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*SCRIPTURE READING: Matthew 11:16-19
16“But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, 17‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ 18For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; 19the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”
SERMON: “Letting God be God”

(Joke #1) A minister was walking down the street when he saw a group of boys surrounding a dog. Concerned that they might be hurting the dog he went over and asked, “What are you doing with this dog?” One of the boy’s replied, “She’s an old neighborhood stray. We all want her, but only one of us can take her home. We’ve decided that whoever can tell the biggest lie gets to keep the dog.”

The minister was taken aback. “You boys shouldn’t be having a contest telling lies!” he exclaimed. Then he launched into a ten-minute sermon against lying, beginning with “Don’t you boy’s know it’s a sin to lie?” and ending with, “Why, when I was your age, I never told a lie.”

He then launched into a ten-minute sermon against lying, beginning, “Don’t you boys know it’s a sin to lie,” and ending with, “Why, when I was your age, I never told a lie.”

For about fifteen seconds there was dead silence. Just as the minister was beginning to think he’d gotten through to them, the smallest boy gave a deep sigh and said, “All right, give him the dog.”

(Joke #2) Then there’s the story of a woman at work. She receives a phone call that her daughter is very sick with a fever. She leaves work, stops by the pharmacy to get some medication. She gets back to her car only to find that her keys are locked inside the car.
Not sure what to do, she calls home. The baby sitter tells her the fever is getting worse. “You’d better find a coat hanger and get that door open.”

The woman looks around and finds an old rusty hanger thrown down on the ground. She doesn’t how to use and being religious she bows her head and asks God to send her help.

Within five-minutes an old rusty car pulls up. Slowly a bearded man wearing an old biker skull rang on his head gets out. “The woman thinks, “This is what you sent me to help?” But she is desperate so she tries to give a prayer of thanks.

The man asks if he can help her. “Yes my daughter is very sick. I stopped to get her medicine but locked my keys in my car. Please, can you use this hanger to unlock my car?” “Sure!” this man says. He walks over to the door and in less than a minute the car is open. The woman hugs the man and says through her tears, “Thank you so much! You’re such a nice man.” The man replies, “Lady, I am not a nice man. I just got out of prison today for car theft and have been out for only an hour.

The woman hugs the man again, and with sobbing tears cries out loud, “Oh thank you God! You even sent me a professional.”

(Transition) Children at play. Adults who don’t understand what God is doing. This is what our passage of scripture is about this morning.

Just like the boys in our opening story, Jesus is asked a question. “Are you the one?” his cousin John the Baptist wants to know from the darkness of his prison cell. “Or should we wait for another?”
These questions that come to Jesus through John’s disciples suggests that even the one who was preparing the way for the God’s kingdom didn’t fully understand what God was doing through Jesus.

Jesus answer to this lack of understanding is three-fold:
#1 (and this is found in Matthew 11:2-6) The powerless (blind, crippled, lepers – in our culture aids patients have been referred to as modern day lepers, deaf, the dead, the poor) are receiving God’s power (to see, to walk, to be cleansed and whole, to hear, to live again, with good news).

#2 (and this is found in Matthew 11:7-15) The kingdom of heaven and God is going to look different than you might expect. Until now it has suffered violence, and the violent have taken it by force. But John the Baptist has become Elijah the OT prophet who didn’t die. John the Baptist is ushering out the old age and making way for the new age, the kingdom of God that has come and is coming in Jesus Christ.

#3 (and this is found in our text) You are like children at play who refuse to participate in this!
Here is the essence of what Jesus observed about children playing. Those who have studied middle eastern culture in that time say the ritual of children at play went something like this.

The girl’s would pretend to play the flute – which was traditionally the boys job at a wedding – as way of inviting the boys to begin a wedding dance. The boys would pretend to wail – which traditionally was the girl’s job at a funeral – as a way of inviting the girls to sing a funeral dirge. Because the boys do not respond to the girls playing the flute, because the girls do not respond to the boys wailing, both sides refuse to play.

Commentaries like Dale Bruner and others suggest another possible interpretation of this parable. Those children sitting in the marketplace are Jesus and John calling out to the people. Jesus: “God and I are playing of wedding music for you and you refuse to dance.” You are rejecting my gospel ministry.” John the Baptist: “Jesus and I are playing funeral music and you refuse to cry. You are rejecting my ministry of judgment and repentance.”

In any event the adults of Jesus generation reject both John the Baptist and Jesus – ironically for the same reason – their lack of doing what is culturally and socially acceptable. John didn’t eat and drink normal stuff. It was weird – he ate locust and honey – he dressed strangely, he lived in the wilderness, and he challenged those who had religious and political power. Jesus on the other hand, there’s rumors who about who his real father is, he too challenges those in power both religiously and politically by eating and drinking with all kinds of people, celebrating with sinners, welcoming them to receive good news from God.

What about us today? – Are we really that much different from the generation of Jesus that refused to participate in the coming of God’s kingdom?

Do we not still live in this tension between the grace notes of Jesus wedding music, and the grave notes of the foreboding repentance music of John the Baptist? Do we not often refuse to engage in grace because God’s kingdom is opening up to those we would just as soon not welcome?

Or we ignore or deem irrelevant repentance and judgment because it isn’t all that appealing to us to do the work of personal or communal inventory before God and each other?

So we live in between this tension of the call to rejoice and repent, recognizing that Jesus — the way of the bridegroom— became the way of the cross. Perhaps the message we need to hear most clearly is this: when God calls us, regardless if it is to rejoicing or repentance, we should play! And live in this new age that God is constantly opening up through Jesus.

This is what Presbyterian elder Lee Watenpaugh did. As he was preparing to depart for Sudan’s Darfur region in late 2006 he received an astonishing request from a Muslim village sheik–Please send teachers to start a school so that we can learn more about Jesus.” Watenpaugh returned to First United Presbyterian Church in Woodbridge, Virginia and began spreading the word, making calls, asking for help. Soon a collation formed to support the sending of teachers. It included PCUSA Sudan mission network members, PCUSA mission personnel, PCUSA World Mission staff, a PCUSA presbytery, PCUSA congregations and a PCUSA partner church, all engaged in their passion bring the grace of Jesus Christ our suffering human sisters and brothers in this war-torn country between Arab militia’s and black African Muslims.

Many Western observers say with the acquiescence of the Sudanese government, the Arab militias are attempting to drive black Africans out of Darfur, in this ethnic and tribal war. The United Nations says more than 2-million of the 6-million Darfurians have already been displaced.

So why are Muslims in Darfur interested in knowing more about Jesus? Watenpaugh attributes it to those Christians serving the region that is suffering in the midst of horrific violence. One day a sheik told him he was amazed by the dedication of Christians involved in relief efforts. According to Watenpaugh the sheik said: “You brought the clinic to help us when nobody else would. We say you get hit in the head with shrapnel. What is it about you Christians that you are out here ready to help us?

If time permitted I could tell you many other incredibly positive wonderful stories about world mission in our PCUSA church. Instead I encourage you to pick a copy of World Mission Highlights that can be found in the narthex area on your way out of the sanctuary this morning, if you’re interested.
I’d like to conclude this message with a personal story and then leave you with some questions. Just this week – on my 50th birthday in fact – I spent an hour with my spiritual director, around issues that deal with repentance and forgiveness. One of the issues I’ve been wrestling is how to forgive, when someone hasn’t repented or even acknowledged that what was done was wrong, and that it shouldn’t have happened. This has intensified for me because my father took a terrible fall two weeks ago, hitting his head and face on the concrete. He is home now, but weaker, and not as sharp mentally yet.

But on my birthday I received gift that came during this hour with my spiritual director that overwhelmed and surprised me. Palatable, intense grief – It just kept coming waves. I wasn’t sure what to do, my spiritual director simply said, this is so good, and so normal, just breathe with it and exist with it and know that you are not alone. I’m still not completely sure what happened but I can tell you that I feel as if a burden has been lifted from me, and that I feel more freedom to be myself.

Who is God asking you to show grace to, so that you will no longer refuse to play? What is God asking you to repent of, so that you will no longer refuse to play?

Get about the business of dancing and crying, and live again, playing in and participating in the kingdom of God now.