July 9, 2023, Proper 9, Year A

Genesis 24:34-38,42-29,58-67; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

We have all probably heard that old story about a rescue: A man trapped in his house during a flood believes God will save him so when a neighbor offers to give him a ride to safety he waves him away saying God will save me. There is a boat and then a helicopter. Each time the same offer, the same dismissal. God will save me. So, the man dies in the flood and finds himself in heaven, standing before God asking, ‘why didn’t you save me?’ And God says, I sent the truck, the boat and the helicopter and you refused them all. What else could I possibly do for you?’ 

I suspect that story may be based on this morning’s gospel.  

Just before this passage, John the Baptist, who is in prison, sends some of his disciples to Jesus to ask if Jesus was the one they were waiting for. Jesus says, ‘go back and tell John what you have seen, the blind see, the lame walk, etc.’ Then we come to today’s reading.

One commentator rephrased Jesus’ opening comments this way: 

You want help, you pray for help but when it is offered what do you do? You complain about John’s piercings and tattoos and say, ‘Who would want to listen to him?’ You see the “blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead raised and the poor brought good news,’ and what do you do, you complain about the company I keep.  If you so choose, John will be for you Elijah as foretold by the prophets:  the forerunner of the messiah, you will see the salvation of the world.  But you don’t want to. Doesn’t matter what you see, you’ll reject it. 

Then the lectionary skips 5 verses. Let me read them to you:

“Then he began to reproach the cities in which most of his deeds of power had been done because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, on the day of judgment it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades. For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that on the day of judgment it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom than for you.” (Mt 11:20-24)

The cities he names are places where Jesus has been, where those signs he told John the Baptist to notice have been taking place. They include Capernaum which was his home town at the time. The cities he compares them with, the cities he says are better, are the cities of Tyre and Sidon. They were ancient enemies of Israel. When they fell to Alexander the Great the cry from Israel was, ‘Thank you, God!’ And Sodom, well you know what happened Sodom.  (Sodom’s sin, by the way, was violent inhospitality to strangers found within its gates.) ‘They were better than you,’ Jesus says. ‘They would have listened and repented.’

Jesus is walking through the cities of Galilee, showing though word and deed the presence of the Kingdom of God in those places, and he is often met with apathetic indifference or hostility. He is frustrated and he lets us know it. Then he switches gears and becomes more the gentle Jesus we find so much easier to listen to, the one our prayers of the people are addressed to this morning. When he does that, we see he is what the prophet Zechariah calls ‘a prisoner of hope.’  

That is what the apostle Paul shows himself to be in the reading from the letter to the Romans this morning and what Abraham’s servant is as he searches for he knows not who, and, what I suspect Rebekah is, as well.  ‘Prisoners of hope.’ It could mean someone who is pathetically hoping things will turn out the way they want them to, and so is blind to what is right in front of them, like the guy in the flood who keeps sending help away. It could also mean someone who, in the face of an ugly situation, persistently, tenaciously, refuses to give up their expectation of a transformed reality. Someone who knows the kingdom of God does come near.

In the silly rescue story it is striking that even with all the man’s rejections of God’s overtures, still he finds himself standing before the gates of heaven, speaking to God face to face. In that story you could almost argue God is the one who is a prisoner of hope. ‘Hello, I’m right here, do you see me yet?’

So, too, with Jesus in the gospel. After that long cry of frustration comes a prayer of thanksgiving for the crazy, frustrating situation he finds himself in, and then those comforting words, ‘Come to me all you who are weary.’ That tender passage is so familiar. Yes, Lord, I am so tired, just let me rest. Of course, that isn’t really what it says, or at least that is not all that it says. ‘I will give you rest’ is connected to ‘take my yoke upon you and learn from me.’ 

The rest we are offered is an invitation to be yoked to Jesus. He gives us relief by sharing our burdens, by carrying part of the load, but also by inviting us to share his burdens. He is sneaky that way. It is an invitation to help to bear the burdens of God, to also be ‘prisoners of hope,’ to show through our very lives the nearness of the kingdom of God. That is a pretty holy calling.

Life is hard, it is also very good, but we must admit troubles abound. How often we find ourselves speaking to God, asking, ‘hey, we could use some help here?’

I’m sure you haven’t been able to miss the news of immigration crises around the world. The response to different peoples arrival in towns and nations across the world has been much like the response Jesus received as he walked from place to place, everything from people joining together to offer food, rest, and shelter to the weary; to apathy, ‘who is that, I don’t know, I can’t do anything;’ to rejection, rage, and fear.

Climate crisis, the hard work of racial reconciliation, disease, gun violence, taking honest looks at ourselves and our complicity in the tragedies that affect all the world, not to mention those found just in our personal areas of concern, the troubles never end.

What if, as kingdom people, we learned to see such troubles, such tragedies, not as causes for despair or apathy, or, Lord have mercy, a reason to turn our anger on the suffering or on one another, but as reminders of the words of Jesus? Not as a call to fly to the Sudan to join in helping with refuges there, not necessarily, anyway, but as a call to look around and check the fit of the yoke we have been given to wear. Perhaps it is to volunteer to work with children, or at a food bank, to give compassionate care to someone we live with, or to lead or be part of a group like sacred ground looking at all kinds of ways systemic racism infiltrates our lives. Whatever it is, to ask, is the yoke still on or have we let it slip away, forgetting the importance of what we are doing? 

What if we were to see personal times of frustration, anger, and apathy as signs from God, reminders we are to be on the lookout for God’s activity among us, for proclamations the kingdom is near, and then, not as a sign to just sit around and wait for God to fix everything, but as a call to pick up our cross, to be yoked to Jesus, and to join in the transformation of the world?

What if? What then? What we would see? A call and a promise to find a renewed heart as we join in the work. A reminder heaven is found right where we are when we put our shoulders to the plow and join Jesus in his work.  

‘Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.‘