after Pentecost
| Old Testament | Exodus 17:1–7 |
| Psalm | Psalm 78:1–4, 12–16 |
| Epistle | Philippians 2:1–13 |
| Gospel | Matthew 21:23–32 |
O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we, running to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
I am unable to learn how to let myself become empty before you. My grip remains too strong on my worries, my plans, my fears. You let go. You abandoned everything, including your own existence, to join us and show us your love and save us. I desire to place complete trust, but I lack knowledge about the process. Your self-emptying gives me hope that I can release my tight hold too. Amen.
▶ | Hear These Lessons Preached St. Luke the Evangelist · Proper 21A, October 1, 2017 |
“For this intent, that He might make them even self-condemned, He causes the judgment to be delivered by themselves. … For if He had said simply, harlots go before you, the word would have seemed to them to be offensive; but now, being uttered after their own judgment, it appears to be not too hard. … To you he came, not to them. You believed not, this offended not them. They believed, this profited not you.” And on why the authorities would not answer him: “They feared the people. Do you see a perverse heart? In every case they despise God and do all things for the sake of men.”
“It is odd that we still find so many people inside the church who have a greater problem moving with compassion for change in society than many outside the church. They seem bent on protecting God.”
“I’m wondering if it is God who comes and does things that threaten and shatter our understandings of God; and that it is the demonic who wants us to maintain the status quo about God — which will normally be too narrow an understanding of the God whose ways are far beyond our own.”
“Voltaire quipped that we ought to judge a person by his questions rather than his answers.”
This Sunday we have the parable of the two sons. The first son is the one who says, “I will not go,” but later changes his mind and goes. The second son is the one who says he will go, but does not go. This is followed by the polemical question to the authorities: which one of the two does the will of the father? They, of course, say that the first son in the end does the will of the father. For the reader — and especially for the one who heard this in Matthew’s community — there is an aha moment in which we see clearly that the authorities are agreeing with behavior that is not like their own.
As we reflect on the passage, it is helpful to remember that after the fall of the temple in Jerusalem there were really two strands of competing Judaism left. As one scholar pointed out, the Pharisees really are the ancestors of our modern-day Jewish friends, while the Jesus movement would be the second great Jewish strand that has woven its way through history. From an early time, Christians understood this passage as a defining one about who that Christian movement was and is. As the ancient bishop and teacher Chrysostom wrote: the Christian is the one represented by the son who at any hour turns and chooses to do the will of the father, to go out into the vineyard and work. The Christian is the son who is the missionary.
But I think there is a deeper message that Jesus is offering. While Chrysostom is right on the one hand — and certainly the history of the Matthean community and the history of Christianity bear out, at the very least, this determined differentiation — there is more. We must stand back. We must now, knowing the context, step back and allow the Gospel text to speak into our context.
The very powerful message is the Gospel message, one that is perhaps more disturbing and challenging than the contextual one. This Gospel message offers the news that it is never too late to follow Jesus and become a missionary worker in the vineyard. God will embrace the son who turns and chooses in the end — no matter what they have been doing — to become a member of the community. Do we not rejoice in the finding of the one as much as in the salvation of the many? It isn’t an either/or but a both/and vision of the kingdom.
Yes, there are people in our community who sin knowingly. We are human. We know we promise that we will strive for kingdom behavior, and we know we will fail. After all, our baptismal covenant says that “whenever” we sin, we will return. Christians know we are not perfect. But we as Christians also rejoice when the sons and daughters of God who have lived life without, who have lived life saying “no,” turn and join the other workers in the field. We, the church, exist for those who do not yet belong. We exist so that the vineyard is ready for the latecomer and for the newcomer.
As Mrs. Augusta Irving, the elementary school teacher who struck the fear of God into me most days, used to say: “Andy, better late than never.” Yes indeed, Mrs. Irving. You have spoken the Gospel. Better late than never.
This Epistle is not only appointed for today. Philippians 2:5–11 is the Epistle for the Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday, and its collect reads: “Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection.” The Church has bound this hymn to the palms and the passion. Preach it in September and you are already in Holy Week.
“Like Timothy and like Paul’s audience, leaders and members of our own congregations are called to imitate Jesus by refusing to insist on their own prerogatives or status, whatever they may be, and serving others in humility.”
“What’s in a name? From a biblical perspective — everything!”
Paul, in this passage, uses a first-century Christian hymn — possibly even one they would have known — to urge the members of the community at Philippi to have the same mind as Christ. That means that they are to seek not to insist on their own way or their own rights, determined by their social status, but rather to become lower than their stations. Like God in Christ Jesus, they are to seek to become powerless and to serve.
Paul invites them not to be better than the other — this is not, after all, a quality that Christ illustrated.
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
It is in serving that one is great. It is in taking the lower seat that you shall be known. It is in washing feet and loving each other regardless of station. It is feeding the poor who have no right to be fed, and healing the sick who have not fulfilled the law. It is in eating with those who are not worthy to be eaten with. It is in loving those whom you would not dare to love. These are the qualities by which you will be known as a follower of Jesus.
This is the work of Christ that they are to continue in the world.
People will talk about a lot of reasons why our church is failing. They will ponder the reasons why we are shrinking in numbers. I think in the end it is because we don’t do these things very well.
We do not have the same mind as Christ Jesus, and we are unwilling to become low. We actually regard equality with God as something to be exploited and lorded over those whom we do not believe deserve such equality. We are unwilling to empty ourselves. We will not serve God or his mission over our own needs and desires. We are quick to take the highest seat. We are not eager to wash each other’s feet — especially not the feet of the poor. We are unwilling to hold back or deny ourselves. We will not sit with those unlike us. We will not dine with those we don’t agree with. We will not be seen with those who are not like us. We are wholly unwilling to do the hard and difficult work of following Jesus as Jesus has invited us to follow.
Perhaps this is why Paul has us squarely figured out. The truth is that, like the Philippians, what is so bad about our church is just this: it is a comfortable place for comfortable people, comfortable in our going out and our coming in. Yet Paul may have us figured out. Comfortable is not a whole lot like the ministry and character of God in Christ Jesus.
Origen, reading “Thou art Peter” a month ago in our Gospel, reached for this Sunday’s Old Testament to explain it: “A rock is every disciple of Christ, of whom those drank who drank of the spiritual rock which followed them, and upon every such rock is built every word of the church.” Moses strikes the rock at Horeb and water comes out; Paul says the rock was Christ; Origen says the rock is also every one of us who has drunk from it.
The people of Israel are wandering in the wilderness. They grumble, and they camp here and there. They quarrel with each other and with God. And they want something to drink. So Moses went to Horeb and struck the rock, and water flowed from it. Moses renamed the place not for God’s providence of water, but for the people’s quarreling and testing of God.
This passage is referred to in the Gospel of Matthew 4:1–11, when the Devil tempts Jesus. Jesus’ reply is that God is not to be tested. This relies on Deuteronomy’s and Numbers’ accounts of today’s passage. See, in particular, Deuteronomy 6:16.
The religious leaders of the day have put God to the test by asserting themselves into the powers and principalities of this world. They have put God to the test by actually doing the things the devil tempts Jesus with. They have sought to be part of the powers, they have sought to feed their greed, and they have claimed God’s sovereignty over their actions. Jesus rebukes this way of being in the world, and he rebukes the devil in Matthew. He rebukes this way of being by reminding us that God is not pleased with this “self-assertion” or “self-enrichment.”
The Sinai God invites instead a different way of being in the world, one that is about neighborliness. The Sinai God invites love, and love of neighbor, as the highest commandments. God in Christ Jesus fulfills such with his own obedience in the face of powers, principalities, wealth, and self-protection. Instead, Jesus shows his obedience to the Sinai God of Moses by keeping the commandments, loving others, and being obedient. God in Christ Jesus reveals a complete dependence upon God.
As John reminds us, everlasting water, which quenches all kinds of thirst, will be given by God through Jesus — the one through whom all waters spring.
Shall we grumble and quarrel, or shall we be obedient to the command to love each other, and to love God by doing so? Jesus, in the end, shows the way through the wilderness in a manner that is foreign to the humanity that confronts Moses.
Both sons in the parable are dishonest — one with his mouth, one with his feet. Which kind of dishonesty is yours this week?
Christ did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited. What small equality do you hold on to and exploit — seniority, standing, being right — that he would have let go?
