Come Labor On Proper 24A

Come, Labor On  - Matthew 22:15-22

Paul’s letter to the church in Thessaloniki is believed to be the first of his surviving letters to be included in the Bible. This makes it the earliest existing example of Christian writing about Jesus and the emerging community of his followers. Evidence in the letter suggests that the Thessalonians have questions for Paul: There are believers who have become idlers, non-productive members of the community just waiting for Jesus to return—what should we do? What about those who have returned to worshipping idols? And some have died before Jesus’s return in the end of days—what will happen to them when he does? 

Before addressing these issues, Paul butters the Thessalonians up. He compliments them for their “work of faith, labor of love, and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ”—which contradicts the earlier-named problem that some of their number have stopped working at all! 

Note his emphasis here on “work” and “labor.” Paul knows what we all know: Faith, hope, and love do not come easy. Ongoing hard work is an important component of the life of any faith that is grounded in love for others—all others. We have to work at this. We work at this in all kinds of ways, including such mundane tasks as cleaning the house, washing the dishes, etc. Sister Joan Chittester addresses this connection in her book, Illuminated Life: 

Work does not distract us from God. It brings the reign of God closer than it was before we came. Work doesn’t take us away from God. It continues the work of God through us … I must work as if the preservation of the world depends on what I am doing in this small, otherwise insignificant space I call my life.

 Paul knows there is no time for idlers on the harvest plain, no time for worshipping idols, and no time to sit around and speculate on the future. Today, idols tend not to be made of wood or stone overlaid with silver and gold. The idols that lure us today are distractions of all kinds: money, greed, envy, consumerism, hatred of those not like ourselves, and inflexible ideologies. Even our obsessions with religion and politics can become idolatrous! 

In this letter, Paul reminds the Thessalonians of the reputation they have as hard-working evangelists who have “turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God.” They have a reputation to maintain as those who have followed Paul’s example, who have persisted in doing the work of God’s kingdom despite hardships along the way. ‘It’s time,’ he encourages them, ‘to continue the work you have begun.’ Again, the gentle art of leading people where you want them to go by showing them the best version of themselves. 

We see a different tactic at play in this morning’s gospel lesson. There, we pick up the ongoing narrative of Jesus in Jerusalem, and witness his ongoing confrontations with various authorities. This time he is confronted by the Pharisees, concerned with keeping Torah faith despite the ongoing Roman occupation. And there are also gathered some Herodians, those who support the ruling family of Palestine, and therefore are seen by others to collaborate with the Roman Empire. It might seem odd that these two groups would be joining forces, but we know politics and religion often make for strange “bedfellows.” In this case, the Pharisees and Herodians both, for different reasons, have common cause to derail the Jesus Movement.

 Together, they set about to test Jesus in public. They no doubt think they have a fool-proof plan to discredit him, bringing forth a question to trap him: about paying the tribute tax to Caesar. If he says Jews ought not pay the tax, some will agree with his sticking to Torah ideals, while others will question his sense of what is practical for survival in the Empire. (This was likely the position of the Pharisees.) On the other hand, were he to say “Yes” to paying the tax, such a practical answer will cost him both politically and religiously, possibly to the point of losing the support of his own followers. For in encouraging Jews to pay taxes to the Roman emperor, he would be siding with the descendants of Herod, who, at the beginning of Matthew, slaughtered all of Jesus’s young cousins! 

It seems a foolproof trap they have laid for him. What could go wrong with their plan? 

Plenty as it turns out! All Jesus has to say is, “Show me the coin used for the tax.” 

Gleefully, his opponents produce a denarius—which shows an image of the emperor on one side, and an inscription on the reverse: “Tiberius Caesar, august son of Augustus, and High Priest.” 

Now for the important context: This coin, for the Jewish people, is itself a forbidden idol. Such coins were not permitted to be used for offerings at the Temple—thus the reason for the money-changers and currency exchanges in the Temple courtyard. 

That the Pharisees and Herodians would produce such a coin on the Temple Mount exposes them as hypocrites. Jesus calls them out as “actors” or “role players,” which is the root meaning of the word, hypokritai (hoop-ok-ree-tahee). Simply by producing the coin, they expose themselves as religious role players or posers, breaking the rules of the very system they seem to be protecting with their questions! 

Jesus could stop there, but no. After getting them to say whose image appears on the coin, he replies, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Like any respectable rabbi, Jesus turns their question back on them: Knowing what you should know, you decide about the tax. The real question is not about taxes. It’s about who you serve. 

Now the familiar epigram in these lines is worth lingering over: “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” The parallel construction of the phrase might seem to suggest that the realms of Caesar and God are of equal significance. But the effect of the phrase is actually the reverse. Jesus does not suggest that the religious realm and the political realm deserve equal respect. Instead, the second clause all but nullifies the first. The realm of Caesar is vastly inferior to the significance of God’s realm, and in setting them in opposition like this, Jesus underscores that fact and ridicules the original question.

Jesus is saying in effect, ‘We bear God’s image. We belong to God as surely as your coin belongs to Caesar. Who do you actually serve?’ Remember what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “You cannot serve God and mammon!” That is: ‘You cannot serve God and money!’ (Matthew 6:24). Essentially Jesus takes the question posed to him about right practice in tax payment and turns it on its head: ‘Go ahead and toss Caesar a few denarii, but remember that life does not consist in wealth, possessions, and power, but rather in living according to the will of God.’ 

Jesus, like Paul after him, has one chief concern: Give to God what is God’s. 

Their teaching echoes down to us with a strong imperative. This is no time for idle chat. No time for idlers. No time for returning to the worship of idols. There’s no time to worry about Caesar. Nor Herod. No time for posers and schemers. It’s time to continue the work of faith, the labor of love, and the steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 

As we sing,

Come, labor on!

Who dares stand idle, on the harvest plain

While all around him waves the golden grain?

And to each servant does the Master say,

“Go work today.”   (Jane L. Borthwick, 1859, 1863) 

Work we must, as if the preservation of the world depends on what we are all doing in this small, otherwise insignificant space we call our life. 

Because it does matter. The world does depend on what we are doing in the small, otherwise insignificant space we call our life. 

Our life is God’s life. And God’s Life is ours. 

Amen.

 

  

What If Proper 23A

 

Matthew 22:1-14

This week's Sermon That Works by The Very Rev. Thelma M. (“Nikki”) Mathis does a terrific job making sense of an otherwise difficult parable.

What If?

It’s possible that the “weeping and gnashing of teeth” referred to at the end of this parable is being performed by anybody who has to preach on this Gospel passage this morning. The kingdom of heaven is like … a king with anger issues, a vicious aristocracy, and a guest with poor taste in clothing who gets thrown into everlasting torment? How is this good news?

 

Where’s the Jesus who says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28)? The one who gave us the Beatitudes; the one who heals all the sick; the one who says, “Let the children come to me” (Matthew 19:14)?

 

Believe it or not, this is the same Jesus who is speaking to us this morning, but this time, the verbal form he’s using can be trickier to understand. Unlike a wise proverb or a beautiful promise, parables are stories that are meant to be weird. They are undomesticated by design. They have no clear answers tied up in a bow. Instead, they have outrageous characters doing ridiculous things, all for the purpose of expanding our holy imaginations.

 

And yes, of course, we first use intellect, study, and analysis to understand the foundational context of the parables—that of the original culture and language—and all the implications thereof. But then, springing from that foundation, parables invite us to feast on “what if?” And in that “what if,” we can explore new ways of living and loving outside the stifling, normative box created by our own cultural assumptions, conventions, and any self-righteous sense of moral certainty. Author and New Testament theologian Amy-Jill Levine, in her book, Short Stories by Jesus, offers this key to our exploration of multi-faceted truth in parables:

 

Like a poem (another simile), a parable will evoke numerous interpretations; it is our job to sort through them. When we seek universal morals from a genre that is designed to surprise, challenge, shake up, or indict and look for a single meaning in a form that opens to multiple interpretations, we are necessarily limiting the parables and, so, ourselves.

 

We might be better off thinking less about what they “mean” and more about what they can “do”: remind, provoke, refine, confront, disturb.

 

And disturb is exactly what this parable does. Here we find a dismissive and murderous aristocracy that kills royal servants for the crime of inviting them to a dinner. Here’s a king who has apparently never heard of de-escalation, so he destroys a city. Here’s a royal social order so rigid that commoners are coerced to come and party while unburied corpses—and what little possessions they may have had—are still burning in the city’s rubble. And we can’t forget the guy without a tux who gets tortured for all eternity. Not to mention all the elegant foods prepared for the gourmet feast—the fatted calf and slaughtered oxen waiting to be consumed like some time-sensitive parmesan and truffle double-baked soufflé—across the time it took for a monarch to assemble troops and commit war crimes against his own people!

 

Why would Jesus offer any part of this absurd nightmare as an example of the kingdom of heaven?

 

Let’s start at the foundation.

 

The foundation for this parable derives, at least in part, from an argument unfolding after the time when Jesus lived and taught. At the time when Matthew’s Gospel was being written, there was an intramural cultural and theological argument between two sides of the Jewish community: about whether Jewish Christians or Jewish non-Christians were the ones truly following God.

 

By having the parable’s king destroy the city of those who “would not come” to the wedding banquet he had prepared, Matthew is weighing in on the debate. The destroyed city in the parable recalls the Roman decimation of the city of Jerusalem—and the absolute razing and defiling of temple—in 70 ad. The application seems to be that, in the destruction of Jerusalem, God’s judgement has been enacted on the Jewish religious leaders who rejected Jesus. The parable could be Matthew’s way of arguing that Jewish believers in Jesus are the ones truly faithful to God.

 

Now this historical context doesn’t necessarily mean that we should read this parable as a wholesale allegory, but that’s most often how this parable is explained in pulpits, Sunday School, and Bible studies. And unfortunately, from that interpretation, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to many false and anti-Semitic notions: about how Christians and Jews fit into the unfolding of God’s plan of salvation.

 

What if, for us here and now, Jesus is also doing a new thing? The great thing—the good news—about Christ’s invitation to the “What if?” of parables is that—once we honor the foundation—we’re set free to listen to whatever else the Holy Spirit has to say. Is this parable about existence of judgment? The fact of Jesus’s rejection? The inclusion of others who are often rejected, now being fed and honored at God’s table?

 

What if this parable is a mirror held up for us to see our sometimes-distorted notions of God and God’s kingdom—or shall we say God’s “commonwealth”? (Remember: parables invite us to think about God in fresh and vivid terms, asking, “What if…?”)  What if God operates outside of our notions of power and control, of scarcity and fear? What if God rejects being depicted as angry or power hungry, rejects being used as an excuse for the crusades or the slave trade or the Doctrine of Discovery? What if Jesus isn’t the bridegroom as depicted in this story—a royal so inconsequential to the lives of his subjects (and to our daily lives now), that he’s ornamental rather than functional? What if Jesus isn’t a prince so negligible that we can offer worship on Sunday and then uphold empire on Monday?

 

If this parable can function as a mirror, the reflections we see in it are not for the purpose of beating up on the church, using shame as a punishment for judgment. What if judgment isn’t exclusively about punishment, but about clear sight and honest repentance, leading to love and liberation?

 

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said it best: “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

 

What if the ridiculous cruelty of this parable is meant to remind us of the simple fact that God is love, and we are beloved? Jesuit priest and author Gregory Boyle addresses this beautifully in his book, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion:

 

God, I guess, is more expansive than every image we think rhymes with God … The God, who is greater than God, has only one thing on her mind, and that is to drop, endlessly, rose petals on our heads. Behold, the one who can’t take his eyes off of you. Marinate in the vastness of that.

 

Following love’s logic to its conclusion, let us look again at the parable’s mirror.

 

Perhaps Jesus isn’t king or son, but a conscientious objector to empire. Jesus is the one who won’t go along with status-quo maintenance and the terror that comes with abuse of power.

 

Lutheran pastor and author Nadia Bolz Weber describes Jesus in the parable like this: “At Calvary he (is cast out into) the outer darkness of empire, the outer darkness of our self-obsessions, the outer darkness of our secret addictions, the outer darkness of our sins and sorrows, the outer darkness of our human competition extravaganza. He goes to Calvary, rather than play along.”

 

What if we, like Jesus, refuse to “play along” with empire, and with our projections on and emulation of God as tyrant?

 

What if—among the many who are invited—the few chosen are the ones who choose to follow Divine Love incarnate, so that we can all—every human being everywhere—may be called “beloved,” God’s children with whom God is well pleased?

 

What if, because of what was done by Jesus in the outer darkness of Calvary, we really do get to, as Father Boyle says, “marinate in the vastness of a God who can’t take their eyes off of you, and who endlessly drops rose petals on our heads”?

 

Amen.

 

The Very Rev. Thelma M. (“Nikki”) Mathis is the Rector of St. Gregory the Great Episcopal Church in Athens, GA, Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta. She is also Dean of the Oconee Convocation in this diocese. For more than a decade, she has served on the faculty for the Episcopal Preaching Foundation and is currently faculty for the Learning to Lead program in her diocese. She is a contributor to Forward Day by Day, The Sewanee Theological Review, Graymoor, and the Episcopal Preaching Foundation publications Kerygma and Preaching the Beatitudes.

 

 

 

 

 

The Futility of Violence Proper 22 A

 

The Futility of Violence

It’s not a parable about wicked tenants. It’s about the futility of violence. How one approaches a parable like the one in Matthew 21:33-46, beginning on giving it a title, is problematic. A title which the parable, when told, it never had. Neither Matthew nor Jesus says, “This one is called: The Parable of the Wicked Tenants.” The title labels the tenant farmers as wicked for being unhappy about their situation. Most, if not all of them, have had their family ancestral farmland foreclosed due to debt and gobbled up by an absentee landlord. They are frustrated, not wicked. The lands the tenant farmers had lost was inherited land. It had been in the family for centuries. At the time of Jesus, and even more profoundly at the time Matthew’s gospel appears, farms and vineyards were often foreclosed and now owned by city-elites of the Roman Empire.

 

Another problem is a history of the church reading these stories as allegories – each character in the story, we say, is code for someone else. Looking at the allegory in Isaiah 5:1-7 some six centuries before Christ, one might have a legitimate point of making the owner of the vineyard God; the tenant farmers to be the kings and leaders of Israel, some of whom were notoriously corrupt; and the vineyard itself is Israel. Oh yes, and for centuries in Church preaching it has been assumed that the new “people who produce the fruits of the kingdom” was in fact the Church itself. To interpret the parable in this way, and cast Israel, or “the Jews,” as “wicked tenants,” means the Church established the very roots of anti-Semitism and Christians as “God’s new people.” Such interpretations persisted through The Holocaust, and today feed the increase of attacks on Jewish people and synagogues here in the U.S, and throughout the world.

 

As already noted, at the time of Jesus, and four decades later when Matthew’s gospel appeared, an unjust system of wealthy city elites who lent money to struggling family farms foreclosed them. The tenants needed to borrow money because of taxes to the Temple, toll-booth taxes, or tariffs, to move their goods to market, and further tribute taxes, or protection money, to be paid to the Roman Empire. Further, the Empire now “owned” the entirety of Judea, Galilee, and most of the surrounding territories. Any notion that “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything therein” had been usurped by the Empire and its need for more and more resources to sustain its power. God was no longer viewed as “the owner” of the vineyard. And the kind of violence one hears about in the parable is aimed more and more against the Empire, not God, eventually resulting in a sort of peasant revolt beginning in the year 66 CE, and crushed by Rome in the year 70, with Jerusalem and The Temple burned to the ground. Thus, the nearly 4,000 years of Yahwism and Abrahamic religion came to a halt – for there was now nowhere to make the appointed sacrifices.

 

This means that after the year 70 CE what we know as Rabbinic Judaism became normative. It had its origins in the years of captivity in Babylon and rabbis led the study of biblical texts while developing several different groups of texts to interpret what the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob willed for creation and the people appointed to care for creation and one another. And although there were home communities of people who followed Jesus as a movement within this new form of Judaism, it would be sometime in the late 1^st century or early 2^nd century that anything like “the church” as an organized entity appeared. That is, the parable is not about Christians and Jews as we think and know of them. It’s not about God. It is about the Empire, or the State’s, oppression of the people of the land – peasant tenant farmers – through systems of property foreclosures, taxes, tolls, tariffs, and an armed military enforcing it all. The church’s collective misreading of this parable has not only caused the sustained existence of anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, but also blinded much of the church from recognizing the signs of what in the 20th century became the origins of authoritative, corporate fascism in Italy and Germany. Only a handful of Protestant Confessing Churches resisted the fascist oppression.

 

Standing among the ashes of Jerusalem, however, there are still deeper lessons to ponder. The futility of armed rebellion and violence was revealed. By the year 70 CE, some four decades after Jesus, the peasant revolts had failed spectacularly. This appears to have resulted in a never-ending spiral of violence up to the present day. In one corner, we hear Vladimir Putin just this week threatening to use “tactical” nuclear weapons against Ukraine and countries of the NATO alliance, calling into question just what constitutes a sovereign nation-state. In the other corner, is the president of the United States threatening to “annihilate” Iran and its entire civilization – one of the oldest civilizations on the face of the Earth – while also threatening to make all countries in north and south America client states. This also calls into question what constitutes a sovereign nation-state.

 

The parable also explores the themes of inheritance and who are rightful heirs of the land, and frankly, calls into question the very credibility if ancestral lands. At the micro level this means homes and farms, but at the macro level it means Empires absorbing more and more countries and territories. Willliam Herzog III, in his book, Parables as Subversive Speech, suggests the parable raises these still relevant questions: How can people and even sovereign nation states reclaim their honorable status as heirs, or as sovereign nations, if violent revolts always end in futility? Are there other ways to reassert their claims? [page 113]

 

The oldest strands of the four gospels are the Holy Week narratives in which Jesus eschews armed revolt, and instead, in proclamations like the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s Prayer, and other teachings, does exemplifies another Way – the way of non-violent resistance. It is how the early church operated until in the fourth century the Emperor Constantine elevated the church to Empire status. Others like Ghandhi and Martin Luther King Jr achieved at least temporary success through non-violent resistance. But even those gains are currently in danger of being reversed as the violence of empires appears to escalate.

 

Jesus asks us to pray for bread that is given daily. To pray for our debts to be forgiven as we forgive the debts of others. To hallow God’s name. For God’s will to direct all that we do and all that we say.

Blessed are those who know their need for theirs is the grace of heaven.

Blessed are those who weep, for their tears will be wiped away.

Blessed are the humble for they are close to the sacred earth.

Blessed are those who hunger for earth’s oneness for they will be satisfied.

Blessed are the forgiving for they are free.

Blessed are the clear in heart for they see the Living Presence.

Blessed are the peacemakers for they are born of God.

[The Casa del Sol Blessings of Jesus based on Matthew 5: 3-9, by John Philip Newell]

 

May our prayers be for the peoples and nations of the world to find a Way beyond the futility of violence so that all persons may live in peace and security.

Amen.