Making It Real – sermon on July 9, 2017
Matthew 11: 7-19 and 25-30 As John’s disciples were leaving, Jesus began talking about him to the crowds. “What kind of man did you go into the wilderness to see? Was he a weak reed, swayed by every breath of wind? Or were you expecting to see a man dressed in expensive clothes? No, people with expensive clothes live in palaces. Were you looking for a prophet? Yes, and he is more than a prophet. John is the man to whom the Scriptures refer when they say, ‘Look, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, and he will prepare your way before you.’ I tell you the truth, of all who have ever lived, none is greater than John the Baptist. Yet even the least person in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he is! And from the time John the Baptist began preaching until now, the Kingdom of Heaven has been forcefully advancing, and violent people are attacking it. For before John came, all the prophets and the law of Moses looked forward to this present time. And if you are willing to accept what I say, he is Elijah, the one the prophets said would come. Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand!”
Jesus went on, “To what can I compare this generation? It is like children playing a game in the public square. They complain to their friends, ‘We played wedding songs, and you didn’t dance, so we played funeral songs, and you didn’t mourn.” For John didn’t spend his time eating and drinking, and you say, ‘he’s possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man, on the other hand, feasts and drinks, and you say, ‘he’s a glutton and a drunkard, and a friend of tax collectors and other sinners!’ But wisdom is shown to be right by its results.”
At that time Jesus prayed this prayer: “O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for hiding these things from those who think themselves wise and clever, and for revealing them to the childlike. Yes, Father, it pleased you to do it this way! My Father has entrusted everything to me. No one truly knows the Son except the Father, and no one truly knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”
Sermon: Making it Real by Rev. Doreen Oughton
Way back when I was in seminary, my favorite on-campus worship service to attend was the one put on by the Black Student Alliance. I loved how engaged the congregation was, calling out, “preach it,” and “well?” in addition to frequent “amens!” I could see how it energized the preacher, stirred up his or her passion, which got the crowd going more and so on. It was exciting and invigorating. I found myself wanting to call out during Sunday worship at my home church, and really wishing people would call out to me when I did my student guest preaching. But it was not to be. I confess I was too self-conscious to call out in a place where that wasn’t the norm, and I imagine not many people in the mostly white churches I preached at had any inkling of this idea of spontaneous shout outs during the sermon. But I want you to know that, even though you are not shouting out, and even though I preach from a manuscript, you are an important element in the preaching. By your facial expressions, your nods, your apparent interest or disinterest, you have an impact on what I am saying and how I say it. My relationship with you influences the direction I go in with the scripture passage. I hold you all in my heart and mind as I read and study.
I bring all this up because I can’t help wonder what is going on with the people listening to Jesus preach in the passage we heard this morning. He has sent off the 12 disciples to do the work of harvesting we talked about a few weeks ago, and he sets off without them to continue to preach and heal and proclaim the good news. As he is doing this, he is approached by some followers of John the Baptist who come with a message, a question. They tell him that John wants to know, “Are you the one, or do we wait for another?” Jesus advises them to let John know about the work he is doing, the work that fulfills the scriptural prophesies about the one to come. And then he turns to the crowd.
What does he see or hear or perceive? Are there whispers about a showdown of the prophets? Do they suppose John’s followers were dissing Jesus? Do some overhear the question and assume Jesus is offended? Something seems to have gotten Jesus riled up. He lets the crowd know in no uncertain terms that John is a prophet and more, and that John’s work and his are intimately connected. John was the one preparing the way for him, Jesus, who is advancing the kindom of heaven. And he says that as great as John is, those who are living in the kindom are even greater, even the least of those who are there. Jesus came to advance the coming of the kindom of heaven on earth. He declared it to be near, to be within and among and between us. He is inviting all who hear him to live into the kindom, to live into their greatness.
And again, I wonder what he saw and heard – skepticism, disinterest, people walking away now that they see there is no beef between Jesus and John? So, he calls them out. “To what shall I compare this generation?” He says they are like children playing in the square who can’t get their friends to play along – not to dance at the wedding songs nor mourn to the funeral songs. Jesus can’t get his listeners to engage, to play, to wonder, to imagine. They want him to give them something more concrete – a verbal smackdown of John, powerful healing, a road map to heaven, perhaps some stone tablets with the words of God on them. But he wants them to listen for the tunes, to engage, to dance.
I watched an interesting TED talk the other day by Yuval Harari in which he explains the rise of humans over all other animals. He says it’s more than our ability to communicate and cooperate, which other animals can do. But they can do it only in small groups of creatures that they know, that they can see. Humans have the ability to communicate and cooperate in large numbers, with people unknown and unseen, and this is because we can imagine. We can believe in something we cannot see, and so make abstractions real. Harari uses money as an example, pointing out that we can give a piece of paper (a bill) to someone who doesn’t know us, has never seen us, and get an item or a service in return, because of our collective agreement that the paper has value. Jesus is urging his listeners to imagine and make real the kindom of heaven, as real as earthly nations have become – and they are nothing but ideas and agreements. Jesus needs them, needs us, to engage wholeheartedly so that this kindom can open up before us. You can dance to a wedding tune even if there isn’t a wedding, and therefore make the joy real. You can mourn to the funeral song even if the loss isn’t your own, and so connect with another in an act of healing.
Jesus goes on to talk about the criticisms made first against John for his abstinence, and then against Jesus for his indulgence. He seems to be saying that it is not about one way being right and the other wrong, for people will find fault with both. He says that wisdom is shown to be right by its results. If an ascetic lifestyle brings John and his followers closer to the kindom, it is wise. If Jesus’ feasting and friendship with sinners brings them closer to the kindom, it is wise. Chose a path and engage and you will find wisdom. You can even switch paths, but engage. Open your mind, let yourself imagine, let yourself believe what you cannot see. Let yourself ask questions and not have the answers at the ready. Don’t box God in with your preconceived ideas, by what you have been told about who God is and how God works. Jesus’ reference to children playing also nudges us to be like children in our eagerness to know more, in our acceptance that there is a vast knowledge and wisdom that is not yet ours, no matter how long we have walked this earth. Jesus lifts up a prayer of thanks that God reveals things to those who are childlike, while hiding them from those who believe themselves to be so wise and clever. When we think we already know, we are not open to learning. We disengage.
Harari talks about how society advances because of humankind’s ability to agree on things of imagination or abstraction. Brian McLaren talks about how important it is to disagree about things as well. And as with Jesus and John, these ideas are not at odds with each other. McLaren talks about the bible as a library, which would hold a variety of information and ideas, many at odds with each other, giving different perspectives. This reflects the culture and community for which the library was created. After all, cultures and communities are messy, full of internal tensions, and a good library would reflect that tension. What is a culture but a group of people who argue about the same things over many generations. These long-standing arguments and disagreements reveal a deep unity. A culture thinks some questions are important enough to keep struggling over and over and over, through generations. To be part of a culture means that you agree that its questions are important, regardless of the proposed answers. Healthy debate and disagreement, a variety of perspectives are signs of vitality in a culture. Again, we see the importance of engagement. Dance to the wedding songs, mourn to the funeral songs.
You will soon have a chance to engage with some questions of the church culture – questions about what it means to truly be a welcoming church, especially to a group of people who have been harmed by the church. We will start to explore whether this church is called to be an Open and Affirming church, a designation used by the UCC to indicate that a church has wrestled with some important questions about beliefs regarding the full participation in the church of LGBTQ people. Again, more important than the outcome of our work is the engagement in the process. Now this may feel scary to some of you. There have been disagreements about this and other topics in the fairly recent history of this church that resulted in increased tension and decreased membership. But I think it is not healthy for us to insulate ourselves from some of the risks and messiness of a true community. For me, the scary thing is that people won’t show up, won’t engage in the work, won’t imagine and, with the guidance of the holy spirit, re-create this faithful body. I pray that you will, that we all will. I trust that if we keep an open mind, a child-like eagerness to learn from each other, God’s wisdom will be revealed.
And maybe it is not fear that might keep you from engaging, but exhaustion. Perhaps you already feel overwhelmed by what life and church has asked of you and you don’t want to attend one more thing. To you, please incline your ear to Jesus as he invites you, invites all of us: “Come to me all you who are weary 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.” May it be so.
