The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost ---- 5 July 2020

Zechariah 9:9-12

9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. 10 He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth. 11 As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. 12 Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double.

Romans 7:15-25a

15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. 17 But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. 21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, 23 but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

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.' 18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, "He has a demon'; 19 the 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."

25 At that time Jesus said, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; 26 yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. 28 "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants

·        I don’t believe for a moment that Jesus is telling his disciples to be silly or uninformed. Wisdom is a constant theme in the Scriptures and being thoughtful or intelligent is never down-played. Jesus does say See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. (Mt. 10:16) and that verse doesn’t appear to despise either wisdom of intelligence.

·        Without some intelligence, we could not see God in the world around us or in the people who are with us so often. Without wisdom, we might fall prey to unscrupulous people who would use us and cheat us.

·        However to say that what the Father has hidden has been revealed to infants says a lot about revelation and those to whom God’s revelation comes. Here Jesus says the hidden things of God are revealed not to the wise, the crafty, or the brilliant, but to the ones who are least likely to understand.

·        Were we to rely on our sense and our own understanding of the world around us for an understanding of God and God’s ways, we could easily be led astray. The strangeness of the weather or the natural world and the absolute weirdness and folly of human behavior could lead us to see God as angry, nasty, or possibly insane. That doesn’t even begin to deal with such things as a global pandemic that has sickened millions and bound so many of us into our homes.

·        We don’t rely on our senses or science or understanding alone to encounter God. What God reveals about Godself is beyond our ability to grasp or to scrape up for ourselves from our experience and understanding. As such, we are the “infants” Jesus is speaking of.

·        Do we want to be infants… children… little ones? Probably not. We’ve all struggled for our maturity. Maybe we’ve been thrown into situations that adults need to handle long before we were ready, by family, disease, war, crop failures, or even death. We’re adults! We’ve learned to handle it! As such, this is an admirable thing.

·        What we haven’t learned is now to grasp God and God’s grace by ourselves and our own efforts. It needs to be revealed to us. Do these words seem familiar? I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Ghost has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith; even as He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith; in which Christian Church He forgives daily and richly all sins to me and all believers, and at the last day will raise up me and all the dead, and will give to me and to all believers in Christ everlasting life. This is most certainly true. (The Small Catechism of Martin Luther, on the third article of the Creed)

·        What we believe is not conceived in our own minds. What we believe has been revealed to us by God through Jesus Christ and we grasp it in the Holy Spirit. It is not ourselves we rely on but it is the grace of God on which we rely. As the old hymn says On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand; All other ground is sinking sand.

·        I would say then that the level of maturity we’ve achieved (or have pretended to) has nothing to do with God’s revelation and grace. No matter where we find ourselves to be, we depend on God – like infants – to reveal what is needed to know Jesus and the Father. We may still have to seek out that wisdom and be a little more ready when it comes to us. Still, in truth, God wishes to reveal the life, the grace, the mercy that is God’s own life to us. God will find a way to reveal that to us. That’s all part of why Jesus came among us and why he remains among us.

I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants