To God the Things That Are God's

A sermon for the 18th Sunday after Pentecost, given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on Sunday, October 16, 2011.

Exod. 33:12-23

Ps. 99

1 Thes. 1:1-10

Matt. 22:15-22

Jesus has made the Pharisees not a little bit angry at him. In response to their accusation, “What right do you have to do these things? Who gave you such a right?”, Jesus told them three parables each showing that they are the ones who need to defend their actions. They have participated in the tragic history of the rejection of God’s messengers. They have been a disobedient son full of empty words, they have been tenants who refuse to acknowledge their true place in relation to the landowner and refuse to listen to the landowner’s messengers when sent to remind them of their responsibilities, and they have been those who refuse to join in the celebration of the wedding feast of the son of God. The theme in all of these parables is that the Jewish leaders while outwardly trying to preserve God’s way as they see it, are actually stifling God’s way as it is coming to be around them.

The Pharisees have lost all patience with Jesus and want more than anything to discredit him, to gain back the people’s support to themselves and away from Jesus – to regain their authority and prestige as leaders.

They will eventually go to great lengths to secure that they control the vineyard. But at this point they are still disputing with the landowner’s son.

They go off somewhere and think up a few good questions which they are sure will trap Jesus – force him to say something that will cause someone with power to be offended or insulted – get him in trouble and discredit him.

So the Pharisees send some of their disciples along with members of King Herod’s political party to go and present a this “doozy” of a question to Jesus.

First, some high class flattery:

“Teacher, we know that you tell the truth. You teach the truth about God’s will for man, without worrying about what people think, because you pay no attention to man’s status.”

Jesus you’re an honest guy– you don’t care if what you say offends anyone as long as it’s true, right? (well see how truthful you are in response to this!)

Then their question:

Tell us, then, what do you think? Is it against our Law to pay taxes to the Roman Emperor or not?

Craig Keener, in his commentary on Matthew’s gospel, writes the following about the situation that the group hopes to put Jesus in by this question:

“The coalition hopes to catch Jesus coming or going: either he will support taxes to Rome, undercutting his popular messianic support, or he will challenge taxes, thereby aligning with the views that had sparked a disastrous revolt two decades earlier. In the latter case, the [members of King Herod’s political party] could charge him with being a revolutionary – hence showing that he should be executed, and executed quickly.” (Keener 1997, 326)

This is a CATCH-22, a lose-lose situation. Or so the coalition of inquisitors hopes.

But Jesus is wise to their game. And wise, period.

And the questioners assume that Jesus will tailor his response to please the group of people that he prefers to please – they assume that Jesus will answer in a way that secures his own image, his own perception among the people.

They project their own motives onto Jesus.

But Jesus answers in a way that we read “amazed” his questioners and caused them to leave him alone.

Here is the beauty of Jesus’ answer.

First he calls them out on their evil plan. “hypocrites! Why are you trying to trap me?”

Then he asks for a coin.

The coin they probably gave him would have had on one side, “Tiberius Caesar, son of the Divine Augustus” and on the other side “pontifex maximus – high priest” (Keener, 326)

This was the real scandal – not only that the coin represented the oppressive imperial rule of Rome over the Jewish land, but that the coin represented the rival religion of the Roman imperial cult. The Roman emperors would claim divinity and require worship from parts of their empire in order to secure their power. The Jewish resistance to the tax because of this had been the source of problems in Palestine in the first century.

“Whose face and name are these?”

The image stamped on the coin would designate that these coins are ultimately minted and issued from the Roman emperor himself and that paying the tax that is required is a giving back to the empire what was due – a form of required loyalty.

It’s a reminder that Caesar is Lord.

“Whose face and name are these?”

“The Emperor’s”

Well then, give to the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor.

But Jesus doesn’t’ stop there.

If Jesus had stopped there, he would have satisfied the members of Herod’s political party. People would have interpreted him as in essence saying, “they’re Caesar’s coins, just give them back to him.”

But Jesus doesn’t just stop there. He goes on: “and pay to God what belongs to God.”

Now if we think about this, there is an interesting observation that can be made.

The Emperor’s coin was considered to be the Emperor’s because it had his face and name on it.

So what belongs to God? If the coins belong to Emperor because it bears his face and name, what bears God’s face and name and would then belong to God?

A Jewish person brought up with the stories and teachings of Torah would know the answer.

Genesis 1:27

“God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

Humans bear an inscription too, humans bear an image.

While the Emperor may have created pieces of silver for his purposes, God has created humankind for his purposes.

Jesus’ response not only speaks the truth, it satisfies both the members of Herod’s political party because it does not deny that the coins should be given to Emperor. It satisfies the Pharisees because it does not deny that one should obey God’s law.

A deeper understanding would hear the second phrase “give to God what belongs to God” as superseding the first phrase since Jesus would agree with psalmist in saying that all that exists belongs to God. (Witherington, Commentary on Matthew 2001, 413).

Psalm 24:1 says “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;”

Ben Witherington suggests that we can actually hear Jesus’ words as saying this: “give [the Emperor] back these worthless pieces of metal he claims, but know that we are to render to God all things since God alone is divine and to God belong all things.”

We are stamped with God’s image. We are created by God for God’s purposes.

We are a people of dual citizenship. We are citizens of the kingdom of God, but we live in America, and are residents of Acworth.

But Jesus’ words remind us that though we are part of a global community, though we are citizens of America, though we are residents of Acworth – we are in a real and ultimate way citizens of God’s kingdom, the city of God as it has been called.

Ours is a different way of living.

We are only responsible if we join in the conversations at the Town Hall regarding matters of the common good and the town’s future, we are only responsible if we enter into the wider discussion of what is good for America. We are only responsible if we participate in the global conversation – advocating for justice and peace. But let us not forget that our understanding of what is good comes from our understanding of who God has created us to be.

We are Christ’s ambassadors, we read in 2 Corinthians 5:20, “as though God were making his appeal through us.”

We are necessarily involved in the politics of the world, the nation, the town in which we find ourselves – but we are there as ambassadors to the way of Christ, the way which speaks truthfully, which manifests the love of God for all people.

We are those who have come to know God’s forgiveness of our sins.

God’s forgiveness has transformed us from enemies into friends, and we now, living in response to that reality, love our enemies.

So when we enter into the conversation of the town, of the nation, of the world, we do so as ambassadors of love, of truth, of reconciliation. We do so representing the one who did not seek to dominate, to lord over others, “to be served but serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

When we enter into the world, into our jobs, the conversations with friends, with enemies, the political sphere, discussion about the political sphere – let us model the one who loved his enemies, let us remember that more than rendering to those in power what is due to those in power, we are to render to God what is due to God.

And God has committed to us the message of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:19), the message of God’s love.

To Christians in the city of Ephesus, the apostle Paul wrote “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.”

Paul must have visited one of the Ephesian town meetings.

He goes on—

“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”(Eph 4:31-5:2)

AMEN.

Refusing the Feast

A sermon for the 17th Sunday after Pentecost, given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on Sunday, October 9, 2011.

Exodus 32:1-14

Psalm 106:1-6,19-23.

Philippians 4:1-9.

Matthew 22:1-14.

The chief priests and elders brought up the question of authority in chapter 21 – what right do you have to do these things?

Jesus had just rode into Jerusalem, taught in the temple, cleansed the temple, healed blind and lame in the temple, provided for the poor, and begun a children’s choir (Hauerwas, Matthew, 185).

Jesus then likens them to a son who says he will obey his Father and work in the vineyard but doesn’t and then to tenants who refuse to share the harvest with the absentee landowner and mistreat and kill the servants and even the son of the landowner.

The overwhelming theme of these two parables that Jesus tells the chief priests and elders is that the question is about authority but not in the way that they think.

It is not, “what right does Jesus have to do these things?” but “what right do the leaders of the Jewish community have to do the things that they have been doing throughout Israel’s history and even into Jesus’ day?”

Jesus’ story about the tenants associates the chief priests and elders with those who killed the prophets in earlier times in the life of the community of Israel. They, just like many before them, cared more for their own way of being toward God and others, than the way that God was reminding them through the prophetic voice.

The conclusion of the parable is important to understanding the next parable that Jesus tells:

When Jesus asks what the landowner will do to the tenants, the chief priests and elders reply that he will kill them and rent the vineyard out to others who will share the harvest at the right time.

Jesus replies and says “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce the proper fruits.”

IN the parable of the wedding feast we see this reality fleshed out.

But the interesting twist we see in Jesus’ parable is that the reason the original invited don’t end up at the wedding banquet is not because they are rejected, but because THEY reject the invitation to the feast.

The kingdom of God is taken away from the chief priests and elders and given to another people BY their own rejection of the kingdom of God. They don’t recognize God in Jesus because they have forgotten God’s true nature as one of humility, justice, and mercy.

The chief priests and elders are the ones in the parable who refuse the invitation to God’s feast. Seeing Jesus’ compassion and life-giving presence in their midst, they refuse to rejoice – but become defensive of the way things have been and their own authority.

They have no respect for the king’s son and refuse to join in his celebration. We see this throughout the gospel stories as Jesus heals someone and instead of delighting in life and wondering at God’s power displayed through Jesus they criticize him. Or when Jesus shows compassion to someone who is rejected in society, instead of delighting in the mercy of God shown in Jesus’ actions, they bristle with offense at Jesus’ audacity to break social norms.

God is not primarily rejecting them, they are rejecting God’s kingdom as it is being made manifest all around them in the actions and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

Even still, the king sends out the messengers when the food is ready and invite the guests to come and join the celebration.

Many of the guests ignore, but others violently reject, harm and even kill some of the messengers.

We can easily see how this part of the story points to the way Jesus will be treated in less than a week’s time from his telling of this parable.

And so on account of their refusal of the invitation, their refusal to celebrate with the son of the king the joyous event of his marriage, their refusal to delight in the abundant offerings of the king’s feast, they are replaced by any and all people on the streets good and bad alike.

On account of their refusal of the compassion and miraculous life-giving presence of Jesus, the chief priests and elders lose out on the opportunity of participating in the new messianic community begun by Jesus.

the kingdom of God is taken away from them and given to a people who produce the proper fruits, enjoying the presence of the king’s son, delighting in the feast of compassion, justice, and truth.

It’s taken away not against their will, but in accordance with their will since they wanted nothing to do with God’s reign of justice, mercy, and truth.

And so the banquet hall is full –yet there is one there in the room who is not properly attired. I think it’s safe to infer that this person could have worn the proper wedding garments but refused to. It doesn’t seem at all to be in line with the spirit of Jesus for a person to be rejected on account of his inability to afford or obtain the appropriate things. It is rather that this person refused to wear the right attire for the ceremony and in his refusing rejects the invitation of the king even though he showed up at the feast. He followed the letter of the invitation but not the spirit. He is still not delighting in the joy of the feast.

This is a mysterious part of the parable to be sure and I’m not quite sure what to do with it to be honest. But I think this makes the most sense. This person is refusing to fully participate in the feast and therefore in essence rejects the king’s invitation and excludes himself from the feast.

He is bound and thrown out to where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Everywhere else Jesus talks about weeping and gnashing of teeth, it is in reference to those who refused God’s kingdom of justice, truth, and mercy for whatever reason.

I would venture to say that no one is ever excluded who hasn’t already excluded themselves.

God’s offer to us is to participate in the life and light of God’s reconciliation and forgiveness, of God’s love and freedom. When we reject God’s love because we love to hate, when we reject God’s forgiveness because we don’t think we need it, when we reject God’s mercy to our enemies,

when we reject God’s generosity towards the weak, the poor, the despised – we exclude ourselves from fellowship with God and from true fellowship with our neighbors.

It is when we embrace God as we see God in Jesus Christ, in his truthful, justice seeking, merciful LIFE, his self-giving, enemy-forgiving, nonresisting DEATH, and his renewing, death-conquering, life-giving RESURRECTION – it is when we embrace Jesus’s call to follow him, to receive God’s love and participate in God’s love for the world – we find a feast – a joyous feast, delighting in the joyous inauguration of God’s kingdom on earth.

The chief priests and elders could not embrace Jesus’ way because they loved their own way too much. They were unwilling to do the 180 degree turn that true repentance requires. If we as those who have been trained to consider ourselves as most important, our self-advancement and self-preservation as the highest goal, our enemy as undeserving of mercy, our way of seeing the world and our ways of living in it as final and unquestionable, if we are incredibly attached to the self that we have created, we will be unwilling to come to the feast of God’s truth, God’s mercy, and God’s justice. We will not recognize them in Jesus, and we will not experience the incredible joy of the new life that God offers us.

Let us not refuse the offer to become a part of God’s new kingdom life. Let us not harden our hearts to the invitation to God’s feast of reconciliation.

The feast will go on regardless, let’s humble ourselves and take part, lest we miss out on the truth that sets us free.

The Tenants and Us: Refusing the Light

A sermon for the seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on October 2, 2011.

Exodus 20:1-20

Psalm 19

Philippians 3:4b-14

Matthew 21:33-46

Has anyone ever told you the honest, brutal truth about yourself?

How did you respond?

I’m sure for most of us, we got incredibly defensive at first and then as the initial emotions wore off, we started think about what was said a bit more, and then realized that the person may have been right.

Today’s parable is about a confrontation that went terribly wrong.

Some context.

Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem created a great stir in the community life of the Jewish people there.

Many began thinking Jesus was a prophet and possibly the promised Messiah who would come to his people and free them from oppression.

Matthew 21:23

“By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”

The understood accusation in this question is that Jesus does not have the authority he thinks he does.

Instead of responding directly to their accusation, Jesus begins to speak to them about their own authority.

Jesus first shows that the authority of the religious leaders is really built up on the perception of their authority by the people.

If they deny John’s prophetic identity, they are on the people’s bad side and might lose respect or receive great anger. If they affirm John’s prophetic identity, Jesus will ask them why they didn’t listen to John and respect him.

Their authority is not based on what is true or what is most important, but authority for authority’s sake. They enjoy their position of influence, they enjoy the status and wealth that accompany being in a position of power and importance.

They are willing to protect their power at the expense of truth and therefore use “truth” as a way of manipulating people and circumstances for their own self-interest.

So when they say in response to Jesus’ asking whether John was a human or divine messenger that they don’t know, they don’t really mean that they don’t know, they just mean that they plead the fifth so that they can maintain their image, status, wealth – their power.

As we learn more of who Jesus is and what Jesus stands for, we realize the threat that Jesus’ teaching and his life are to the status quo. They threaten the way things are. They threaten our comfortable routines. Jesus’ life and teachings cause us to reflect on our own lives. Are we more drawn to what is comfortable than to what is true?

After exposing their unwillingness to be truthful, Jesus accuses them through the parable of the two sons of being the son who says one thing and does the opposite.

They are the ones who are full of words and bankrupt of actions.

Jesus further claims that tax collectors and prostitutes – the despised of society – are more fit for the kingdom of God because they at least care more about truth than their comfort – as seen in the fact that when the tax collectors and prostitutes heard John preaching that everyone must repent and be baptized to prepare for the coming king, the coming kingdom, they responded with honesty concerning their need to turn their lives around. Whereas the religious leaders responded with defensiveness and indignation – proving their unwillingness to let truth question their power.

And so we come to today’s parable.

Jesus puts the resistance of the religious leaders to truth in context by telling them a story about a vineyard and its tenants.

The religious leaders’ position is one of serving God’s people Israel. They are responsible for new generations of Jews to understand who they are as worshippers of God and as a people who have the history that they have. The religious leaders are responsible to lead the Jewish community into understanding themselves truthfully in light of the story of the Tanakh (what we call the Old Testament) and by understanding that story to understand how they should live in light of their current circumstances.

This is a role of stewardship, of tending to a community of which they are not the highest authority. The highest authority, the only true authority over Israel has always been God.

Jesus’ parable is a story of two aspects of Israel’s existence as a community. There had always been a tendency of leaders of the Israelite community to think of themselves as the final authority or at least to wish themselves to be. Reading first and second Kings in the Old Testament gives you a good feel for this dynamic. An authority figure (usually a king) starts running the nation however he feels like it should be run (usually for his own best interest) and a prophet comes to him to tell him that he’s not being the steward of God’s people in the way that he should be.

Authority figure misrepresents God, disobeys God and leads the people who are influenced by him astray.

Prophet comes and seeks to point out the error and call the authority to change in light of truth.

Of course, as many of us know, and as all of us can imagine, such confrontations of injustice with truth were never pretty.

This is the story that Jesus tells. It’s not a pretty story.

A landowner does six things:

Plants a vineyard, puts a fence around it, digs a wine press in it, builds a watch-tower, leases it to tenants, and goes to another country.

God is the landowner and the community of Israel is the vineyard. The picture of a vineyard as representing the community of Israel is throughout the Bible.

So God is landowner. The community which God promised to Abraham, and gave form to in the desert under Moses is God’s vineyard. The leaders that God entrusts his community to are the tenants.

When the landowner sends servants to collect produce (possibly because the produce had not been sent and the landowner was beginning to wonder).

The servants are not welcomed but seized and beaten and some killed.

He sends more servants and a greater number than the first group.

These two are treated in the same way.

This back and forth sending/seizing story is the a big part of the later story of the community of Israel that we can read about in the Old Testament.

The community of Israel would be lead astray by the present king or priest or both and a prophet would try to speak to the issue, to remind the leader of their responsibility, and these prophets would be abused and many times killed.

The response of power which is built on lies and injustice to truth is violence.

A beautiful passage in the gospel of John chapter 3 gives words to this experience:

“And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.

And so, having experienced so much resistance from the tenants after sending servants, the landowner determines that he will send his son – they are bound to respect the authority of his son.

But rather than respect the authority of the son, they see it is an opportunity to secure their lasting power, their usurping of the landowner’s ownership. The vineyard will be theirs if they can get rid of the one who will inherit it.

And so when they saw the son, they seized him, they threw him out of the vineyard, and they killed him.

In less than a week from the telling of this parable, Jesus would be seized, thrown out of the Jerusalem city limits, and killed.

The question of authority and the questioning of authority leads to the greatest violence for the sake of preserving the status quo, the power which was built and sustained by manipulation and falsehoods. The darkness could not stand the light and its reaction had to be to try to eliminate it.

The religious leaders in Jesus’ telling of the parable, are being tied in to the history of the persecution of the prophets that they would have heard many times before in their training in the story of the community of Israel.

Now Jesus asks them what should be done to the tenants. The religious leaders respond that they should be put to death and that the vineyard should be leased again to more worthy tenants.

Unable to see themselves truthfully, they cannot recognize that they are participating in the story of the evil tenants by refusing to recognize truth in the person and teaching of John and now in the person and teaching of Jesus.

Jesus concludes that they will have their authority taken from them (not that they will be killed). That the kingdom of God, the vineyard he began will be given to those would serve and represent God’s desire for truth, mercy, and justice.

The religious leaders realize that Jesus was talking about them and they become angry and want to arrest him. But true to form they do nothing out of fear of the crowds who are becoming more and more convinced that Jesus is the true authority.

It all began with the religious leaders’ question: By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?

And Jesus turns the question around on the religious leaders – by what authority are THEY doing these things, and who gave THEM this authority?

Unveiling the fact that the only authority they have been willing to recognize is their own authority and that they fight against any new word, however true, from the one who gave them any authority they have – the landowner whose vineyard they serve.

And so I think we can see a dynamic within ourselves as individuals and our community where on the one side we have our self-interest and on the other we have what is right. On the one side we have our own perceived final authority and on the other we have the authority of God’s truth and love revealed in Jesus’ person and teaching which has the power to deconstruct our habits, our practices, and ways of life which have strayed from God’s way.

We are called as community of followers of Jesus to look at ourselves as individuals and our community in the light of God’s word. In what parts of our lives as individuals and our life in community are we refusing to let in the light?

Is there anything in our lives as individuals or in our life as a community which we would be tempted to act like the tenants in the parable if someone were to challenge it?

We read in the first letter of John chapter 1, verses five through nine:

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

To live in the light is to participate in life to the fullest. To be free of lies, is to be free indeed. This is only possible as we continue to listen to how God would have us change and be continually willing to give up the old to make way for the new in our own lives and in the life of our community.

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

We are God’s agents of reconciliation in the world. We are the ones bringing the good news – the light in the darkness– that God loves the world. But we must allow our own darkness to be confronted if we are ever going to be able to with any honesty or integrity confront the darkness of the sin and injustice around us in this world.

Therefore, may our eating and drinking together in remembrance of Christ’s reconciliation, be a prayer of repentance and renewal, death and resurrection, for ourselves and our community, that we may die to darkness and rise again to light, truly to be lights to the world as we go out this week.