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They are like children squatting in the town squares, calling to their playmates, “We piped a tune but you did not dance! We sang you a dirge but you did not wail.” (Mt 11:16-17, Lk 7:32)
For years this remark of Jesus was an enigma to me. (It is a long time since I was a child.) Then one summer, not too long ago, I was watching a group of children trying to organize a game.
One little boy was asked if he wanted to play baseball. He said no, he didn’t like baseball; he liked kick ball.
The other children quickly agreed, “OK, let’s play kick ball!” The boy thought for a moment, then walked away saying, “No, I don’t want to.”
Apparently, it wasn’t either baseball or kick ball that was the issue; something else was bothering him.
Jesus must have observed similar scenes sometimes in Nazareth, sitting in front of his carpenter’s shop and watching the children on the street.
We are often like this in our relationship with God. We make a pretence at wanting to know God’s will but when he shows us something he would like us to do, we often say, “No, Lord, I don’t want to do that” (implying that if it had been something else, we would have responded immediately).
Yet if God invites us to that something else, we, like little children, again say, “No, I don’t want to do that either.” We actually believe (in a childish way) that we are simply not being presented with the right option.
In reality, we don’t want to do anything.
The Pharisees used this same kind of thinking when they proposed that they were eagerly seeking the Messiah.
“It couldn’t be John . . . fasting like that and living like a wild man. He was insane! It couldn’t be Jesus either. Look how he eats and drinks! Would the Messiah act like that?” (cf. Mt.11:18-19)
Jesus read their hearts. They didn’t want to play at all; they weren’t open to any kind of grace. Sometimes in our life with the Lord, we act like that. We kid ourselves by saying that God is just not approaching us in the right way. If he did, we certainly would play.
But isn’t it true that often we don’t want to play at all … neither dance or sing a dirge? The problem is much deeper.
From Desert Harvest, (1985), Wipf and Stock Publishers, pp. 54-55, available from MH Publications
