious lawyers for making the law too oppressive and restrictive. They think he is abusing the law because he doesn’t approach it with the same so-called honor and respect that they believe they give it. Instead Jesus is saying the evidence of God’s law is not seen in the keeping of the rules, but is seen in the compassion and mercy that one practices which results in life improvements for all people and not just a few. When he condemns the cities he has visited in his ministry in this passage, Jesus cannot believe that people are missing the significance of the miracles of life that are happening all around them and are instead concentrating on the strict interpretation of the law. Open your eyes and see. Open your ears and hear! You are missing what God is doing!
Remember that the Pharisees and Sadducees and religious lawyers have come up with 613 separate rules that everyone has to keep in order to prove that he or she is really a child of God. If you don’t keep all 613 rules exactly as they say you should keep them, then they believe you are not accepted by God. It’s an oppressive viewpoint and totally misses the point of why God instituted such laws to start with. The law was to be a guide to life, not an end unto itself.
Jesus says that they have made the law so oppressive that it has become an unbearable weight dragging people down to death instead of helping them live life with joy. Jesus then tells us that his burden is light and his yoke is easy.
Most of us don’t know what a yoke is. It was a neck piece made of wood hung around the neck of a animal or slave to which cords or rope were strung allowing one to pull a load more easily. It was an instrument of work, that could become oppressive if the load you had to pull was too heavy.
However, Jesus invites us to share his yoke. What does that mean? When you had a new young ox it didn’t know how to pull a load automatically. You had to train it. One of the best ways to train a young ox was to yoke it with a double yoke next to an experienced and older oxen. The yoke would look real funny, one side enormous for the older ox, the other side small for the younger ox. The older ox would do most of the work, the younger ox would help pull the load, and while pulling alongside the older ox would learn when to move and how to move to make the best use of the yoke and their combined strength. Jesus is saying, come alongside of me, wear the training yoke, learn how I move as I move, learn how I talk as I talk, learn how I walk through life as you walk with me. Do it with me. You are not alone. I will share my strength and my wisdom with you and you will find the burden to not be so terrible, but to be one we can share together and celebrate the accomplishments we achieve together.
If you study the scriptures you will realize that this portion of Matthew is actually a discourse on wisdom. Jesus is contrasting the viewpoint that keeping the law is not all demand and restriction, but a lightness of being, like the wise woman in Proverbs 8 and 9 who invites people to come to her free feast, or Isaiah 55 with its call to share free food. It’s a call to learn a new way of relating to God and applying what you learn to living life as it should be. God’s law was seen as peacemaking, as relieving the thirst and feeding hungry souls.
In the following passages from Matthew we see Jesus confronting the issue of how to keep the Sabbath. Can you heal a person on the Sabbath? Can you pick a handful of wheat and eat it on the Sabbath as you walk through a wheat field? Jesus tells us that the Sabbath, like the law, was made for people, and not the other way around. It is the person who is most important, and not the law. The law is to help us live faithfully, not to cause us to stumble and fall.
Jesus always interprets the law by focusing on compassion and mercy. Hosea 6:6 says, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” The promise is not heaven some day, but real joy today, real rest and assurance today, not in the time to come. With such a sense of rest we can turn our attention toward that which really matters: people.
Listen to me. It's summer time! We've had a whirlwind time at PRIDE! Some of us are exhausted and worn out. We've kept ourselves so busy getting ready for PRIDE and doing PRIDE that some of us forgot to have fun at PRIDE! Too many of us are on the verge of 'burn-out.' We've given and given and given until we have little left to give. That makes us critical about others who we think should be more involved than they are and who we believe should be willing to give more time and effort than they do. "Why can't they be more like us," we wonder. But do we really want them to feel the same way that we do? Burned out and negative?
As your pastor, I want you to get some rest, to enjoy some time-off from church responsibilities for the next few weeks. Take a walk in the park, smell the roses. Oh, I still want to see you in worship, of course! I want us to keep up our friendships and community going full-speed with each other. But most importantly, I want you to enjoy just being you and doing the things that give you refreshment and renewal in your life. I want you to get all charged up and energized for the exciting future that God has placed ahead of us as a community of faith.
Remember today’s scripture. Let me read it to you from The Message: "Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." (Matthew 11:28-30)
It's good advice from Jesus. Let's all try to follow it! I suggest you try following it this week.
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