For Sunday
Proper 9A
Collect
O God, you have taught us to keep all your commandments by loving you and our neighbor: Grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to you with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
Jesus expresses deep displeasure for the relative ineffectiveness of his ministry. It’s a strangely candid moment, really. Jesus has sent his people out and it seems as if there were more skeptics in the world than he had bargained for. And the lectionary, for its part, skips over the most incendiary part, where Jesus even brings the proverbial receipts, calling out whole communities for their indifference and expressing deep condemnation for it. I think we can all relate to this frustration.
And yet, Jesus’s critique is focused, not on skepticism, but on the more fundamental role of separation in the people’s attitudes. He compares them to children complaining about each other. And the complaints, notice, are about what other people do or don’t do in response to their actions. “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.” I did this thing, why didn’t you respond? Extend it out. I cooked the dinner, why didn’t you say thank you? I cut my finger, why didn’t you say “are you all right?”
Jesus isn’t saying expectations and commitments are bad. But notice the one-way ratchet effect that happens here when it always centers on me or we. Truths give way to distortions. This makes the pivot to John work. He points out that these skeptics always center it on themselves. John ate nothing and they called him a demon while I ate food and they called me a glutton.
Jesus’s teaching here recenters the followers’ focus from themselves and toward a more collaborative approach by arguing that going it alone is a heavy burden, but teaming up with Jesus makes it way easier. Then we both have skin in the game.