Kingdom: Wisdom
Jesus is the Wisdom of God
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. July 9th, 2023
It’s easy to pine over the legends of old. What would it have been like to see Martin Luther King Jr. preach? To watch the Lombardi Packers at Lambeau? Or see the Beatles live? We may have legends in our own time, sure. But they don’t reach that stature until they’re already gone, before they become whiffs of nostalgia.
If only the people of first century Palestine could appreciate the absolutely legendary individuals who walked among them! John the Baptist, who Jesus himself calls the greatest of men. A man who lived an absolutely angelic life in the wilderness. He devoted himself to prayer, to fasting, to preaching the word of the Lord. He managed to subsist on nothing but locusts and wild honey. He wore nothing more than camel’s hair. He preached powerful hellfire and brimstone and many came to hear him speak.
And there was also Jesus. A man who could cast out demons, cure the sick, raise the dead. A man who confounded pharisees and scribes. Who comforted the downtrodden, the tax collector, and sinner. Who proclaimed the good news of the Kingdom of God.
Yet we hear this morning from Jesus himself neither of them were appreciated in their time. “For John came neither eating nor drinking,” Jesus says, "and they say, 'He has a demon.’” John was a little too strict, a little too otherworldly. People swarmed to hear him speak, but he was also a subject of gossip. No man could live that way, we might imagine them saying. He must be possessed. We know Herod Antipas himself feared him, he had him arrested because he told Herod not to marry his brother’s wife. But he kept him around because, entranced by his weirdness, he liked to listen to him. But he didn’t want to follow him.
Jesus, too, we learn became a subject of mockery and opposition. “the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” No one knows what they want! If John is too strict and otherworldly, Jesus is too debauched. Where John fasts, Jesus does not fast. Where John stays in the wilderness, Jesus finds his home among tax collectors and sinners. That is to say, among the wrong sort of people. The sort of people who run afoul of the Law, the sort of people who are not like us upstanding citizens with all the right opinions.
God blessed that generation with two of the greatest men of all time. And both were rejected for two opposite reasons. “Yet,” Jesus says, “Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”
Everyone seeks wisdom. Wisdom is the sort of knowledge that leads to good and right action. We all want wisdom because we all want to live well. We want to be happy. We want to do good for ourselves and others. And because we are made free wisdom doesn’t come to us by instinct. We need to learn wisdom. Unlike many things we learn in life, how to read, how to do math, the history of our nation, wisdom cannot be taught in a classroom or by a text book. Wisdom can be hard to find. We can easily be led astray. We can be given bad directions and go down the wrong roads. And yet we only have one life to live, only a lifetime to learn wisdom and make use of it for ourselves, our families, our communities, and our world.
What makes John and Jesus so unpalatable is the wisdom they present is peculiar and counterintuitive. It is peculiar and counterintuitive because it is not human wisdom, but God’s wisdom. Jesus says, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” This is the wisdom hidden from the intelligent and wise. This is the wisdom that is so off-putting at times, and difficult to understand. That wisdom is Jesus himself.
"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.” The Bible speaks of the Covenant as a yoke Jews put on themselves. Jesus, too, begs us to put on a yoke. To put on his yoke. To learn his wisdom. To bear his burden. To follow him in his suffering, in his meekness, in his forgiveness, in his peacefulness. To know his wisdom. A wisdom vindicated by his resurrection, and his deeds of power.
The wisdom of Christ makes no sense in the world as it is. The meek do not inherit this earth. Peacemakers are not always appreciated in their time. Those who weep do not always laugh. Sometimes things do not turn out alright in the end. But Jesus came proclaiming a Kingdom. A Kingdom where he is Lord. A Kingdom where the world is turned upside down. And when we see things in light of this Kingdom, and we discipline ourselves to see the rule of God in our midst, the wisdom of Christ comes into focus. And we understand, truly, how it is that the way of the cross leads to life and peace.
The next few Sundays we will be focusing on different parables and teachings Jesus gives about the Kingdom of God. And we will see how when we understand the Kingdom we understand the wisdom of Christ. We will see how the yoke of Christ’s wisdom, when we put it upon ourselves, proves to be less burdensome than we might imagine. Instead, we find, it is easier than the so called wisdom of the world. It lighter that the demands of this world. Because the wisdom Christ is, alone, leads to eternal life.