Sermon on Matthew 11:16-19
Here we are, on yet another Sunday evening, and I still don’t really know what I’ll be doing. We tried an experiment last time, and that seemed to go all right. I thank you for letting me experiment with my preaching. I think becoming more comfortable getting off book will help me as a preacher in the long run. However, the problem with growing as a preacher is that your preaching seems a little worse for a little while. It’s like moving from t-ball to little league, or from little league to varsity. The rules are different, the expectations are different, and you have to figure out where you belong in the new order.

This is something new for me, and new things are scary. Jesus says in this passage that wisdom is vindicated by her deeds, but what if my deeds aren’t so wise? That’s something we all have to face at some point or another. I’ve always been proud of my preaching, but what if all it’s been up to this point is an intellectual game, something derived of study and craft, not authentic relationship with God? I just want you to know that if it turns out I’m a fraud, I’m holding you all personally responsible for making me do this.

It’s funny; I’ve started this new thing, I have the freedom to ignore the lectionary and preach any lesson I want, and I choose a lectionary reading I didn’t use a few weeks ago. I have the freedom to leave the pulpit, to leave notes behind, and I still have a manuscript here, on little sheets of paper, so I can hide them in my bible, but I have somewhere to go if I get lost.

We tend to reject freedom. I hope I don’t offend anyone here, but I don’t understand vegetarianism. I can understand not eating salmon or deer or other wild animals, but farm animals are not natural. Whether you accept evolution or believe that Genesis is literally true, cows didn’t come into being in the same way that lions and tigers and bears did. Cows are the result of thousands of years of selective breeding, changing an antelope-like critter into something fatter, smellier, and dumber. The same is true for pigs and chickens and most of the animals we eat.

Cows are about as natural as asphalt. Nonetheless, every now and then a group of animal rights activists will try to free cows from a slaughterhouse. Now, I support animal rights in many respects. I think the animals that give their lives to feed us should be treated with dignity and respect. They should be treated humanely, have freedom to move around, and not be subjected to painful and invasive procedures. I think animals should not be used for any kind of consumer products testing, like cosmetics and the like. In many ways, I am sympathetic to the demands of some animal rights groups, so I’m not just picking on them.

But let me tell you, freeing cows is stupid. You ever try to free a cow? If you’ve got a dog in the back yard and someone opens the gate, the dog runs off. Dogs are smart. If you’ve got a cow in the back yard and someone opens the gate, the cow isn’t going anywhere. Cows don’t want freedom. They wouldn’t know what to do with it.

There’s something similar about elephants. Now, circuses are one of those things that I agree with the animal rights folks about. I think it’s cruel to remove animals from their natural habitat and force them to entertain us. Elephants, as we all know, are extremely intelligent, majestic, communal animals. In the wild they dominate their habitat. But if you take one when it’s small and put a chain around its neck and attach that chain to a stake in the ground, then it grows up thinking that it can’t pull that chain out of the ground, even as an adult, when it could easily yank that chain out of the ground. It becomes accustomed to its slavery and doesn’t seek freedom at all.

Humans are like that. I could have said that after talking about cows, but I’d rather say humans are like elephants than humans are like cows. But I guess we’re like both. We’re offered freedom and we don’t know what to do with it.

Just think about our biblical history. The Israelites are freed from Egypt, and they first thing they do is enslave themselves to a false god, the golden calf. They are offered the freedom of being God’s people, people of justice and mercy, a people whose mission it is to see that justice shall rain down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, but they chose war and aggression, building up political power and influence, a political campaign that does not lead to safety and security; it leads to exile and destruction.

When Jesus comes along, people are fighting for power. There are lots of little revolutionary groups fighting the Romans. That’s what people wanted from a messiah, someone who would drive the Romans out of the Holy Land. Jesus understands that what they’re seeking isn’t true freedom. One oppressor is overthrown by another; that’s how politics works. Jesus offers us something more; true freedom, grace, freedom from the past, freedom from our failures, freedom, as I stress over and over, to love without worrying about the consequences. And what do we do with that freedom? We develop a religion called Christianity, one of the most rule-bound and oppressive religions there is. You can’t eat such-and-such on Fridays. You have to do this, this, and this in worship. You have to believe this. You can’t believe that. Only people with blue eyes can be pastors. No, only people with black hair can be pastors. The arguments go on and on, as they have been for two thousand years with no sign of stopping. Ever.

Jesus was a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Don’t believe me? It says so in the bible. A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. I want that on my tombstone. A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. That’s who we’re modeled on. This isn’t someone who agonized over whether to serve communion by intinction or in individual cups, or with wine or grape juice. He ate and drank whatever was available from whoever was available. He felt the presence of God in every element of creation, in each stone in his sandal, in each morsel of food. All of this is God’s creation, and Jesus knows that God’s creation is good.

Jesus pulled back the blinds covering God’s presence. He shows to us the very real presence of God in each atom of creation. The movement of an electron around an atom is the circulation of God’s blood. The intensity of the suns heat in August is the passion of God’s love for all creation, us included. From the very biggest things to the smallest, God permeates creation. We eat and breath God. We are constructed of God. That makes all our rules, our petty arguments, seem pretty stupid, I think. Maybe I’m more like a cow than I’d care to admit, anyway–chewing my cud, farting, oblivious to the glory of the world around me because I’m too concerned with my own belly.

A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. No one a decent Christian would want anything to do with. But here we are. We have a choice. Will we be decent Christians, following the rules, looking respectable? Jesus offers us, even us who have been Christians for years, decades, Jesus offers us a new life, filled with the glory of God. For the grace to choose being a glutton and a drunkard, a friend to tax collectors and sinners, thanks be to God. Amen.

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