This Generation - Reflections on Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30, Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A

by John C. Holbert on Friday, May 1, 2026

         It may be that many of you have focused your attention in this pericope on the famous request of Jesus to “take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,…for my yoke is easy and my burden light” (Mt.11:29-30). I have always found this teaching rather ironic, given the demands that Jesus always makes on his followers, few of which they, or I, have found to be neither easy nor light! But I will leave that irony for another day. I wish to focus this essay on Mt.11:16-19, a small text that I find amazingly appropriate for this particular day and time in the history of US America.

         This year is America’s semiquincentennial, in English, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Around July 4 of this year, we will witness the usual parades, bands, fireworks, and even this year a WWF cage fighting match on the lawn of the White House! A rather peculiar way to celebrate such a remarkable day, but so it is in the administration of Donald J Trump, whose past includes relationships to various wrestling/fighting events. Which leads me to repeat Jesus’s statement in Mt.11:16: “With what shall I compare this generation?” With what indeed?

         Jesus may offer to us a clue for our own comparisons by the interesting ones he suggests. Jesus speaks of his generation as children, playing games of make-believe. He describes first a group of active children who complain that another passive group refuses to join the play; the active group plays the pipe as at a wedding feast, but the passive group will not dance to the tune. And when the active group “laments,” perhaps weeping and wailing as at a funeral, the passive group will not join in the mourning (Mt.11:17). It could be said that “this generation” is sharply divided between those who wish to lead in matters of enjoyment and sadness and those who show no interest in either activity. And in the same way, Jesus chides his hearers as those who named John the Baptist a person possessed by a demon, because he was a deep ascetic, eating and drinking very little, while at the same time calling Jesus (“the son of man” or “the human one”) “a glutton and a drunk, and a friend of tax-collectors and sinners,” because he enjoyed good food and drink and ate and drank with the wrong folks (Mt.11:18-19). This generation has a very hard time expressing any sort of unity about pretty much anything! They are children, playing their own games, shouting out angry words against anyone with whom they disagree.

         And what shall we say about this 21st century generation? Are we any different? Our Republican politicians, who currently control all three segments of the US political structures—White House, Senate, and House of Representatives—have collectively passed what they named “The Big Beautiful Bill,” though they have now renamed it something about “Tax Relief.” It surely is tax relief for those who have millions and billions, far less relief for those among us who have rather less cash to spare. These Republicans continue to crow about this legislation, passed with precisely no Democratic support. The result of its passage has been a potential 16 million Americans thrown off their insurance policies, achieved by the Obamacare provisions of some years ago, the denial of SNAP benefits for millions of working families, and the reduction of Medicaid resources for millions more of the working poor. Indeed, the Republicans have piped their tunes of financial reductions for many, and large gifts for the few fabulously wealthy among us, and the Democrats have refused to play. 

         And what does that say about this generation? I would suggest that this generation has deranged and perverse priorities, emphasizing goodies for the rich at the expense of those far less well off. As we witness this year of the semiquincentennial, and its bands and parades—and its cage-fighting matches— we would do well to listen with care to those who are piping these tunes for the rich among us. We would do well not to be taken in by the display of power and comfort and pleasure for the few. The Declaration of Independence declared freedom from any sort of tyranny, especially kings, any system of leadership that was not interested in all of its citizens, not concerned for those marginalized, not aware of the working immigrants who need our support. We must not let ourselves be seduced by the flashes of grandeur, the loud colors of fireworks, the beautiful piping, bidding us join the pleasurable fun. If we do, forgetting those of us who cannot join in the fun, having not enough money or time or leisure to do so, we will be like children, playing make-believe, hoping “bread and circuses” will hide the truth of a generation that has lost its way in the search for a so-called “American Greatness.” 

         To what may we compare this generation? We are like children, playing games of make-believe, hoping all will be well if we pipe loud enough, if we dance fast enough, and refuse to take seriously the hope of an America conceived for all of its people, searching diligently for equality for all, not only for a few.