It was about three years
ago that I was channel-surfing and came across The Last Temptation of Christ
showing on Trio. It is, to say the least, a very controversial
portrayal of the inner life of Jesus. I had not seen it before, only heard the
noise and clamor about the movie (which is about 20 years old now). So, I sat
down and watched it.
There were things about
the movie that I liked and appreciated. And too, there were several places in
the movie where I thought, “Ah, no wonder.” I won’t review the movie, but
relevant to today’s passage, I will say that one of the things I liked about it
was the intricate interplay of influence that flowed both ways between John the
Baptist and Jesus. I couldn’t help but to be reminded of The Last Temptation
when I read this passage again.
Notice especially: We
played the flute, you didn’t dance. We wailed, but you didn’t mourn. John was
an ascetic. You called him demon possessed. I eat and drink and you call me a
drunk and a pig.
The flute is Jesus’
approach; the wailing is John’s. Playing the flute is done at weddings, where
there is music and dancing and joy. Jesus announced that the kingdom was like a
wedding banquet, and he allowed the prostitutes and other ostracized to dance
with him. “He is a drunk and a pig – the very opposite of piety,” they
said.
“No matter,” said Jesus,
“John came fasting and calling people to mourn for the funeral ahead, but you
wouldn’t mourn anymore than you will dance. You dismissed John as possessed by
demons. You are like bored children in the market place: you won’t play wedding
and you won’t play funeral. You don’t know what you want; or better, you don’t
know what you need.
Jesus then thanks God for
hiding these things from them, hiding their pathetic and condemned spiritual
state, hiding this from the wise and the intelligent. Those are not only harsh
words, but it’s the opposite of everything we say about God. Jesus thanks God
for hiding from these people what they must see in themselves in order to reach
out for salvation. Some of these people are not facing impending judgment, they
have been judged already. … Jesus also thanks God for having revealed it, by
contrast, to infants.
It is the infants who
dance with Jesus. It is not the learned, the theologians, the scholars, the
wealthy, or the pious church-goers who already hold the keys to the kingdom and
know, or act like they control, just who is in and who is out.
In contrast to the elite,
the so called “infants” are believing the truth and seeing the wisdom of God.
The infants, by the way, are the uneducated, ignorant, downtrodden, those
marginalized by society, those weighed down by their own sin, and those
ostracized by the religious establishment.
And no wonder it appears
as if, and it is a troubling saying, “God has hidden the truth from the wise
and intelligent.” Frequently in the New Testament, especially with Matthew
and Paul, the explanation for the puzzling and inexplicable rejection of Jesus
as Messiah could only be explained as in someway attributable to God’s action.
But it isn’t hard to
notice that it is the masses – which in the 1st century meant the
destitute – who gather to Jesus, not the rulers, the wealthy, the religious
know-it-alls, or the elite.
Even 250 years later, a
pagan philosopher, Celsus, attacked Christianity by saying that Christians were
uneducated, irrational, uncultured, poor, and by and large just a bunch of
women and slaves. And much to his annoyance, when confronted by educated
pagans, they would still not stop pushing their opinions!
In Acts 17, Paul’s
experience testifying to the gospel in front of Greek intellectuals was less
than satisfactory. He was basically laughed out of the Aeropagus in Athens –
where the philosophers and intelligentsia went to debate ideas – and he moved
on to Corinth with his tail between his legs. You can hear the echoes of this
experience when Paul writes to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 2:
When
I came to you, I did not come with lofty words or wisdom. I came to you in
weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were
not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit.
But, of course, this “only
the poor and uneducated” is not absolute. In Acts 15 we learn that there were a
large number of priests and scribes in the Jerusalem church, and Paul himself
had patrons who were rich converts – Lydia – the maker of purple – being an
obvious example.
The contrast, I think,
between the “infants” and the “wise & intelligent”
is a contrast between those who think they have all the answers (i.e. they need
nothing) and those who know that regardless of education, wealth, position in
society, standing in the church, [they know full well that like an infant, they
are wholly dependent on the love, nurture, and sustenance that can only be
found at the breast of God.] Many people will confess to believe that,
but few of us actually live that way.
Dependence on God is the
great equalizer. There is no advantage to money, education, popularity, esteem
of others, or even assurance of convictions – all are equal in the utter
dependence on God, as an infant is utterly dependent on its mother.
Those who are uneducated
or impoverished, or ostracized, or marginalized, or confused, or smart enough
to realize the futility of human mental constructions in the face of the
infinite – these will more quickly abandon all illusions of their own
self-sufficiency. As even Buddha said:
The fool who knows one’s
own folly is wise at least to that extent; but the fool who thinks oneself wise
is really a fool.
It is the truth behind the
beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.”
Or, blessed are those who understand their spiritual poverty and dependence on
God.
We are a nation of people
who do things our way, need no one, dictates to others, and is never dictated
to by anyone else. We act unilaterally, bend the world’s rules and conventions
to our liking, and punish nations who don’t go along with the way we want to do
things.
We are exactly the kind of
people who have trouble understanding the depths of our dependency, and the
shallowness and illusion of self-sufficiency. We are strong. And
to us, strength is the opposite of dependence, even dependence on
God, despite our rhetoric.
My yoke is easy and my burden is light, says Jesus. I’m playing a flute calling people to a dance of life and spiritual abundance. But no one will dance, because they are bound and entangled by their allusions of self-sufficiency and their allusions of control. They are bound and entangled by their attempts of self-sufficiency (they don't want to need anybody), and they are bound and entangled by their attempts to be in control.
No wonder it seems that
only the infants could hear the music. But then, Jesus said that unless we
become like children, we couldn’t enter the kingdom of God.
Do you believe in your
utter dependence on God? Can you feel that control is an illusion, and Can you
learn to let go? Can you be content to dance with joy to the music of the flute
like an infant? Or is that beneath you? Some things to think about. Amen.