Matthew 11:16-24 Still Hopeful Surely there have been occasions you felt you didn t have the right words to say- at a funeral or when you visited someone in the hospital. And there may have been times you reached a point of such intense pain or shock, or even joy, that you could not speak. Elie Wiesel, the essayist and novelist and historian, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and Holocaust survivor, has written that for years after WWII, and the death camps, he simply did not speak: the horror and fear and suffering of that time were so great that he could not find words to express them; and he withdrew deeper and deeper into himself. And there is a wonderful French film from the late 70s- an Academy Award winner- entitled Get Out Your Handkerchiefs which begins with a frustrated husband seeking a music instructor to help bring his wife out of her silent boredom. All she does all day long is sit in the house knitting and listening to Mozart; and what she does not do is speak. Perhaps music can best express our emotions, can reach into those numb places where words cannot gothus the Mozart. One memory I hope to keep all my life was a couple of years ago at a funeral with my mother- my mother who cannot put two words together to make a coherent thought, but when a soloist began singing Amazing Grace my mother began singing softly with her, and it was so sweet and beautiful.
And there are times, more times than I could or should tell you, when I feel I don t have words to express what a passage of scripture means- or what it means to me. And this scripture makes me feel even more inadequate. It is a difficult passage. It is deep and difficult to understand, and it is difficult for us to deal with what we do understand in it. Perhaps one place to begin is the quotation in verse 17, where Jesus says, We piped to you, but you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn. Here are mute responses to joy and hurt- music and dance, and wordless sorrow and weeping. These are depths of emotions we can understand. And what we need to know, then, is the meaning of the two groups here- the musicians and the wailers, and those who neither dance nor mourn. Jesus speaks this little couplet, as he says in verse 16, to describe this generation, in other places called the evil or crooked or perverse or adulterous generation. Now, this generation is not any particular generation; but rather, every generation in every age of the world, and it stands as a comparison to the Kingdom of God. This generation is like those bullies who expect the rest of us to play the game by their rules, who demand that we dance to the tune they play. I can t help but think of the outlaws in the old westerns, who shoot at the feet of unarmed men and tell them to dance. This generation are the powerful who
make the rules about religion and morality and proper thought and behavior, and then demand that the rest of us obey them. But the Kingdom of God is ruled by God alone, and the people of the Kingdom obey only God. So that our examples, here in verses 18 and 19, John the Baptist and Jesus, are two men who broke the rules of this generation keeping their lives in perfect step with God: you didn t see John the Baptist dancing to their song, and so, they said he was possessed; and when Jesus came to show everyone the joy and mercy of God s Kingdom, they said look at him, a drunk and a glutton, friend of sinners! They said that he should be more serious- religion is serious business, after all! When Jesus says in verse 12, that the Kingdom has suffered violence and violent people try to take it by force, it is this generation he is speaking of, this generation that killed John the Baptist, and crucified the Son of Man; it is a religious entity because it wishes to control the way to God, even violently if necessary- just think of the history of the conquering church, the Inquisition, the wars for orthodoxy and wars of conquest, think of the way some religious leaders today offhandedly condemn others different from themselves; think of how easy it is for us to judge and ostracize others- you ve seen it happen in church; think of
how Christian and Muslim terrorists distort the messages of peace and love contained in our holy books. Look at the paragraph beginning in verse 20. Here are these three towns, on the northern edge of the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus had performed numerous miracles and powerful deeds, and the people followed him hoping to get some blessing from him; they brought him the sick and crippled and he healed them, they heard his teaching and saw Jesus debate against the heartless legalism of the Pharisees. All this they experienced, yet they did not take to heart the words and works of Jesus- they refused to repent. They were content to remain part of this generation, rather than change their hearts and minds and give themselves to the rule of God, and to be ruled by God s love. When Jesus speaks here, he is not speaking of individual faults, but of a collective guilt, and of a civic or national need to repent. Notice it is the cities Jesus condemns, not persons. And so, this generation is a political entity, as well. Political in the sense of relationships between citizens based upon policy, political in the way that government (and church government also!) should provide opportunity and justice for its people, should exist for all citizens, and not just for the elite, though this generation contorts it into party affiliations and favoritism
and seeking and keeping power. The Kingdom of God is a political entity, too, not in order to become a voting bloc, but that it is people in humble relationship with one another, governed by the love of God, seeking the good of brothers and sisters. This is important, because many people have confused church affiliation and personal and public morality with obedience to God- but it is more than that; they have equated an emotional response to worship and personal spiritual fulfillment to God s approval- but it is much more than that; so many good people who are still part of this generation who have not given their hearts over to God, who withhold their hearts from other people. Sometimes we may feel overwhelmed by the size of the problems in churches, in our nation, in the world, and angered by the careless way that leaders may twist the truth to benefit their election campaigns, or to justify their personal ideology, or to fill the pockets of their friends and supporters; we may be frustrated by the silence of the good people. It would be better, Jesus says, for wicked Sodom and Gomorrah, for the pagan cities of the Bible, can we say better on the judgment day for Havana and Beijing and Hanoi and Islamabad, than for this nation, this generation, that willingly follows such greedy and prideful leaders.
Yet, I am still hopeful. The story is not finished yet, more verses follow our text in chapter 11, and they are words that call to us out of our labor and our burdens, out of our inarticulate struggles, words that call us to Jesus, to take up his yoke, to share his labor. I am still hopeful because this call comes out of the love and grace of God and not from our own success, our strength, our rugged individualism, or our connections to the right people. To take up his yoke is to bind ourselves to one another. The work of Jesus is the healing of people, and his yoke, which we put on, is one we share in service to one another. Only here can be the salvation of this generation: where we, as a people, as a nation, as a church, may be forgiven our collective guilt- our acquiescence to the lies and the injusticeand brought into God s Kingdom. All of chapter 11 is Jesus answer to the question of John the Baptist in verse 3, Are you the one? And Jesus replies that the blind see and the crippled walk again, the deaf hear, and the poor have good news preached to them. There is no word of Jesus seeking to gain power for himself, or for his followers. In the battle against evil in the world, Jesus has employed truth and hope and compassion. We can see in his response that Jesus offers the Kingdom of God to the lowly; and in
verse 25, Jesus thanks God for hiding the truth of the Kingdom from the wise and revealing it to children. So, I still hope. God keeps coming to us, keeps calling to us, joining with us, sharing our burdens, loving us, giving us companionship when we are alone and understanding when we are lost, and creating among us a family of faith that will share the road of life and the work of God s Kingdom of love and peace. In our troubled or our silent times, let the Lord show himself to be the one. Face God humbly and behold the mercy he gives to all creatures.