On
any term-time Tuesday morning in the Minster, you will find the Minstrels, our
playgroup for pre-schoolers and their grown-ups. From an early age, the
children play with dolls, with a kitchen, with cars and other vehicles. They
play because they will grow up to be adults who have babies of their own, who
must cook, who might drive. The play of infants—whether cubs or kittens or
children—is a rehearsal for adulthood. It always has been.
It
was no different in Jesus’ culture. He was clearly familiar with the games
children played in the marketplaces—of
course he was: as a child, he would have taken part in such games on many
occasions.
In
the culture in which Jesus grew up, the men of the community took the lead in
orchestrating celebrations, such as weddings. A band of musicians would head
the parade, with everyone else joining-in and following them from the
bridegroom’s home to the home of the parents of the bride, and back again.
Likewise, the women of the community took the lead in times of mourning, such
as funerals. Their rising and falling ululation both honoured the dead and gave
voice to the grief of the living. In our Gospel reading today, Jesus refers to
the game in which the boys and the girls have taken turns, the boys drawing the
girls into a wedding dance, the girls drawing the boys into a funeral march,
the dance and the march flowing back and forth, perhaps for hours on end as the
amused market-sellers look on with half an eye.
But
something has gone wrong. The children aren’t playing together now. And it
isn’t simply that they have grown tired, or bored of this game; that they are
resting, or have gone on to something else. The boys and the girls sit in two
groups, on opposite sides of the square, at an impasse. Each group is blaming
the other for the breakdown of their play. We
started up the wedding dance again, shout the boys, and you didn’t join in: why, then, should we join in with your funeral
march?
We only refused to join in because
you had first refused to join in with our funeral march,
the girls retort! Each group blames the other: you wronged me before I wronged you!
The
context of Jesus’ childish tale is this. John, the baptiser, had been put in
prison. He would, eventually, be executed. But for now, he is imprisoned, and
had sent messengers to Jesus in search of answers to doubts that troubled him.
You see, Jesus was so different from John, as different as a wedding from a
funeral. Had John got it all wrong? Or was it Jesus that had got it wrong: had
John served God faithfully, only for Jesus to let it all fall away again? Jesus
sends back his reply to John, and then turns to the crowd around him, asking
them, what did they make of John’s
ministry?
John
and Jesus were so different from one another, at least on the surface. John was
aesthetic, extreme. Many had been drawn to his call to repent. Others had found
it all too much: this man was clearly under the influence of a demon; those
drawn to his cult, themselves demonic. Jesus, on the other hand, was all about
having a party, eating and drinking with sinners. Jesus was not religious
enough for the Pharisees who passed judgement on those who had gone to John;
and, ironically, not religious enough for those who had gone to John, who had
repented of their sins.
Here’s
the situation:
Those
who had followed John were wailing repentance, and the good religious people
wouldn’t join in: it was tawdry and excessive and beneath them.
The
good religious people were proclaiming the wedding celebration of God and his
people, but needed to keep the people—the bride—pure: sinners must be excluded.
Those
who had followed John in the funeral march didn’t want to follow Jesus in the wedding
dance, because it was too joyful.
And
those who wanted a wedding dance didn’t want Jesus in it, because he brought
sinners with him.
Things
have reached an impasse: and Jesus starts to tell a story about children
playing in the marketplace, a scenario everyone would recognise. They, too,
have reached an impasse. But both groups bring something that the other needs.
Lament, repentance, is not an end in and
of itself: there is no point in repentance if it does not lead into
participation in celebration [Confession and Absolution leads into the Gloria].
But there is no celebration, no inclusion, without repentance. You can’t have
either one without the other!
Oh,
and it doesn’t matter whether you joined the game when it was a wedding dance
or when it was a funeral march. Neither one is better than the other. The point
to the game is not to move from one to the other as you mature—journeying from
celebration to mourning, or from lament to rejoicing. The point of the game is
that we become increasingly attuned to what is needful in the given moment, and
increasingly confident and competent in our participation.
Jesus
says: John leads to me; his ministry
flows into mine.
And
Jesus continues: 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.
Some
of us have found our way here with an inclination—whether nature, or nurture,
or both—to noticing what is wrong (as we perceive it) with the world, to judging people—including ourselves—quickly
and harshly, to setting ourselves standards we can never live up to. And we
find it quite disconcerting that there are other people here who frankly don’t
seem that bothered about it all; who are all about love and acceptance and
inclusivity and letting God sort the rest of it out.
And,
if we are honest, we are weary from being good, and feeling bad; we are weighed
down by the burden of it—and affronted that others won’t share the load.
And
Jesus says to us: Let me come alongside
you; allow yourself to be yoked to me, as a young ox is yoked to an experienced
ox at the plough. Let me be the other ox, and let me train you in the art of
celebration, of thankfulness, of enjoying God’s good gifts and sharing them
with others.
On
the other side of the marketplace, some of us have found our way here with an
inclination—whether in our upbringing, or in rebellion against our upbringing—to
self-justification, to believing that who we are—and who others are—is already
the full realisation of God’s plan for us. We are already seated at the wedding
banquet at the End of the Age, when God has wiped away every tear; but if we
are honest we want to keep crying because of the other people here who keep
calling us to repent, to change our outlook and direction, to become something
other than what we are.
And
we worry about the gap, between the banquet we proclaim and the joylessness
displayed by some Christians: it makes us look like hypocrites—and who would be
drawn to that anyway? We, too, are
weary.
And
Jesus says to us: Let me come alongside
you. Let me be the other ox, and let me train you in the art of lament, of
repentance; of dying to self, in order that you be transformed from the person
God accepts as you are, into the person God hopes and dreams you might be.
Presumably
the children find a way to move beyond their impasse, if only that they slope
off home and reconvene again the next day, leaving yesterday’s quarrel to
yesterday, where it belongs. I say presumably because Jesus holds them up as
our model and invites us to learn from them. Today is a new day. If you are
weary, come: come to Jesus, whatever your burden.
Come,
together with the boys with their flutes and the girls who wail. Come and join
in the game, that together we might learn, that together we might grow into
maturity, the fullness of Christ. Amen.
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