Sometimes, children play a game that mimics what adults do. It’s a harmless diversion that is simply their interpretation of what is going on. We smile when we see them playing “shop”, when we are served “tea” in an empty plastic cup or when we have our arm bandaged from our wrist to our armpit because they are pretending to be a doctor. There is no way we can confuse what they are doing with the “real thing”, they are just having a bit of fun, pleasing themselves while grown ups get on with the real business. It was the same in the time of Jesus, while the adults would engage in trade in the village marketplace, the children would play, largely oblivious to and ignorant of what was happening around them.
Children at play is a metaphor Jesus employs in our reading today. Jesus explains that the Pharisees rejected John the Baptist because he was too austere for their liking. They lived a comfortable life and did not want to change how they lived when John told them to give up their luxuries and turn towards how God was calling them to live. They also rejected Jesus because His lavish generosity was more than they could stand. Jesus went and helped the very people the Pharisees couldn’t bear to be around. Jesus loved the poor, the outcast the sinner and the sick. Jesus compares the Pharisees to being like children, playing at being God’s people while others, like Jesus, actually got on with the serious business of showing God’s love to the world.
I fear that there are many in our churches today who are playing at being Christian. We are called to follow Jesus where He led and do what He did. We are called to live lives of selfless generosity and to help others, feed the hungry, welcome the outcast. There are times when doing so can seem like unnecessary austerity. We don’t want to give up our comforts or security. Alternatively, we can look at others who are going to those on the margins and wonder why they are wasting their time on those sorts of people? We can suggest that people are poor through their own fault and they should just get a better job. We can swing between finding the call of Jesus as unnecessarily harsh or unnecessarily wasteful depending on how we want to avoid it. As long as we are doing so, we are only playing at being Christians. When we behave like this, we miss what God is actually doing in the world; we become the new Pharisees. If we want to be Christian, we have to stop playing at it and embrace it with our entire life, not simply when it suits us.