Matthew 11: 16-19, 25-30

Holy Communion and a Hot Dog Roast

Preached on July 3, 2011

This week I got a good laugh from our newsletter.   Alta and I put the content together, but sometimes it’s not until I see the finished product that something strikes me as being not exactly what I had intended.  Now we all know the humor of bulletin bloopers, but our church secretary is so efficient that we just don’t get funny typos.  What struck me as hilarious was not a typographical error, but the juxtaposition of two very incongruous images. 

On the page where we highlight worship over the next two months, the entry for Sunday July 31^st reads thus: “Holy Communion and hot dog roast.”  Welcome to worship in German Reformed country!  We have the Lord’s Table in the morning, and the hot dog supper in the evening.  I just hope that people don’t think we’re offering them as either/or options!  There in a nutshell, we have the whole crazy business of Christianity and the Church.  The paradox was never plainer to me.  From the sublime to the ridiculous, you have to embrace the whole thing.  The thing about church is–it’s never going to look like you think it ought to look.  Neither does the Christian life, for that matter.

Jesus is confronting his own paradox in this puzzling reading from Matthew.  It helps to know the occasion for this conversation.  John is in prison, and John’s disciples have just come to Jesus demanding to know if he is the One for whom they have been waiting, or should they look for another.  What Jesus was offering was not exactly what these early followers had been hoping for.  Jesus boils over in exasperation and says, “go tell John what’s going on.  The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the wretched of the earth learn that God is on their side.” (from The Message paraphrase)Even John, a prophet, had trouble understanding the paradox.  A God of love and meekness confronting an empire built on oppression and power over others?  The confusion is understandable but Jesus has been preaching for some time now, an d not getting the results for which he was hoping.

In exasperation he yells at the crowd.  “Here’s what you people remind me of.  You remind me of children who want things to go their way.  When you want to play the flute you want others to dance.  When you want to wail, you want others to cry with you. ”  After this little parable teaching he goes to compare the reaction of the crowds to John’s teaching, and his own.

John gave them hard words about repentance and they said he was crazy.  He wailed and they wouldn’t mourn.  Jesus ate and drank with sinners and people said—he’s too soft and a friend of riffraff.  He played the flute and they wouldn’t dance.  Neither John nor Jesus gave the people what they wanted, or said what they wanted to hear.  The people were looking for something  in between “too soft” or “too hard.”

It puts me in mind of many of the things we hear from the unchurched, or the lapsed members.  The church is too serious, or the church is too frivolous. There is too much fellowship and not enough mission. Or there is too much mission and not enough fellowship. The church is too liberal, or the church is too conservative.  I don’t like all the stuff about the church season.  Or the worship isn’t high-Church enough.  Worship is too early, or too often, or not often enough.   Like Goldilocks: this bed is too soft and this bed is too hard….this church is too soft or this church is too hard. 

The children in the parable in this passage can’t respond positively to either the invitation to dance or the invitation to mourn.  They can write off Jesus because he eats with sinners.  They can write off John because he looks crazy by the standards of the world.   So they sit it out all together.   Millions are doing just that, this very Sunday morning.  Jesus says, in this disturbing passage, that there is nothing in between.  You take it all or you leave it all.  Holy Communion and Hot Dog Roast.  It never looks like you think it ought to look.

I’ve read that this is the first year on record, that there will be more marriages done outside the church, than inside the church.   Of course, I don’t mean outdoor weddings, but refer to weddings where the couple has no active involvement with the church.  How many funerals are there where the funeral home has to find a pastor to put a respectable stamp on things?  I’ve done my share of both. 

As a minister of the gospel I bring the church with me, even if it hasn’t been invited.  I suppose one could say that such events are occasion for evangelism.  That may be true at funerals.  We’ve all been to weddings and we know that a decision for Christ is an unlikely outcome.  The spirit is flowing, but it isn’t the Holy Spirit!  I have concluded that when I agree to officiate at such events for the unchurched, I am in reality offering them the “something in between” that Jesus proclaimed did not exist.  They receive something In between too hard and too soft…the grace of Jesus without the yoke of the Church. 

In our consumer culture we pick and choose what suits our needs.  It has to fit exactly and be the price we want to pay or we look elsewhere.  Nowhere does Jesus say that that those who come to him will be burden free or that the yoke he offers will not once in a while chafe our necks.

What does Jesus offer us?  He offers us rest from all that has gone wrong in this world.  He doesn’t fix it, he gives us place to come and rest…a Sabbath.   He offers us rest from sinful preoccupations.   Paul said it better than anybody. ”I do not do the things I want, but the very things I do not want is what I do.”  Jesus puts us gently back on the right path, each time we stray. He offers us a peace that passes all understanding.  Jesus offers us a way off the modern treadmill of “not enough.”

And even those of us committed to church and Jesus can profit from this passage.  We want grace for ourselves but we wouldn’t mind if those other sinners got what was coming to them.  We’re not sure where crazy cousin John and his message of repentance fits in our respectable lives. 

Try as we might we can’t work out our own salvation.  We come to church not because we must, but because we may.  Jesus offers a lighter yoke.  We learn from the life of Jesus how to walk the ancient path that leads to peace.  David Holwerda characterizes this yoke as one that both restrains and enables, simultaneously a burden and a possibility.

Jesus says (Matthew 10: 38-39 from The Message) “If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself.  But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me.”  Here then is the paradox of the Christian life. It is about losing and finding.   Scarcity and abundance.  Love and duty.  Dancing and mourning.  Wailing and singing.  Following and leading.  Denying and giving.  Having all and losing all.  Dying and living.  It is Holy Communion and a Hot Dog Roast.