A Different Kind of God

Zechariah  9: 9-12
Matthew 11: 16-19, 25-30           

In the scripture today, Jesus tells us that his yoke fits well when we put it on and what he means is that instead of filling up our lives being busy all the time and trying to create our self-worth from how many things we accomplish in a day and how many people are our friends and how many likes we get on Facebook – Jesus tells us that the yoke he will give to us is made specifically for us and it will bring MEANING to our lives instead of just busyness. Because that is what we all want. We want to mean something. We want to leave a mark on the world and know that when we’re long gone, those who loved us still remember us.

Jesus brings meaning and purpose to our lives. Rather than filling up on useless endeavors that mean nothing in the long run, we need to fill our lives with the words of Jesus Christ, fill our lives with the voice of the Holy Spirit, and we need to fill up on the love God the Father has for all of His children. This is where meaning and purpose truly exist for us.

Every time you choose to do something good for your community; every time you forgive someone for something they did to you; every time you show compassion while everyone else is showing anger – you proclaim your witness to the love of God born out through the birth and death of Jesus Christ and continued through the presence of the Holy Spirit. Your life and your decisions may very well be the only Gospel some people ever read.

Think about that for a moment. When you proclaim yourself a Christian, you label yourself and YOU decide what people will think about a Christian by the way you treat them and by what you say to them. There are so many people who have never or barely ever cracked open a bible. YOU are the only living witness to the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ.

John, tried to show God to the people by being very ascetic and Jesus tried to show them God by being very friendly. Both were shot down by the people that thought they knew the Old Testament and knew God, but they were embraced by the people who didn’t know much about the OT, although they desperately wanted to know God. In today’s world, you can bet the same holds true.

We, in these churches like to think we know Jesus and know the ways of the Holy Spirit and that we know the love of God the Father. And we do to a certain extent just like the scribes and Pharisees did. However, you can bet that if Jesus came back today, that he would deliberately be the opposite of everything we’ve ever imagined him to be. Jesus was always breaking our preconceived ideas of what God is all about; as well as our ideas of what a Savior is supposed to be.

Back in the Pharisees time they were looking for a warrior on a horse that would lead a great army and cut down the Roman Empire. What do we expect Jesus to be now? The great humanitarian? Or is Jesus the emo kid with the black hair and spikes in his chin and piercings everywhere? Is Jesus the dirty, homeless man we passed by without a thought? Is Jesus the illegal immigrant just trying to save his family from a life as awful as the one he lived? Is Jesus the lesbian woman with cancer trying to get her lifelong partner death benefits when she dies? Is Jesus the black teenager trying to escape from the gangs he grew up in and was told he could never escape from by everyone in his life? Is Jesus the young woman dressed provocatively because she bases her self-worth on how many glances she receives because no one ever bothered to love the real person she is inside?

Jesus comes to us in many forms and in many ways. He rarely is what we expect him to be because we are limited by our own biases and preconceived ideas the way the Pharisees were when they encountered Jesus and John. Where are we blinded? It’s important for us to recognize our own failings and lack of imagination because it helps us grow into better people that accept the failings in others.

It’s easy to judge. We see in this passage that the scribes and Pharisees had judgment down to a T – and let’s be honest – so do we. However, we’re not called to be super critical and passive aggressive to our fellow human beings. We’re called to share the Gospel and that doesn’t always mean quoting scriptures at people. It’s about how you live your life. It’s about the words you choose to say that can wound or heal a person. It’s about taking a moment to help instead of hurt. It’s about offering real advice that is meant to help a person instead of using it as a way to put them down.

Every choice we make in both word and deed tells the world the kind of person we are and since we have proclaimed ourselves Christians – then we better recognize who Christ is so that we can follow his example. We cannot lie, hurt others, deliberately gossip, deliberately put them down, deliberately refuse to forgive mistakes, deliberately cause pain and think that non-Christians will want anything to do with Jesus Christ. They will run from God because we have shown them that God is a hypocrite that says “love and forgiveness and mercy” but then shows hatred, judgment, and pain when a person falls short of perfection.

Perhaps we need to take time to get to know Jesus all over again. Crack open that Bible and before you begin to read, ask God to show you where you have lacked imagination and forgiveness and acceptance. Ask God to show you more about who God is and what Jesus Christ is doing in this world today and then begin to read. Read with an open mind and heart. It’s what we need to do when we meet people as well. We need to listen with an open mind and heart. We need to find the beauty in each person because there is something beautiful and pure and good in everyone we encounter. They are God-made therefore they cannot help but have beauty inside of them.

When we start looking for the goodness in people, the flaws start to disappear. Stop criticizing and start loving – that is what Jesus calls us to do!

Amen.