Br. Luke Ditewig

Matthew 11:20-26

When saying, teaching, and showing the same thing over and over, it’s frustrating when your children, students, friends, or audience don’t listen or understand or respond or rise to the invitation. It’s hard to be ignored and misunderstood. Jesus knows that firsthand.

John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus, introduced Jesus to the crowds and baptized him. But lingering in prison and not seeing expected change, John doubted. John asked: “Are you really the Messiah or should we wait for another?” Jesus replied: Yes, I’m doing what you said. Remember Isaiah; I’m healing and liberating, just not as you expect. John, who perhaps knew Jesus best, misunderstood him.[i]

Jesus did most of his early work, including healing, calling his disciples and feeding five thousand in three little villages near each other: Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. These people who most saw the signs and directly heard Jesus ignored him. They didn’t repent. Jesus confronts, saying: Woe. You are worse than infamous Sodom. The indifference to God is more a problem than notorious evil by their neighbors.[ii]

Then Jesus prays. “At that time,” Eugene Peterson points out, misunderstood and ignored, Jesus gives thanks: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”

Jesus knows this misunderstanding and indifference do not impede God. The so-called wise and intelligent are limited to the surface. Down beneath, hidden to them, divine power surges onward. [iii] God reveals and works through infants and children through unexpecting and hidden people and means. The surface makes Jesus sad. Jesus responds and confronts. Jesus trusts and gives thanks that is God with us and grace continues.

What’s happening in your life? Which friends or family are troubling you? What evil, active or indifferent, makes you mourn? What tempts you, rational or not, to despair?

With simple, child-like faith, listen down deep: God is with us, God loves all, and God is healing. At this time, perhaps feeling ignored or misunderstood, or weighed down by grief and upset at injustice, join Jesus in deep trust that grace continues saying: “thank you.”

[i] Eugene Peterson. (2008) Tell It Slant: a conversation on the language of Jesus in his stories and prayers. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, p198-199.

[ii] Eugene Peterson, p200.

[iii] Eugene Peterson, p201-202.