Saturday, October 7, 2017

Doing God's Will.

Matthew 21:23-32
October 1, 2017

I.

In today’s reading it is now the day after Jesus has caused a major disturbance in the Temple.  He entered Jerusalem to the celebrations of a very large crowd waving palm branches and calling him the Son of David, the great king of old.  He booted merchants and brokers out of the Temple, and he healed the blind and the lame who came to him.  While children keep singing about him and he has an argument with the priests and scribes who were in charge.  It was a busy day.

The next day begins when, on the way from Bethany up to Jerusalem, which is a deep gorge, he curses a fruitless fig tree.  The fig tree clearly represents the old ineffectual, fruitless religious establishment, saying that what is important and invincible now is prayer and trusting in God.

Everything about Jesus here is action.  He doesn’t talk about entering Jerusalem according to the prophecy of Zechariah, on a donkey… he does it.  He doesn’t just rail about the injustices and corruption of the Temple… he goes into the Temple and actually starts pushing the commercial interests out, physically.  He doesn’t simply pray for the blind and the lame and wish them well… he heals their actual bodies.  He doesn’t just note that the fruitless fig tree is an analogy or symbol of the fruitlessness of the prevailing religious system… he makes a living — or dying — example out of it. 

He enters the Temple again and is immediately confronted by the leaders, “the chief priests and the elders of the people,” who want to know by what authority he is doing what he is doing.  Who gave him the right to challenge the accepted practices and the established order?  Who gave him permission to cause all this trouble?  Who said he could do any of this?

It was kind of a rhetorical question because in their minds there is no authority higher than God and they considered themselves to be God’s legitimate agents and stewards.  Jesus had committed acts that were obviously blasphemous, unpatriotic, and dangerous.  He assaulted the Temple, which was a national and religious shrine, not to mention a major profit center and tourist attraction!  He practically allowed himself to be hailed as king!  He challenged the legitimately chosen leaders!  He called them a fruitless and barren fig tree!    

So since God was clearly on their side, because everyone knows God is always on the side of the established religious, political, and economic leaders, they assumed Jesus could not claim God as his authority.  That would be ridiculous.  And if he claimed anyone or anything else as his authority, well, God trumped that.  It was a foolproof plan to outwit and silence Jesus!

II.

Jesus, characteristically, refuses to answer the question.  He says, “I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things.  Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?”

This forces the elders and priests back into their huddle, as they try to figure out the best answer.  Their whole approach is to come up with an response that will give them the political advantage.  So they reason, “We can’t say John’s baptism was from heaven because then we’d have to explain why we didn’t follow him.  And we can’t say it was just made up because all the people think it was from heaven, and they will get angry with us, and they’re already pretty riled up from yesterday.  Let’s just refuse to answer.  Yeah, that’s it.”

So they break their little conference and come back to Jesus to say, “We don’t know.”

One thing it does not occur to them to ask is what is actually true.  They’re looking for the answer that will work best rhetorically and politically.  Maybe they’re even seeking the best answer legally.  But they don’t ask any theological questions.  They don’t ask whether John’s baptism was faithful to God’s will, as revealed in Scripture.  They don’t even unroll the Torah to discern whether what John was doing measures up.  They don’t ask what kind of effect John’s ministry had on people’s lives.  They don’t ask whether John really was a prophet, which is what the people see him as.  It’s all about maintaining their power, authority, and image.  They’re all about institutional preservation.  They’re not seeking the truth at all.

One thing I get tired of pretty quickly is attending church meetings and listening to ecclesiastical debates and conversations in which Jesus simply doesn’t come up.  It’s all about the Book of Order, or Robert’s Rules, or the correct procedure or administrative structure.  It’s all about what works in terms the latest insights in business management or psychology.  But we seem never to get around to the question of what is true and good.  For us that means what is faithful and obedient to Jesus.  I don’t understand why this isn’t the only question. 

Well… that’s not accurate.  I understand completely why it isn’t the only question.  If we listened first and foremost to Jesus then we might feel ourselves obligated as his disciples to do what he says.  And it’s much easier to just stick a picture of him out front as a kind of mascot, and then do as we please.  Just like these priests and elders were relying on their splendid building and their long traditions and their radiant vestments and their intense proficiency at making flawless sacrificial offerings and their profitability and their patriotism and their connections with the economic and political elite and their deep knowledge of the details of the Torah.

But it’s all a big expensive show.  Because at bottom what they are saying and doing has no effect on the injustice, the violence, the exploitation, the inequality, the hunger, the bondage, and the suffering of people.  It’s hypocrisy, which Jesus will address with chilling directness in chapter 23.  The real blasphemy is to remember and celebrate the Exodus, God’s dramatic and miraculous deliverance of the people from slavery… while leaving people around you today… in slavery.  It is to lift high the cross of Jesus in creed and hymn, and standing idly by while people are executed and lynched today.

III. 

Jesus’ response is that if they will not answer his question neither will he answer theirs.  However, he will tell them a very pointed parable about their own hypocrisy.

“A man had two sons;” he says.  “He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’  He answered, ‘I will not'; but later he changed his mind and went.  The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go.  Which of the two did the will of his father?”

Even the priests and elders are not afraid to answer the question based on the little parable.  They don’t need to have a conference to decide how to respond to this one.  The answer is obvious.  They can see that the first son is the one who actually does the father’s will.  No one is more convinced that they are out there in the vineyard doing the father’s will than those clocking in overtime in their lavish Temple offices.

But then there is the problem of the other son, the one who is very good at placating his father with all the right words.  He promises to go work in the vineyard.  But never actually shows up in his work boots and overalls on grape-picking day.  He looks good, but he doesn’t accomplish what the father wants.  He always finds something more pressing, more important, than actually laboring in the vineyard.  Maybe he’s in marketing.  Maybe he’s the HR director.  Maybe he’s trading grape futures.  Maybe he’s writing the definitive textbook on viniculture.  But he’s not actually in the actual vineyard picking actual grapes, which is what the father actually asks him to actually do.

Seeing that they missed the point, Jesus lashes out at these elders and priests.  It was their response to John’s ministry that conclusively showed them to be like the second son.  For John is about repentance, like the first son who at first says no, but changes his mind and heart, and finally obeys the father.  And you can’t repent unless you realize you’re headed in the wrong direction, which is exactly what these leaders can never admit.  They have reached the pinnacle of their profession.  They are the epitome of success.  They were certainly not going to believe some lunatic eating bugs in the desert calling on them to repent.

IV.

Jesus flatly tells them that “the tax-collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.”  “Tax collectors and prostitutes” was the way Jesus’ opponents derogatorily and dismissively referred to his disciples.  But Jesus embraces this label because these are precisely the people — those rejected and oppressed as sinners — who understand repentance and therefore find themselves welcome in the Kingdom of God.

The self-righteous, the judgmental, the condemnatory, the morally upright, the successful, the leaders, those propping up and serving the establishment, the ones who are about preserving and maintaining their own privilege… these folks don’t get it.  They may talk the talk, but they don’t walk the walk.  They don’t actually go and work in God’s vineyard.  

And what else is the work of God’s vineyard, the labor in God's Kingdom, but Jesus’ work of inclusion, welcome, non-violence, acceptance, forgiveness, healing, and love.  His is the work of compassion and empathy.  His is the blessing of spiritual poverty, gentleness, peacemaking, and purity of heart.  His is the work of reversal, in which the first are made last and the last are invited to the head of the line.

Doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God.  Those words of the prophet Micah describe the work in God’s vineyard.  That means always standing or kneeling with the reviled and excluded, the condemned and marginalized, the lost and forsaken, the blind and the lame, the unpopular and powerless.  

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