A Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (26/07/20): God's Promises Are Fulfilled Despite What We Do

God's Promises Are Fulfilled Despite What We Do 

Genesis 29:15-30 

Jacob has been confronting the question that all of us from time to time must face. What does the future hold? Where is his life going? Jacob at one level knows better than most some of the answer to that question. He is the recipient, the carrier, of a promise of God. God has promised him that hill will have many offspring. His children will be numerous. They will be so numerous in fact that they will become a nation. And this is only his part of a much larger promise which God has made to his family and to the whole human race. Jacob is one link in a chain that leads from Abraham to Jesus. One moment in the trajectory of the story of God's gracious dealing with the human race. The promise to Jacob is one in a long sequence which make up God's saving action. The story begins with the promise to Abraham that he will become many nations and that his descendants will be a blessing to the whole world. And it leads eventually to the promise made through Jesus Christ that anyone who would follow him should share in his life, life in all its abundance. 

But right now that story seems stalled. There is an obstacle in the path of all these thing coming to fruition. There is no prospect of Jacob having any children. He doesn't even have a wife. And what is more just now he is the world's least eligible bachelor. He has run away from home. He has run away just before the consequences of his actions caught up with him. He has deceived his father and betrayed his twin brother. He tricked Esau out of his inheritance. And then he duped his father into giving him the blessing that rightfully belonged to his brother. Not unnaturally Jacob is not welcome at home. So he is on the run. He is a penniless refugee. He is not a victim, since that situation is of his own making. But he is definitely not a very appealing prospect. He is not good husband material!

Jacob though is the sort of person who always treats a problem as an opportunity. Every situation he finds himself in is an opportunity for him to get ahead. Even before he was born he struggled to gain the advantage over his twin. He was born grasping his brother's heal. And from the moment he was born he has always used his cleverness, his ingenuity, and indeed his outright deceptiveness to take hold his own future. He has always striven to make his own future. He has tried to shape that future to his own liking. The name he was given means “he grasps” because he was holding his brother's heal. But his name's true significance became clear as time went on, it means “usurper.” Jacob is the one who grasps the position, the place in life, that does not belong to him. And without a wife, at this point he presumes to takes God's place. Rather than accept the promise that God has made to him, and trust that God will be true to that promise, Jacob sets about making it come true for himself. He will make the fulfillment of that promise in his own time, at his own convenience and according to his own preferences. 

So looking for a wife Jacob has arrived at his uncle Laban's house. Laban is his mother's brother. And Jacob, as soon as he arrived, has seen what he wants. He wants Rachel. Jacob wants he beautiful and graceful daughter of a wealthy man. She fits Jacob's plan for his future perfectly. He can sort out fulfilling God's promise and have what he wants all at the same time. Jacob is utterly smitten with Rachel. And as so often happens, when people are in love, or in what passes for love, or in what they imagine is love but is in fact lust and self-interest, as so often happens Jacob's usual good sense and wiliness leaves him. He is so consumed with his desire for Rachel that his guard is down. 

Uncle Laban is a shrewd man. No one gets to where he is today without a measure cunning and guile and an eye for a good deal when he sees one. Perhaps he recalls the time when Abraham's servant arrived looking for a bride for Isaac. They arrived with camels laden with treasure and took away his sister Rebekah to become Isaac's wife and eventually Jacob's mother. But Jacob is a different prospect altogether. He has no treasure. He has nothing at all. He doesn't even have a good reputation! He is a fugitive and rather at Laban's mercy. Though Laban seems to be all friendliness to begin with. He welcomes Jacob's suggestion that he and Rachel should become man and wife. “Better,” he says “that I should give her to you than that I should give her to any other man.” And the crafty dealer that he is, seeing that Jacob is too taken with Rachel to be cautious, Laban lets Jacob name his own terms. Jacob offers to work for Laban for seven years for the hand of Rachel in marriage. Jacob is prepared to pay a very high price to get what he wants, and he wants Rachel. You know just how good a deal Laban is getting when he snaps it up right away, no bargaining, no haggling, done! Laban gets to keep Rachel and all the work she might do, for seven more years. But on top of that he gets Jacob's labour as well, bargain! 

As the seven years pass Jacob reckons he has got a good deal. Those seven years pass as if they were a day. His anticipation of the reward at the end, Rachel as his wife, carried him through them all with hardly a care. Life is sweet. The future he had planned and shaped for himself is all coming about. He has taken God's promise and he is making it come true. The wedding feast arrives. It is a great party. In the evening Jacob rolls into bed, probably having had slightly more to drink than was wise. But he is ready for the fulfilment of seven years of longing. 

When Laban and Jacob had first met, Laban had declared: “Surely you are my bone and my flesh” He now sets about and proves that they are indeed cut from the same cloth. There is a twist in this story. Laban has two daughters. Rachel is the second. She has an older sister Leah. Older, less pretty, less graceful, Leah's eyes, it was said, were lovely. That sounds like faint praise compared to Rachel. But it is not even that. It is a slur which the  ancient rabbis and modern translators alike are ashamed to expose. What it really says there is: "Leah's eyes were weak." Was she short sighted, were her looks and her grace spoiled by a squint? Or did she simply lack the sparkle that was present in her sister's eyes that made her so attractive? 

The trickster is tricked. Laban proves himself every bit as crafty and deceitful as his nephew. Jacob has met his match. In the dark and in the alcoholic haze Leah is inserted into Jacob's bed rather than Rachel. And Jacob doesn't spot the difference. And their marriage is consummated! In the morning there are the recriminations. “What is this you have done to me?” cries Jacob dismayed. Laban keeps a straight face while laughing inside. “This is not done in our country – giving the younger before the first born.” Oh the irony! Jacob the younger, who had tricked the firstborn out of his inheritance, now tricked into marrying the firstborn instead of the younger! But there is still a deal to be made, “Tell you what,” says Laban with a smirk, “we will give you the other in return for serving me another seven years.” When the honeymoon with Leah was over he could have his Rachel. But now his prize tasted like dust and ashes. The future he was designing for himself in ruins. The first seven years had past in a moment, Every moment of the second seven years dragged like an eternity. Seven years paying off a debt for something he didn't want. What more burdensome servitude could there be. And in those circumstance, lovely as she was, Rachel can hardly have been much consolation, with her sister Leah there as a constant reminder of the terrible mess that Jacob has made of his life.

This story reminds me of nothing more than a soap opera And perhaps the comparison is a genuine one. The drama in the story is perhaps slightly exaggerated, maybe it is heightened for effect. But on the other hand, like a soap opera, it is true enough to life to be believable. This is exactly the kind of mess people can get themselves into when they are trying to take hold of life and shape a future for themselves. Everyone's self interest runs up against everyone else's. Problem and opportunity, power and weakness are thrown into the mix. And the awful tangle that is human life and human society is what comes out of the other end. But where is God in this? As Bible readings go, the tale of how Jacob ended up married to two women, is remarkable because God is not mentioned once. God is not even hinted at. Everyone is acting pretty much as we all might. Using the freedom we have to do what we think is best in the circumstances we find ourselves in. Some of us act with the best intentions. Some act with much more selfish and self-interested intentions. But in fact most of us are mixed up and not sure. And all of it is done without any reference to God, and without any reference to what God might intend for us in the long term. Jacob, Laban, and we just get on with living. But God works his purpose out. God is there unseen bringing about the future which God wants. This sorry tale of a trickster who gets tricked, this sorry tale is the beginning of the story of the foundation of God's chosen people, Israel. The people who carry on the promise of blessing for all that was made to Abraham, the story of God's seeking to love and save the human race that continues through Jesus Christ to reach us here and now, begins here. It is a story of God seeking our best and of God's will being done despite our best efforts to get in the way of it. Even at our best God accomplishes his good will despite what we do, rather than because of it. Facing what the future holds  we can do so with hope and confidence and even joy because whilst like Jacob we cannot ever shape that future quite the way we want, we like him are carriers of God's promise: We know that all things work together for good for those who love God. God can even use our deceit, our ambition, even our lust to bring about his good purpose,  as he did with Jacob and Laban and Rachel and Leah. He used the betrayal of a friend and an agonising death to bring us to him. Which is what he did with Judas and with Jesus. He continues to work even through our failure and short comings to bring about his reign of love. 

There is a next episode in the soap opera Leah, the unloved wife, cries out to God. And God, we know, has a habit of lifting up the lowly and downtrodden. God hears her cry and gives her sons.  Her sons are Reuben and Simeon and Levi and Judah. They are the founders of great tribes. In our forgetfulness we still commit the same injustice against Leah as Jacob did. One of the prayers in our service book, in the interests of inclusiveness, now names not only the patriarchs, but also their wives. So we pray to: "The God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel." We still prefer the pretty one! Yet it is Leah's son, Judah, who is the bearer of God's ongoing promise. It is from him that are descended the kings David and Solomon, and his line continues down to the messiah: Jesus Christ. But the truth is, despite what anyone does, despite how forgetful we can be God's will is still done. No human scheme or device,  no deceitfulness or trickery,  can do more than delay the future God is forming. The future will be shaped according to God's promise to work only good for those who love him. 

Amen.

God's Promises Are Fulfilled Despite What We Do by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (19/07/20): Wheat and Weeds

Wheat and Weeds

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

What is the kingdom of heaven like? What does God’s reign look like? Perhaps this is the most important theme which Jesus’ teaching addresses. From the outset Jesus announces that the kingdom has come very near, and is indeed present in his person, but that merely begs the question, what is it like? And time after time Jesus tries to answer that question. Again and again he presents us with word pictures that try to help us understand the nature and character of God’s reign. Over and over he tells stories that attempt to illuminate for us the kingdom of heaven. In many of these parables Jesus draws on the rural life which his first hearers are familiar with. And a number of these parables picture the kingdom as a field of growing wheat. This is what Jesus wants us to visualise at this point:

“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good wheat in his field. . .” 

It is a simple enough picture to grasp. Even now a drive into the countryside at different times of the year will reveal to us the development of crops. The year begins with empty fields, bare earth into which seeds are sown. Soon after the first sprouts appear and the ground acquires a hint of bright green against the dark earth. Little by little the fields are filled with maturing plants until the harvest comes and the fully matured crops are brought in. Jesus wants us to visualise the kingdom as a present being somewhere in the middle of that process. The kingdom has been established. In the life and ministry of Jesus himself all that needs to be done to bring about God’s full and final reign has been done. The kingdom will come, as sure as summer follows spring and autumn follows summer. But as yet God’s reign is not fully realised on earth. It is yet to be fulfilled. We are in that time in between. This is the time during which the kingdom will grow, just like seeds planted in a field will grow. We live in the tension, in the now-and-not-yet of the kingdom, between its establishment in and by Jesus and its final fulfillment. We are living through the time between planting and harvest.

Of course a field of wheat just growing doesn’t make much of a story. Watching wheat grow is perhaps an even more tedious activity than watching paint dry. But the growth of the kingdom is not without dramatic tension. Jesus tells us that there is a problem with this field:

“But while everybody was sleeping an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.”

Matthew recalls that when Jesus explained this parable he meant us to understand that field represents the world. Looking at the world it is easy to observe that it isn’t just good seed that is growing there. The world is not as it should be. People are held back from realising their full potential, of coming to life in all its fullness as God intends. The weeds which grow among the wheat are those of economic inequality and exploitation, of prejudice and hostility between people of differing races and languages and religions and outlooks. The world itself is being consumed and degraded by the way in which it is being used and exploited, which leaves the existence of many precarious and might ultimately render the world uninhabitable. The state of the world is now such that at times we might feel that we are hardly able to see any wheat at all for the weeds. In Jesus’ story the fruitful growth of the field is disrupted by the actions of an enemy who sowed weeds amongst the good wheat. It would be too easy to use this parable to push away from ourselves responsibility for the state of the world. But this is not what Jesus intends at this point. What he wants us to be clear about is that the state of the world is not how God ever intended it to be. Inequality, division and hostility and degradation are not part of how God intends the world to be. The field which God sowed was a field of good wheat. That it is now full of weeds is no part of God’s intention, even if it is very hard for us to explain how this state of affairs came about, or for us to accept our share of the responsibility.

Christians have what must be called a revolutionary vision of how the world should and will be. That is what the kingdom of heaven is, it is a vision of the world set right. It is a vision of the world turned upside down, quite literally a revolution. The established social and political order will be transformed into an order which reflects God’s good intention for the world and our place in it. That is the wheat which is growing in the field of weeds. But there is a profound contrast between Christians and revolutionaries in a conventional sense. One element of the story which Jesus’ explanation doesn’t identify is who the slaves represent. That omission is quite deliberate. It creates the opportunity, the demand even, for the followers of Jesus to identify themselves with the slaves of the master who sowed good seeds. Inevitably Jesus’ followers seeing the world as it is, and holding onto a vision of the world as we do, are going to ask, what should we do? Seeing the field of wheat filled with weeds the slaves ask their master what they should do about the weeds:

“Then do you want to go and gather them?” 

This is the impulse of the revolutionary, or even just of the activist. They see the world as it is. They know that something is wrong. And they set about putting it right. There is no denying that it is a vitally important part of Christian discipleship and mission to identify and address the world's problems. To fail to do so would be to fail in our calling to love our neighbours. But there is a limit to how much we can take into our own hands. There is a limit to our understanding of good and evil in the world which we must acknowledge. We must be humble enough to acknowledge that we cannot be certain where the boundary between fruitful growth and harmful weeds lies. This is the contrast between Christians and revolutionaries and quite a lot of activists who admit no such limits to their understanding. Che Guevara, the Argentinian/Cuban revolutionary, once pointed out that the true motivation of the revolutionary is, despite what you might think, love. He is not wrong. In that way Christians and revolutionaries are alike. They both aspire to a vision of human fulfilment and fruitfulness. But the revolutionary is certain of their understanding and are prepared to use any means necessary to achieve their objectives. They are clear in their own mind about what is wrong of how to get to a field without any weeds. Jesus points us to the consequences of that kind of certainty. The master in Jesus’ story replies to the question of his slaves:

“No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.”

The problem with the slaves' plan is that, first it may be difficult to tell the difference between the wheat and the weeds. And second, and more importantly, the roots of the wheat and weeds may be so entangled that it would be impossible to pull up one without the other. If the slaves took that action it may end up doing more harm than good, and the harvest might be a great deal less abundant than it could have been.

Unsurprisingly Jesus’ parable presents us with a picture of God. A picture which might be somewhat lost if we pay too much attention to the way Matthew recalls Jesus’ explanation of his parable. In the explanation which Jesus gives to his disciples attention is directed to the end of the story. Jesus retells the ending of his story in greater detail, but with more conventionally mythological imagery: 

“The Son of Man will send his angels and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and evil doers and they will be thrown into the furnace of fire where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

It is this ending which so often revolutionaries want to take into their own hands. And even Christians in their more frustrated and downhearted moments wish would come about sooner rather than later. It is the violent moment of judgement which revolutionaries hope to bring about and Christians look for in the return of Christ. It is the great assurance which Jesus gives, that in the end all will be made right. All evil and all the causes of evil will be removed from the world, so that everyone and everything good in the world might flourish. But paying over much attention to that moment loses sight of the meaning of the time in between that we’re actually living through, and what it tells us about God. Wheat and weeds grow together because the master refuses to endanger any of the wheat by allowing the weeds to be uprooted. The master wants all of his wheat to have the fullest opportunity to come to maturity. In the face of his field being filled with weeds the master shows a good deal of patience and forbearance:

"Let them both grow until the harvest."

This is what Jesus wants us to hear about God and about the state of the world. God provides the world the fullest opportunity for love and goodness to grow in the world, even as evil and suffering continue. God is patient with the world. The harvest time will come, it is then that the weeds will be dealt with. The difference between revolutionaries and Christians is not so much a difference between the world they might like to see, but a difference in how they hold onto that vision. The revolutionary is perhaps impatient. The revolutionary wants to see the world put right sooner rather than later, and is prepared to go into the field and start pulling up the weeds. As Christians we hold onto that vision of the world which is the kingdom of heaven, but we do so with faith which demands patience. We trust that God will bring about the kingdom in its fullness. God will remove evil and suffering from the world. But our faith must be patient, because God will not countenance any transformation of the world which destroys any of the good in the world even as it removes evil. Does this make us tolerant of evil? I don’t think so, because everyday we pray: “Your kingdom come.” 

Amen.

Wheat and Weeds by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (12/07/20): Non Condemnation

No Condemnation

Romans 8:1-11

There is therefore now no condemantion for those who are in Christ. . . . if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies. . . 

This is Paul at his most dense, most theological. He crams more theological thought into these eleven verses than anywhere else in his own writing or anywhere else in the Bible. Paul is addressing the big question, life the universe and everything. Or at least the part of that big question that concerns us most: The human condition. Paul, like everyone eventually, recognises the stark reality of what it is to be human. Our bodies die. And it looks like we, what makes me “me” or you “you”, it looks like we die with them. We don't like it. It is a miserable and disappointing prospect. All that we are turns to dust and ashes. It, all our striving, all our longing, amounts to nothing. But at the same time we are aware that there is something more. The danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard called the human condition: “Finitude flung against eternity.” There is “transcendent.” There is an overarching being, an “is-ness”, that continues. And what is more we have something in common with it. But something has been lost. The worst part about being human is not just that we die, but that we die knowing there is “everlasting”. We are aware that there is “transcendence”, something bigger and more lasting than ourselves. We aware that there is permanence and meaning, but we know that we don't share it. The human condition, as the Bible tells it, is the fall. The overarching being which we are aware of is God. It is God's image we still bear, that awareness of transcendence. One of our familiar  hymns rather elegently sums this up: “Your living likeness still we bear though marred, dishonoured, disobeyed.” (Great God Your love has called us here StF499/H&P500) And death is the result.

 

One response to the human condition, perhaps the most “natural” response is to declare, as  so many do: “Eat drink and be merry for to tomorrow we die.” That is to say with the author of Ecclesiastes: "Vanity of vanities! All is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2). Everything is futile. That being so, you might as well enjoy it while it lasts. This is what Paul would call life according to the flesh. In its most lurid form perhaps what we would most easily recognise as “fleshy living”. Literally eating and drinking, and much else besides, and being merry. It is living a live which ignores the destination that human life is headed to. Or it is anaesthetising oneself from awareness of that destination, by living in the moment by indulging those appetites that we are happy to call “of the flesh”. 

But for Paul religion can just as easily be what he call life according to the flesh. One of the most startling features of the gospel, especially in Paul's reading of it, is the stand the gospel takes against religion and even against morality. We might be tempted to soften that criticism by suggesting Paul opposes "religiosity" and "moralism". But really his fire is directed against religion, even the most perfect religion he knows, the one he was brought up in.   Even as religion tries to answer the question of the human condition, even as it tries to restore what of the image of God that has been lost, even as it tries to restore us to the fullness of that image, even when that religion is the ideal religion, it can still be “life according to the flesh.” Paul in his own life had fully experience the paradox, the internal contradiction, of even an ideal religion. For him the Law, that is the Jewish Torah, the Law is perfect. It fully discloses the nature of God. And it directs human beings to what must be done to restore God's image in us. The Law justly condemns the way in which humans have distorted God's image in themselves. But the Law, even perfect as it is, cannot do what it sets out to do. It cannot restore humans to the image of God. It cannot solve the problem of the human condition. Because as Paul himself has experienced, we can will the Law's requirements but we cannot do them. That is what lies at the heart of the human condition. We can be aware of God. We can be aware of the solution to our condition. But is the very nature of being human, trapped inside our bodies as it were, that prevents us from doing anything about it. It is the ultimate Catch 22. We can will the laws requirements but we cannot do them. And worse than that, the law reminds us of all the things we should not do and should not be. And that very reminder Paul observes, not least in himself, that very reminder places temptation in our way. In a very real sense  religion, even an ideal religion,  leads us into the very thing it is trying to prevent. It sets our minds on the things of the flesh rather than on things of the Spirit. To attempt to fulfil the Law's requirements, and so to stand before God on our own merits, would be to have placed ourselves as the focus of attention rather than God. The attempt to fulfil the Law's just and truthful requirements is to try to approach God in self-righteousness. This is something which is as false as it is impossible. And Paul knows it: "Those who are in the flesh cannot please God." Religion, even the ideal religion, the Law, is as “fleshy” as the hedonism that we more readily condemn. The only thing that religion or moralism will do is leave us condemned by religion and moralism.

 

And it is at this point which Paul is able to disclose the Good News. What the Law could not do, God has done:

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin condemned sin in the flesh so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled.

This is pretty much the whole substance of Paul's Gospel Everything else,  the 16 chapters of his letter to the Romans, and all his other letters, is not much more than understanding and unwrapping the consequences of that one foundational thought. God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves with religion.

In Jesus the righteous requirements of the Law are fulfilled. To unpack pack quite how God does what the Law can't, in Jesus, would take much more than one sermon or even a whole series of sermon. A whole life of discipleship might not get to the end of trying to grasp just how God saves us from ourselves. But perhaps at this point, like driving a car, we can drive it to get us from A to B, without necessarily knowing how it the car did it. We can accept that God has done something for us that we can't do for ourselves. In fact God does something we shouldn't even try to. In Jesus God opens the possibility for God's image to be fully restored in human being. Paul draws one of his great contrasts when he reminds us that we are not in the flesh but in the Spirit. Life in the Spirit perhaps in largest measure is accepting our place in God's order of things. It is, empowered by the Spirit of Christ in us, accepting that we cannot restore God's image in ourselves. It is admitting that we cannot fulfil the Laws righteous demands. It is accepting that we cannot do for ourselves what God therefore must do for us. It is abandoning all prideful, self-righteous attempts to stand before God in our own merit. It is accepting and trusting that what God has done in Christ is sufficient, even if we never will quite understand how it works. The outcome of what God has done is that there is no condemnation for us. Methodists should recognise what that phrase, indeed the whole reading, is for Paul. “No condemnation now I dread” (And can it be StF345/H&P216) we sing. Paul's experience of life in the Spirit is a song that that was sung with the same exultant jubilation by him almost 2000 years ago as we might sing Charles Wesley's words now. The Law condemns us. The human condition is what it is. But that condemnation does not fall against those who are in Christ. There is nothing that we have done, there is nothing that we can do that will remove the restored image of God in us. Those previously lost and missing parts, transcendence, permanence, eternity are restored to us by God. There is nothing that can take that from us, as long as we place our trust in the fact that God has done what nothing else could do 

There is a scene in the film “Oh Brother where Art Thou.” The film is set in America, during the great depression. It is a comedy The central characters are three escaped convicts on the run. At one point they come across a revival meeting at a riverside. A preacher is baptising a large group of people in the river. Two of the three escapees rush into the water and are baptised. In the next scene they are exultant. Everything has been put straight,  they are set free. There is no condemnation for them. Their friend tries to puncture their jubilation They are straight with Lord but, as he points out, “The state of Mississippi is a little more hard nosed.” They haven't escaped those consequences of their actions. In truth both sides of that conversation are correct. There is no condemnation that can fall us from God. The problem of the human condition has been answered. But we still must live with all the consequence of being human. 

We are still “finitude flung against eternity.” We still all die, but that is no longer a miserable disappointing prospect. Because of what God has done in Jesus Christ, death does not have the last word on us: 

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. 

Amen. 

No Condemnation by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (05/07/20): Come to Me, I Will Give You Rest

Come to me, I will give you rest Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 

There's no pleasing some people There is just no pleasing people! “You people!” Jesus says, “You people! What are you like. You are like squabbling children, who can't decide whose game to play. You won't kick a ball when we want you to. You won't play hide and seek when we want you to. You argue like that and end up playing nothing.”

There is just no pleasing people, John the Baptist came along with a message from God: "Repent, judgement is upon you!" He was all demand. He was quite literally "hair shirt." He was out there in the desert shouting. And people said he was bonkers. So Jesus comes along with a message from God: "The kingdom of God had come very near to you." He is all warmth an welcome. He goes where people are. He speaks to their need. He is welcome at their table and in parties. And people say he's a drunk and glutton. There is just no pleasing some people.

There is a profound problem in trying to speak about God, or for God. You end up sounding one of two ways. You either end up sounding like a hectoring killjoy, or you end up sounding like a wishy-washy do-gooder. There's nothing in between, and neither of those options is terribly attractive. It seems that when you speak about God what gets heard is one half of the message or the other, but almost never both together. So people hear the demand that God makes. They are told the world and the people in it is going wrong. They hear the demand for change. And they hear of the disastrous consequences if they don't turn themselves and the world around. They hear hear the hectoring kill-joy John the Baptist and all the “thou shalt nots.” And they want nothing of it. It is all too repressive, too burdensome, and just plain mad. Or people hear the offer which God is making; "Come everyone is welcome. There is nothing that you have done that can hold you back or that can't be set right." They hear the inclusiveness of God's invitation and welcome. They hear what they mistake for the voice of Jesus, that everything will be alright with him. And they think he's a helpless and hopeless idealist. He seems to be just an ineffectual do-gooder that doesn't seem to have grasped the harsh and cynical realities of life. They think they see a free pass for all the wicked, unsavoury, undesirable people in the world. They worry that all the harm and injustice in the world, especially directed against them, is going to go unanswered. There is just no pleasing some people. They want justice in the world, so long as it is directed against someone else. And the they want a welcome, so long as only they and people like them are included in the invitation. Karl Barth, the Swiss theologian, was once led to point out how unsettling a place the Kingdom of Heaven might be. He was asked whether we could expect to see our loved ones in the kingdom. He answered, "Yes, and everyone you hate." The inevitable result of the partial or distorted hearing of the Gospel is that for the most part, by most people, it is rejected. 

Jesus saw this. One of the most encouraging features of the the story of Jesus is that even he didn't convince everyone. At a time when it seems almost impossible to get a hearing for the Good News. And when it is even harder to get anyone to respond. I find it it somewhat reassuring that even Jesus struggled to be heard and accepted. He laments that he is confronted by a bunch of squabbling children. He criticises their contrariness:

It is like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another.

"We played the flute for you, and you did not dance."

"We wailed for you, and you did not mourn."

“You didn't like John the Baptist because he never went to parties and made you feel guilty, but I come to your parties and make you welcome, and you don't like me any better. There's just no pleasing some people.”

But what Jesus does about it is striking. He doesn't plunge into a bout of self-examination, questioning whether it is he who is mistaken. He doesn't wonder how he can repackage his message to make it more accessible and more attractive. He doesn't redouble his efforts to persuade or even cajole those who is not convincing. No! Typically for Jesus, he prays. His answer to those who reject him is prayer. But he doesn't pray for their defeat or their destruction. Instead he turns his attention to those who accept his words and deeds. He prays to God and gives thanks for those who have heard and responded. Because there were some. And indeed, there remain some who hear and respond. And what is more, Jesus points us to who they are:

"I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants."

At a certain level I think Jesus directs us to literal children. When he says “infants” it isn't just a metaphor. I don't see very many children in Church unfortunately. But those I do see "get it." For the most part, from my observation, children grasp what is going on in worship in way that is different from and in some sense better than the adults. I see it most clearly at the communion rail. The children who come forward grasp that what they are being offered is something very special. It is too special to be put into words. And they know they have to respond. Children have yet lived long enough in the world to have been taught to ignore and reject the presence and reality of God. They still have wonder and the readiness to be amazed and just be glad. But it isn't just children. When Jesus says “infants” it is also a metaphor. A few years ago there was an exchange between two American bishops, one an Anglican the other a Methodist. The Anglican was Shelby Spong who was famous or perhaps notorious for his liberal demythologised reading of scripture. He wanted to repackage the message of the gospel to make it palatable, acceptable to the affluent, educated people of 20th and 21st centuries. He pointed to his own daughter, who was a research scientist, her father questioned whether someone like that could be expected to believe the contents of the Bible. To which the Methodist bishop, Will Willimon replied: “I don't know, I don't what sort of a person is she? Does she like a good story? Does she have any imagination?” For Spong and presumably for his daughter the world had been reduced to a place of cold hard facts in which it was hard to find a place for the strangeness and wonder of the gospel. Willimon on the other hand was still prepared to accept a childlike view of the world that left room for the strange and the unexpected and for the wonderful, room for a story that might amaze and delight. Shelby Spong and perhaps more so the vociferous rejecters and deniers of God and religion are those whom Jesus labels “wise and intelligent.” The thing is that Intelligence and wisdom are so often just the names that we give to the power and the violence that we use to maintain our illusion that we are in control. The weak and the dispossessed, like children, have no such illusions. That is why it is they and those who identify with them are the ones who can hear the Good News, and for whom Jesus can give thanks.

The Jesus that most of his contemporaries rejected, like the Jesus that most people fail to respond to now, isn't the real one. In the sense that it is a false picture of who Jesus is. Jesus says of himself:

All things have been handed over to my 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.

This is one of those passages which tends to make us squirm a little. Because it contains the exclusive claim of Christianity. The claim that in everything Jesus is decisive. We started out with the problem of talking about God, and that such talks seems to please nobody. It is either to harsh and to weak, hectoring killjoy or wishy-washy do-gooder. The truth is that when Christians talk about God they cannot avoid talking about Jesus. The only way we know anything about God, or anything about what God might want, or about what God might offer, the only way is through Jesus. When we tell the story of Jesus we present both the demand and gift of God. And there is no other way to do that. The picture of Jesus and his message as ineffectual wishful thinking, as impractical do- goodery is as false as the picture of Jesus as a glutton and a drunkard. Jesus calls us to himself. Who he is makes the meaning of that call decisive. He is the one who speaks to God on our behalf. And he is the one who speaks for God in calling us. The two aspects, demand and promise, of talk about God held together. What we need to understand is the claim Christianity makes is that to come to Jesus is to come to God.

Jesus puts that invitation into some of the best loved word of the whole Bible:

Come to me, all you that weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Or perhaps as some remember it better, from King James Version: “Come unto to me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Here salvation is defined as “rest.” Perhaps that is a definition of salvation that our culture/society might grasp. One of the reasons that some people do labour so hard, and are so heavy laden, is that they are striving for rest. They want to work themselves into a position where they don't have to anymore. For young people the attractiveness of a celebrity lifestyle is that it gives the appearance of not including any work, or at least very little that might be considered wearisome labour. Jesus makes an invitation to those who are burdened. His invitation is to those who are weighed down by the way the world is. It is to those who have to work and who like almost everyone have no prospect of escaping from it. And for whom labouring has little purpose or meaning beyond keeping bread on the table and the wolf from the door. The rest which Jesus is offering is strange though. Not the idle luxury of the rich and powerful which some many long for. That in reality might be a rest which is as wearying as work. The rest which Jesus offers is strange, because it needs to be learned and it is symbolised by an implement of work: a yoke. The invitation which Jesus makes is to become disciples, followers of him and learners of his way. That in itself is rest. It is salvation. Because by learning to work in his way, to bear Jesus' yoke we are set free from the much more burdensome yoke that others or even we ourselves would place on our shoulders. He sets us free not to be idle but to have meaning and purpose in everything we do. That is rest. That is peace in the midst of work, in the midst of unavoidably busy lives, rather that escape from it. The message from God and about God as it turns out is not hectoring killjoy nor wishy-washy do-goodery.  It is a message addressed to those who are worn down by the world as it, but who still have enough wonder and imagination to her and accept it .The message from God and about God is Jesus' call to come to him, to follow him, into peace and rest, into the only life worth living.

Amen.

Come to Me, I Will Give You Rest by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.