We all know the feeling of becoming someone we never intended to be. This sermon, based in Romans 7:15-25 and Matthew 11:16-19, 25-end, explores how Paul and Jesus invite us not simply to try harder, but to discover another way of being human.
This is what I don’t understand.
The things I want to do, I don’t do.
I keep making plans
but something always seems to get in the way.
I don’t do the good I want to do
I keep becoming someone I never intended to be.
I wanted to be patient, but then I got tired.
I should have spent more time with my children when they were growing up,
but, you know, the pressures to always be working,
to make a good impression, to get on.
I didn’t want to worry so much, but those credit card bills kept coming.
I wanted to be generous, but never had anything left.
I wanted to be kinder, but ….
That’s what I don’t understand.
I’ve never quite become the person I wanted to be.
Do you get that?
Do you feel that?
Or am I on my own?
I know I’m not on my own because Paul felt it as well
and wrote about it in his letter to the Romans.
I don’t understand what I do.
What I want to do I do not do.
I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
He knew what all of us know
that there is this sad fact of life
that we are never quite as free to be ourselves as we imagine.
We imagine we’re free to be ourselves,
we imagine we’re self-made
but all the time we are being formed by the powers that be:
by advertising – (why would that be a multi-billion industry if it had no effect on persuading us to be and do differently?)
by social media
by our work place – and its politics and expectations
by our families
by our friends
by the news we consume
even by our churches
and the company we keep
All these things form us.
They have power over us.
Some of it works for our benefit, but
some of it teaches us to live by fear,
scarcity, competition and status.
Some of it wields a power over us
so that we don’t do the good we want to do
and finish up doing the things we hate doing.
Paul put it all down to sin.
I don’t understand what I do.
Why do I do what I hate doing?
We hear his conclusion:
“It’s not me. It’s sin living in me that does it.”
Paul speaks of sin as an occupying power
and he has been “taken prisoner”.
Paul isn’t describing a weak will
so much as humanity living under an oppressive regime.
It’s a regime larger than individual acts of wrongdoing.
It’s everything that enslaves us:
Systems of domination,
fear, violence, exploitation,
and the internalised habits they create.
Paul calls this Sin.
We might recognise it today in what we call
“the powers that be”
those forces, systems and habits
that shape us
until we no longer
know whose voice we’re listening to.
It’s the powers that be that diminish us
and steal our freedom to be
the people we would love to be.
The powers that be aren’t just them.
They’re more pervasive than that.
The powers that be are also inside us.
Their voices have become our inner voice.
We’ve learned their language,
They’re our self-talk
persuading us to measure ourselves by their standards
till we finish up cooperating with the very powers that diminish us.
This is what we don’t understand
because we are confused by the powers that be.
And so we turn to Christ.
He does understand.
He doesn’t begin by blaming us.
He begins by understanding us.
His understanding comes from experience.
The wise and learned have scoffed at him.
The powers that be have laughed him to scorn.
He praises his Father for hiding “these things” from the wise and learned
and revealing them only to “little children”
That’s always been the way with God.
Pharoah cannot see
Herod cannot see
Pilate cannot see
The chief priests cannot see.
The so-called “wise and learned”,
the so-called grown ups,
the so-called leaders
are looking in the wrong places,
with the wrong expectations
using the wrong measures.
They cannot see.
That’s why Jesus insisted
that we have to become as little children
to enter the kingdom of heaven.
But why children?
It’s not because children are innocent.
They’re not.
They can be devious and manipulative.
It’s not because children know less,
but because children are still teachable.
The “wise and learned” have already graduated.
They’ve stopped learning.
They think they know how the world works.
They know what success looks like,
who matters, who wins, who loses.
They think they know it all.
They think they’re experts.
Children are still learning.
“Learn from me.”
That may be the most important sentence in today’s gospel reading.
Jesus says,
Come to me.
Take my yoke.
Learn from me.
He’s inviting people into another school,
another imagination, another kingdom,
another way for being human
for those who become as little children,
vulnerable to all sorts of abuse
in the ways of the world and the powers that be,
and teachable …..
and for the weary.
The invitation is for those who become as little children
and the weary and burdened by modern life
which teaches us to desire things we don’t actually want:
to work more, to work harder,
to consume more, compete more, fear more,
leaving us less able to do the good we want to do.
The ones Jesus was inviting
were wearied and burdened
by the religious establishment
the social hierarchy,
the endless demands of honour and shame,
the burden of purity laws
as well as the crushing demands of empire.
Jesus understands
how we are bound to do what we don’t want to do,
and with mercy and compassion
he invites us
to come to him,
to join him
as our teacher.
Every kingdom forms people in its own image.
Every kingdom has its own idea of what a successful human being looks like.
The powers that be produce anxious people,
competitive people,
frightened people,
striving people,
people who never quite believe
there is enough, or
they are enough.
Jesus doesn’t simply forgive those people.
Those people who come to him,
who turn to him
he patiently teaches,
forms
and reshapes
into the people
God intended them to be
from the very beginning:
gentle,
humble in heart,
and finally able
to rest.
Grits and Grains 