Jesus had been preaching and teaching, healing all kinds of sicknesses and casting out demons, up and down the Sea of Galilee for months. Everywhere he went people gathered, waiting for hours - some just to hear him speak, others hoping for the chance to ask him a question or even just to touch him. There wasn’t any advertising, no advance teams of publicity people stirring up interest in a new sensation. The word just spread, from house to house, from village to village. “Have you seen the new rabbi?” people would ask one another. “Did you hear what that healer Yeshua bar Joseph did in Capernaum? They say he’s even healed lepers!” Or, disapprovingly, “Can that Reb Yeshua really be all that holy? I hear he heals on the Sabbath and - the real shocker - “eats with tax collectors and loose women.”
There were even beginning to be rumblings that maybe - just maybe - this might be the long-awaited Messiah. The rumors were widespread enough that John the Baptizer, stuck in Herod’s prison for criticizing his wife Herodias, had heard them and sent a couple of his followers to find out what, if anything, was going on. But Jesus doesn’t answer them directly; instead he tells them to go back and report to John what they have seen and heard, and let him draw his own conclusions.
And then Jesus addresses the crowd again.
Remember, they would probably have all gone out to see John, too, when he had been busy baptizing people up and down the river Jordan. It was quite a show, well worth the dusty walk in the hot sun, to hear John blazing away at the Pharisees, calling them vipers and hypocrites, just the sort of thing they’d always thought, too, only they hadn’t said it out loud. He looked just like they had imagined Elijah to be, too, wild-eyed and bearded. He could really work an audience; if you got carried away and walked the aisle when he called for sinners to repent, why, it didn’t hurt anybody to repent and maybe actually did some good. You did feel kind of different for a while, at that, until the daily grind started to get to you again.
So Jesus reminds the crowd of all that John had been and done, of how many of them had gone to hear him speak, and affirms they were right to admire John.
But - John was in prison, now, so what good had it done to be one of his followers? If they had actually left their fields and homes and followed him, they’d have been left just as abandoned and bereft, just as empty-handed and purposeless as John’s disciples were now. So it was just as well, the listeners might have thought, that they hadn’t gotten carried away. Although of course some of John’s disciples were now in the group traveling with Yeshua... But no, this rabbi might be a whole different cup of tea than John was, he might not get in the same kind of trouble with the authorities, but they weren’t about to stick their necks out for him, either. Come to hear him, yes, ask him for healing, yes, but that was as far as they were going to go.
And what Jesus is saying now is beginning to make them uncomfortable. Some of them begin to slip away. They didn’t come to be yelled at, they’d had enough of that with John.
“What’s your excuse this time?” Jesus was saying. “You didn’t like John, he was too wild-eyed and radical for you, what with the fasting and camel’s hair clothes, not to mention hell-fire and brimstone sermons. Some of you even thought he was possessed by a demon, just because he said things that weren’t said in public, things the powerful people didn’t like to hear.”
“What’s your excuse now?” Jesus went on. “You complain about me because I don’t preach hellfire and brimstone sermons. I don’t fast like John, I laugh and tell stories, I eat and drink, even with people who you think aren’t as good as you. You think you’re so smart, standing at a safe distance, finding fault with both of us.”
“But I tell you,” Jesus added, “time will tell who’s really on God’s side, who’s really operating with God’s wisdom. The time will come when you will wish you had followed one or the other of us, because when you stand on the sidelines you miss out on what God is doing.” [v. 18- 19]
Everybody has an excuse for not getting seriously involved with God, don’t they. And some people’s reasons are genuine - they don’t know what God wants, or they were burnt by rigid, legalistic versions of the Gospel, or they’ve been taught that there is no such thing as truth. But some excuses are just another way of saying “I have more important things to do with my life, don’t bother me.”
And in this country - the society as a whole, not individuals - has rather less excuse than most for taking God’s word lightly. We have more Bibles per capita than any other country in the world. We have more churches, more Bible studies, more religious programming than any other country in the world. And yet what have we done with it? We have courts forbidding sports teams to pray before games, radio and TV stations refusing to air the Christian side of the homosexuality debate. We have nearly the same level of divorce, and nearly the same level of premarital sex, among people who are identified as Christians as there is among society as a whole. And we have raised a whole generation of kids who don’t know the difference between Jesus and Mohammed.
“Woe to you, America,” I can almost hear Jesus saying. “For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. Yes, you, America, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done for you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.” [v. 21-24]
Because no matter what the excuse may be, there is no excuse for people who have been given every opportunity to respond to God’s truth but who have failed to recognize it for what it is or squandered it in pursuit of things which do not satisfy.
But why are people looking for excuses? Why would anyone want to be excused from the heavenly banquet, the wedding feast of the Lamb?
I imagine Jesus looking around at the crowd, as he finishes telling them that they, good Jews all, are in more trouble than the city that has come to be a synonym for ungodliness. Some are puzzled, some are angry, a few, perhaps, are convicted. There’s a long pause, a silence. Jesus’ voice changes and he looks upward, addressing his Father: “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.” [v. 25-26]
For some reason, the smarter we are, and the more educated we get, the harder it is to submit to God. For some reason, we start second-guessing God, demanding that he explain himself to us, and insisting that he conform to our expectations, asking him to prove himself again and again before we’ll sign on the dotted line.
That is why Jesus says that we must become like little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. Children know they are dependent, and don’t resent it. Children know they don’t know everything, and can live - even if occasionally under protest - with the answer, “Because I said so,” or “Because I’m your mother, that’s why.”
It seems like a lot to ask, doesn’t it, for grownups to abandon their hard-won independence and self-reliance. And it is. Jesus knows that what he is asking is not easy. And that is why, I believe, that he ends this quite uncomfortable passage with a promise of rest. He is saying, “No matter how hard it may seem to you to let go of all the things you’ve looked to for security, all your preconceived notions of what life is about, I promise you that it will be worth it.”
And it is.
His yoke - that is partnership with Christ. Do you know what a yoke is? It’s a wooden bar that fits across the necks of a pair of oxen so that they can share the weight of whatever it is they are pulling. When we walk with Christ, when we are in harmony with him, he is the one who bears the whole weight of the yoke. But in order to do that, to be in harmony with him, requires meekness and humility. But don’t be mistaken - a meek person isn’t a doormat. Far from it. A person who is meek is disciplined and obedient, not weak or a pushover. And a person who is lowly of heart is simply someone who refuses to look down on anyone else.
And that partnership with Christ, undertaken in obedience and humility, provides a rest and refreshment that nothing else in this world can even come close to matching.
Everybody has an excuse. But there isn’t really any excuse for refusing Jesus’ invitation. And who wants one anyway?
