“Plan B” – Sermon on July 3, 2011
July 3, 2011
Scripture: Matthew 11: 16-19, 25-30
Jesus said, “But 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.”
Sermon: Plan B
by Rev. Doreen Oughton
Have you ever had a plan in mind that was great, really wonderful, but you somehow just couldn’t get it to work out? Maybe you applied for, even interviewed for a job that would be just perfect for you, but you couldn’t get that second interview. Maybe you had a great idea for a certain ministry for the church, but you just couldn’t get people to join you, and you couldn’t do it alone. Maybe you’d planned to stay married, stay in a loving family situation ’til death did you part, but no matter how hard you both tried to make it work, the marriage just couldn’t hold and you ended up divorced. Maybe you’d planned to spend you golden years with your beloved, enjoying each other with leisure, but he or she passed away much too soon. What do you do then? How do you pick up and move on when what you’d planned for was so right, so right?
I have a feeling that Jesus was in a place like that in the reading this morning. It starts out with him saying, “But 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.’” He goes on to say how he and John the Baptist had different ways of sharing the same message, but the people he spoke to couldn’t hear it from either of them. He’s exasperated. He’s been trying so hard to engage people with his message, and he knows that John, as different as he was from Jesus, trusted the message and tried to guide people to it. But people refused to hear it, criticized one, then the other, setting up barriers to the message.
Jesus’ plan was to save the lost sheep of Israel. He knew that they had strayed far from right relationships with God, each other, the world around them, even within themselves. He was concerned that the temple, the Jewish religion, instead of bringing them closer to God was putting more obstacles to right living. The laws had not brought about the freedom they were intended to, but had become burdensome to the people. Most likely he wanted to get the faith leaders on board, to change the way they understood and did things, to purify the faith so that it again worked in people’s lives to reconcile them to God and to their divine purpose to express God’s glory. But it was slow going. In the chapter before this one, Jesus sent his disciples out to proclaim his message because he had observed so many who were, in his words, harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. The harvest is plentiful, he’d said, but the laborers few. He had no confidence in the so-called laborers for God among the temple leadership, so he coached his own and sent them out.
So his plan to reach the religious leaders, to get them back on track to get the people headed in the right direction was not working out. The religious leaders were looking for any excuse to dismiss him. He was proclaimed by John the Baptist as the anointed one, but John, to the religious leaders, was a crazy ascetic, obviously in the spell of a demon. And Jesus himself was categorized as a glutton and drunk who kept terrible, sinful company. And Jesus was getting pretty worked up about it – calling them out on the way they talked from both sides, the way they refused to engage. There is a part of the scripture that is not included in the reading, but is a rant of sorts against the towns he’s preached to but have not repented. “Woe to you,” he says to them. “You have not repented even after witnessing my deeds of power.” The judgment on you will be fierce, he says.
Makes me think of how the potential employee might say “woe to you” employer. You might save a few bucks hiring someone younger with less experience, but they’ll end up running your company into the ground. Or “woe to you” ex-spouse. You thought you’d find peace walking away from this marriage, but everyone is hurting, finances are tighter, and there is an aching sense of failure that persists. Woe to you. So easy to get caught up in predicting disaster when things aren’t going according to your plan. So easy to focus on the hardship that didn’t have to be there, if only…
But then there is a dramatic shift in Jesus’ tone and action. He stops his rant, and prays. He says a prayer of gratitude – “I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth.” How many of us do that when things aren’t going the way we planned – stop and say, “Thank you God, thank you.” I don’t do it as often as I’d like, but I do stop and pray when I find myself getting all riled up, or when I feel I’ve hit a wall. I have figured out that moaning and groaning about how things aren’t going right doesn’t really get me very far. It makes me feel more stuck. Is that how Jesus was feeling, like he was painting himself into a corner with his words? However he got to the point of prayer, he got there. “Thank you God, thank you.” It was these words of gratitude that opened him up to see what was really there to be thankful for. In saying thank you, he was thankful. He saw that it was a gift that he had so many followers. The religious leaders weren’t listening, but lots of people were, lots of people who had been like lost sheep.
No matter how bad things get, no matter how much things seem to fall apart, prayers of thanks can help you see blessings. There is a story in the magazine Christian Century that tells of a woman who, in a period of two years went through the death of her husband, the incarceration of her son for drug possession, and the suicide of her daughter. She was drowning in grief, despairing of what kind of future she could possibly have. Somehow her pastor found the nerve to say something so outrageous to her at the time that she never forgot it. He told her, “thank God every day, even and especially when you can scarcely find a reason to do so.” The advice grabbed her, and though there were many days that she couldn’t manage to thank God for anything, she gathered her courage enough to try. Eventually it became a daily practice for her, and then a source of strength, hope and even joy for her.
So Jesus gives thanks, and sees the blessing, of how it was God’s grace that opened the eyes of the infants as he calls them – the innocent, the dependent ones, even while the so-called wise and intelligent saw nothing of the truth. And so he changes his plan, he stops spinning his wheels with the wise and intelligent and begins to focus his work on the harassed and helpless, the sheep without a shepherd. “Come to me all you who are weary, all who are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” The people who have been worn down by their efforts to meet their religious obligations, who put their last mites into the collection box, who don’t have the proper eating utensils, those who are diseased or disfigured, who associate with someone diseased or disfigured – all those who are shunned and burdened, to them Jesus promises rest.
It is not, however, the kind of rest that is so strictly enforced by the religious leaders of the time, when work is forbidden on the Sabbath, the day of rest. Instead Jesus sees rest as work that refreshes, renews and replenishes. It is the work of re-creation. In the passage that follows today’s, Jesus defends himself and his followers to the religious leaders for plucking grain and eating on the Sabbath, and then restoring a man’s shriveled hand to wholeness. Jesus assigns a whole different understanding to Sabbath. He reframes it from a weekly burden of vigilant inactivity to a weekly peak of God’s delightful project of creation.
When we take the yoke of Jesus upon us, we draw on his gentleness, his humbleness of heart, and his joy. We yoke ourselves to do the joyful work of creation and recreation. And indeed it is light work. Something to give thanks for each and every day. May it be so.
