31“To what can I compare the people of this generation?” Jesus asked. “How can I describe them? 32They are like children playing a game in the public square. They complain to their friends,

‘We played wedding songs,
and you didn’t dance,
so we played funeral songs,
and you didn’t weep.’

33For John the Baptist didn’t spend his time eating bread or drinking wine, and you say, ‘He’s possessed by a demon.’ 34The Son of Man,^f on the other hand, feasts and drinks, and you say, ‘He’s a glutton and a drunkard, and a friend of tax collectors and other sinners!’ 35But wisdom is shown to be right by the lives of those who follow it.^g”

Obviously Jesus is talking about some people never being happy. But what, or who, aren’t they happy with. I can’t really judge for sure, but this is what I see in myself when I’m impossibly irritated by people like Jesus and John the Baptist.

I think I’m rejecting God!

You see John and Jesus represent people who were on the extremes. They were extremely passionate. They didn’t aspire to keeping their head down and fitting in with the crowd. They were devoted to a higher God with a higher mission and they were willing to pay the price to accomplish that mission.

This makes us all uncomfortable. To see someone doing what we know we should be doing just pisses us off. If no one does it, then perhaps it can’t be done and God is asking too much or our idea of what God is asking is wrong. Then these freaks come along and truly LIVE…and BAM! our excuses get blown to smithereens!

The challenge here is not to just accept the radicals, or even to love them. The challenge is to be one of them.

Holy Spirit, give me the courage to truly live passionately on the extremes of this life, and at the doorways to your life.