Time for the Fruits

 

Time for the Fruits

Matthew 21:33-46[1]

Faith is an aspect of human life that has many facets. Our “beliefs” play an important role in faith. Gathering for worship is central as well. The music, the Scriptures, and the words we say together are both an expression of our faith and a way to encourage faith. We “act out” our faith together when we celebrate the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Our personal spiritual practices also build up and provide an outlet for our faith. While it’s possible to have faith without a community, we gather with others because they help us hold on to faith when life gets difficult.

At the end of the day, however, the call to follow Jesus is not simply about what we say or about how we worship. It is a call to live life in the way that he did. When Jesus calls us to be his disciples, he doesn’t just ask us to say the right words. Rather, he calls us to “take up our cross” (Matt. 16:24). I think that means that we are to commit to living our lives in the way Jesus did: loving God so completely that we choose to follow his ways no matter what it costs, and loving others even to the point of sacrificing ourselves for them. Following Jesus means “bearing fruit”: the fruit of a life that looks like his.

I believe our Gospel lesson for today addresses this challenge. Jesus tells a story that is traditionally called “the Parable of the Wicked Tenants.” It’s a story of a man who built a vineyard and leased it to tenant farmers. When it came time to collect his share of the produce, he sent his servants, but the tenants beat them and threw them out. Finally, the landlord sent his son, and they killed him. When Jesus asks what the owner of such a vineyard would do to the tenant farmers, the Jewish leaders answer in a way that is predictable—he will take his revenge by killing them.

The problem with this lies with the way we have traditionally interpreted this parable. We have tended to see it as a metaphor for the way God works—the landlord is God, the vineyard is Israel, the tenants are the Jewish leaders, the servants are the prophets, and the son is Jesus. But if we read the parable that way, it makes God into an absentee landlord who makes unjust demands of those he has put in charge of his vineyard. What’s more, God doesn’t seem to be a very competent landlord, because he sends his servants to collect the rent without any protection. And in the end, God acts just like the oppressive land owners of the day by taking revenge on the tenant farmers.

That image doesn’t work for me when it comes to my understanding of God. In the first place, the original command to love our neighbors in the Bible specifically prohibits revenge: “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18). Furthermore, Jesus teaches us instead of taking “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” not to retaliate even against evildoers (Matt. 5:39)! And when Jesus describes who God is, he says “your Father in heaven … makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45). When you put it all together, the traditional way of understanding this parable doesn’t work for me.

I think we need to look at it differently. Jesus tells a story about an absentee landlord who follows the standard customs regarding tenant farmers. He takes such a large cut of the crops as to leave the farmers who are actually working the land with barely enough to keep their families alive. As a result, the tenants rise up and determine to overthrow their tyrant of a landlord. In response, he sends in an army and wipes them out. That’s not how the kingdom of God works! I think Jesus is teaching us about the kingdom of God by telling a story about the opposite way in which the world works.

The kingdom of God works very differently: enemies become friends. Those who rebel may indeed find themselves broken and crushed by their defiance, but they also find that God is the one who heals the broken and lifts up those who are crushed (Ps. 145:14; 147:3). In the kingdom of God, there is no more “eye for an eye,” because operative rule is to forgive as you have been forgiven, to be merciful as you have been shown mercy. There is no place for revenge, because we’re commanded to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

I think Jesus used this unusual method of teaching to shock the “religious people” of his day out of their complacency. They were so used to considering themselves “righteous” and believing the way they lived was blessed by God that they ignored the fact that they were blatantly contradicting the clear teachings of Scripture. It’s easy to fall into that trap: most of us like the comfort of believing the way our world works is what God endorses. But if we look closely, and pay more careful attention to the Scriptures, we may the truth to be unsettling.

I think Jesus may have been warning the “religious people” of his day and ours that the “time for the fruits” is at hand. That’s the literal phrase that is translated “the harvest time” in the parable. “Bearing fruit” is an important theme in Matthew. The idea is that our faith is meant to make a difference in the way we live our lives. If it doesn’t, then it’s not “bearing fruit.” And the fruit that God looks for from all of us is that we love him so fully that we choose to follow his ways no matter what the cost, and we love others even to the point of sacrificing ourselves. I would say it’s likely that means we all may need to make some changes in our lifestyle. We all need to recognize that now is always the time for the fruits!

[1] © 2020 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm Ph. D. on 10/4/2020 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

"Righteous"

 

“Righteous”

Matthew 21:12-32[1]

Most of us have opinions that we believe to be right. That’s a perfectly normal part of being a living, thinking person. There are just some things that make sense to us, and others that don’t make sense. When it comes to matters that are near and dear to the heart, we can often tighten our grip on our opinions. We may even blur the difference between “opinion” and “truth.” Granted, our opinions can be more or less “informed,” but they are nevertheless opinions. Assuming that our opinions are “true” can set us up for some unfortunate conflicts with our fellow human beings. Especially when they also have opinions they believe are “true.”

Again, so far we’re just dealing with normal life. This has been going on as long as there have been people. Things can get a bit dicey when we go from assuming our opinions are “right” to assuming that they (and we who hold them) are “righteous.” That adds another dimension to the problem. When we take that step, not only are those who hold different opinions “wrong,” we may view them as “enemies.” When we see ourselves as “righteous,” it’s not far from seeing those who disagree with us as dangerous. And when we perceive people to be a threat, it becomes easier to attack them.

I think Jesus was addressing this problem in our Gospel lesson for today. It’s no secret that Jesus had a tense relationship with the Jewish religious leaders. In our lesson for today, he “got in their face” about their hypocrisy by driving the merchants out of the temple. Now, we have to understand that the base of power for the Jewish religious leaders was the temple and the synagogue. Part of what that means is that by definition they got to define who was considered “righteous” and who was branded a “sinner.” And of course, in that setup, they were the ones who got to be “righteous,” and they were the ones who got to target others as a “threat.”

So when Jesus dared to criticize the religious leaders on their own turf, they responded in a way that is perfectly predictable. They asked him, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” (Matt. 21:23). This is predictable because they assumed they were the ones whom God had given authority in religious matters, and that Jesus had no such authority. But Jesus saw through their intentions, and so he asked a counter question. He asked them where John got his authority to baptize. He knew they didn’t recognize John’s baptism any more than they recognized his authority. And their response is interesting and instructive.

The “argument” that followed among them showed where their true concern was. They weren’t concerned about the authority of Jesus’ ministry, any more than John’s. They weren’t even concerned about what was true. Their sole concern was about maintaining their power and prestige and about how they looked to the people! So they kept their place firmly on the fence and simply answered, “We do not know.” Now, these are men who were used to answering questions with definitive answers that were to be taken as God’s truth. I would say they rarely, if ever, spoke those words to anyone.

So Jesus told a parable that exposes their hypocrisy. In the parable, a father asks a son to go work in the vineyard and he refuses, but then changes his mind and goes. The father asks his second son to go to work and he says yes, but then doesn’t go. The clear implication is that it’s not always those who make a lot of noise about being righteous who actually practice what they preach. In fact, Jesus told the “righteous” religious leaders that the tax collectors and prostitutes—those who were at the top of their list of “sinners”—were way ahead of them when it came to actually doing God’s will!

For all their presumption of being “righteous” and the pious play-acting that went along with it, they had rejected what Jesus called “the way of righteousness” (Matt. 21:32). What’s more, the people they scapegoated as being “sinners” were actually the ones who believed John and Jesus and accepted the good news of the Kingdom of God they came to preach. The very fact that the leaders considered themselves “righteous” was simply a convenient way for them to keep up appearances with their sham religion by diverting the attention to others. In fact, their whole system of religion was an elaborate self-justification for their self-designation as “righteous.”[2]

This behavior was not the exclusive prerogative of the “righteous” people in Jesus’ day. People of faith throughout the ages have identified others as “sinners” simply as a way of justifying themselves. We all can fall into the trap of deflecting attention away from ourselves so we can keep up the appearance of being “righteous” and avoid facing our own sins. But whenever we use our religion to make ourselves look good at the expense of others, we’re not only hurting them, we’re also hurting ourselves. The more tightly we draw the circle of who is “righteous,” the more pressure we feel to live up to expectations that no one can fulfill. Instead, Jesus offers us God’s full and free acceptance as a gift. When that gift takes hold in our hearts, it no longer matters who is “righteous,” because none of us are!

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[1] © 2020 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. on 9/27/2020 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 114: Jesus was “breaking through the vicious circle of their discrimination in the system of values set up by the righteous.” 

Generous to a Fault

 

Generous to a Fault

Matthew 20:1-16[1]

We live in a world where the value of your labor is determined by how much someone is willing to pay for it. If we look at respective salaries for different vocations, it’s rather revealing as to what we value. We pay entertainers and athletes millions of dollars for what they do. But living in a pandemic has highlighted the fact that what we pay those who are truly “essential workers,” who do the jobs that keep our lives going, is meager by comparison. Maybe one of the changes this time will provoke is for us to re-think the way we reward a few for entertaining us and wind up paying those who do the jobs that are truly important much less, sometimes not even enough for them to live on.

Of course, we can be a very generous people. Whenever we are confronted with images of human suffering, we can be “generous to a fault.” Relief efforts for national and international disasters raise millions of dollars. “GoFundMe” drives for individuals in crisis raise tens of thousands. We clearly have the capacity to help those in need in times of crisis. I wonder what it will take for us to realize that many “essential workers” like teachers, police officers, grocery workers, nurses, and many others provide services that are in fact far more valuable than those who entertain us. Maybe it’s time we reevaluate who gets to be “first” in our world, and who is considered “last.”

This is the theme of our Gospel lesson for today. Jesus tells a parable about a man who owns a vineyard. The harvest is ready and he’s anxious to get the grapes out of the field as quickly as possible. So he goes to the market at the break of day to hire day laborers for his field. Then he keeps going back all day long, sending more workers to help with the harvest. When it comes time to pay the workers things take a surprising turn. The vineyard owner instructs that the workers be paid beginning with the last to be hired—and he pays them all the same thing! Those who worked only one hour got a full day’s wage, just like those who put in a full twelve hours!

When those who had worked all day complain, the employer simply insists that he has a right to be generous with what belongs to him. I think a big part of what this parable is about is that in the kingdom of God, the realm in which God’s grace and mercy and love defines life for all people, there is nothing to earn. In a very real sense, we are all “eleventh-hour workers,” regardless of what we may have done. We all receive far more than we deserve. In this kingdom, everyone receives grace, unconditional love, and unfailing mercy equally. And that is true simply because God is generous! As Desmond Tutu puts it, “There is nothing we can do to make God love us more” and “there is nothing we can do to make God love us less.”[2]

  On one level, this comes to us as unbelievably good news. But on another level, I wonder if it makes us a bit uncomfortable. When the first are last and the last are first, it upends our expectations that life will follow the predictable pattern that those who work the hardest get the most rewards. The Kingdom of God is a strange one: those who are deemed godless gain entry ahead of those who are supposedly righteous. Little children are the example by which we all must measure ourselves, not those who are accomplished and successful. Those who serve are viewed as the “greatest,” and those who seem to be “great” are in fact viewed as “least.” For those of us who have worked hard all our lives, this may not sound like good news at all! In fact, we may perceive it as a threat to our way of life!

But then maybe that’s part of what this parable is meant to address: we are comfortable with a world in which the first are first and the last are last. Giving everyone the same grace, mercy and love regardless of what they do sounds unsettling. So does the idea that everyone receives God’s blessing equally, regardless of how hard you work. We’re much more comfortable with a life that is based on the principle that you have to work hard to earn your way in life. Those of us who have worked our way to being “first” in this world like having the “rewards” of our labor.

The truth of the matter, according to our Scripture lesson, is that in God’s sight we are all “eleventh hour” laborers. We all receive far more than we deserve. The fact that in God’s kingdom, all people have equal shares means that we all enjoy God’s grace, mercy and love freely and equally. That amazing gift is more than we could ever earn, because we can never do enough to “earn” anything from God! The Bible reminds us that this not only applies to our relationship with God, but to all of life. We cannot claim anything we have as a “reward” for our labor, because all of it ultimately comes from God. If this makes it sound like God is generous to a fault, that should lead us not to object, but to rejoice like the “last” workers in the vineyard did when they received more than they expected!

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[1] ©2020 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm Ph. D. on 9/20/2020 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time, 32.

Healing Hostility

Healing Hostility

Matthew 18:21-35[1]

It seems that everywhere you look these days you can find hostility. Some of it is very open, even “in your face.” Some of it is more subtle but no less real. It’s not hard to find someone who’s angry about something. And the sad truth is that the hostility is within us as well. All of us have people in our world who “push our buttons.” Sometimes we “go off” in the privacy of our homes, talking to the TV. Or listening to the radio in the car. I think that’s a truth we’d rather not have to face: that we may be part of the problem, not part of the solution. When hostility seems so prevalent, what can one person do?

I’ve seen one man stop a whole line of tanks simply by standing in their way. I’ve seen public officials kneeling in front of angry protesters in a move that seemed to diffuse the tension instantly, at least for the moment. Perhaps the ancient wisdom that “a gentle answer deflects anger” (Prov 15:1, NLT) still holds true. Sometimes, at least. There are times when it seems like hostility and the violence it breeds is like a flood that nothing can stop. But there are times when simple, honest, friendliness can win over even the most stubborn enemy.

In order to be able to take that kind of friendly approach even toward those who are openly hostile to us, we have to find a way to heal the hostility in our own hearts first. I think that’s where our Gospel lesson for today comes in. Jesus teaches Peter to go beyond forgiveness that only goes so far. Rather, Jesus says to practice unlimited forgiveness.[2] That’s quite a tall order for most of us. There are some people who have done us wrong in such a hurtful way that we simply find it impossible to let go our hard feelings. And yet, Jesus doesn’t let us off the hook—he makes it clear that those of us who look to God for unlimited forgiveness must put it into practice in our lives as well.

And to reinforce the point, Jesus tells a parable. A king demands of his servant the settlement of an unimaginable fortune—10,000 “talents,” which would have been several billion dollars in our world. When the servant begs for more time to pay, the king relents and forgives the entire debt. That’s hard for me to fathom! Who forgives that kind of debt? And yet, as the story goes on, the first servant goes out and demands settlement of a much smaller debt: about $10,000. When the second debtor begs for more time, using the exact same words he used, he refuses to even grant him more time to pay. When the King hears about it, he brings the first servant back in and states the obvious: “Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?” (Matt. 18:33). And the point of the story is that we who have known God’s unlimited forgiveness are to extend that to others “from the heart” (Matt. 18:35).

Unfortunately, Jesus doesn’t teach us how to do this. It’s much easier said than done, I find. I’ve learned that I have to get to the place where I can truly understand and even empathize with someone who I feel has done me wrong in order to offer them this kind of unconditional forgiveness. That doesn’t always come easily. In fact, sometimes I have to have an experience where I wind up being in their shoes myself to be able to reach that level of awareness and empathy. Sometimes it has taken me years. Sometimes, it has taken me decades.

There’s a film called The Interpreter that I think illustrates the choice we face. The film is about an interpreter at the United Nations named Sylvia. She tells the story of a rite of forgiveness in Africa called the “Drowning Man Trial.” When someone is murdered, after a year of mourning, the killer is tied up and thrown into a river to drown. The family of the victim then have to choose—if they let the killer drown, they will have justice, but they will spend the rest of their lives grieving. If they save the killer from drowning, their act of saving a life can heal their own grief. I wonder what I would do if faced with that choice!

Whether there is or ever was such a thing as a “drowning man trial,” I think it serves at least like a parable for us: do we forgive as we have been forgiven, and in so doing find healing for ourselves? Or do we nurse our hurt feelings, our hostility, and our anger, and so find ourselves trapped in bitterness? I think most of us would agree that it’s better to come to the place where we can acknowledge that we share a common humanity with those who have done us harm. When we forgive them, we not only take a step towards healing the hostility we may feel. More than that, by changing our own hearts, we put a little more kindness, a little more friendliness, a little more understanding out into the world. And I do believe that the more we do that, the more we can heal the hostility that plagues us all.

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[1] © 2020 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. on 9/13/2020 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman NE.

[2] Cf. M. Eugene Boring, “The Gospel According to Matthew,” New Interpreters Bible 8: 380, where he observes, “Whoever counts has not forgiven at all, but is only biding his or her time (1 Cor 13:5). The kind of forgiveness called for is beyond all calculation.”