Sermon on wisdom and folly by Rudolf Renfer

Sermon preached by Rudolf Renfer on Matthew 11.16-19

What kind of generation, what kind of people are these! When there is music, they do not dance. When they are at funerals, they do not weep.
And they have the same reaction with John and Jesus.
John is a pessimistic man and speaks about repentance, and they answer: He is crazy, he has a demon.
Jesus is enjoying life, eats and drinks a lot, and they answer: He is a gourmand and gets drunk. He is not serious.

These people might have thought: How can someone enjoy life, when the end of this world is near? The Pharisees are fasting and John is fasting, therefore shouldn’t we also be fasting?
However, this Jesus who calls himself the Son of man is sitting at the table with people who were considered impure and sinners. He accepts the sinners and eats with those who are certainly not politically correct, and possibly neither ideologically nor theologically. He challenges the existing and established religious and social order. Indeed, he seems not to be serious.
However, he also knows that his final destiny will be betrayal, suffering and death on the cross.

So what about us? What shall we do? Where do we stand? Shall we give the same answer: John is crazy and Jesus is not serious? Last Thursday we did not come to work, because it was a holiday, le Jeûne genevois, the Geneva fasting day. Did we fast? Or did we sing and dance on a day of fasting? Maybe we are crazy?
In our daily life, do we behave well, no excess, not too much pleasure, being serious, not eating nor drinking too much, having everything under control?
And in our work here, what attitude do we adopt? Are we punctual with our time schedule (in LWF it’s me who is responsible for the follow-up of the flextime system, so this is something very serious)? No problems with our supervisor? No problems with our assignments? Do we perform well? Is it serious not to take all the vacation days this year, because some of us are under a heavy work load? Maybe some of us are just a bit workaholic and have no time for singing, dancing and relaxing? Are we mad, or are we serious?

It is not easy to find an adequate attitude or life style. If we want to challenge the current economic and social systems, we might need to lose our heads, our traditional common sense, our diplomacy, and stand on the side of all those whom no one wants to stand for.
If we want to challenge the current systems, we might take an option for the table to be shared with all those who are considered impure, unworthy, incorrect and excluded.

So again my question: What shall we do? Our text ends with a strange sentence:
“Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.”
So, John and Jesus are put together under the word of wisdom. Those who can understand John and Jesus will live under God’s wisdom. Sometimes fast, sometimes feast. We have heard from the Proverbs that wisdom of God means something like knowledge of God’s plans and words. Jesus himself represents God’s wisdom, but this wisdom is seen as madness by this world, says the apostle Paul.

This looks somehow schizophrenic, or at least paradoxical. But in fact, Christian faith is a bit like that. Christian faith is revealed to the excluded ones, to those who do not have an important place in life and society. These people do not appear in newspapers, on internet, they don’t have their own facebook, they do not belong to the world of big finances and politics, but maybe they are close to us, or at least to the work we are trying to do in this house, although we also sometimes have the impression of being crazy and mad when we are sitting at our desks, or participating in meetings or looking at decisions of our authorities.

What saves us is the force of grace, or the conviction that we believe in this crazy John and of course even more in this fabulous Jesus Christ who will save lives and communities from damage, in order to live – and why not even here in the Ecumenical Center – with the dimension of foolish wisdom which will be justified through our daily actions and through our daily work, in spite of all adversities.
This will be sometimes through repentance and fasting, and sometimes through joy and dancing, even if the world around us thinks that we are mad or not serious.
Amen.