The kingdom of heaven
is like a mustard seed…the kingdom of heaven is like yeast…the kingdom of heaven is like a
landowner who owns a vineyard… I am the vine, you are the branches…
Jesus was really good
at Similes and Metaphors.
When anyone talks
about a vine or vineyard, they are talking about Israel. The Psalmist says…
7 Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face
shine, that we may be saved. 8 You brought a vine out of
Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. 9 You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the
land. 10 The mountains were covered
with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches; 11 it sent out its branches to the sea, and its
shoots to the River. 12 Why then have
you broken down its walls, so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit?
13 The boar from the forest ravages it, and
all that move in the field feed on it. 14
Turn again, O God of hosts; look down from heaven, and see; have regard for
this vine, 15 the stock that your right
hand planted.
This
is a Psalm that remembers the protection and prosperity of Israeli history, in
a time when they are in much more crisis.
It was written during the time when the Assyrian Empire loomed large
over the northern kingdom – a kingdom it would eventually come to destroy
completely. It is a Psalm beseeching God to once again bestow God’ blessing on
his people. And it’s an amazing example of a metaphor!
In
our Old Testament scripture this morning, we hear the words of Isaiah early in
his tenure, before the Assyrian Empire demolished the northern kingdom. Isaiah recites a list of complaints against
the people – all justifications for the coming storm of the Assyrian
kingdom. Through Isaiah, God says, I
have protected you…but you betrayed my
expectations, so I’m removing my protection, I’m removing the hedge that used
to keep you safe from predators.
We
are clear, as we are with all prophets, that Israel has done something
wrong. That God’s people have
disappointed God in some way. But –
truly – we rarely hear the ways we disappoint, am I right?
That’s
because they are in the following verses, the ones not in our
lectionary.
a. In Isaiah 5: 8; you who adjoin house to
house and field to field, until there is no room for anyone but you; greed and
excessive – perhaps aggressive – perhaps predatory – hoarding practices, where
the winner takes all and leaves no room for the loser to have a home.
b. Verse 11 – you who pursue strong drink
in the morning and wine at night, lying around listening to tambourine and
flute but not paying attention to the work of God’s hands
c. Verse 18 – you who draw iniquity along
cords of falsehood; drag sin along with cart ropes – who decide who gets what
based on errant cords of logic;
d. Verse 20 – you who call evil good and
good evil, /darkness for light/light for darkness, bitter for sweet / sweet for
bitter
e. Verse 21 – you who are wise in your own
eyes and shrewd in your own sight;
f. Verse 23 – you who acquit the guilty
for a bribe and deny the innocent their rights
Nearly
all of this has to do with how you treat others. There are some of you out there who may drink
too much wine and listen to too much music… But most of these
transgressions focus on right relationship with others.
When
Jesus speaks in the temple – this, his third parable responding to the question
of the Pharisees and Scribes, “From where do you get your authority?” - Everyone
in the temple would know at the mention of the vineyard, that Jesus was
referencing this passage from Isaiah. Except,
In Jesus’ rendition, the landowner has a much greater status, he has more
properties and responsibility in his purview, and so he has hired tenants to tend
the vineyard. If the people of Israel,
God’s people, are still the vineyard, Who do you think these tenants are
supposed to be? These caretakers of the
vineyard are the temple leadership.
The
tenants who were supposed to plant and water, tend and nurture, reap and
harvest of God’s fruit from the people of Israel; that leadership was not
teaching and caretaking the Jewish population well. They were ignoring the landowners’ servants,
the people who came as a reminder, the people who had a prophetic message, the
people who represented truth, the people who came to demand accountability.
But
More than simply ignoring the message, they got angry. They beat the first messenger.
More
than angry, they got violent. They
killed the second.
More
than violent, they got self-righteous and stoned the third messenger.
And
then, more than a beating, they got Greedy.
They decided to use violence to kill the heir.
Here
we are with Jesus and – for once – a pretty clear metaphor. We can see this metaphor of Jesus the heir,
and the prophets who came before him but were refused, rejected, ridiculed, and
returned with deadly force. We are able
to see how God continues to hope the tenants will come around to their
responsibilities. We can see, in real
time in the story, how the temple leadership that has gone astray and failed to
lead their people well are now trying to figure out how to repudiate this heir,
this Son of God, so they won’t be forced to relinquish their power.
The
leaders of the temple are the caretakers of the vineyard. Our leaders are the caretakers of a
nation. Have they been doing a good job?
For
the past 6 days, ever since waking up to horrible, tragic news on Monday
morning of the Vegas shooting where over 50 people were killed, our country has been plunged, once again, into one of our favorite unending
debates. I am not going to stand up here
and rehash the gun debate. I am not
going to do it because I think that both sides are right. I think the proliferation of these obscene episodes
of apparently random, large-scale killing is a direct result of the
proliferation of the amount of killing machines we have in our population, the
ease of getting them, the fact that they become more and more technologically
advanced in the skill of how fast they can kill … things. People, animals, robots, stone statues
brought to life (according to the movie I was watching the other day.) But I also think, paradoxically, that
policies enacted would come to rest on a great number of gun owners who are
trained in safety, and responsible, and have great respect for the damage their
firearm can do. I don’t think simple gun
policy would prevent tragedies like the one last weekend in Vegas.
But
there are two things that do sicken me about the gun debate in light of our
assumed religiousness and our unconscious religiousness.
First is the reverence we seem to have
as a culture –and consumers - for the all-more-powerful gun model. A pistol will kill someone as dead as a rifle
as dead as an Assault Rifle. It seems to me a person who lives outside of a war
zone does not own an Assault Rifle because they need to protect
themselves. They own an assault rifle
because they appreciate – admire – revere the technological advances and the
deadly power of the thing. I made a
friend here in Hastings several months ago, and he is a gun owner. He owns 10, 4 of which are the type of rifle
that looks like what you see in the movies.
Black. Sleek. Long. Contoured to fit your stance. And loaded with a magazine of bullets. I think he collects them and admires them as
someone might who drives and loves classic cars, or a pilot appreciates
construction of a plane. It’s about the
artistry, the design, the power and the majesty of the thing. But between our TV and film culture of
kill-the-bad-guy plotlines, our political fear-mongering that enemies could be
at our door at any second, the NRA’s paranoid narrative, and the gun lobby’s
hold on our politicians, that admiration of guns turns into a reverence that is
hardly paralleled with anything else in our culture.
In bible study this week, a fellow
pastor here in town said something profound; that whenever the beginning of a
conversation gets an immediate and vehement backlash, you can be assured you’ve
uncovered a sacred cow – an idol of the culture. Our love of guns has, for some, I believe,
crossed over into gun worship. Idolatry,
as Jesus or the prophets might have said.
But
to me, something even more terrifying is the narrative that is used to justify
this love of firearms. Did you know that
the value of gun manufacturers stock goes up every time there is a mass
shooting, in anticipation of a rise in gun sales? We are told that we need to
arm ourselves because at any time, a crazed or depraved or drugged out person
could appear on our doorstep ready to take everything we hold dear. We are told we have the right to stand our ground
whenever we feel threatened – an idea and a law that tacitly endorses
responding in violence instead of trying have a discussion and find out
whatever the dispute may be. In each of
these mass shootings, we are told, again and again, that the only way to stop a
‘bad guy’ with a gun is a ‘good guy’ with a gun. Nevermind the fact that for all intents and
purposes, Stephen Craig Paddock seemed to be just another good guy who liked
guns. Nevermind the fact that in a
Permit-to-Carry state of Minnesota – (well, all 50 states now allow gun owners
to carry with a permit; Illinois was the last hold out) – but Nevermind that in
Minnesota Philando Castile proactively and calmly informed the officer who
pulled him over that he had a firearm and therefore should have been in the
‘good guy’ category but was shot and killed while reaching for his permit. Nevermind that when John Crawford III picked
up a BB gun in a Walmart in Ohio in 2014, it scared fellow shoppers so that
they called the police and he was fatally shot for considering a purchase of a
toy gun in a place where people purchase real guns – legally.
Which
all begs the question - Who decides who is a good guy with a gun and who is
bad? How do we make those decisions in
the split second we feel we have to protect ourselves? If we accept the mantra that only a good guy
with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun, how often will we get that
split-second decision wrong? And on
whose authority do we have the right to take a life?
Because
it’s certainly not a Christian authority.
If we were following Christ, if we were following our professed
Christian beliefs, we would see that neither Jesus our Christ nor his disciples
nor the Apostle Paul ever suggest that the way to solve violence is with
violence. In fact, in every instance,
it’s the opposite. Let’s look at this
parable again;
You would expect, after the first
servant came back beaten, the second killed, that would be enough for the
landowner to respond with wrath and violence.
Right? Human intuition is, if you
don’t learn the first time, you certainly learn the true nature of someone with
a second instance. Cross me once, shame
on you… cross me twice, shame
on me… as the saying goes?
But God, in the form of the landowner,
sends a third peaceful messenger to the tenants to remind them of their
responsibilities. And when, again, he is
greeted with violence, the landowner sends his own Son.
Does he respond with an eye for an
eye? Does he show up with assault rifles
or whatever weapons were appropriate to the time? No.
Again and again, God brings grace and vulnerability and love in lieu of
retribution or violence.
Indeed,
we follow a teacher who sacrificed himself that we might know a different
pathway to human life rather than war and violent retribution. Our parable ends with another metaphor about
the stone that the builders rejected becoming the cornerstone. The Pharisees, aware that Jesus is speaking
of himself, turn away disgusted. Because
Jesus says, those who fall on this stone, those who try to break Christ, will
become broken themselves. The way of
love and generosity and vulnerability inherently breaks down evil. Jesus is the cornerstone, building for us the
foundation of a new way of life. Because
Jesus never answered violence with violence. Jesus lays out a life that rejects
violence and vengeance for radical vulnerability, radical generosity, radical love
– even for enemies and those who appear evil.
And
so I ask a question that has been debated for centuries; Is there any room in
the Christian Worldview for a Christian to say, “I am going to kill to protect
life?”
Sadly,
I don’t think simple gun policy would prevent tragedies like the one last
weekend in Las Vegas – but neither is more guns an answer to our culture’s
problems. There was no way a ‘good guy
with a gun’ could have stopped the shooter faster than the security and police
did. Rather, an end to these horrible
incidences of mass murder will require a whole-scale change in our lives; in
our TV and film plots that exaggerate violence, simplify evil and exalt righteous
vengeance without any presence of doubt; in our tending and nurturing of
relationships in the face of an ever-more disconnected and bullying culture; in
our own diminished human capacity for compassion and empathy; in our regard and
respect for the lives of others; in our sense of safety, protection and ideas
of who to fear, and finally, in our approach to how much of a firearm is
necessary to fulfill those things. We
would have to build these things on the cornerstone, on the teachings and
example of Jesus, his disciples and in the words of the Apostle Paul. We will have to build them by holding fast to
God’s love, grace, and vulnerability – not more guns.
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