Dear Friends,
Our gospel reading for this Sunday continues our readings from Matthew with an inspiring, yet often confusing, selection of sayings from Jesus. Each short verse focuses our attention and challenges us to deeper understanding of our faith and our call.
These verses remind me a bit of the little books of sayings by famous people that so often find their way into Christmas stockings. Will Rogers most immediately comes to mind; his wit and turns of phrase, readily accessible thanks to those handy little books, still serve to pep up many a business speech and wedding toast even though they were uttered nearly a century ago. Having a short, concise list of sayings is hardly a new phenomenon, however. Matthew, Luke, and others similarly compiled and preserved the words of Jesus. But Jesus’s sayings are far more universal and profound than those of Will Rogers, and they clearly have a great deal more staying power.
Before reading Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30, please pause for a moment of prayer for illumination.
God of heaven and earth, by whose gracious will we have been privileged to know you through Jesus Christ, reveal yourself once more through ancient word and present action. Lift the heavy burdens we cannot carry alone and the sin that clings so closely, that we may be freed to worship and serve you. As we welcome the yoke of Christ, we seek the rest that comes with his gentleness and humility; they empower and strengthen us for the tasks you give us. May we experience the soulful rest that Christ offers us in our weariness, and may we share it with all whom we encounter. Amen.
After reading and pondering the first four verses (11:16-19) of today’s reading, the popular maxim “You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t” came to my mind. I’m not sure why this popped into my head this week; I’ve read these passages countless times, but never before have I thought of that pithy, perplexing little phrase. I wondered about its origins and checked in with Dr. Google, who was happy to inform me that the phrase is attributed to an early American evangelist, Lorenzo Dow (1777-1834), in his book, Reflections on the Love of God, published in 1836, two years after his death. Dow wasn’t directly addressing these particular scriptures when he penned that statement; rather, he was sharing his Calvinistic understanding of the absolute divine sovereignty of God. We humans are fallible creatures, he believed, and because of our intrinsic finiteness, we know that we can’t always choose the desirable action or the right path. Thus for Dow, we’re essentially helpless, damned no matter what.
I don’t know why I never thought of it before, because Dow’s phrase seems particularly apt for the situation that Jesus is addressing in these four verses. Jesus promotes a celebration with music and dancing and is called a glutton and a drunkard. John, the complete opposite in this passage, neither eats nor drinks and is then vilified as possessed by a demon. Clearly, you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. It certainly sounds like those hearing about John the Baptist and Jesus are doomed to equivocate, to be perpetually paralyzed by indecision into inaction. There’s no way to take a stand.
And by extension, the same is true for us; how often do we agree with someone, only to turn completely around on hearing a different perspective? How often do we teeter on the edge of a precipice of indecision, unsure of what to do in a given situation? We are damned if we do and damned if we don’t in so many situations.
But even as he points out our paralyzing hesitancy and vacillation, Jesus gives us a new way to look at our options, a new way to be guided by faith in such predicaments. At the end of verse 19, when he says, “Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds,” Jesus is telling us that he wants us to act in the best possible way in order to move towards justice and love. He assures us that in the divine plan and with faithful wisdom, our imperfect actions are far better than no action at all. Jesus knows that our deeds confirm our faith more than our beliefs do. “Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” (11:18) Wisdom teaches us how to act.
A quick aside here, if I may, about the Biblical notion of wisdom, including why Jesus refers to wisdom in the feminine. His choice of words reflects the wonderful wisdom poems of Proverbs, especially the first nine chapters, with which Jesus would have been very familiar. Matthew would have known wisdom as Sophia, from the Septuagint. After Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Near East and Egypt, Greek became the dominant language. The Septuagint was the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, translated in the third and second centuries BCE for the Greek-speaking Jews of Egypt.
Though today we are familiar with Sophia as a name, that is not what Sophia was in the time of Jesus or Matthew. Sophia is not a person, later attempts to personify it notwithstanding. Sophia is an allegory for divine wisdom. We might try to understand Sophia, or wisdom, as some early Jewish scholars did – as something similar to a righteous woman, nurturing her children and teaching them about virtue and God. Additionally, in Hebrew, nouns are rarely gender-neutral, and the word “wisdom” in both Greek and Hebrew is feminine, much like “la chaise,” which means “chair” in French, is feminine. Aside from the grammatical construct, the notion of wisdom as a feminine attribute is part of the ancient Near East world view. For me, all this serves as a distinct contrast to the vilification of women elsewhere in the Bible and in later Christian theologies.
Now that we’ve solved that mystery (I hope!), let’s return to today’s reading. In the first verse, Jesus asks, “But to what will I compare this generation?” Generations were clearly important to Matthew, who reflected the Biblical emphasis on ongoing witness from one generation to the next. He begins his gospel by sharing the generations of Jesus’s genealogy, in part to reinforce Jesus’s firm place in the prophesies of the Old Testament, and in part to demonstrate God’s enduring presence in generations of lives of the Hebrew people. God’s work has demonstrably taken more than a single generation to accomplish. And for Matthew, many generations to come will also be part of God’s work.
We, too, are part of the long line of these generations. As Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.” (The Irony of American History, 1952)
Nibs Stroupe, recently retired and much-admired pastor of Oakhurst Presbyterian Church in Decatur, Georgia, builds further on Niebuhr’s elegant words when he writes, “God wants us to hear at our deepest levels that we are loved. What God wants from us, first and foremost, is our passion rather than our perfection.”
We are not to be stymied by the inaction that can so easily grow from what is an ultimately unachievable quest for perfection. We are comforted by knowing that God knows we can’t achieve perfection. That said, we can certainly respond to God’s call with passion – passion for love, justice, and mercy. With the virtues of love, justice, and mercy serving as the guiding principles of our response to God’s love, we are able to faithfully be about the work that God would have us do.
You may be confounded by Jesus’s words in verse 25 of our reading, when he thanks God “because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” Here, the wise do not reflect the wisdom of Sophia, who is “vindicated by her deeds.” (11:19) In the eyes of God, we are unschooled, uneducated, naïve, and trusting in faith. We are beloved infants, open to the nurturing care and forgiveness of God as we seek to be more fully open to God’s call, which is anchored in Jesus’s sacrificial love. Infants do not seek perfection; they simply trust the one who holds them. Their faith is innate, natural, and instinctive. Would that we all had such natural faith and trust!
Our call, however, is far from easy or natural. Jesus calls us to hard, ongoing, difficult work, work that will make us bone-tired. And yet, it is not impossible; in Jesus we find ultimate rest. “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.” (11:28-30) Faith, learned through trust in the words and sacrifice of Jesus, lightens the load of the call that we respond to.
The stirring words of these three verses are unique to Matthew’s gospel and are often shared at funeral services to comfort mourners. They are certainly words of great consolation for such times, but there’s nothing in Scripture that indicates that’s their sole purpose, or even that it’s the primary intent of Jesus. These are words that we are invited to hear – to be open to – at all the painful, heavy times in our lives.
And these are especially hard times for all of us. Now, in this time and place, we are all tired and in need of rest. Our bodies, our minds, our spirits, our souls are exhausted; our burdens are far from light. As we struggle in the midst of pandemic, divisiveness, and fear to live and act as faithful Christians, we crave the essential rest that ultimately comes from our loving, nurturing God.
This is not to say that we should deny the stress, anxiety, and pain that we suffer; they are real. But there is solace in faith and in the knowledge that we will, indeed, find the right actions and that we’ll find rest for our souls in the loving embrace of Jesus. I pray that in these challenging and demanding times, we will find the will to seek and accept God’s rest.
Joys and Concerns:
For our nation, as we celebrate 244 years since declaring our independence.
For the ongoing, far from complete, task of sharing that independence with justice and equality for all.
For all who have offered their lives and service to protect our freedoms, and for those who call us to continue the task of making our nation “a more perfect union.”
For all who mourn the passing of loved ones.
For mine and Nan’s successful trip to New York and positive news from our doctors. Our thanks as well for your prayers. They surrounded us on our journey and on our hospital visits, and they helped to lighten the burdens of this trip. We are deeply grateful.
On this Independence Day Sunday, let us pray together:
Almighty God, ruler of all nations, we pray for our nation and its people, and for our leaders. May we be mindful of your favor and obedient to your will. Forgive our shortcomings as a nation, and purify our hearts to know the truth that alone can make us free. Save us from injustice and oppression, from pride and arrogance, and from greed and self-centeredness. Increase our concern for people beyond our boundaries and for the poor and afflicted in our own land, that we may be a blessing and an example to all nations. Bring us at last to that day when the whole world shall know peace and blessedness, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.