Boiled or Grilled?

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

“But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ 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!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”

At that time Jesus said, “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; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 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. “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.”

I love to grill.  I also love grilling cookbooks… at least in theory.  I say “in theory” because most grilling cookbooks seem to be made for someone with a degree in Food Science.  Now I happen to have a degree in Food Science, but I don’t want to have to marinade my roast in a vacuum, adding freshly picked herbs from the mountains of Tibet every two hours.  It’s just too complicated for my life.

  

The Pharisees also made life too complicated.  They believed that it was by following the rules that you got closer to God’s Kingdom.  The Ten Commandments were the steering wheel that they used to keep on the straight road to the Kingdom, but that wasn’t enough for them.  They added additional rules to make the sure no one even got close to the edge.

My favorite grilling cookbook is The Webber Big Book of Grilling.  It’s seen so much use over the years its literally falling apart.  I haven’t tried a recipe that’s a bust yet.  This book, unlike most recipes I see these days, doesn’t require you to wade through the author's life story before you get to the meat.  It just cuts through all that complicating mumbo jumbo and gets right to what matters:  Good ingredients, simple technique, and fire.  That approach makes it a pleasure to grill and has encouraged me to try more and more recipes over the years.

Jesus too was looking to cut through the complicating mumbo jumbo the Pharisees had piled onto God’s Law.  All the extra rules weren’t actually helping the people get closer to God; instead it most often made people just give up along the way.  Jesus offered a different approach.  He said forget the distracting mumbo jumbo.  Instead, just “take my yolk upon you” in other words, walk along this life in my footsteps, and we'll all get to God’s Kingdom, AND life along the way will be simpler, richer and actually deepen your relationship with God rather than making you want to throw up your hands.  Don’t make your life harder than the world already makes it, Jesus would say!  Simply love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and your neighbor as yourself.  THAT, like the recipes in Weber’s Big Book of Grilling, is a recipe for life that is straight forward and clear.  Walking with Jesus, accepting his yoke, allowing yourself to be steered by the love, grace, kindness and generosity of Christ in everything we do, gives our lives a clear purpose that leads to an ever more peaceful, closer, and eternal relationship with God.  A relationship and an abundant life that begins now and goes on beyond eternity.  

That’s the program.  Letting go and letting God, as one particular spiritual path says.  Having God as your pilot, not just the co-pilot.  Letting God take the reigns and guide the cart of your life.  Getting on the Jesus bus, putting our tray tables up and and our seat backs in the upright and locked positions on the Jesus plane.  No matter how you want to talk about it, when we begin to walk, step by step in Jesus’ footsteps toward the life God created us to live, we begin to find ourselves living more and more a life of meaning, purpose, dignity, love, and joy.  

Now, none of us will do this perfectly and I am at the top of the "not doing it perfectly" list.  We’ll let Jesus drive for a while and inevitably our lives hit a rock in the road… sometimes a small rock and sometimes a rock the size of Gibraltar… and in those times we’ll find our lives off the road, rolled right into a ditch, and up to our necks in muck.  The Good News is that no matter how much time we spend on the road and how many times we find ourselves in the ditch, Jesus lived, died, and was raised from the dead to make sure that each and every one of us gets to where God created us to go.  

Is it also true that Jesus thinks walking on the road makes for a more pleasant journey through this life than being dragged along through the ditch?  Absolutely!  That’s why he’s always encouraging us to stick to the path of loving God and loving neighbor.  But no matter how much time we spend on the road and how much time we end up in the ditch, Jesus' promise to us and all of creation is that we will ALL get there and not even death will get in His way of making sure that happens.  

You see, life is like a prime ribeye given to us as a completely free, unconditional gift from God.  God has also given us the freedom to cook that steak any way we choose.  We can choose to boil it to flavorless leather OR we can choose to dry age it, add a rub, give it a beautiful crusty seer, and grill it to the rare side of medium rare and then serve it with topped with roasted garlic butter.  Ether way the steak is a gift and you will be fed.  But for both life and that steak, it turns out that it makes an enormous difference depending on how you cook it.  Amen.