Luke tells us that “the Pharisees and the experts in the law rejected God’s purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptized by John” (7:30).  So, it is possible to reject God’s purpose, but we already knew that.  God has such wonderful plans; so many want nothing to do with it.  If they did, wouldn’t they be here, with us or in any church?  By some reports, a majority of Americans do not believe in God, which sounds odd, since we are also told that a majority of Americans are Christian.  I’m afraid the suspicion is sadly true that not everyone who claims to be Christian is in fact claimed by God in Christ Jesus.  People can claim this or that yet not be claimed by it.  Luke says the evidence of rejection was not receiving baptism from John.  I have to suppose there was one Pharisee or another, one expert in the law and another, who did receive baptism, but as a whole, neither group did.

Why?  Because they did not believe they needed that baptism.  They knew about sin—as they supposed, and they knew they weren’t sinners.  The idea of receiving baptism was offensive to them, to their sense of themselves and their relation to God.  What was John’s baptism?  A baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  John himself wasn’t forgiving anybody’s sins, as though he had that power.  John was a facilitator.  John was saying there is a door that is open: let me guide you to it.  If you want God’s forgiveness, if you want conviction that God is pleased after all to restore you, repent.  John called people into the water, poured the water over them (or plunged them down, if you have to be so Baptist about it!).  He asked them to confess their sins to God, to begin taking those necessary, saving steps in the direction of repentance.  Relationship requires honesty.  Self-deception won’t do.  Each step in the direction or repentance was a step closer to God, ready to forgive.  John was telling them, reminding them all, that God is there and ready to forgive, a God of salvation compassion.  All it takes is repentance, the confession of sin: our disordered lives, our foolish living for ourselves, leaving such a mess as we go.  John’s baptism was like an enacted prayer for forgiveness for those who confessed their sin, their absolute and entire lack of righteousness; that is, their absolute and entire, ongoing need for God.  People who don’t sin don’t need God.  No one says that, but that’s the underlying logic.

The Pharisees, remember, were those who had committed themselves to the most rigorous keeping of the law.  The experts in the law—other accounts call them scribes or lawyers—spent their lives immersed in God’s written Word, debating about interpretation.  Yes, it says this, but what does it mean, how to understand it, and how to apply it?  Those were the questions the law experts explored.  The law experts filled out how the law was to be carried out, and the Pharisees then devoted themselves to carrying out the law so interpreted.

Beloved, we see what happens when God’s Spirit is nowhere to be found as people interpret the Bible.  People, for whatever reason, seem to have an inbuilt tendency to interpret Scripture towards their own wishes.  And what can check that?  Well, there’s a term for this, too: stubborn pride.  The shorthand for this is sin.  Interpretation is the source of so many heated arguments; Jesus came as light.

The Pharisees and law experts would not be baptized by John because they could not see, would not see that they were in any need of repentance, that there was anything of which they needed to repent.  That was the logjam, the obstacle, the stumbling block.  Until we know we need God’s forgiveness, until you and I know why we need God’s forgiveness, know what we have done, said, desired, contemplated, that requires God’s forgiveness, that can be washed away only by God’s forgiveness, until we arrive at that point, God can’t do much for us, despite all God is always doing for us: giving us light and life, for example, food and work and income, health.  All God’s goodness towards us and towards everyone is for a reminder of God’s nature, a reminder of God’s goodness.  Let us not neglect our good God, ready to forgive.  The time to turn to Him is now.

It’s not just the Pharisees and law experts who were left cold by John’s call to the water, indignant, insulted, as if how dare he talk that way to us.  Jesus lays a broad charge, beloved.  How can we hear it?  “Jesus went on to say, ‘To what, then, can I compare the people of this generation?  What are they like?’” (7:31).  Have you tried talking with people about Jesus?  Yes, some will enter into the conversation.  It can be a rich and rewarding conversation!  You and I, however, we know that such willingness to talk is the exception.  The majority would rather talk about something else, anything else.  Raise Jesus and they get evasive, prickly, uncomfortable.  They don’t feel safe, as the current jargon says.  So, don’t even try to bring in words like sin or salvation.  Even if the majority of Americans do consider themselves Christian, that doesn’t mean they want to talk about it, think about it, explore it.  Hey, I’m Chrisitan, okay? So let’s talk about something else.  Well, who wants to talk about sin?  Yet, as Jesus was reminding everyone, no one could talk about Jesus without also talking about sin.  Jesus came because of sin.  Around the start of this century, Methodist bishop Will Willimon wrote that “sin is the problem we have between us and God.”[1]  Jesus is the answer to our sin problem, amen?  So why do you and I just let the conversation stop and drop, right there?

Jesus searches for an image that people around him would recognize.  He tells them they are “like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to each other: ‘We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not cry’” (7:32).  Can’t sing anything to make them rejoice; can’t sing anything to touch their heart!  As if nothing they’re told makes any difference to them.  As if they won’t listen, or have forgotten how.  “At the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light, And the burden of my heart rolled away”—maybe like a tombstone? —“It was there by faith I received my sight, And now I am happy all the day!”  Yeah, forget that.  Not many will confess their blindness, their spiritual blindness.  I mean, how does that make them look?  “Jesus said, ‘If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains’” (John 9:41).  The Pharisees aren’t the only ones.

Not rejoicing, certainly not repenting.  I mean, why would they?  What would draw out one or the other, rejoicing or repenting?  Relationship, beloved.  A valued, treasured relationship with one whose word we want to hear, wait to hear, love to hear.  One unto whom we can unburden our heart.  Jesus came, the Word of God, the Word Incarnate, proclaiming God’s Word, the message, the truth of the matter.  Yes, there were those who responded positively, we know, and here we are, praise be to God.  And there were many and still are who didn’t much care.  What Jesus said neither encouraged nor drove them to seek the Lord in penitence and prayer.  They felt no need for what Jesus was offering and did not value what he was telling them.

But they were keen to discredit the message and the messenger: “John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon’” (7:33).  John, bah.  Way too religious, denying himself all the good things that can be had here.  He was no fun at parties, not that he was ever invited.  He dressed weird, smelled funky—I mean, couldn’t he at least run a comb through his hair?—always seemed hoarse with trying to get attention.  Out of his mind, possessed, crazy.  The lesson, there—hey, don’t take this religion thing too seriously, don’t take it too far; keep it private; keep it to yourself.  Keep out of my way.

“The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners’” (7:34).  The ascetic monk in the wilderness left a bad taste in the mouth of many—thought he was so much holier than everyone!  And as for gregarious Jesus, who enjoyed a party, who enjoyed people, who liked to laugh and tell stories?  (He told great stories!)  As for Jesus, who displayed no reluctance or revulsion in the company of those whom all truly decent people avoided like the plague: well what kind of religion is that?  A fraud, a hustler, just looking to play people for a drink and a meal.  No one who really loved God would associate with such people!   In each case, the critics are saying that’s not the way because the critics, if they want a way at all, want their way.  As they see it, they hold the truth, know the truth; they make the truth.  No matter your political or theological allegiances, you can’t say you haven’t noticed that, especially over these most recent years increasingly, power, as applied by our fellow human beings of whatever loyalty, power wants to dictate truth, then compel everyone to comply with it.  God’s Word is not man’s truths but God’s Truth.  Yet this can be accepted only by faith, and many do not.

What is the truth of the power of this age?  In whatever manifestation, the core is this: orthodox, historic Christian teaching is not true because it cannot be true.  Why not?  Because, if orthodox, historic Christian teaching were true, contemporary values would therefore necessarily be a lie, a demonic lie, leading only to sorrow and destruction.  Not that we see so much sorrow and destruction out there—nothing to see, here!  Move along!

Beloved, it’s those who are truly hungry, thirsty, who value food and drink.  In our times, people take food and drink for granted: we have all we need, more than enough, too much; we throw good food into the trash can and pour good drink down the drain, as if so what.  If this is what we do with what God gives to sustain our bodies, it’s also what we do with what God provides to sustain our souls.  Americans don’t go to church—we know some of them; some claim to be members of a church yet seem to have found more interesting, rewarding things to do fifty-two Sundays out of the year—the habit of Bible reading is not so common; people don’t pray much and don’t find much personal satisfaction in prayer.  And when pastors start to talk like this, well, no wonder those who wandered off have no reason to wander back in.  Just tell warm, funny stories, pastor!  Jesus was as storyteller.

What does Jesus say?  Surveying the situation he found around him, how does he respond: “wisdom is proved right by all her children” (7:35).  The children of wisdom, the sons of wisdom.  That’s a Hebrew way of referring to those who are wise, who not only know what wisdom is but have some.  Wisdom—that’s applied knowledge, applying what we know to the task of daily living.  The beginning of wisdom, the ground for successfully applying what we know to the task of daily living, the beginning of wisdom, Scripture tells us, is the fear of the Lord: awe, reverence, listening, obedience.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his brief book about being a vital worshiping Christian community, writes, “Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of men.  And so [worldly wisdom] also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness.  Only the Christian knows this.”[2]  Who knows the godlessness of men?  We remember that Jesus spoke much of forgiveness, offered it to any who wanted it.  Let us also remember it was this same Jesus who spoke also about the destructiveness of sin.  The sin that destroys is the sin that says there is no sin, nothing to be forgiven, nothing for which I need forgiveness, no one there to forgive.

[1] William H. Willimon.  Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry.  Nashville: Abingdon P, 2002.  270.

[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Life Together.  Trans. John W. Doberstein.  New York: Harper, 1954.  119.