Pentecost 18
October 16, 2011
Matthew 22:15-22
A rich man went to his rabbi one day in the midst of a personal crisis. So he asked his Rabbi, what must I do to inherit eternal life? The rabbi spoke with him about the commandments, specifically the second table commandments, honor your father and mother, do not steal, do not kill, do not bear false witness, do not commit adultery. At the end of this list of commandments, the young man wiped his brow in relief…he had not broken any of the commandments that the rabbi mentioned. He thanked the rabbi and was getting up to leave when the rabbi spoke up “there is one more thing you need to do…” Hesitating, the man turned around, “Sell all your possessions and give your money to the poor…” The man could feel drops of sweat form on his forehead…the rabbi had never mentioned do not covet because he knew that the man was so possessed by his possessed that to have made this last statement would be a challenge that the young man was not ready to take on yet. And so the young man left the presence of his rabbi, his head hung low in grief over his wealth.
I tell you this story because I think that the interaction between the rich young man and Jesus can help us frame the encounter between Jesus that the disciples of the Pharisees that we just hear about.
It had been a long day for Jesus when the disciples of the Pharisees and the Herodians came to speak with him. It was the morning after Jesus had entered Jerusalem and turned the temple upside down…and up to this point in the day, Jesus cursed a fig tree, had his authority questioned by the Pharisees when the returned to the temple and then he told them the parable of the two sons, the parable of the wicked tenants and the parable of the wedding banquet. Earlier that day, the Pharisees had wanted to arrest Jesus…but they did not do so because they were afraid of the crowds because the crowds regarded Jesus as a prophet. But it seems that now the Pharisees have come up with an idea that they think will entrap Jesus in what he says.
So the Pharisees send their disciples, along with some Herodians (a group that almost nothing is known about except for that they were probably Roman sympathizers) to Jesus to ask a simple, but VERY loaded question. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the Emperor?”
Now to those of us living in a society where it has been said that nothing is quite as sure in life as death and taxes, had we been there, we probably would have looked at these guys and said “are you kidding? Taxes are a legal obligation.” And in Israel, there were also taxes to be paid. Each year people were expected to pay the temple tax…however, taxes paid to a civil authority was a relatively new thing.
In the year 6 AD, a census tax was instituted by Rome. It is the tax we hear about in the beginning of Matthew that sent Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem. According to Roman law, every adult was responsible for paying this tax, the equivalent to one day’s wages, each year. This tax was the source of quite a bit of anger from the people of Israel, especially the zealots, who had gotten quite violent in their protest.
For Jesus to have responded to the disciples of the Pharisees by saying that paying taxes to the emperor was lawful would have upset the people who had been following him so loyally for years. The zealots who followed him would have especially have taken him to task. On the other hand, for Jesus to have responded that paying taxes to the emperor was unlawful, it would have upset the Herodians, who would have run back to the Roman authorities and reported that Jesus was getting ready to take his “occupy temple street” protest outside of the temple, which the Roman authorities would not have liked very much.
Knowing that they were out to get him, however, Jesus gave neither of these responses. Instead he asks for a coin used to pay the tax. His questioners procure for him a denarius, the currency of the Roman Empire. Whose image is this and what is his title? They answer that the currency bore the head of the emperor on it along with his title, “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus, High Priest.” In a few words, it was a coin with a graven image that equated the emperor with a god. This secular currency was very different from the religious currency used by the Jews.
And so, in one of his more diplomatic moments, Jesus responds “The give to the emperor, that which is the emperor’s, and to God, that which is God’s.” In this one short statement, Jesus shuts down the aim of the Pharisee’s and their cronies. Instead of giving them what they wanted, Jesus acknowledged the civil authority of the emperor…but he also reminded them that God’s empire is bigger than the Roman Empire.
So what does this mean for us who live in a time hundreds years after the fall of the Roman Empire? We who live in a time of economic uncertainty considered to be the worst since the great depression, where “occupy wall street” protests have spread throughout the country, and both sides are crying “class warfare”? And what does this all have to do with the story of the young rich man and Jesus?
I would propose that it all connects through a question that is not asked in this encounter with Jesus and the Pharisee’s cronies but that I wish that Jesus had asked.
“Whose image do you bear, and what is your title?”
We live in a time when our civil currency and the currency with which we give our financial gifts back to God is the same. It is a time when we are being blasted with ads saying that we need the newest and the best things now…and if we miss the boat on the newest gadget we’re going to lose significant status points. Me and mine have caused many to become like the rich young men, guilty of coveting more and more things, letting their possession take possession of them and their lives. The almighty dollar is in a competition with Almighty God for loyalty and sometimes it looks as if we have let the almighty dollar win.
…and it makes you wonder what Jesus would say if he came back now…it would probably be something that would make us want to kill him again, even though he is really just telling us the truth about our situation.
“Whose image do you bear, and what is your title?” Jesus asks us
When we stop to listen to the truth that Jesus has for us, there is some good news…and the good news is that even with the broad grip that civil authority seems to have, God’s authority is bigger and better than civil authority. And not only that, there is good news in the reminder that the image we bear is the image of God…and the title that we bear is child of God. With everything going on in this world, it is the perfect time for us to be reminded we are not defined by our things, we are defined by the image of God that dwells in us. We have been created and claimed by God to go be caretakers of the things that we have been given, but more importantly, we have been called to be caretakers of one another.
This sermon is unfinished in it's written form. In my process of crafting it, I became so frustrated with coming up with a good ending that I decided that it was time to walk away and let the Holy Spirit take over. I have never done this before, but it worked. God is Good.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Sunday, October 2, 2011
God's Crazy Love
Pentecost 16A
October 2, 2011
Matthew 21:33-46
Isaiah 5:1-7
It’s kind of unsettling, isn’t it? A man sends some of his servants to collect his share of the harvest from the tenants that he has leased his vineyard to…when the tenants kill the servants, the landlord doesn’t send in an army to retaliate but instead sends more servants who meet the same fate. Again, the landlord doesn’t seek revenge or send army or guards or even a small gang of men out to the tenants to deal with the tenants and collect the landlords share of the harvest…instead, he sends his son. The tenants foolishly think that if they remove the son from the scene, they might be the recipients of his inheritance…the vineyard…so they throw him out of the vineyard and kill him too.
But why is this story so unsettling? Depressing even? Is it because of the actions of the father to send more servants to meet the same fate as the first servants? Is it because he then sends his son into that dangerous situation to meet the same fate as the servants? As a land owner, he was obviously a wealthy person, being able to lease out land and then go to a distant country…he could have just as easily hired an army or at least a small group of intimidating men to go to the tenants and collect what the landlord was owed. He didn’t have to send his son, or even the second group of servants. Or is it so unsettling because the tenants have an all too familiar attitude.
The behavior of the landlord is definitely hard to accept because of how easily he was willing to sacrifice his servants after the first group had been killed…and it’s even harder to accept that he was willing to send his son into the mix after seeing what had happened to the servants. The attitude of the tenants should be the behavior that gives us the wakeup call, though. The tenants have entered into a lease agreement with the landlord and then, between entering into the lease and harvest time, they become convinced that the vineyard that they are leasing is theirs to do with as they please. They begin to believe that this absentee landlord doesn’t deserve his cut of the harvest…but maybe, just maybe, if they remove his son from the picture, they will be rewarded with his inheritance and be able to live high on the hog from here on out.
But what do these tenants have to do with us that would give us a wakeup call? We certainly are not tenants in a vineyard. Well, this may be so in a literal case…but if you were to think of this world as God’s vineyard, then yes, we are tenants in a vineyard…and because sin has entered into the picture, we have come to believe that this vineyard is ours to do with as we wish. Over the years, we have polluted the water, the land and the air, we have brought on greater disparity between the rich and the poor and have denied justice to the most vulnerable among us. And when God sends prophets into our midst to help us see where we have gone wrong, we either ignore them or send them a painful message that we’re in charge now and we don’t need anyone’s help to get us out of the mess we are in. That was certainly the reality for the prophet Isaiah, the apostle Paul and it was also what we attempted to tell Jesus. We don’t like God’s servants, his prophets, coming and telling us what we do not want to hear…that we have forgotten the truth of God’s reality, either because we chose to forgot it or because it is so hard to carry out that we ignore it until it seems to go away. But in order for that to happen, those prophets need to go away too. And so we cut the Isaiah’s in two, we behead the Paul’s and hang the Dietrich Bonhoeffers…because when their voices are silent, we can live in blissful ignorance running things the way we want them run…giving to our landlord only when we see fit and how much we see fit.
But the parable of the wicket tenants didn’t end with the death of the landlord’s son, it ended with a question. Now when the owner of the landlord comes, what will he do with those tenants? And we are offered two suggestions. The first suggestion is that the landlord will come and deal those tenants a miserable death and then rent out his land to other tenants. Notice that this suggestion is not offered up by Jesus, but by the Pharisees…the very ones whom this parable is aimed at. Retaliation was a very real reality then, just as it is now…which is why in the old testament we hear about eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth…this text actually limited the level of retaliation that could take place…so if someone knocked out your tooth, the most harm you could do to them would be to take that same tooth from their mouth.
Jesus, however, offers up another solution. One in which the landlord does not give up on the tenants or sink to their level. The solution that Jesus offers is that it was necessary for the son to be rejected so that he might become the foundation of what is to come. He takes his words from the Psalms “the stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; and it is amazing in our eyes.” What Jesus is offering up is an alternative to what comes naturally to humans…an alternative in which the landlord so desires to have a relationship with his tenants that he is willing to risk everything, his servants, even his own son, so that he can reach out to them. Retaliation is not an option to the landlord, only love…crazy, unreasonable, unfathomable love.
These texts from Matthew that we have heard in the last weeks and will be hearing in the next few weeks are incredibly dangerous…they invite the temptation of self-vindication…they invite an attitude of “you got what you had coming.” But that’s not what Jesus is about, it’s not what God’s about…that’s not what the Gospel is about, even if we have to do what Martin Luther said is necessary sometimes…squeeze a text until gospel leaks out of it. Jesus cannot help but share the good news of the Gospel, even in challenging texts like the one for today.
As inhabitants of God’s vineyard, it is incredibly tempting to forget that we are just tenants and that can lead us to behavior that is self-serving and dangerous. It can lead us to hoard the gifts that we have been given by God and it can lead us to want to silence the prophets among us to remind us of the hard work that comes with being God’s people, the tenants of God’s vineyard. But as people of God, we are called to do the hard work of tending God’s vineyard and producing good fruits, justice, righteousness, equality, love. We are called to never give up on this work because we have a God who has never given up on us. God is willing to give us an infinite number of chances, knowing that we cannot be forced into anything. God has a crazy, unreasonable, unfathomable love for us, a love that is willing to risk anything to have a relationship with us. A love so strong that God was willing to destroy his choicest vine in order that life may become available to us.
As Christ hung from the cross, God stood at the foot of that cross with dirty, blistered hands, holding a wilted vine and hurting from the pain of his son, knowing that the rejection of his son by the people was not the end of the vineyard…it was just the beginning.
October 2, 2011
Matthew 21:33-46
Isaiah 5:1-7
It’s kind of unsettling, isn’t it? A man sends some of his servants to collect his share of the harvest from the tenants that he has leased his vineyard to…when the tenants kill the servants, the landlord doesn’t send in an army to retaliate but instead sends more servants who meet the same fate. Again, the landlord doesn’t seek revenge or send army or guards or even a small gang of men out to the tenants to deal with the tenants and collect the landlords share of the harvest…instead, he sends his son. The tenants foolishly think that if they remove the son from the scene, they might be the recipients of his inheritance…the vineyard…so they throw him out of the vineyard and kill him too.
But why is this story so unsettling? Depressing even? Is it because of the actions of the father to send more servants to meet the same fate as the first servants? Is it because he then sends his son into that dangerous situation to meet the same fate as the servants? As a land owner, he was obviously a wealthy person, being able to lease out land and then go to a distant country…he could have just as easily hired an army or at least a small group of intimidating men to go to the tenants and collect what the landlord was owed. He didn’t have to send his son, or even the second group of servants. Or is it so unsettling because the tenants have an all too familiar attitude.
The behavior of the landlord is definitely hard to accept because of how easily he was willing to sacrifice his servants after the first group had been killed…and it’s even harder to accept that he was willing to send his son into the mix after seeing what had happened to the servants. The attitude of the tenants should be the behavior that gives us the wakeup call, though. The tenants have entered into a lease agreement with the landlord and then, between entering into the lease and harvest time, they become convinced that the vineyard that they are leasing is theirs to do with as they please. They begin to believe that this absentee landlord doesn’t deserve his cut of the harvest…but maybe, just maybe, if they remove his son from the picture, they will be rewarded with his inheritance and be able to live high on the hog from here on out.
But what do these tenants have to do with us that would give us a wakeup call? We certainly are not tenants in a vineyard. Well, this may be so in a literal case…but if you were to think of this world as God’s vineyard, then yes, we are tenants in a vineyard…and because sin has entered into the picture, we have come to believe that this vineyard is ours to do with as we wish. Over the years, we have polluted the water, the land and the air, we have brought on greater disparity between the rich and the poor and have denied justice to the most vulnerable among us. And when God sends prophets into our midst to help us see where we have gone wrong, we either ignore them or send them a painful message that we’re in charge now and we don’t need anyone’s help to get us out of the mess we are in. That was certainly the reality for the prophet Isaiah, the apostle Paul and it was also what we attempted to tell Jesus. We don’t like God’s servants, his prophets, coming and telling us what we do not want to hear…that we have forgotten the truth of God’s reality, either because we chose to forgot it or because it is so hard to carry out that we ignore it until it seems to go away. But in order for that to happen, those prophets need to go away too. And so we cut the Isaiah’s in two, we behead the Paul’s and hang the Dietrich Bonhoeffers…because when their voices are silent, we can live in blissful ignorance running things the way we want them run…giving to our landlord only when we see fit and how much we see fit.
But the parable of the wicket tenants didn’t end with the death of the landlord’s son, it ended with a question. Now when the owner of the landlord comes, what will he do with those tenants? And we are offered two suggestions. The first suggestion is that the landlord will come and deal those tenants a miserable death and then rent out his land to other tenants. Notice that this suggestion is not offered up by Jesus, but by the Pharisees…the very ones whom this parable is aimed at. Retaliation was a very real reality then, just as it is now…which is why in the old testament we hear about eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth…this text actually limited the level of retaliation that could take place…so if someone knocked out your tooth, the most harm you could do to them would be to take that same tooth from their mouth.
Jesus, however, offers up another solution. One in which the landlord does not give up on the tenants or sink to their level. The solution that Jesus offers is that it was necessary for the son to be rejected so that he might become the foundation of what is to come. He takes his words from the Psalms “the stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; and it is amazing in our eyes.” What Jesus is offering up is an alternative to what comes naturally to humans…an alternative in which the landlord so desires to have a relationship with his tenants that he is willing to risk everything, his servants, even his own son, so that he can reach out to them. Retaliation is not an option to the landlord, only love…crazy, unreasonable, unfathomable love.
These texts from Matthew that we have heard in the last weeks and will be hearing in the next few weeks are incredibly dangerous…they invite the temptation of self-vindication…they invite an attitude of “you got what you had coming.” But that’s not what Jesus is about, it’s not what God’s about…that’s not what the Gospel is about, even if we have to do what Martin Luther said is necessary sometimes…squeeze a text until gospel leaks out of it. Jesus cannot help but share the good news of the Gospel, even in challenging texts like the one for today.
As inhabitants of God’s vineyard, it is incredibly tempting to forget that we are just tenants and that can lead us to behavior that is self-serving and dangerous. It can lead us to hoard the gifts that we have been given by God and it can lead us to want to silence the prophets among us to remind us of the hard work that comes with being God’s people, the tenants of God’s vineyard. But as people of God, we are called to do the hard work of tending God’s vineyard and producing good fruits, justice, righteousness, equality, love. We are called to never give up on this work because we have a God who has never given up on us. God is willing to give us an infinite number of chances, knowing that we cannot be forced into anything. God has a crazy, unreasonable, unfathomable love for us, a love that is willing to risk anything to have a relationship with us. A love so strong that God was willing to destroy his choicest vine in order that life may become available to us.
As Christ hung from the cross, God stood at the foot of that cross with dirty, blistered hands, holding a wilted vine and hurting from the pain of his son, knowing that the rejection of his son by the people was not the end of the vineyard…it was just the beginning.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)