Epiphany 6 (NL Year 3) John B. Valentine
Luke 7:18-35 February 16, 2025

"NO MORE PLAYING GAMES"

Have you ever heard the saying that "The devil's in the details"???

It’s a reminder that it's in the details ... in the fine print ... that the mystery ... or maybe the bugaboos .... are to be found.

As in you need to actually read and pay attention to that service agreement or those loan docs before you sign on the bottom line.

Or how about this one ..... that "God is in the details"???

That one’s maybe not quite so ubiquitous as the first one ....

• But architects declare that “God is in the details” as a reminder that sweating the small stuff ... paying attention to the details ... is vitally important ...

• And biblical scholars use the phrase “God is in the details” as a reminder that ... when we read the words of Holy Scripture ... “the details” are oftentimes the places wherein we may unearth our greatest insights.

So ... for instance ... in that chunk of Luke’s gospel which we heard read this morning ... there’s this one quirky detail that has kind of bugged me all week as worthy of our attention.

You see ... buried amid the lines of that lesson ... most of which are a kind of comparative conversation about Jesus and John the Baptist ... is this quirky bit wherein Jesus asks this rhetorical question ....

"To what, then, will I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like?"

And then he answers himself ... saying

“They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not weep.'”

“They are like children .... sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another ....‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not weep.'”

THAT ... folks ... is a quirky and even curious little detail!

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So what is it that Jesus says the people of his day and age are like??

And perhaps ... by extension ... what might we imply that WE are like?

“Like children!”

And not just any children ... not just ‘children that are playing’ ... but children who are whining ... maybe even snipping and sniping at one another!

• "We wanted to play Barbies ... but you said no."
• "We wanted to play baseball ... but you didn't bring your glove."
• "We wanted to play Life ... you wanted to play Candy Land!"

"You're not playing what we want ... the way we want ... and we don't like it!"

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Speaking of "play" ... let's mix things up a little bit here this morning.

Let’s do a turn and talk.

I want you to complete the following sentence ....

"When I was .... pick an age between ... say ‘five and ten' ... I used to love to play __________” ... and then insert your favorite game or pastime.

So ... for instance ... "When I was eight ... I use to love to play ‘Kick the Can’.”

Everybody come up with your answer ...

• How old you were ... and
• What you liked to play ...

And share your answer with at least two other people ... and have them share their answers with you!

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So what was it???

What was it that you loved playing ... back in the day?

Let’s see a ‘Show of hands’ ...

• How many of you came up with a ball game??
• How many of you came up with a board game??
• How many of you came up with an imagination game??
• Music??
• Large group game??
• Some other activity??

But now .... maybe ‘more importantly' ... t least in the context of this morning’s gospel lesson ....

How did you feel if nobody else wanted to play that game or activity that YOU wanted to play??

IRRITATING ... no???

In fact ... I suspect that ... although the particular what we might want to play may be different ...

The feeling associated with others not wanting to play our games ... and/or we not wanting to play theirs ... always felt and feels the same.

Irritating ... frustrating ... annoying even.

Because we don't like it when others won't conform to our desires ... when other people won't do what it is that WE want to do ...

Any more than we like it when we're asked to conform to others' desires when we really don't want to!

But ... either way ... it ALWAYS feels more than a little awkward.

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So what is it that Jesus is trying to tell us with this quirky metaphor about children and their preferred pastimes?

I think ... in part .... that it is an accusation:

• It has something to do with how ... when John the Baptist showed up ... he wasn’t willing to conform to peoples’ expectations ... and it pretty well got him killed.

• And ... likewise ... when Jesus shows up ... he isn’t willing to conform to peoples’ expectations of him either ... and ... at the end of the day ... it is going to get him killed as well.

But then again ... I think it may also be something of an invitation ...

An invitation to play the game that Jesus wants to play ... to get into step with his desires and priorities ... rather than the other way around.

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You know ... or maybe you don’t know ... but there’s been a group of folks around here who have been getting together every other week to study the history of the Reformation.

I know ... maybe not the most pertinent of topics at first glance ... but we’ve found a whole number of way in which ‘what happened way back when’ may inform our lives today.

You see ... it was five hundred years ago or so that Martin Luther sparked a conflagration by nailing his "Ninety Five Theses" on the door of the local church in Wittenberg, Germany.

Specifically ... we’ve been discovering how Luther changed both the church and the world by refusing to be conformed to the expectations of powers of the day ... and rather to conform his life and his teaching to the core values of the Gospel.

Luther wasn’t perfect ... no .... Luther was FAR from perfect .... but his unwillingness to conform to the church's expectations ... and the emperor's expectations ... and the pope's expectations ... changed his world ... and our world ... for the better.

Anyhow ... one of the things that has been fascinating for the folks in our study group has been to realize the level of commitment that it took for Luther and some of those other early reformers to challenge the systems of their day.

Speaking out against the powers of the day ... speaking out against the Pope and the princes ... was tantamount to pronouncing your own death-sentence.

Nonetheless ... Luther spoke out ... and then a number of his contemporaries spoke out ... and literally changed the world ...

Because they tried to conform their lives to the Gospel.

And we’ve seen in their stories an invitation to conform our own lives to the message of the Gospel as well.

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Speaking of conforming our lives to the expectations of others ...

There's an apocryphal story about a third-grade Sunday School class ... wherein the teacher .... because he hadn't spent much time preparing his lesson ... suggested to the kids that they spend some time playing "church".

The kids liked the idea ... and they doled out the roles of pastor and reader and organist ... of choir members, ushers, greeters ...

And set to playing "church".

But after not too long a while ... as third graders are wont to do ... they got bored with what they were doing ... and began fumbling about for something else to do.

At which point ... one youngster in the class piped up and said, "I know ... I got an idea ... let's play ‘Jesus'."

Now when the class asked her what she meant ... and how they should actually play this game called "Jesus" ... she explained that:

One of them would be Jesus ... and be really nice and caring to everyone ...

And the rest of the kids in the class would be mean to the Jesus character ...

• Call him names ...
• Say he was stupid ...
• Complain about everything he did.

Which ... needless to say ... took a little of the glow off of being the Jesus character.

But they decided to give it a shot ... and so they assigned to one the role of Jesus ... and a couple others were cast as disciples ... and the rest of the class was Pharisees and Sadducees ... with a Roman soldier thrown in for good measure.

But it took just a few minutes for the one playing the role of Jesus to call for a "time-out" ...

And ... in so doing ... she unknowingly uttered something incredibly profound.

She said ... "Let's not play Jesus any more, let's go back to playing church."

"LET'S NOT PLAY JESUS ANYMORE ... LET'S GO BACK TO PLAYING CHURCH."

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You've got to admit she's right ... don't you?

There's a difference between "playing Jesus" and "playing church" ....

Even as this morning's gospel lesson points out there was a difference ... a BIG difference ... between:

• ‘dancing' or ‘not dancing' when someone played the flute ... and

• ‘weeping' or ‘not weeping' when somebody else wailed.

Sometimes we know its best to "go along to get along" ....

And sometimes we know its easiest to just conform to the expectations of others ....

And sometimes we realize that the path of least resistance is that along which crowds and waters flow ....

But sometimes we aren't called to play "church" ...

Sometimes we are called to play "Jesus" ...

Sometimes we are called not to conform but to reform ...

To stand up and speak out when it’s discomfortable and discomforting ... and become agents of change on behalf of the Kingdom of God.

May God give us the wisdom to know which times are really which ... and the courage to act when it is time to play “Jesus” !