Wednesday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Where have spontaneous children’s games gone in our era of “play dates”? Myself a baby-boomer, in the ‘50s & ‘60s neighborhood children would race home after the final bell, change their school clothes, finish up homework (or at least say we did) and then run out to join the myriad of kids outside (large families were common in baby-boomer days). Playing hard, we would leave the fun once the “street lights came on.”
Our activities may have been the likes of “tag,” “kick ball, “dodgeball,” or “keep away.” Children’s fun in first century Galilee had a wide variety, too, but children especially loved imitating the adults around them. Two playful activities are mentioned in today’s Gospel. Children imitating “funeral” and “wedding:” “We played the flute for you, but did not dance” [wedding]. “We sang a dirge for you and you would not weep” [funeral]. There are always children (and adults) who will not take part.
John the Baptist represents the funeral. His message was a dirge, a wail, and a mourning song. Somber and severe was John. But what he offered was simply not enough. He failed their expectations and was rejected. Pouting, they took their ball and went home.
Jesus represents the wedding. He is the ultimate bridegroom of the Kingdom Banquet. He made merry with people! But Jesus invited the wrong kinds of guests — the riff-raff and the loathsome, society’s miscreants. The man from Galilee doesn’t fit their expectations and is rejected.
It is apt that Luke illustrates 1st century children’s play of the most revered of all adult activities such as “funerals” and “weddings.” Kids like to imitate their elders and like some adults are more like brats, and spiritual brats at that. Nothing pleases them, neither dirge (John) nor the dance (Jesus). They whine and pout and refuse to budge. Thinking themselves the center of the universe, they demand that the other children do it their way or they will take their ball home. Is this far from what children witness from “grown-ups” in our day, expecting the world to bow and bend? Nothing is ever enough.
Are we spiritual brats from time to time refusing to take part, looking for faults and imperfections? Do we bend the gospel toward us rather than us to the gospel? Do we exclude those that Jesus would honorably seat front and center? Do we threaten that unless things go our way we will end the game and take our proverbial ball home?
Where do we need to grow up, you and I, so we might fully take part in both the dirge and the merriment of life? Where do we need to shed the expectation that the world falls to our whims?
—Timothy J. Cronin