Note: There will be a service in Coates churchyard on Sunday at 10am: please bring a chair (or email here if you would like one to be brought for you). The alternative below is for anyone who can't make it for any reason.
Today’s Gospel contains more of Jesus’ teaching of his disciples. It starts with a picture of children in the marketplace, ‘playing funerals’, or so it seems! The children cannot agree what their roles are to be. Jesus likens his contemporaries to squabbling children, unable to agree with one another, and he then goes on to talk about how people cannot agree with one another about John the Baptist, his cousin and forerunner, and Jesus himself. John, who does not drink and who fasts hard, is possessed by the Devil, according to them, while Jesus, who does drink wine and goes out to lunch and preaches the Kingdom of God to all and sundry, even the hated tax-collectors and sinners, is accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. One line from Jesus puts them firmly in their place - ‘Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.’ You can hear the sigh as you read these words. These people will never learn, even though Jesus is clearly inspired by divine wisdom (Matthew 11.16-19). We then move on to verse 25. This passage is an actual prayer of Our Lord. There is a lot of evidence that Jesus spent a lot of time in prayer. Apart from the Lord’s Prayer we don’t have many actual prayers. This is one instance. It is a word of thanks to God that God has hidden the truth of the Kingdom from the so-called wise and intelligent and revealed it to infants (the simple, the marginalised, the poor, the disregarded, with whom Jesus always had a great affinity). He addresses God as Father and then turns to the disciples with words that seem to have come straight from John’s Gospel, stressing the closeness of Father and Son. It is through the Son that we come to know the Father and through the Father that we come to know the Son. Then comes a passage which is well known to those who love the BCP Holy Communion and Handel’s ‘Messiah’. If we look more closely at Jesus’ words he seems to be saying that those who are weighed down and weary will find rest by taking up his yoke, his burden. This is really encouraging for us in these challenging times. We lay aside our burdens of care and concern about the future and take up the way of life that Jesus shows us, and it is easy. We can rest in the love of God. We need to hear these words in these days. Lord God, the source of truth and love, keep us faithful to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, united in prayer and the breaking of bread, and one in joy and simplicity of heart, in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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AuthorCanon John Green Archives
May 2021
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