After lauding the accomplishments of John the Baptist, Jesus lambasts his generation by echoing the words of a children’s ditty: “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.” This is a “something’s wrong with this picture” type of rhyme. It’s a poem that reflects awareness of the effect that music is supposed to have on individuals. It’s a Jazz funeral nightmare: nobody sheds a tear when the orchestra’s dirge-laden, slightly dissonant chords of “Just a Closer Walk with Me” evoke a cloud over the funeral procession. And not even the neutral stragglers in the “second line” shake a leg when the corpse has been committed to the crypt and the band strikes up a raucous rendition of “When the Saints Go marching In.”
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://spectrummagazine.org/article/column/2013/11/07/i-write-songs-matthew-1116-17