This parable of the wicked tenants as it is sometimes called feels very rooted in its specific history so much so that even through the parables were told so that “hearing they might not hear” the Chief Priests discerned Jesus told this about them. It is the summaries, conclusions or maybe so far as application that open up the parable beyond the Jewish temple leadership. In my reading Jesus gives three separate summaries.
“The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone”
“The Kingdom of God will be taken away and given to those producing its fruit”
“The one who falls on the stone will be broken to pieces, the one the stone falls on will be crushed”
This sermon looks at each of those in progression and how the help us hear the parable for ourselves. The placing of the cornerstone is pure gospel. “God has done this and it is marvelous in our eyes.” The second is the moral warning to watch. If you think the vineyard is yours to do with as you want, you might be killing the heir. The third thinks about our ultimate positions regarding God: ignoring such that we might trip over, set ourselves against him, or build on the cornerstone.
When I go to a Pastor’s Conference I usually try and share a few things. Not a travelogue; Nobody wants to see your vacation pictures. An attempt to extract some wisdom.
All pastor’s conferences have two expressions. There are the “right hand kingdom” issues. These are the anxieties and efforts to rule, govern and guide the church in the world, to make decisions and address problems. There are also the “left hand kingdom” issues. These are the worship, prayer, study and consolation of the brethren. Depending upon the group you are in, networking can be in the right or the left. Using right and left is theological language for those things which are of power and the law and those things which are of grace. The right, the power-hand (sorry lefties), is the straight ahead law, commands, hierarchies and governance. “Do this, and you will live.” The left, the sinister sneaky hand (sorry lefties), is the one that you don’t see coming. We never expect grace. “Believe this, and you are already good.”
In that right hand kingdom stuff I had three observations. And I don’t mean any of these observations to be positive or negative. Most things in the right hand kingdom simply are. Being humans we are all struggling toward the best outcomes we can imagine. Sometimes there is a lack of imagination, sometimes too much. But we tend to fall in predictable paths. First observation, The Eastern District is probably the poorest one in the LCMS which colors my visions, but man there was a lot of money floating around the PSD. Having money allows for less anxiety and more imagination of what we might do. Lacking money, a certain fatalism sets in. The hopefulness of the PSD was refreshing. Second observation, the political reality of the district is that CA drives everything. The money and the weight of congregations is Southern Cal. The third observation is that the pastors of the PSD clearly see themselves apart from the larger Synod. Not that they would separate, but the anxieties are different. And they believe the anxieties of the rest of Synod are misdirected. There are deeper conversations that could be had around each of those, but that is enough for this space.
Because as much head space that we give to the anxieties and expressions of the right hand kingdom, the church is ultimately about the left. How do we proclaim the grace of Jesus Christ and him crucified for our salvation? One of the biggest anxieties of the conference is the current state of the pastorate. The two expressions of this anxiety being a perceived shortage of pastors and specific to CA congregations a shortage of pastors willing to move to CA. And this is not a small issue for a Lutheran Church body that confesses “so that we may obtain this faith, the ministry of teaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments was instituted. (Augsburg Confession Article 5).” The primary study of the conference lead by Dr. Leopoldo Sanchez I felt was spot on. Dr. Sanchez, who I had for a couple of classes back in Seminary, is “Mr. Holy Spirit.” And you could summarize his study as “It is OK to Pray to the Holy Spirit.”
An older book was titled “The Half Remembered God” and the Holy Spirit is often that, half-remembered. But it is the Spirit that works in the life of the church. The Spirit is half-remembered because He is always testifying to Jesus, also because He works through means – Word and Sacrament. We see the effects of the Spirit, like the wind in the trees, but often miss Him. What Dr. Sanchez shares was a summary of his book “Sculptor Spirit”. And in that work he outlines five different models of sanctification, five different biblical ways the Spirit works. And the two that address the expressed anxiety I felt were what he labels renewal and dramatic. Renewal is the fact that “The Holy Spirit works through death and resurrection.” Dramatic is that the life of the church is one in the wilderness. We learn to trust God and prayer as the Spirit leads us through trail and temptation. Wherever we find ourselves, we have been lead there by the Spirit. And it is for our good that we might know God more fully. It is only in God that we find our true rest from all our anxieties.
Pay attention to the stories people tell you over and over. They are telling you about themselves. The stories that we as Americans tell over and over right now are toxic. They have erased the old stories. Their only fruits are division, death and lethargy. This sermon is about a better story. It is a story that Jesus tells about the Kingdom, which of course is a story about himself – God. And it is a story full of mischievous life. There is always work in the Kingdom. The pay is unfair, but always right, and better than we deserve. Go work in the vineyard. You won’t regret it. You won’t regret an identity built on this story.
“Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near.” – Isaiah 55:6
When I think of everything that runs under the banner of religion or spirituality – from rules for life to teachings of grace, from ritual to ecstatic outburst, from relationships to doctrinal definitions, from civic duty to kingdom’s not of this world – there are a lot of polarities that people might think religion is about. And it is not that they are all wrong. Religion in this world does take on a lot of secondary traits. And it is dealing in stereotypes, but most institutional forms of religion end up being more about those “distinctives.” Ecstatic religion? Head on down to the Pentecostal gathering. Relationship driven sanctification awaits at the Wesleyan Methodist Assembly. And if want ritual, you really can’t beat the Orthodox Church. And those are just within Christian religions. The Buddhists seem to be a home for the philosophically inclined. The Muslims will give you the five pillars of the good life. Us Lutherans? Well, we used to be a bit more united: some solid ritual, the pastors will argue to death over doctrine but the laity keep congregations going through steady relations.
Now I don’t want to say all of that is meaningless. It is not. But none of it is the real point of religion. If your religion in not the place where God draws near, you are missing the point.
That assertion is a live wire. So I’m going to cover it a bit. Saying that God draws near is not just confined to ecstatic experience or feeling, although it might include that. Saying that God draws near is not about saying the right words in the right order as if you were conjuring Him, but He has promised to be present in some rituals, like baptism. Saying that God draws near is more about having faith in the promises of God. Without faith we would not recognize His presence. Most people might look at the cross and see another poor revolutionary receiving just rewards. It is faith that sees the innocent Son of God drawn near to save.
When the prophet tells us to seek the Lord while he may be found, that time is the time of grace. And the time of grace is when you hear it proclaimed. Like right now. The Lord has drawn near to you with his grace right now, if you should accept it. And if he has drawn near, Call upon him. Like the boy Samuel hearing his name. It took Eli a couple of times to realize that God has drawn near. “Tell him, speak, for your servant is listening.” Call upon him with all your heart. Call upon him with the biggest request possible. Create in me a clean heart O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence.
The Grace of God is like the sun. There are days that it might feel too strong and overpowering, that we must withdraw. And maybe we move a bit away. Find some shade. But when it is gone, all you can think about is how cold and dark things are. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Because today is the day of grace. The sun comes up every day and follows its course. But the day shall come when the sun does not give its light. And you do not know that time. Call upon Him while he is near. Work while we still have the light, for the darkness comes when no work can be done. Pray, praise and give thanks while the day is here.
Most of the parables tell us more about God – Father, Son or Spirit – than they do about us. The stuff they tell us about ourselves we already know, like that we are prone to insane double standards. Like, I never have to pay my debts, but you, pay it right now. What the parable of the unmerciful servant tells us is that staggering amount we have been forgiven by God, and how God did that while we were still trying the play the con on him.
The difficult thing that this sermon attempts however briefly to think about is what is demanded of disciples in this world. The radical forgiveness of Jesus is required of us for those within the church. That is Jesus’ answer to Peter, “seventy times seven”. That is the moral lesson of the parable. “Should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had on you?” To fellow disciples we must practice forgiveness. The question then extends to the world? And this is where you cross into the imitation of Christ. We are not the messiah. On the one hand radical forgiveness of the world is not required and may not be wise. On the other this is the model of Christ and it is an open and costly road. Such forgiveness as Christ is an act of faith that the Father repays.
A fellow pastor made a blanket statement recently, “Optimism is mandatory.” It is one of those statements that I could immediately intuit what he was getting at. He flipped it around and said “you are not authorized to despair” which I found completely without problem. Because when I think about despair it’s opposite is hope. And as a Christian we have hope. What I balked at was the equation of Hope and Optimism. Now I hear you already. There you go pastor, splitting hairs that can’t be split. But at least some part of the preacher gig is based upon words. Upon having an understanding about the shade of meaning words have and how they are used. And to my ears Hope and Optimism had different domains of use.
Optimism to me is based in the gut or in our feelings. At its most pagan it is simply the feeling that fortune favors me right now. It could come from a feeling of karma. “I deserve something good.” It is Norman Vicent Peale’s “The Power of Positive Thinking.” And honestly I don’t want to be too negative on some of these. A positive outlook on life is an endearing American trait. Even if you just call it the Dunning-Kruger effect – irrational confidence – it often works. Fake it until you make it is good advice. Nobody likes hanging around Eeyore. But ultimately Optimism is based only on ourselves. It is the advice of Self-Help. If I only follow this seven-step plan everything will be perfect. And the problem with self help stated as boldly as “Optimism is mandatory” is that it makes it a law. And we can’t keep the law. We do not have a promise from God that everything in this world is going to be peachy. For lots of people commanding optimism would be like the drowning hand meme. Sometimes self-help works, but many times down you go.
Contrary to Optimism which is not based on anything solid, Hope is based on the promises of God and His self-revelation. And the Christian Hope is as the creed defines it, “I believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” This Hope is solid because Jesus is risen. We have already seen the first fruits. We have also been given the Holy Spirit, the deposit of that World to Come. God is not saying to us, “get up” while we are laying dead. God himself shall raise us. Likewise God is not demanding that we build the Kingdom under our own effort. He has already made the Kingdom. We only wait for its full appearance. The entire creation groans waiting for the revelation. When Jesus compares building on the sand and building on the rock, to me this is the difference between optimism and hope. Optimism is the sand. You can build on it for a while, but eventually the water rises higher and the building goes down. Hope is the rock. Even when the water comes up, it is Jesus who can command the wind and the waves to be silent. The prophet can part the sea. We have been provided an ark.
We absolutely need to be told to have Hope. And if we think God isn’t living up to his promises, take it to Him. He might come back at us in a whirlwind. We may be talking words without understanding. But this is also the God who promises “a bruised reed he will not break.” And it is exactly that testing of hope that builds it up. “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. (Rom. 5:3-4)” It does this because the rock like nature of the promises of God are made real in our lives. We have not been abandoned, neither is it all on us. I balked at optimism, because it comes up short. The Christian has hope.
I started using the word clouds a long time ago for the image. Originally I thought it was artistic cute: a Word cloud for preaching the Word. But, as I made them I started to realize they did have something to say, and what they had to say too seeing a few. There was always the simple surface fact of the most commonly used words. Like above – Luther and Jesus. I learned and adapted over the years that if “God” was the biggest word, the sermon was probably too generic. I looked for Father or Jesus or Spirit to show up. But there are a variety of shapes that show up. The clouds that are dominated by 2-3 big words and everything else is small are usually the simplest. They tend to be more about proclamation. At the other end are ones like the above. There are lots of words that are large enough to be read, but none that really just pop. Those tend to be less pure proclamation and more teaching or invitation to ponder. The every Sunday preacher has to have a bigger repertoire than the occasional. The lectionary preacher even more so, if he wants to preach the text and not just what is on his mind that week.
Matthew 18 is a deeper text than we normally treat it. Depending upon if our preference is for Young Luther or Old Luther (listen to the sermon), we tend to reduce it to “The Process” for solving disputes in the church, or reduce it to the ridiculousness of even thinking about the law parallel to Jesus’ hyperbole about cutting off body parts. We aren’t going to do that and the Father would not want that, so thinking in sin counting terms must be just wrong. I hope that this sermon was an invitation to think beyond those simplistic reductions. The Christian Life has a simplicity to it, but those are caricatures. That simplicity is the one found on the other side of a complexity.
I’m not sure if it is simply because I’m an area pastor, or if it is because I have two boys in the school, for one of those reasons I get to lead the Valley Lutheran Chapel occasionally. Their chapel functions a little differently than our typical worship service. We start with assigned readings – the lectionary. Those reading are shared each Sunday in a large majority of Churches. It is one of the good outcomes of the 20th century ecumenical movement. Valley’s Chapel starts with a topic. So instead of being assigned say Hebrews 12:2 as a text, I was assigned the topic: Why did Jesus die?
For most of us who have been Christians for a long time that particular question is not one we spend a lot of time reflecting upon. And if we do ponder it, we have set dogmatic answers that we accept because they make sense. The biggest of those answers is at the root of substitutionary atonement. Jesus died because only Jesus – sinless God-Man – was a worthy sacrifice for sin. Christ was our substitute. And if we are biblically literate, we might recall Abraham sacrificing Isaac and being stopped at the last moment and God providing the Ram. And we might recall the long history of Temple sacrifice of the lamb without blemish on the day of Atonement. So when the lamb of God – Jesus – shows up, his death is a necessity.
But for as bloody as that metaphor is, I’m not sure it resonates as a reason to those not deeply embedded in the story. To a pagan, the idea of my God dying would be crazy. And we should understand something here, the audience, at least a portion of the audience of even a Lutheran High School, are pagans. To a pagan, the reason you worship a God is because he is powerful. He or She might use that power for your advantage. And if they don’t use it for your advantage, at least if you offer the appropriate sacrifice, they might not use that power against you. If anyone has seen the movie “Cabin in the Woods” you know what I’m talking about. Baal and Thor and Zeus were popular not because they died. Gods don’t die. Or if they do it is because they are associated with the crops. They are popular because they are strong. And if you don’t think such gods are around today, ask yourself what we mean by “media” or “economy” and what we do. The high priests of the fed are raising interest rates, which will sacrifice some jobs, in the hope that Economy has a soft landing. That’s theology and a hidden deity.
So why does Jesus die. Why doesn’t he look like this guy? When the scoffers taunted, “If you are the son of God, come down from that cross and save yourself” why didn’t he?
For me the best answer is from that Hebrews 12:2 passage. It tells us something dear about God. “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb. 12:2 ESV).” Why did Jesus die? For the joy that was set before him. I don’t know about you but I usually don’t associate joy and suffering. Now I might endure a workout for the endorphin high that follows, for the success of the team I’m on, to prevent myself from being on my 600lb life. But we are talking about The Cross, the most shameful and torturous death ever invented. What was this joy that caused Jesus to die?
Part of what was set before him was “sitting at the right hand of the throne of God.” That is the judgement seat. That is the seat of power. Even old Odin hung himself on a tree to get the magic runes of power. Is the Jesus story just a repeat of Odin? No way. Because when Jesus comes into that power does he immediately wreck vengeance? No. The reason that Jesus desired that power was so that he could have grace on his. Jesus doesn’t use the power is a capricious way like the gods of old or say the economy. Jesus says “come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” The God of the universe endured the cross, not to justify lightning bolts, but to lift up the sign of love in the wilderness.
“Despising the shame.” Hating everything that sin has done to his good creation, turning the garden into this wilderness, Jesus endured the cross to use the power to recreate.
The Joy of God was making a way for his people to be fully human again. The joy of God was through grace giving us the ability to follow him. To follow Jesus past death and out of the wilderness.
Why did Jesus die? For joy. For the joy of many brothers and sisters. For the joy of the new creation. The old gods, the new gods, every idol ever made? Heck with it, let it all go to hades. The God of Creation? Would not see the sinner die. And for Joy of creation created a way past death. For you.
I suppose I should have used a title like “The Labors of Christ”. The text is what happens immediately after Peter’s confession of Christ. You have a confrontation over what that word means. Peter thinks it means something very earthly. Jesus corrects him. And then he invites everyone to see his definition. What is Jesus’ definition of the Christ? Suffering, death and resurrection. How are we invited? To pick up our cross and follow. Why would we do this? It is the only way past death. It is the only way we keep our life, to lose it. This is how God works. This is the labor of the Christ seen through the things of God, not the things of man.
The creed is either true or false. Either God the Father is the creator of all things visible and invisible, or He isn’t. Either Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God crucified under Pontius Pilate yet sitting at the right hand of the Father waiting to come again in glory, or He isn’t. Either the Holy Spirit does work through means like one Baptism for the remission of sins, are it is just simple water.
The truth or falsehood of something has little direct effect on its popularity or unpopularity. In fact, some things that are true can be repugnant. Some things that are false can be very sweet. For example, it is true, even if unpopular, that the typical woman would not stand a chance in a fight against a typical man. Now if she had a gun that changes things, but that is not what Hollywood shows. Hollywood shows us a 100 lbs starlet throwing around a 250 lbs man without messing up her hair. Sorry, not happening. I don’t care how much Kung-Fu she knows. An example of a falsehood that can be sweet would be the idea that one can be a Christian without a church. There are lots of people who really like that idea. You might see them at Christmas, but they will tell those who ask they believe in Jesus. Which is how you get 20% of people in church on any given Sunday, but 70% proclaiming belief. The problem is that Jesus said he was going to build his church. Me and my personal Jesus are nice, but not sufficient, because we are being built together into one body. The Holy Spirit works through means, the first of which is “The Holy Christian Church, the communion of saints.”
When Jesus asks the disciples “who do people say that I am?” They answer him, “The Baptist, Isaiah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” Jeremiah is the real interesting one on that list. The Baptist is the most recent prophetic voice. Isaiah is the sweetest. Saying one of the other prophets is just saying “he’s speaking truths in a powerful way.” Calling Jesus Jeremiah is calling Jesus “the man of sorrows.” There is a long history of the iconography of this Son of Man. The two stained glass pictures nearby are a couple of examples. One has the crown of thorns. Many of the pictures will pick up either the reed that he was beaten with, or the crown, or some other element of the passion. Another popular picture is the Garden of Gethsemane. But, it doesn’t require any of those elements. Sometimes The Man of Sorrows is just portrayed with the melancholy downward look. Jesus is not fully stoic. His guts can be churned.
The Man of Sorrows sits in the unpopular truth square. We’d all like to be in the popular truth square. The devil is pretty effective at herding us into the popular falsehood one. I’m always surprised at the number of people who will stand in the unpopular falsehood square. If you doubt me in that why are there so many people who insist that “real communism has never been tried.” But we have an instinctive horror at unpopular truth. Jeremiah prophesied for 40 years that Jerusalem was going to fall. This was the truth, but nobody wanted to hear the message. We have little interest in being Jeremiah.
What God tells Jeremiah in our Old Testament Lesson (Jeremiah 15:15-21) is instructive. “If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall be as my mouth. They shall turn to you, but you shall not turn to them. And I will make you to this people a fortified wall of bronze…for I am with you to save you and deliver you, declares the LORD.” The Truth is precious. Jesus calls himself the Way, The Truth and the Life. Nothing that is not true comes from the mouth of God. And I think we know that in the long run, truth outs. Of course we ourselves might not be there to see it. At Keynes quipped, “in the long run, we are all dead.” But standing in the truth is standing where God is, and where he will save, and from where he will deliver. The LORD has declared this.
The man of sorrows stood in that unpopular truthful corner. His own did not receive him. But the light still shines. Don’t mistake popularity or unpopularity for the truth. Tomorrow will rearrange all of our categories, but the truth stands like a fortified wall of bronze.
