Crazy Love from a Crazy God

Today is World Communion Sunday.  It is a Sunday on the church calendar to remind us that we are part of a whole community of believes of all time and places who worship and commune with God together.  As part of Bethlehem's celebration, all of our music today was written by Hispanic composers.  


The gospel for today was Matthew 21:33-46, the parable of the wicked tenants which follows last weeks reading of Jesus' authority being questioned.  I know various parts of the sermon struck a cord with a few members of the congregation as they realized just how crazy the landowner was or how they have been affected by people they know who reject God. 


Enjoy!

These tenants really do not know how the world works.  They seize, beat, kill and stone the first set of slaves and they think they can get away with it!  And then they do the same to the second set, seizing, beating, killing and stoning them as well.  And then they get it in their heads that if they kill the son of the landowner that they will somehow be able to claim the vineyard, the son’s inheritance, as their own.  They don’t realize that the punishment for murder is death, that eventually the police and armies will come after you and murder you as well, they aren’t going to let you live out your days in peace in the vineyard because they all fear you. 

And this landowner is really just as crazy.  After people have seized, beaten, killed and stone one group of powerless slaves, you do not send to them another equally as powerless group.  And then you certainly don’t send them your son and expect the outcome to be any different.  No real landowner would do such a thing.  After the first set of slaves were killed, a normal landowner would send an army to kill off these tenants or at least send them away and then lease out the property to other, more trustworthy tenants.  But then again this is not an ordinary landowner, for this is not a real story, this is one of Jesus’ parables. 

And in many parables, we often try to explain them allegorically – that every person or thing in the parable represents something else in real life.  Now that doesn’t always help with the explanation but often it at least helps us at first glance.  So thinking that allegorically, who would you say is the landowner?  The slaves? The son? The tenants?  And what is the vineyard? 

So if God is the landowner, the slaves were the prophets, Jesus is the son, and the Israelites are the tenants and this all takes place in heaven, the kingdom of God, that would mean that God is so crazy, so desperate to have a relationship with God’s people, that God has sent prophet after prophet to tell them about God.  And yet prophet after prophet was rejected, and often killed for their teachings.  And so God, realizing that God’s people will not listen to prophets, decides to up the ante, and sends Jesus, the son of God.  And yet Jesus is also rejected and killed. 

Well no wonder why the chief priest and elders were getting a little hot under the collar at Jesus when they realized that he was talking about them.  They are God’s chosen people, they are to inherit the kingdom of heaven.  However this is when thinking of this parable as an allegory breaks down. 

Because people have thought this way for centuries, Christians have used this text as an excuse to kill the Jewish people, because they think God has now rejected them and chosen Christians, followers of Jesus to inherit the kingdom instead.  And on this World Communion Sunday we are also reminded that this way of thinking has not just caused arguments about who will inherit the kingdom of heaven between Christians and Jews, but different sects of Christianity and different races and different cultures, and often those arguments have ended in war, in death.

 But this parable is not just a straight allegory tale.  Through using Jesus’ words, Matthew, our gospel writer today, is trying convince all people, Jew and gentile to turn to Jesus. Matthew is deeply pained that his own people, the Jews, are rejecting Jesus.  So he tries grace: “the stone that the builders rejects has become the cornerstone.” And when that doesn’t work, Matthew tries threats: “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produce the fruits of the kingdom”. 

And isn’t the same for us.  Many of you have spoken to me about the pain that you have when your family, siblings, children, grandchildren, reject the church and do not come to worship or are sometimes not baptized.  And some of you have tried to convince your family to go to worship with grace or with threats of eternal suffering, or with begging or even with the “will you just do it for me” argument, hoping that if you can just get them in the building the pastor’s words, or music, or scripture will seep into their minds in some way. 

Last week when I asked what questions you have for Jesus, someone asked something along the lines of why Jesus doesn’t just do something so great that no body could possibly doubt.  We are all in pain when other’s doubt.  We are pained for them that they are not able to have faith.  We are in pain for the body of Christ, the whole church, because the church is not yet whole when there are people missing.  And we are in pain for ourselves, because when others doubt, it make us doubt our faith as well. 

And yet God has done something amazing, God has done something great in order to keep us from doubting.  God sent prophets to help teach us, and when that didn’t work, God sent Jesus, the only son of God to die on a cross for us so that we might inherit the kingdom, the vineyard.  Because quite frankly the world doesn’t work that way, but God is just so crazy, so in love with us as a people, that God gave up his only son Jesus to die for us so that we can enter into the kingdom of God, the vineyard.  And it is because that gift is so great that Matthew, our gospel writer, and fellow Christians, and ourselves experience such pain when people do not see the crazy love God has sent to us over and over and over again.