An Epistolary Sermon: Matthew 22:1-15

READ MEEEEEEEE! Matthew 22:1-15 

An Epistolary Sermon

Dear God, 

Well. Here I am. Again. The parable this week is a doozy. And it’s already Saturday. And I’ve thrown out all of my sermon work from this week because none of it is right, and I didn’t turn in a reflection paper for my class on time, a class that’s supposed to be about listening and discernment, and we decided to get a puppy and we pick her up tomorrow at two, and my son “needs” my computer right now so he can make a video for his YouTube channel, and there’s this incessant clicking in my right ear that I can’t seem to shake or ignore, so I’m Googling “Covid-19 and ear clicking,” and there’s an election coming up and people are scared and freaking out and being ridiculous, and my friends are dealing with a second hurricane in the span of six weeks, and everything in the Northwest is on fire, and I have this horrible tendency to focus on how hard my life is when really it’s a life of comfort and privilege, and here’s this story that is supposedly about you and your followers that turns in to contradiction and murder and chaos and threats of hell. Everything feels like it’s on fire right now, God. And it’s not the good Holy Spirit fire. Or maybe it is. I don’t know. I just don’t want to be on fire anymore.

Here’s this story about a king who is supposed to be you, right, God? At least that’s what all the commentators say. That’s what all the smart white men in our two thousand years of Christian history who know all the Greek and who’ve studied the scriptures and written all the books and decided all the heresies are saying.  The king is you, the invitees are Israel, the servants who are abused and killed are your prophets, and the city you burn down is Jerusalem, or maybe it’s just the temple, we’re not sure, and the people you invite to your party are the Gentiles. There. The kingdom of heaven. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

But God, this story is crazy. This story is nuts. Everybody is freaking out in this story. The whole city is on fire. Nobody’s being rational, except, maybe, the poor guy who gets kicked out of the party for not wearing the right clothes. And his response to all this chaos? He’s speechless. He is without words. So here I am, God, full of a whole bunch of words that are really coming to nothing. Here I am, God, feeling a little bit speechless. I mean, What the hell, God?

So. Yeah. 

Amen.

Dear Jenn - 

You know that I am just a figment of your imagination and probably not really God, but anyway, you’re imagining some kind of a response from some kind of benevolent being, so here goes:

You don’t know a whole lot about me, so listen to those white guys, they’ve thought long and hard and they know all the Greek and they’ve written all the books and historical criticism is important and so is the history of interpretation and they’re also all a part of that “Great Cloud of Witnesses” you like so much, so maybe read a little bit about what they have to say. You  know, the parts about how we don’t really want to be about “cheap grace.” The parts about how this parable does, in fact, tell us what the kingdom of heaven is like, where everybody is invited, and how grace is free, but how it also requires a response of us, a right action, and that being a Christian does mean that we change what we wear, what we’re “clothed” in, you know, in a metaphorical sense. There’s some good stuff there. Good stuff.

And hey, I’m sorry about the whole ear-clicking thing. That happened to me, once. It totally sucked.

And also, you probably should have asked what I thought about getting that puppy. You know she’s going to wake you up in the middle of the night to pee. Are you prepared for that? Are you sure you’ve thought this through?

Also, don’t let a bunch of old white guys tell you what to think about me. They’re not the boss of me.

Well, good luck tomorrow. You’ll do great.

God.

Dear God - 

Yeah, that response wasn’t really what I was looking for. I need an answer of some kind, you know something hopeful and good and true about who you are and what you have to teach us. I need to be able to offer these folks something, something they can hold on to to give them hope and solid ground to stand on during these troubling times. Maybe that’s why the history of interpretation is just not helpful here. Seems like they all have the same decoder ring they got from the same brand of breakfast cereal and they’re applying it to this passage and it’s all just so obvious. This is a story about you and the Israelites and how they rejected you even though you gave them a special invitation to join the party, and they responded by killing your prophets and then you responded by tearing down their temple and inviting the Gentiles in to the party. Except some Gentiles don’t have what it takes, so they get kicked out when they’re not wearing the right clothes for this particular occasion. There. Done. The Moral of the Story: don’t reject God’s invitation, and always keep your wedding robe somewhere handy, and preferably, fireproof. 

It’s like they’ve ignored all the violence and destruction of this parable. I mean, I have questions. Why wouldn’t those invited to the party not want to come? If the champagne is flowing and the filet mignon is being served with a wine reduction sauce and the five tiered cake has a raspberry cream filling, who wouldn’t want to be a part of that? Seems like something went wrong in that relationship between the king and the folks he’s invited, otherwise, they’d be excited to come, otherwise they’d drop everything to get all fancy, drink too much, and jump on to the dance floor when the DJ spins out the electric slide. So what happened? Why don’t they want to come anymore? And then when the king asks them to come a second time, they beat up and kill his messengers. I mean, why the crazy response? Seems way out of proportion if you ask me.  And the king responds in kind, as if that’s going to solve the problem. He sends his troops in, destroys the murderers and burns down the whole dang city. Then, while his city is still in an uproar, while people are fleeing their houses with whatever they can grab, their arms full of babies and pots and pans and photographs and family heirlooms, the king still insists on his silly wedding banquet, and so the slaves go out, grab anyone they can find, and bring them in for a little champagne and filet mignon. Did these guests even have a choice in the matter? I mean, they’re fleeing from their city, their houses are burning to the ground, and the last guy who rejected the king’s offer was killed. So. What choice do they have, really? Do they all rush back to their burning houses and dig their formalwear out of the mothballs in the back of their closets? But then, but then, when they do come, when they do respond to the king’s invitation, they watch as some poor sot gets kicked out, tied hand and foot, thrown into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth simply because he wasn’t wearing the right outfit. I mean, that’s crazy, right? What am I supposed to do with this story?

Oh, and the ear is still clicking, we could use some help with the puppy, and also I’ve got this whole hormonal acne thing going on that would be great if it could get cleared up somehow. Maybe by tomorrow would be great. Oh yeah, and the fires and the hurricanes and the political situation in our country. And the wars. And the hungry kids. And the trashed planet. And systemic racism. But mostly, what am I going to tell these folks tomorrow?

Amen. 

Dear Jenn - 

Once, I was stripped of my clothes and accused of being the King of the Jews. I’d spent a lot of time hanging out with the tax collectors and the sex workers and the sick and rejected and I healed some people and told them to eat and drink for the kingdom of God is at hand. I guess that made folks nervous. I just stood there. Said nothing.

Anyway, I know what you’re asking for. And that’s just not how I work. Imma just gonna let you sit here, in this mess of a story. Maybe you’re looking for answers where there aren’t any. Maybe, you know, my grace is sufficient for you and all that. Maybe you’re just supposed to read the story again. Then go for a walk. Go to Starbucks. Come home and take a nap. Eat some frozen pizza. Decide on what you’re going to name your puppy. Oh and drink some water. Have you had enough water today?

God.

Dear God -

Ok. So I read the story again. And again. And one more time. I drank some water. The ear is still clicking. We’ve decided to name the puppy Eliza. Or maybe Luna. Or Sunny. 

But God. You just can’t be the king. You just can’t. The king is…scary. He’s hotheaded and impatient. He has unreasonable expectations. He kills and destroys. He does this horrible bait and switch thing where he invites everyone to his banquet but then punishes the guy who isn’t wearing the right clothes. He calls him “friend,” and then throws him into hell! Everything I’ve come to know and trust and love about you, God, gets undone if you are the king. How can you be the king? 

But all the smart white guys say that you’re the king. They say that we need to be sanctified as well as justified. They say that we need to say yes to the invitation, but also work to be worthy of that invitation. They say this is a story about the eschaton, the end of times, when you will gather everybody to yourself and determine who’s in and who’s out. You’ll decide who’s worthy and who’s not. And how can they be wrong? It’s right there, right in the Bible. Jesus says, “The kingdom of Heaven is like this.” Can it really be true? Is the kingdom of heaven really like a tyrannical king and like some folks who reject his invitation and like a burning city and like the good and the bad all being gathered together for a party until the king finds the really bad guy, the one who isn’t playing his part, and kicks him into the outer reaches of hell?

Because if these old church fathers have it right, then I think maybe I’m out. I think maybe I don’t want to go to your party. I think maybe I’d rather hang out with the folks who show up just as they are, who don’t hide their unworthiness behind wedding robes or righteousness or perfect choices. I’m not really interested in the ones who are hiding their singed and blistered skin behind a fancy wedding robe.

I’ve tried to be the one who dresses herself up for the party. Even while everything all around me burned, I tried to get myself together, tried to wear the right clothes, tried to say the right things and believe the right beliefs. I’ve tried to show up worthy. And because I stopped just a second longer to check my lipstick in the hallway mirror, because I took that extra moment to iron my robe and straighten my collar and put my hair in place, because I was so worried about what I looked like and what grades I got and if I was recycling right, I didn’t notice the flames creeping closer up my ankles, I didn’t notice that sure, I’d made it to the party, I was wearing all the right clothes, but I was also on fire. 

And God, I keep thinking about that guy who gets kicked out of the party. I want to hang out with him. He’s the only one in the story who is being his true self, the only one in the story who shows up when he’s called, just as he is, with all that he has. He shows up. But he doesn’t dress himself up. He just comes. He stays. And when he’s questioned, when he’s asked, “Who do you think you are? How’d you get in here? What have you to say to these charges” he just stands there, silent before his accusers. And he gets kicked out of the party, through really, no fault of his own. He’s bound, hand and foot. He’s thrown into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. He enters in to the pain and stays there. He goes where the hurt is. He participates in the hurt himself.

And then what happens to him? Is he crucified, dead and buried? Does he descend into hell? Is he raised again on the third day? I want to belong to that guy. I want to go to his party. I want to sit around his campfire and hear the stories of his descent into hell, and then hear how he fought his way back out. 

God, I know I’m wrong. I know I’m not supposed to hang out with that guy. He’s probably a bad influence. He probably smokes joints behind the stadium and does donuts in the parking lot with his balding tires. He probably shows up at prom in torn jeans and a leather jacket. He lives hard and with no regrets. Or maybe he’s just the guy who refused to go back to his burning house to grab his wedding robe. He refused to burn himself just get dressed up and please the king.

But God, if you’re the king, you can keep the robes and the filet mignon, you can have the champagne fountain all to yourself while the city burns. If I come to your party, I’ll come broken and bruised with nothing to say for myself. I’ll come hungry and tired and dying from smoke inhalation, but decidedly NOT on fire. I’m not going back for my wedding robe. I’m not going to burn for that. I’ll burn to rescue the kitten caught in the third floor attic, or to help Mary and her six kids get out of the house. But I won’t burn for that. If that’s not good enough, then kick me out too. If I need to be my best self in order to stay at your party, then I just quit now. I’ll never be enough. Let me join the others who are struggling and hurting and trying to survive. Let me join the guy who said yes to you but still didn’t quite fit, who got kicked out of the party anyway. 

Jenn.

Dear Jenn - 

It’s enough. 

Go to sleep.

I was serious about that water thing.

God.

Thanks be to God.

Choose Your Own Adventure: Matthew 21:33-46

Read this! Matthew 21:33-46

 There are problems with this parable. The whole economic and social structure that is the landowner/tenant farmer/ slave/ day worker system is severely problematic, especially to our individualistic, upward mobility, freedom-loving minds. In First Century Palestine, you were born into a place in life, and that’s where you stayed, that was your lot in life, you played the cards you were dealt as best you could, but there really weren’t a lot of choices to be had. You were what your father or your mother was before you. You had to decide, would you have bread and fish for dinner, or fish and bread? You were stuck where you started. The landowners certainly benefited from this unjust social structure. They had good reasons to keep this social structure in tact. Because it didn’t matter how hard you worked, if you weren’t incredibly, ridiculously, overwhelmingly rich, you survived hand-to-mouth, if you survived at all. The closest thing they had to a “middle class” was the tenant farmer — the one put in charge of tending to the landowner’s land, responsible for its fruitful success, responsible for its fruitless failures, at the mercy of floods and droughts and locusts and weeds. After tending the land, paying the landlord rent, giving the landlord a section of the profits, after buying seed for next year, feeding the animals, paying the taxes, and donating to the temple, there was very little to survive on, if the weather cooperated, maybe just enough to feed your family, maybe enough for a new pair of shoes that the little one keeps outgrowing. This whole parable is based upon an unequal, unfair, unjust social and economic system. In fact, this whole parable is based upon…real life, how things are for most people, even in our modern world. If Jesus were telling this story to a group of real tenant farmers, or a gaggle of slaves, or a crowd of day workers, if he had been telling this story to a collection of people who were victims of this societal structure, what we’d have here is an absentee landlord, an unjust system, and a set of reasonable, or at least understandable actions on the part of the tenant farmers. They’ve had it. It’s a revolt. It’s the American Revolution. They’re throwing tea into the harbor and refusing to pay taxes and practicing guerrilla warfare, and finally saying we have had enough. It’s the Civil Rights Movement. It’s the Rebellion. 

But Jesus isn’t talking to the oppressed. This story is not for them. This story is directed towards the Temple priests and scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees, the guys who are tasked with creating and maintaining this social structure. This story is told to the gatekeepers, the ones who are in charge of drawing the line between who is in and who is out. And this makes all the difference. Jesus tells this story to a people who just assume that this societal structure is how things should be, they don’t question the system at all. It’s just a matter of course that the landlord leaves, that the tenants care for the land, that the landlord comes back, usually by proxy, to collect what is due.

I listened to this wonderful podcast yesterday. I highly recommend it. Brene Brown was interviewing Sonia Renee Taylor. Sonia Renee Taylor is an author, civil rights activist, poet and mental health advocate who wrote a book called, “The Body Is Not an Apology.” She argues that we have built an entire system based upon the bodies, and worthiness of those bodies, of others. This system externalizes our values: the ones on “top” are the ones who are best able to support the structure. She calls it “the ladder” - this hierarchy of value which rewards people who fit into the societal mold, and punishes those who don’t quite fit. Our aim, in this structure, is to get to the “top” - to accumulate the most stuff, to be determined as the most successful, the be the smartest and richest and most revered. But the system is rigged against most of us, she says. For most of us, because of our gender, our race, our socioeconomic status, our education, or our genes, and all of those things that are actually out of our control, we simply can’t get to the top, we can’t win the game. But it’s the only game in town, so we play it. And if we can’t win the game, then at least we can beat the pants off the poor guy beneath us. None of us can be at the top, so we create structures, rules, hierarchies, and values so that we can at least be better than whomever is below us. It’s a ladder, she says, and each person climbs the ladder by stepping on the backs of someone else. It’s a ladder that says that the vineyard is ours, that we earned the vineyard, and that we deserve what we have. Even if that’s not at all true. But we don’t have any other way to measure our worth. The ladder is our chosen measuring stick, even when the ladder is always telling us that somebody is “better” and “worthier” than we are. It’s a ladder based upon scarcity, and we will commit violence to anyone who tries to disrupt this ladder.   This is the heart of systemic injustice.

She argues that for the sake of the world, for the sake of ourselves and those we love, for the sake of humanity in general, we need to divest from the ladder, or, if nothing else, we need to stop worshipping it, stop polishing it, stop passing it on to our children as if it is the only way to live. In fact, she argues, the ladder is imaginary. The ladder is a construct. Once we divest from the ladder, this system of saying who is in and who is out, this way of discrediting each other so that we can at least be one rung ahead, the structure itself falls apart, it’s no longer structurally sound, it all falls down. Once we divest from the ladder, we’re free, free to write our own stories, free to live by a different set of codes, free to embrace the things that our soul loves.

Jesus is talking to the guys at the top of the ladder. “God put you in charge of all the things,” he says. And God expected you to take care of it. To be stewards of it. To nurture it and grow it and love it into its truest self. And when God sent God’s prophets to “collect” on God’s investment, you beat and tortured and killed them. When God sent God’s own Son to reset the societal structure, you killed him, too. What the landowner, what God, is doing in this parable is upending the societal structure that the tenants have created for themselves. God reminds them that none of this is theirs, none of this belongs to them. They are just stewards, caretakers, inviters and supporters of what God is doing in the world. God has sent God’s people to remind the tenants that the ladder they have constructed is a construct, it’s imaginary, it’s not real, or helpful, or just. And the prophets and their message of dismantling the ladder is met with violence. It rarely ends well for a prophet. Rejection, exile, assassination is usually how it goes for them.

Because there is so much at stake for these tenants. They want the inheritance. They want all the goods and all the power and all the prestige and all the things for themselves. They want the vineyard for themselves.  They’re willing to commit repeated acts of violence in order to make this so. They’ll do anything to keep their place on the ladder, and to make sure that there are plenty of people hanging on for dear life below them.

See, after stealing a donkey, sneaking in to Jerusalem, turning the tables and inviting outcasts into the temple, after physically dismantling the ladder and causing an uproar in the city, Jesus knows he can’t just make a mess on the outside. Jesus knows that he has to scramble us up on the inside. To dismantle the ladder inside of ourselves is the only way to dismantle the ladder as a whole. Now, Jesus is telling the ones at the top rungs of the ladder that the ladder isn’t real. Jesus has come to tear down the ladder. To tear down the temple. And to rebuild it into something new. 

Jesus is that cornerstone to what will be rebuilt. 

And the builders reject him. Just like the tenants reject the landowner’s son. 

“They said to themselves, ‘This is the heir!’ - do you hear it? This is the guy at the top of the ladder. If we overtake him, then we can take over his place in the hierarchy. If we get rid of him, then we’re the top dog, we get all the things, we will have the power, we’ll be number one. ‘Come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ If we get rid of the guy above us, we will move on up, we will get what he has, we will get “where” he “is.” 

And here is the turning point of the whole parable. For us, and for the leaders of the Temple. Jesus asks them, and he asks us, a question. And how we answer that question will determine our fates. “Now, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” Do you hear it? This isn’t a rhetorical question. Jesus is asking them, “by what construct are you going to live?” What’s your cornerstone? What’s that thing that you are going to stake your life upon? Is it the ladder? Or is it something else, something that maybe hasn’t even been built yet, but something that is distinctively-not-the-ladder? And without even thinking, without even questioning it, because it is simply the air that they breathe, the guys with power choose the ladder. They choose the hierarchy. They choose to end the story with a framework that they are comfortable and familiar with, even if it means their own destruction. Even if it means that they will trip over and lose their own freedom, their own well being, their own beloved-ness, even if it means that they will be crushed by their own hypocrisy and greed and by the very structure upon which they have based their whole lives, they can’t let go of the ladder. They can’t let go of the construct. They can’t lose it all, because the ladder is all they have. 

So they answer him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at harvest time.” Those tenants will get what is coming to them. They will get justice. They will be forced to pay for what they’ve done. Because that’s what we would do. Because that is the structure that we live by. That’s the story that we know. That’s the ladder that we climb. 

And how does Jesus respond? He doesn’t tell them that they’re exactly right. He doesn’t tell them that they’ve chosen wisely. He doesn’t say, “yup, this is exactly what God is going to do to you, you wicked tenants of the temple!” Instead, he asks them another question. He points them back to their own narrative. And he places himself in their story. “Haven’t you read the scriptures? How “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone?” Haven’t you read that the thing upon which you should build your lives is the thing that has been rejected, the thing that disrupts the hierarchy, the thing that dismantles the ladder and builds something new in its place? This dismantling and rebuilding, this redefining and restructuring, this tearing down and building back up is the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes. 

And they get it. They understand exactly what he is telling them. But the ironic thing is that these chief priests and Pharisees are so ingrained in their structure, they’ve so much at stake in its rising or falling, they have their identities wrapped so completely around the formation and survival of this ladder, they do the exact thing the parable warns them not to do. They realize that he is speaking about them, that Jesus is requiring a complete transformation of the foundations upon which they have built their lives, and they can’t handle it.

Because they actually get the answer wrong. This isn’t what God does at all. God doesn’t come down to us to smite us and give us our just desserts for supporting the status quo. God sends God’s son. And we kill him. But God doesn’t put us to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give God the produce at harvest time.” We kill God’s son, and what does God do? God raises him on the third day. And then God keeps sending him back to the vineyard, again and again and again, and even gets killed again and again and again, in all the tiny and major ways that we betray each other and trash our earth and reject our stories and fortify that gosh darn ladder. But God doesn’t do what the Pharisees and the scribes and the church leaders think God will do. The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. And the people who reject that cornerstone are given opportunity after opportunity to dismantle that ladder. They’re given the opportunity to try again. They’re given chance after chance to produce the fruits of the kingdom. God is dismantling the ladder simply by giving us chance after chance after chance. God is destroying our constructs with grace.  You don’t have to live this way. You can choose to end the parable differently. You can choose to reject the ladder. You don’t have to live with all the rules and the imaginary constructs and the societal structures that have been built for you. You can go a different way. You can choose a different path. 

As we at Peters Creek think about what we want to be, about who we want to be, about what the church should be, as we struggle to redefine our purpose and transform our ministry and foster the kingdom of God in what little ways we can, let’s think about that ladder. Let’s think about how we don’t have to live according to that paradigm anymore. Let’s think about how we can be a place where all people can get a break from the pressures and the falseness and the distractions of the ladder. We have a different cornerstone. We can choose to end the parable differently. 

How will we choose to end the parable? 

Thanks be to God.