Speaking About Us

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

10.05.14;  Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson:  Matthew 21:33-46

This is one of those tough scriptures, one that hits hard for me in particular.

It’s not hard because it’s rough or violent or messy.  There’s plenty of stuff that’s more challenging that that.  Just wander into one of our classes on the Book of Revelation, and you’ll get plenty more of that.  It’s not because it’s too complicated, or because Jesus is making a point that I don’t understand.  He makes it very, very clear what he believes.

It’s the way Christianity has typically approached this text, and how that plays across the last week in the life of my soul.  I’ve been doing a whole bunch of worshipping this last week, as I’ve moved to and fro from Bethesda and the synagogue where my family is a member.

It’s the Jewish High Holy Days, that sacred transition, that movement from one year to the next, and it invariably comes at a time when I’m not ready for it.  The Hebrew calendar is, after all, a lunar calendar, so it’s wildly and crazily all over the place.  Sacred days sneak up on you, without regard for the passing of the seasons.  But here it is, the week-long festival marking the transition from the year fifty-seven seventy-four to the year fifty-seven seventy-five.  

The season begins with Rosh Hashanah, which in Hebrew means, “The Day You See If Your Children’s Dress Clothes Still Fit.”   The answer, this year, was that my youngest child--the baby, the little one--now fits into my clothes.  Sigh.

Yom Kippur, though, which fell yesterday?  That’s the “Day of Atonement,” when Jews remember the suffering of the world.  It is also the day when my teenage sons can have nothing to eat all day, and my wife can’t have any coffee...so sure, yeah, I’m feeling that one.

I’ll freely confess that my encounters with the High Holy Days...particularly the worship...are potent and spiritually moving.  I’ve been attending those worships for over two decades.  I know the songs by heart.  Every year, I struggle through the prayerbook, trying to phonetically read the Hebrew that I spent two semesters learning in seminary a decade ago.  There are moments every year, like when the Avinu Malkeinu sweeps in minor key across the congregation, that the hairs on the backs of my arms always s tand up on end.  Our Father, our King, sing a roomful of voices, in the same tongue that Jesus would have learned as his sacred language.

I like the whole point of the season, frankly.  Here, the holiest of holy times, and what it’s primarily dedicated to is forgiveness, atonement, and repentance.  In a New Year, the whole point is that it’s a chance at a reset, a chance to begin again and to set things right.

And so every year, I find myself sounding the themes of the High Holy Days off of the core theme of the teachings of Jesus.  Turn away from those things that are broken in you, and realize that right now, in this moment and in the moments to come, you can be inhabiting the Kingdom of God.  That’s the heart and soul of the Days of Awe, and it also happens to be kind of the whole point of the Gospel.

Which brings me back to the passage from the Gospel of Matthew today.

What makes this pointed parable a bit rough, a bit hard to hear, is the way that it’s been interpreted.  What’s clear, absolutely and without question, is that this is a teaching that arises from Jesus.  Matthew, Luke, and Mark all have it as a part of their Gospels, each in essentially the same format.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells this story in the temple to a gathered group of Pharisees and temple priests.  What’s impressive is that they’re listening to him at all, because according to the story as Matthew tells it, the very day before he’d shown up at the temple and trashed the place.  Here he is, telling stories, and what you’d think his listeners would be doing is calling security or getting the local constabulary to come pick this crazy guy up on a trespassing and destruction of property rap.

But no.  They’re listening, and and they’re engaging.   He tells them a story, one ripped right out of the agricultural life of the Judean countryside.  Here, a man has worked his own land.  He’s put in the vines for grapes, and protected them with a hedge, and prepared everything for a fruitful harvest.

He does this, and then leaves the field in the hands of tenants.  Harvest time comes, and when the rightful owner of the land sends folks there to collect his portion of the yield, they’re beaten and attacked and killed, one after another.

Finally, he sends his son, in hopes that perhaps that will make a difference...but it doesn’t.  He’s killed, just as the rest were killed.

And then, he asks the question:  What should the landowner do with those tenants?

The answer, from his listeners, was that the landholder would be rid of them in violent ways, like he was Liam Neeson in one of those revenge-porn movies that I’ve never ever bothered to watch.  

Some scholars have suggested that a first century audience would have automatically connected with the tenants, as landowners ant the wealthy were not exactly the most popular folks in and around Judea.  But this wasn’t Judea.  It was Jerusalem, and the temple, the very heart of power in that corner of the world.  These were the powerful and the rich, the ones who own a brownstone in Dupont Circle, a condo in Aspen, and a little 2,400 square foot pied a terre on Park Avenue overlooking Central Park.  

Given his audience, this was a charged parable.  If--as Matthew describes it--Jesus is talking to the priests and those in charge of the temple, then these are people who would have strongly identified with a landowner or a landholder.   “Someone’s squatting in the Aspen condo?  My gracious, lovie, something must be done.”  They would have been up in arms at the idea that anyone would have taken what was not their right.

And so Matthew recounts Jesus asking a question, and springing a trap.

“You’re those tenants,” Jesus says.  “You’re going to have the thing that has been given you taken away, and given to another.”  Boom, bing, and he’s gotten them, although whether they’d have been more offended at the theology or the idea that they might be renters is another question for another time.

It’s a potent little story, but it’s also one that has over the thousands of years of our faith journey been interpreted to mean something that I for some reason have trouble with.   The story, as it’s been understood, has been often read as a straight up allegory over the last two thousand years to indicate the end of Judaism as a viable religion.

They didn’t listen to the prophets, driving them away or killing them.  They didn’t listen to Jesus.  So….[buzzer sound] that’s it all over then.  The garden--meaning the promise of God’s kingdom--will be taken away from them and given to others.  They’d had their chance, and they’d failed to get ‘er done.  Instead of listening and doing what God had told them over and over again they needed to do, they pursued power and their own interests.  They didn’t embrace the Spirit of the living God within themselves, and made a mess of the world.

So now the only real faith is Christianity, so, nyaaah. Tough for you, Jewish people.

The word for that is supercessionism, the idea that Christianity just plain ol’ replaces Judaism as a legitimate way to be truly faithful.  I’ve got some significant problems with this way of thinking, for reasons that go beyond my admittedly deep personal connection.

What strikes me about this parable, and strikes me hard, is something having to do with time.  Here Jesus is, speaking to the high priests and the rabbis--because Pharisees were primal rabbis--about their failure to truly engage in covenant.  Judaism had it’s chance, right?  I mean, they’d had a long time to figure it out, and--according to the supercessionist idea--all they’d managed to do was to fight amongst themselves, get either massively legalistic and judgmental, or turn the faith into something that had more to do with material wealth and political power than a relationship with God.  

How long?  Well, the covenant with Israel began with Abram, when he and Sarai were renamed Abraham and Sarah.  It’s admittedly messy and imprecise, because it’s the hazy stuff of ancient story and legend, but the best general guesstimate on when that was?  

The year 2018...BCE.

So...how long has it been since Jesus showed up to teach and offer up the Good News?  Two thousand and...what?  

How far away is twenty eighteen?  And how are we Christians doing?  It’s a good thing there’s no infighting in the church ever, being judgemental in the church ever, or focusing on money and power.

We’ve been around for a while, to the point where it’s perhaps time for us to hear this parable not so much as a condemnation of “them,” but the way it should always have been heard: as a challenge to us.

It’s a challenge to insure that we, here and now, as we live and respond to the message of grace that has always been at the heart of covenant, are responding in such a way that we’re bearing fruit that can be shared with our Maker.  When we’re not doing that, when we’re grasping and focusing on our own reward, where we’re smug and self-righteous, when we’re in it for our own gain?

Then, we’re not getting it.

Let's hear this, then, to us, for us, reminding us of the dangers that come from complacency and a focus on power.

Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.