“But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates, “‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, 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 at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.” (Matthew 11:16-19)
As we have seen from our gospel readings in the weeks prior, it seems that every time that Jesus spoke with the religious leaders of the Jews, He antagonized them. The reason is that He spoke words of authority and truth which ran contrary to the rules of the bureaucratic Jewish religious system. They could not accept these truths because they felt that Jesus challenged their authority and power and so was someone to be eliminated. He called them hypocrites and sinners which was the truth, but a truth they did not like or desire to hear.
In similar fashion, Martin Luther suffered at the hands of the bureaucratic, authoritarian and corrupt Roman Catholic Church when he preached salvation by grace through faith and not by works of any Law. Roman church leaders saw him and his message as a threat to their cushy lives, their immorality, their corrupt authority, their control over the lives of the millions of Christians and their pocketbooks. Yet what Luther preached was the Word of God, long obscured and hidden by the legalism of Church bureaucracy.
This good news, as the Lord said, reveals that we are all slaves to sin because we all sin. But many these days reject this good news because they do not think they are so bad. They want to establish their own truth, to make their own way to heaven. They reject Almighty God because they want autonomy: to rule over themselves as their own god. How strange and foolish. Only by faith in Jesus do we become sons of God, heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven. We cannot earn it by good works. We receive it as the gift of God. This is such a great comfort that frees us from all our anxiety and fear, especially the fear of death. If we believe this great offer we are accepted and loved by God in spite of our sins.