Prayer

Lord as we ponder your words open our hearts that we may understand and know you. Amen 

Sermon    

I can remember watching one of the episodes of the Vicar of Dibley a British comedy. They had formed a book club and all had come together for their first meeting and it turns out after some rather funny moments that no one had read the book but just the dust jacket. Some had come just for the chocolate hobnobs.  Then the question is asked “well what book has everyone read?” The Scene cuts to a very serious discussion and the Vicar askes.  “Can he ever know true happiness, let’s go back to the original text…and it turns out they are reading from Winnie the Pooh and had been discussing   Eeyore

Tim Adams of the Guardian wrote a while back that during a series of lectures for passion week, the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, opened up about his mental health. In confessing how he had long relied on antidepressants to “restore me to Eeyore status from something much worse”, he noted how his predecessor, Dr Rowan Williams, once advised him “there is almost no human situation that cannot be explained with the hermeneutical tools of Winnie the Pooh”. Certain psychologists have, in recent years, concurred with this observation, writing academic papers on how the characters in the Hundred Acre Wood are expressions of disorders: Tigger suffers from ADHD, Rabbit is a narcissist, Piglet has an anxiety complex and Pooh displays obsessive compulsive maladies associated with eating honey. And Eeyore cannot seem to see joy in life. 

AA Milne himself tended to be dismissive of such readings .

Milne After serving at the Somme,   was not convinced by religion – for all his “hush, hush listen who dares, Christopher Robin is saying his prayers”, he never had his son baptised, unpersuaded that he was born in sin.

Like his creations, Milne put his faith in human difference and inclusive community and was roundly dismissive of the judgmental thou shalt nots of the Bible: “The Old Testament,” he once observed, “is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief – call it what you will – than any book ever written; it has emptied more churches than all the counter attractions of cinema, motor bicycle and golf course.”  

We are not going to hear Jesus speak ill of the Old Testament after all he was a very devote Jewish Person.  However, Milne idea honouring human difference and inclusion is much more in line with what Jesus taught.

I have known some Eeyore's in my time. Regardless of what they had or their live circumstances they could not be happy. 

There is at times this skewed expectation that we should be happy all of the time.  What this means is that people are always looking for the next good thing to make them happy .  I read this a while back in Pleasure is not happiness what keeps people suffering is the constants seeking of pleasure.  We need to retrain ourselves to seek peace over pleasure joy with in the challenge and to find happiness in the process of being alive.   This is a new way of thinking for me. 

In essence I think this is what the message of the gospel is for us today. Jesus says look we did this and you were not happy, so we did this and you were not happy. You listened to John and not happy, listened to us and not happy. What is it then that you are looking for.

Jesus says

“We played the flute for you, and you didn’t dance. We mourned for you, and you didn’t lament”(v. 17). A flute and dancing are appropriate for a wedding. Wailing and mourning are appropriate for a funeral. Whether the game is happy (weddings) or sad (funerals), the children refuse to play.

What do you want, you are not content with either therefore what then will you be content with. 

The next section people are in arms that Jesus is  a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners”  as compared to John, who people flocked to in the wilderness is seen as having some sort of demon and really got on the bad side of Herod and his family getting his head served up on a platter and not metaphorically.  

As the commentator states.  

 Some people just not content with what they have.   Always looking for the something more. 

While John looks like a religious fanatic, Jesus appears to be a libertine.   So if there is something wrong with both of them then you do not have to choose to act at all.  If you are unwilling to act then what will you act upon

   The reality is that in taking John and/or Jesus seriously means that we see the world differently     

Those who were critics of Jesus and John, could not see the world differently.