Preached at Christ Church, Worton and Christ Church, Bulkington
Romans 7.15–25a, Matthew 11.16–19, 25–30
“For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
The other day, straight after taking a funeral, I had a long chat with the immediate family, and I kicked myself afterwards when I realised I had been far cheerier than was appropriate with people who were clearly deeply in grief. Then there was the plan for a “good night’s sleep” that disappeared into Cape Verde’s late-night heroics against the might of Argentina. I could go on, but the worst things I’ve done aren’t things I’d volunteer to reveal from the pulpit on a Sunday.
Vincent van Gogh, At Eternity’s Gate (1890). Hangs in the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands.
We all know the feeling. We all do things that strike us as quite mad afterwards – self-destructive or sometimes just wrong – sometimes things done in the spur of the moment, sometimes wrong courses of action that we’ve continued with for some time.
St Paul recognised this in his own life, writing this morning that even when he was overjoyed by God’s commandments, he saw “another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin”. St Paul’s great insight was that human beings could never become truly good just by trying to follow God’s commandments, because we are all so prone to self-sabotage. That’s why the story of the Jewish people, although they were God’s chosen people, included the same failures and episodes of self-destruction as everyone else’s. Even when we know in our minds what the right thing is and set out to do the best, something inside ourselves, something that often seems out of our control, makes us turn to the worst.
Nobody’s perfect. We all know that.
So I find it odd that, if you pay attention to the way our newspapers are written and our TV programmes are made, they encourage us into a mood of feeling smug and superior. And that’s even before we discuss the algorithms of social media. It has all become much worse over the last couple of decades. I think that is because it is now possible to explore in minute detail what makes people tune in and tune out, what makes people disengage or click. The media and social media moguls wouldn’t press those buttons of smugness and superiority if they weren’t producing results for them.
The problem is that we’re always comparing ourselves with others instead of trying to live the best life we can manage, for our own sake and for God’s; underneath that, a terrible sense of insecurity is driven by awareness that we aren’t as good as we like to think we are. If we can look down our noses at others, then we can tell ourselves, ‘Well, I may be a bit of a disaster area, but at least I’m not as bad as them.’
And if we all see that problem in our own lives, the world seems full of leaders racked with insecurity and armed with catastrophically damaging weapons – and also full of people who are egging them on, turbocharged by the images that flash across their screens. When we feel worn down and depressed by our inability to live up to our best principles on an individual level, the consequences of that failure become terrifying when we scale them up to the level of nations with 2020s technology and 2020s firepower.
In our Gospel reading, Jesus is speaking in one of the small towns of Galilee, the region He was born and raised in. We aren’t told exactly which one. The Galileans had a reputation for thinking of themselves as a bit superior. They were very devout and often looked down their noses at Jews in the bigger cities, who they felt were insufficiently religious and not strongly enough engaged in trying to re-establish their people’s independence.
Jesus in our Gospel reading tells them off, because although they think of themselves as holy, no matter what sort of person God sends to reveal His truth to them, they find a reason to reject the messenger. John the Baptist came, a wild man who lived an austere life on the edge of civilisation, and they said he must be possessed; Jesus came enjoying God’s civilised gifts of food, wine, and companionship, and they dismissed Him as a glutton and a drunkard who spent too much time in the wrong sort of company. That helps us make sense of the cryptic line about the children sitting in the marketplace – Jesus made music, but they didn’t dance; John wailed, but they didn’t mourn. What these Galileans seem to want most of all is to be left in peace with their smug superiority. Because they are so sure they already know what God wants, it is impossible for God to show them something new.
And Jesus thanks God for hiding the truth He has been sent to reveal from those who think they are wise and intelligent, and revealing it instead to children – spiritual children, like the tax-collectors and sinners Jesus hung around with, and the people who flocked out to the desert to see if John was a prophet. And what was this truth?
Well, just before today’s Gospel reading, John the Baptist, having heard about the works and miracles Jesus was carrying out, asks if Jesus is the Messiah, the God-sent saviour of the Jewish people, and Jesus confirmed this. And Jesus adds something else in our reading, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father.” So this is a profound statement of power and authority – a direct claim of divine warrant. So the truth hidden from the wise and revealed to children is Jesus Himself and who He is – the Son of God, sent to rescue us.
Yet Christ doesn’t follow it with some demand for power, but instead says, “I am gentle and humble in heart… Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” So in an environment in which many of the people round Him are falling over themselves to show how holy they are, Jesus, claiming God’s authority, instead praises humility and invites people to lay their burdens on Him.
That was St Paul’s answer to the problem posed by the fact that we all find ourselves doing things we despise – Jesus Christ, the humble saviour, made up the gap that lies between our best desires and our failures to live up to them in His sacrifice on the Cross. If the goal of our lives was to pass some sort of test of being good enough for God, we could never pass it. But we don’t save ourselves – it is Christ and Christ alone who has already saved us, if only we put our trust in Him.
There is a great freedom in that. When we’re free from pretending that we’re always the good guys, or always the wise guys, then we’re free to love and be loved as the people we actually are – flawed, but made in the image and likeness of God, and utterly loved by God. When we accept that we are loved and saved just as we are, then we no longer need to feel smug about other people, and become much freer to love all of God’s children and God’s world.
So rest your burdens on Christ – God loves you just as you are.
And now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and power, as is most justly His due, now and for evermore. Amen.
