Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

July 9, 2023

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

One month ago, I packed up my car and headed to Sewanee, Tennessee to start a master’s degree at the University of the South. Loaded down with notebooks, my laptop, and sheets for a twin extra long mattress, I moved back into a dorm like a college freshman. You’d think that clergy living together in a dorm would be different. We’re not. We traded phone numbers, we ate together in the cafeteria, we hung out on Friday nights. It was college deja vu all over again.

This degree is designed to help working clergy in the Episcopal Church stay sharp. In my preaching class, we had guest lecturers from Germany, South Korea, Brazil, and Tanzania. We had students from Illinois, from Georgia, from Missouri, Alabama; from the Bahamas and Malawi. Of the dozen or so students, four were from Texas. Maybe they considered us international students, I don’t know.

But if there was one theme that run through every conversation we had about preaching and church, it’s that people are frustrated. Preachers are frustrated that fewer people are going to church. Preachers are frustrated that they can’t always say what they want to say for fear of making people upset and leaving the church. Preachers are frustrated that they don’t have the time to craft good sermons. The clergy from Africa were frustrated they don’t have the resources we do. Teachers who teach preaching are also frustrated. Not just in the United States, but around the world. They’re frustrated that students aren’t connecting with their congregations. They’re frustrated at how some students are just so bad at preaching. And I know, I know that many lay people are frustrated. Frustrated that their preachers don’t say what they would like to hear, or that their preachers say what they don’t want to hear. They’re frustrated when sermons go long, frustrated when sermons don’t make sense. Sadly, what I took away from class, is that seemingly everybody in mainline Protestant Christianity, is confused, shamed, frustrated at how things are going. 

Up there on a mountaintop in Tennessee, alone in my dorm room, I would worry. If all we’re doing is getting aggravated by what should be the most joyful part of our lives, then what’s the point? Why get back up here week after and after and grind it out if it only causes me, you, and the world more aggravation? Why continue in the church, even, trying to build up the Kingdom of God? I must be either delusional for thinking I can make a difference or so totally out of touch to think that I am. Frustration.

And then, of course, by the grace of God, this is the lesson for today. “Jesus said to the crowd, ‘To what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; 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.”

Y’all, Jesus is frustrated. Jesus is out there, teaching, preaching, helping the poor, raising the dead, feeding the hungry, and people complain about him. Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners and they call him a glutton and a drunkard. John the Baptist fasts and prays, and they say he has a demon. You just can’t win. How frustrating. 

First things first then. This grief, this angst, this exasperation we feel in the Christian life; well, at least it comes to us directly from the source, Jesus himself gets frustrated. We talk about how Jesus shows us how to be grateful, how to be kind, and all that – but thank God that Jesus shows us how to be frustrated, too. That’s the kind of human emotion I need some help with anyway.

And thinking about it, when I read back through the Bible, it seems that everybody gets frustrated. Instead of thinking that frustration is a bad emotion, maybe I can think of as a message from God. Think about it. God tells Adam and Eve to just not do one thing. They had one job. Of course, they couldn’t do it, they ate fruit and God gets aggravated. Or think of Moses. For goodness sake, through Moses God parts the Red Sea and leads the people out of slavery in Egypt. But the people complain. Of course Moses was frustrated. Later in the Old Testament, the people of God are ripping off the poor, they’re not taking care of orphans and windows. The prophets like Isaiah and Ezekiel and Amos are all so frustrated. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that the Bible will teach you how to be nice. You read this stuff and you want to bang your head against the wall. Again? We’re doing this again? 

And it’s not just the Old Testament. You can hear Jesus toss up his hands, “to what will I compare this generation?” Saint Paul, if there is an archetype of frustration in the Bible, it’s Saint Paul. He’s going around trying to get these churches started and, would you believe it, churches are made of people and people are so frustrating. Paul even gets frustrated with himself, like in this reading today. “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Frustration.

So the lesson for me this morning is that when, not if, we get frustrated, it shows that we care. I’m trying to lean into this frustration. If Jesus didn’t care about his people, then he wouldn’t have ever been frustrated by them. But he was willing to accept this slight, momentary aggravation in comparison to the great glory to come. This sounds so strange to say, but I now believe that frustration is but one aspect of love.

If we didn’t care, if we didn’t care about the gospel, if we didn’t care about Jesus, if we didn’t care about the church, if we didn’t care about our families, we would never get frustrated because they wouldn’t mean anything to us. But the fact that we, that you, that I get frustrated sometimes only shows how deeply we do care, how much we do love. Don’t buy that false dichotomy, that you’ve got to be either happy or sad. Or that the Bible is just to teach you nice things. No, there are many more emotions that God can use to express love. When you see an injustice, or a wrong, or something that doesn’t smell right, or no matter how hard you try, things just don’t seem to be working out, don’t run from it, dig in. Show that you care. Show that you love the world enough to be frustrated for it. It might just be exactly what God is calling you to do.

I have come back with no magic formula, no quick fix, no solution to solve anyone’s problems. In fact, maybe I’ve come back with the realization that problems are but places for all of us to grow.

And, as if Jesus already senses our frustration, as if he already knows how difficult the life in the church will be, as if he already knows the aggravation of discipleship, he gives us a place to lay it all down. In the most majestic words that the Gospel of Matthew can muster, Jesus says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 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. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”