October 8, 2017 – Matthew 21:33-46
Matthew 21:33-46
Agents of Love
Lectionary 27A – October 8, 2017 [Thanksgiving Sunday]
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
The last time I preached on this I started like this: “This is a depressing parable.”
That still holds up, I think.
Nothing goes well and then everything ends in destruction.
Great! Thanks, Jesus! Glad I got out of bed this morning!
As if we needed any more bad news this week.
It has been such a tragic, awful week . . . month . . . year.
The Las Vegas shootings last Sunday, the unimaginable impacts of hurricanes Irma and Maria,
the growing polarization in our world: the increasing acceptance of racism and
division and opposition at every turn in our world.
Increasing conflict: and then this is what Jesus serves us up with this week? Really, Jesus?
Okay: in the story of Jesus we are now in the last week of his life.
He has entered Jerusalem yesterday on Palm Sunday.
The next day – today – he goes to the temple and, okay, he gets angry.
He overturns the tables of the money changers and rebukes the temple authorities for
turning his father’s house into a den of thieves.
When the chief priest and elders question him and ask him
by what authority he is doing these things – a reasonable enough question –
he responds with a story rooting his authority in what John the Baptist was doing.
We heard that story last week.
I said the usual interpretation of that story is that it ramps up the conflict between Jesus and
the temple authorities, as if Jesus is just spoiling for a fight.
But that just doesn’t make any sense to me.
This is the guy who was telling everyone to love their enemies?
And pray for them?
And who eventually will offer his enemies forgiveness from a cross?
And again after he is resurrected? Really?
Last week, I said the story was not so much a rebuke to the temple authorities as it was
a wake up call and an invitation: it’s not too late to change, it’s not too late for you to
join God’s mission to love bless and heal this world and every person in it.
The past does not define you: your bad decisions do not define you.
Only God’s patience and love define you – it is not too late.
So what about this week?
The temple authorities don’t get it and so . . . Jesus tries again.
As my elderly teacher Gerhard Forde said in seminary in response to a question about
what you should do when people just don’t get what grace is all about, he said,
“Just spread it on a little thicker.”
Despite appearances this morning, I am pretty sure Jesus is just spreading it on a little thicker.
Okay: the story.
It is familiar enough.
A landowner sets up a vineyard, leases it to tenant farmers for a share of the produce,
and goes away – a very common practice at the time.
Well, the tenants decide to take matters into their own hands and take the operation over.
They keep the profits for themselves and refuse to give the landowner his due.
So the landowner sends agents to reclaim what is his.
The tenants beat and kill them.
In response, the landowner sends more agents.
The tenants beat and kill them too.
Finally, the landowner sends his own son, his own flesh and blood –
and the tenants kill him too.
Now what do you make of this story so far?
If the story just ended there, what would it say to you?
Right: that the tenants are very fortunate to be dealing with an impossibly patient landowner.
An extremely gracious landowner.
No landowner would act this way in the ancient world – or in today’s world.
Then, as now, the landowner would send thugs, a private army, a collection agency,
or – at best – the police.
It seems nuts to send his servants the second time, and
just plain insane to send his own son the third time
knowing what happened to both sets of servants.
But here we have a landowner so desperate to reconcile and so desperate to be in relationship with the tenants that he will go to extraordinary lengths to make it so.
That’s the kind of craziness that comes from being in love.
I think this is what the story is trying to tell us – I think this is what Jesus is trying to tell us.
I think this is what Jesus was trying to tell the chief priests and the elders on that day.
In the vineyard of the world, God, who is the owner of the vineyard-world –
as the Psalm says, The earth is the LORD’s and all that is in it –
God sent prophets to the people to remind them that the vineyard-world’s
bounty is meant to be shared and not hoarded.
But time after time the people ignored and persecuted the prophets.
In great love, seeking relationship, God kept sending the prophets, hoping for a change of heart.
Finally, God thought I will send my beloved son, the most loving thing I can do,
and surely he will turn their hearts and change their ways.
And instead the son was killed.
Jesus is not stupid – he knows which way the wind is blowing and surely he can predict his fate.
But still he keeps proclaiming – in this story – the patience and the persistence,
the great love and the great mercy of God.
Now – this does seem at odds with the rest of the story, right?
The part where Jesus affirms the statement of the chief priests and elders that
what God will do with them is destroy them and give the tenancy of the vineyard to
someone else.
So figuring something was not quite right, I put on my scholarly cap and gown.
And did some research.
And stared off into space for a good long while.
And then stared off into space for a good long while more.
And this is what I discovered.
This story is probably one of the oldest preserved stories of Jesus we have.
It appears in Matthew, Mark, and Luke – but also in the Gospel of Thomas,
which is not in the Bible.
The ancient Gospel of Thomas was discovered in 1945 in an ancient Egyptian library.
It is composed of sayings of Jesus and many scholars think that many of its sayings
pre-date the Gospels.
Now the most interesting thing to me is:
in the Gospel of Thomas this story ends with the killing of the son.
There is no question to the chief priests and elders about what the landowner will now do
to the tenants.
There is no statement that the landowner will destroy them and put them to death.
There is no statement that the kingdom of God will be taken away from them and
given to others and that they will be crushed.
So here’s the thing:
I think all that is more reflective of the situation Matthew, Mark, and Luke found themselves in
rather than what Jesus’ intention was in telling the parable.
See, I think Matthew, Mark, and Luke – writing 40 to 60 years after Jesus’ death –
found themselves in conflict with Jews who did not accept Jesus as the messiah.
I think Matthew, Mark, and Luke reflected in their telling their own heightening conflict with
Jewish authorities.
I think Matthew, Mark, and Luke could not imagine in their situation
the mercy of God that Jesus could.
When things did not go their way, when their communities and their people were persecuted,
they could not imagine enemy love,
They couldn’t reckon that God’s mercy is bigger than human imagination,
or that God’s patience and lovingkindness is so much bigger than our own.
Jesus knows where his Holy Week will end – but he knows it is not The End.
He knows that the imagined end will be yet a new beginning for a God so patient and
so relentless in love that he cannot imagine a world permanently scarred by division.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke seem – in their telling of this story – resigned to ultimate division.
Jesus, on the other hand,
if the Gospel of Thomas really does preserve his own telling of the story,
Jesus seems resolutely hopeful that God will finally reconcile all peoples.
And that is a message we desperately need to hear this week, this month, this year.
Friends, I am trying to spread it on a little thicker.
The world seems resigned to the deepening divisions that are shaping our society.
Race, wealth, religion, political orientation – you name it.
Divisions are increasingly dividing our world and we seem
less and less disposed to working with those who are different on common goals.
Matthew, Mark and Luke turn a story about God’s never-ending quest to reconcile and
be in relationship into a story about the inevitability of conflict and destruction.
The good news, though, is – as always – to be found in Jesus, who speaks of a God
whose imagination for reconciliation and mercy is so much greater than ours.
And who invited us way back in Matthew 5 to be peacemakers.
I think the Jesus of Matthew 5 knows well the Jesus who tells the story in the Gospel of Thomas.
As I said last week, Jesus is not a divider of people.
Jesus seeks relationship and reconciliation with all.
If you read on in the Gospel of Thomas you will find this story:
A person said to Jesus: “Tell my brothers to divide my father’s possessions with me.”
He said to the person: “Mister, who made me a divider?”
He turned to his disciples and said to them, “I am not a divider, am I?”
The God of Jesus never stops seeking us out,
nor does the God of Jesus stop seeking reconciliation.
And on Thanksgiving Day – let us simply give thanks for that –
because I think we really need to.
Let us give thanks that our God is a God of grace.
On Thanksgiving Day, let us give thanks that God never tires of seeking the lost.
On Thanksgiving Day, let us give thanks that God sent us the prophets and Jesus.
On Thanksgiving Day, let us give thanks for the resurrection of Jesus and
on Thanksgiving Day let us give thanks for the forgiveness he breathed.
On Thanksgiving Day, let us give thanks that God sends us the Spirit,
the energy for mercy-giving and manna-sharing we so desperately need.
The good news is that God’s mercy is beyond human imagining.
So – filled with the Spirit – let us, in these times of division and conflict,
let us be reconcilers and peace-makers.
Let us embody the Spirit of the one who came that we all may be one.
In our homes and in our schools, in our workplaces and in our communities –
let us be agents of the God of mercy and servants of the God of reconciliation.
Let us be agents of love.
And together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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