We have heard two excellent readings from the scriptures this morning, yet it is difficult to find a common theme – difficult to yoke them together – but I’ll try.
In St Paul’s letter to the Romans we have heard that famous passage where Paul confesses that he finds himself unable to do the good that he wants to, but rather does the evil that he doesn’t want to – a psychological analysis of a divided inner state that most of us can relate to.
And finally we have excerpts from ch.11 of Matthew’s Gospel, which contains both familiar words of comfort – ‘Come to me all who are weary and I will give you rest’ – as well as those puzzling words about children’s games. At least, they have always puzzled me.
Chapters 11 and 12 of Matthew’s Gospel, BTW, give us a series of portraits of Jesus, six in all: by and large they fall into ‘good cop’ gentle Jesus in chapter 11 – Jesus the saviour – and ‘bad cop’ Jesus the judge in chapter 12. One of the mistakes we can make – or that churches can make – is to emphasize one at the expanse of the other: Yes, Jesus is gentle and humble of heart, yet he sees us as we are, expects better of us, and has work for us to do. Indeed, he promises both rest, and a yoke. A yoke is a piece of working equipment: it ties two oxen together so that they can pull a cart or a plough; it both harnesses them so that they can direct their strength together in the same direction and to the same end, but it also allows them to share the weight. Another feature of a yoke, is that it only works in motion: when the animals are standing still it is just a weight on their necks; once they start moving, however, it comes into its own. It’s the same with Jesus’s yoke: we have to move forward with him, partner on the journey of our lives with him, for the yoke to become light and effective. Kierkegaard wrote that the church is full of many admirers of our Lord, but only a few disciples; I’d have to admit that much of my own relationship with Christ has been that of a listener and a bystander, rather than as a disciple and a doer. The admirers are merely standing, feeling the weight; it’s only the disciples who get the benefits of moving with the yoke.
Now let’s look again at the lines about the children’s games, the ones I said were puzzling: what’s going on here?
‘But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market-places 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!”
‘This generation’, Jesus’s generation, have been witness to two of the greatest revelations of the divine that humanity has ever known: first the ascetic call to repentance of John the Baptist – as gloomy as a funeral, for sure, but summing up all of prophetic power of the Old Testaments call to holiness and righteous; then comes Jesus himself, the joy and celebration of his revolutionary message, his invitation to the great cosmic marriage feast – and what happens? The people just sit and gawp. They don’t respond. This is the first and only time, by the way, in Matthew’s gospel where Jesus vents his frustration – where it appears that things are not going to plan.
In the next four-verses, the ones that were dropped from today’s lectionary, Jesus reproaches the people for their inertness, their lack of reaction: In chapter 11, verse 20 we read: ‘Then he began to reproach the cities in which most of his deeds of power had been done, because they did not repent’.
Yet what he does next is the really surprising thing: he is frustrated, angry even – and what does he do? He turns round and gives thanks. Look at verses 25 and 26: ‘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.’ Why is this? When Jesus could have been discouraged by the people’s childishness, their unresponsiveness, as well as the Pharisees unrepentance, he suddenly breaks into thanksgiving. It’s as if somehow and somewhere, behind and above a discouraging world, stands a poised Father, completely in control and utterly unfrustrated.
And finally, exactly the same thing happens in Paul’s disclosure of his own inadequacies to the Romans. Let me read again from verses 23-25: ‘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!’ What causes this sudden switch from frustration and despair to an outburst of gratitude? What have both Christ and St Paul suddenly caught sight of? When you have found the answer to that question you will have found the good news of the Gospel.