No pleasing people

The Rev’d Devin McLachlan

The Fifth Sunday after Trinity, 5 July 2026

Matthew 11.16–19, 25–end

Recently, someone from Bene’t’s was asking me  about my journey to ordination. And I remember now that one of the odd things when I was an ordinand (perhaps because most of my friends and acquaintances were not churchgoers) was that invariably at any party or picnic where I let slip that I was at seminary, the person I was talking to would begin apologising,  with genuine embarrassment, for swearing earlier in the conversation.

As if that was the most important thing about our Christian faith.

By the way, if you’ve ever cut me off in traffic you’d discover that I still remember a number of excellent words taught to me by my father,  a man who spent many summers working on commercial fishing boats in Alaska before becoming a Chicago attorney.

So it’s a bit of a relief to see that Jesus too was filled with frustration  with people’s expectations about what it is to be religious:

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!” (Mt 11.18-19)

As Christians we are assumed to be parsimonious and dour, as well as corrupt and extravagant, ignorant science-deniers and clever con-artists.  Fasting ascetic drunk gluttons, the lot of us.

In the words of the Life of Brian’s  ex-leper, there’s just no pleasing some people.[1]

Which was perhaps Jesus’ point.  We love our neighbour, but their opinion of our faith  is neither the beginning nor the end of our spiritual journey:

“A brother came to see Abba Macarius the Egyptian, and said to him, ‘Abba, give me a word, that I may be saved.’

So the old man said, ‘Go to the cemetery and abuse [insult] the dead.’ The brother went there, abused them and threw stones at them; then he returned and told the old man about it. The latter said to him, ‘Didn’t they say anything to you?’ He replied, ‘No.’

 The old man said, ‘Go back tomorrow and praise them.’ So the brother went away and praised them, calling them ‘Apostles, saints and righteous men.’ He returned to the old man and said to him, ‘I have complimented them.’ And the old man said to him, ‘Did they not answer you?’ The brother said no.

The old man said to him, ‘You know how you insulted them and they did not reply, and how you praised them and they did not speak; so you too if you wish to be saved must do the same and become a dead man. Like the dead, take no account of either the scorn of men or their praises, and you can be saved.’”[2]

In the words of Episcopal priest Fr Mike Marsh, “Part of our spiritual work then is to detach from another’s praises and insults, seeking our life, identity, and value in God alone. …it allows us the freedom to hear and consider what is said, to be with others in a more transparent and authentic way, and to live a humble life, neither making ourselves more nor less than we really are. And when we can do that we have a new freedom to be with God.”

For God’s yoke is easy. and God’s burden is light.

And the more we live lightly in this world —  transparent and authentic, humble in the most life-giving sense of the word,  ‘gentle and humble in heart’ — the more we live lightly in this world, gently and humbly, the better able we are to receive the freedom of God’s love.

What the world thinks it means to be Christian is, in every important way, entirely unimportant.

And I’m not just talking about the neo-Dawkins atheists

(Oh there’s someone I’m professionally frustrated with — a zoologist pretending to be a scholar of religion. He reminds me of the physicist in the old joke who seeks to advise a struggling dairy farmer: ‘First, we assume a spherical cow….’)

It’s my fellow-Christians as well — for there’s always someone ready to judge that your faith is too dour, or too liturgical, or not formal enough, or too loud, or maybe just a little too swear-y, or too straight-laced. But “like the dead, take no account of either the scorn of men or their praises.”

How much easier it is then to love our neighbour, if the anchor to which we hold is not their opinion, but the love of the one whose burden is light!

And — equally, in fact even more importantly —  how much easier it is to love my neighbour, when i stop trying to judge their faith.

Our faith can bask in the love of God rather than trying to prove that a neighbour is wrong.  Our faith can rejoice in the beauty and intelligence of science, from cosmology to coniology[3]and dwell in holy mystery.  And even when our faith burns like fire in our bones e en while our tongues struggle to articulate that faith, we can still take comfort:

For God has revealed his salvation to infants. Not to our wisdom. Not to our intelligence.

God has not revealed these things because of our clever words or our straining achievements, the good opinion of our neighbours, nor to our professional qualifications.

God has revealed his love to infants. To the children of God we have always been. In this world of panic and competition, of striving and straining, be at rest, a child safe in its parents arms.

In this world of division and diatribe, set down the heavy, wearisome burdens of pride and fear. Set down the awkward burdens of judgement and anxiety. Instead, choose the yoke that is easy, lift up the burden that is light, learn the lesson that is gentle and humble in heart:

Loving God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength, loving our neighbour as ourself.

[1] Or was that what Brian said to the ex-leper? I’m going to have to watch that movie again.

[2]The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, trans. Benedicta Ward (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984), 132.

[3] the study of dust!