Matthew 21:33-46
To Whom Is Jesus Speaking?
We are entering the 10th month of the liturgical year. This is Year A in our cycle of readings, which means the Gospel of Matthew is our primary text. As this year was starting, I challenged each of you to read the whole of Matthew’s gospel each month. How is that going?
I start to grow weary of Matthew – as I think I have told you I prefer the Gospel of Luke. While I appreciate the purpose of Matthew’s account, it bothers me when those who do not fully understand Matthew’s context begin to take his writings to mean something which Jesus would surely have never intended. Today’s reading is an example.
“Therefore
I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a
people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”
There are some who have taken these words (and others like them) as a justification for the condemnation (and even the destruction) of those classified as the unfaithful tenets. There are some who have taken these words (and others like them) as a justification for the condemnation (and even the destruction) of the others among us who do not reflect the image of ourselves which we have so carefully created. I am not saying that I have no need for the insights and contributions of Matthew’s work; I am pointing out that there is so much more to realize and to remember. The Gospel of Matthew is carefully crafted to illustrate how the followers of Jesus stand most firmly in the tradition of Moses. But, the Gospel of Matthew is not justification for hating, despising, and (yes) even the destruction of the Jewish people.
Not all “Lutherans” are from Germany, and few of us can identify family living in those regions of the world. But we do need to realize and remember the role “good Lutheran people” played in the Holocaust. It was so much part and parcel of the thinking of my childhood congregation that I can’t even identify who said what we all simply accepted to be true. There was an assumption that “the Jews had fallen out of favor with God because they were the ones who killed Jesus.” As a child, I heard this passage from Matthew with such a backdrop. I was being carefully taught to think of myself as the “newly chosen,” and rightful heir to the privileges thereof.
How ridiculous. It is inconceivable that Jesus would have even suggested that the Jewish people were from this point forward condemned and worthy of whatever mistreatment might come their way. Inconceivable!
What Jesus does condemn is any person or group of persons who assume for themselves a role greater than the one allotted to them by the God who created them. Jesus’ words are not a warning against “the Jews”; they are a condemnation of any who would pretend they can run roughshod over others and fail to realize and remember how they got to where they are in the first place.
Persons in positions of power are in peril of losing perspective. It is not enough to be in control, there is a tendency to look for divine justification for being in control.
The chief priests and Pharisees are the ones who understand that Jesus is speaking to them. Jesus is condemning the ways in which they have placed themselves at the top of heap and from there defended their positions of power and authority. They found themselves in control and they had found justification for why they belonged in such superior roles. For the sake of our hearing what Jesus is saying we need to realize that it is incidental that all these persons were Jewish – OF COURSE THEY ARE JEWS! What we need to hear is it the group of leaders who had sent themselves up as unchallenged authority whom Jesus critiques – not the whole of their ethnic and/or religious identity.
One of the vestiges of whiteness is the tendency to see ourselves as individuals while seeing everyone else as one-of-the-whole. This self-deception contributes to our not seeing any difference between the Chief Priests and the persons who came to the Temple; between the Sadducees and the Pharisees; and between the Jews of Galilee and the Jews of Jerusalem. We see ourselves as individuals, but we tend to see all of them as, well, as “them.” This illusion impedes our ability to hear how these lessons are speaking to us and they contribute to our quick desire to condemn (and in some instances destroy) a whole group of people.
I mentioned Germany and the Holocaust earlier. What happened there in the first third of the 20th century was but one example of what has happened in so many places. In the aftermath of WWII, we have developed the ability to condemn “those people”, while ignore the acts of genocide committed in this country and by “our” people.
It is inconceivable that Jesus would have in any way intended that a whole class or group of persons were “those wretches (who are to be put) to a miserable death.”
It is totally in keeping with Jesus’ words to realize and remember how easily power corrupts. And that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
There is an unsettling tone of condemnation being used these days in the references to God and faith and Christian identity. Christian faith is never a defense of “our way of life.” Christian identity is rooted in an awareness that we are but tenants in a garden planted and built and opened to us as an opportunity to bring glory and honor to the owner. The garden is not ours to do with as we please, the garden is to reflect the design and desire of the one who owns it. Anytime we start to think of ourselves as more than tenets, we are teetering on the edge of becoming the subject of Jesus’ parable.
Christian faith is a way of living in which (at great peril to ourselves) we lift from the ditch the beaten and bloodied man who fell among robbers and we take him to the inn and we pay for him to be cared for and nurtured back to health.
This is the hope God has for those whom he has placed in his garden. This is the response hoped for, as God entrusts us with his world and among his children.
Amen.
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