Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have perfected praise

 

 Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves.  And He said to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be a called a house of prayer,' but you have made it a 'den of thieves.'" 

Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them.   But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, "Hosanna to the Son of David!" they were indignant and said to Him, "Do You hear what these are saying?"  And Jesus said to them, "Yes.  Have you never read, 

    'Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants

    You have perfected praise'?"

Then He left them and went out of the city to Bethany, and He lodged there.

Now in the morning, as He returned to the city, He was hungry.  And seeing a fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it but leaves, and said to it, "Let no fruit grow on you ever again."  Immediately the fig tree withered away.  

 

And when the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, "How did the fig tree wither away so soon?"  So Jesus answered and said to them, "Assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but also if you say to this mountain, 'Be removed and be cast into the sea,' it will be done.  And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive."

 

- Matthew 21:12-22 

 

Yesterday we read that when Jesus and the disciples drew near Jerusalem, and came to Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, "Go into the village opposite you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her.  Loose them and bring them to Me.  And if anyone says anything to you, you shall say, 'The Lord has need of them,' and immediately he will send them."  All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying:   "Tell the daughter of Zion, 'Behold, your King is coming to you, lowly, and sitting on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.'"  So the disciples went and did as Jesus commanded them.  They brought the donkey and the colt, laid their clothes on them, and set Him on them.  And a very great multitude spread their clothes on the road; others cut down branches from the trees and spread them on the road.  Then the multitudes who went before and those who followed cried out, saying:  "Hosanna to the Son of David!  'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!'  Hosanna in the highest!"  And when He had come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, "Who is this?"  So the multitudes said, "This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee."

 

  Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves.  And He said to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be a called a house of prayer,' but you have made it a 'den of thieves.'"  We recollect that it is the beginning of Holy Week as we celebrate it; the time is just before the Passover when pilgrims arrived in Jerusalem for the feast.   Those who bought and sold were the ones who traded in live animals used for sacrifices.  The money changers were those who traded Roman coins for Jewish coins.  This was because Roman coins bore the image of Caesar, who was worshiped as a god, and therefore were considered to be defiling in the temple.  My study Bible says that the cleansing of the temple is also indicative of the necessity that the Church be kept free from earthly pursuits.  Moreover, each person is considered a temple of God (1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:19), it's also a sign that our hearts and minds must be cleansed of earthly matters.  Christ quotes from Isaiah 56:7; Jeremiah 7:11, putting the two prophecies together to castigate what is happening in the temple at this time.

Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them.   But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, "Hosanna to the Son of David!" they were indignant and said to Him, "Do You hear what these are saying?"  And Jesus said to them, "Yes.  Have you never read,  'Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have perfected praise'?"  Then He left them and went out of the city to Bethany, and He lodged there.  My study Bible quotes from the Vespers of Palm Sunday, "Keep the feast with the children, and holding branches in your hands, sing 'Hosanna."  It notes that many liturgical hymns of this day emphasize the perfect praise of the children, which unlike that of the adults, was innocent, fitting, unashamed, and from hearts of pure love.  So we also are called to glorify Christ in this same spirit (see Matthew 18:1-4).  By contrast, my study Bible says, the adults' praise carried earthly expectations and agendas, which, when left unfulfilled, led them to rebel against Jesus just five days later (Matthew 27:20-23).

Now in the morning, as He returned to the city, He was hungry.  And seeing a fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it but leaves, and said to it, "Let no fruit grow on you ever again."  Immediately the fig tree withered away.  The fig tree is described by my study Bible as a symbol of prosperity and peace, and it withers because it is fruitless.  This is a prophetic act, it says, directed toward those among both the leaders and the crowds who, after three years of Christ's preaching, teaching, and healing, are destitute of spiritual fruit.  Jesus curses the tree also as a warning to those in each generation of what will befall anyone who fails to listen and take His message to heart.

And when the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, "How did the fig tree wither away so soon?"  So Jesus answered and said to them, "Assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but also if you say to this mountain, 'Be removed and be cast into the sea,' it will be done.  And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive."  We don't have any recorded stories of an apostle literally moving a mountain, but patristic commentary is clear that they had this authority if the need had arisen, says my study Bible.  (There are stories of certain saints who made crevices appear in mountains.)  Moreover, my study Bible notes, not everything accomplished by the apostles was written down.  But in addition to its literal meaning, this is a promise given as an illustration of the power of faith and prayer in all areas of life.  My study Bible quotes Theophylact, who writes, "Whatever we ask, without hesitation and believing in God's power, we shall receive" when we ask for things which are spiritually profitable.

 

I'm intrigued by the note in my study Bible regarding the rejection of Christ by the adults in contrast to the children (rejection both among the leadership and the common people).  It says that the adults' praise carried earthly expectations and agendas, which, when left unfulfilled, led them to rebel against Jesus just five days later.  This is because, at Christ's time, the expectation was that the Messiah would be an earthly ruler, delivering them from Roman rule, and re-establishing the throne of David.   But this sense of expectation, and the rejection based on the unfulfillment of such expectation, remains ever with us, and so is also a problem today.  We can see this for ourselves in modern day criticisms not simply of the Church, but for Christianity itself.  We can see distortions and misreading of Biblical texts used as an excuse for rejection, as if to say that Scripture is merely meant to be taken literally, and if it can't, then it must simply be rejected.  Sometimes popular heresies turn out to be just that, and so establish a broken expectation then used as an excuse for rejection.  We can see such rejection on the basis of an assumption that every wish must be granted, or that there is evil that exists in the world, and pain and suffering all the time.  But most of all these objections come from a sense of unrealistic and unpromised expectations that aren't based on faith in the first place.  Many popular assumptions run contrary to long-established Church tradition.  There is an assumption at work that those who were founders of the Church -- those early disciples and apostles and Church Fathers and faithful martyrs and saints from all manner of walks of life and cultures -- were simply superstitious, or perhaps not educated, or simplistic as they did not come from an age with the kinds of technological and scientific advances that we do now.  But this is again a rejection based on unrealistic assumptions and expectations.  The early Fathers of the Church were the best educated of their time, a time when the full flower of Hellenistic civilization was readily at hand and expected to be known by any such educated person, be that culture such as the literature of Homer, Euripides, and Sophocles or all the ancient philosophers such as Plato and Socrates, as well as science, medicine, mathematics, history, and the beauty of art and architecture which remains astonishing and sophisticated to us today.  The unrealistic expectations of moderns includes assumptions about ancient peoples and their lives which not only miss the mark in terms of knowledge, but even in terms of a pragmatic approach to what they must have known and not known, and how they lived their lives.   So often one hears unrealistic criticisms of a faith structured upon the care, understanding, and insight of centuries of brilliant thinkers by those who have not bothered to cultivate the least knowledge about them.  As such, we might fault the adults in this picture for being more childish than the children.  For children, with their more open minds, may be far more able to grasp what faith is about, what God is like, and how faith is offered to us, than adults who have limited their understanding to their own expectations.  But God does not come to us to fulfill our expectations -- and definitions -- of God.  God comes to us to lead us somewhere, to teach us something, and that "something" comes to us on a long -- even lifelong -- journey of discovery.  To come to know Christ, to come to know God, is a question of opening one's mind and heart so that it may be expanded, transformed, and given a shape that does not start merely with us and our desires or expectations.  It doesn't come from popular culture.  It really doesn't matter what we think we know from others, or our expectations and upbringing.  What matters is the approach, the understanding that there is a gift held before us, but that gift must be accepted, opened, and adjusted to as it leads us and informs us -- and not the other way around.  It's a question of the proper understanding of and approach to grace.  This is why we're told that one must be converted and become as little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:3).   This is an allusion to the open minds of children, that remarkable ability to absorb information in ways that seem extraordinary to adults, such as picking up a language by ear, or even using modern technology such as computer games or mobile software applications.  This is how we should be approaching God and approaching Scripture, and not as if it is meant to meet our own expectations or simply to fail, to be rejected.  Such an approach is actually immature and uninformed, especially when there is a treasure stored within the long history of the Church of understanding, insight, and depth of knowledge.  Let us consider the Lord's extended hand to us, and with what level of sophistication we respond to the grace in that offer.  So Christ says, in the words of the Psalmist, "Out of the mouths of babes and nursing infants You have perfected praise."