Weekly Meditations

Why won't you listen to me? Is the complaint issued in Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30, where Jesus is depicted saying, "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!' (11:18-19).

I am sure many of us today can understand Christ's sentiment. How can we communicate with people who have already chosen not to listen to us? How can we guide them to repentance when they have shut themselves off from every attempt at honest dialogue?

"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” (Matt 11:17). Jesus tells this to his disciples, observing that the people most entrenched against his message of love were often the most knowledgeable and invested people in Israeli society. It was the very people whose job it was to listen to God who refused to accept God’s own Messiah right in front of them.

Jesus comments that if these people were to listen without the preconceptions they were studied and invested in, if they listened to him with the heart of a child, they would see that justice without love was not justice at all.

Jesus goes on to say, "Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28), returning to his core message that it is the meek and the weary, the poor and the oppressed who best can see the truth of his ministry.

This passage from Matthew echoes Jesus' latter statement in Matthew 19, that “It is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven. Power and privilege blind us to simple truths about human dignity.

Jesus’ observations remind me of the observations of the Black poet Robert Hayden, who, in his 1962 work, Night, Death, Mississippi, tells a story of a klansman exposing his five-year-old son to the practice of lynching. Both celebrate the murder of their Black victim, evoking Jesus’ name as they do so: “Christ, it was better than hunting bear which don’t know why you want him dead!” Exclaims the son, oblivious to his blasphemy. It did not occur to father and son that Jesus had died in the same way as their victim; they were too invested in their racism.

How do we communicate to lost souls the error of their ways? How do we love and forgive the children of God who have strayed so far from the Messiah they claim to follow?

I see this dilemma in current events. The Mt. Olivet Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky, has sparked outrage over a Vacation Bible School play where children executed a man portraying the devil by firing squad. The pastor led the audience to chant “Kill him, kill the devil!” but who is this “devil” you are teaching your children to hate? Who are you advocating violence against? Is your “devil” a migrant seeking asylum? A woman seeking ordination, or a young Black child in a parking lot?

Blind faith is dangerous and can be violent if we are unwilling to purge our hearts of our harmful preconceptions and divest ourselves of injustice.

God’s love is most clearly communicated when we listen with the intelligence of a child. When we listen to love without bias, love will ease our burdens and grant us rest.

Rev. Devon Thomas