2011-10-02–Missional Discernment
Missional Discernment
What a hard Gospel to hear! How on earth is this good news? If you are asking that today after hearing it, you are not alone. Your preacher has been asking that question all through the week. In fact, he has been asking it a great deal over the last number of weeks as we have been working our way through the Gospel of Matthew. Not, I am afraid to say, a great beginning for a new priest in a new parish. Still, as much as I might like, I cannot make the Gospels say things other than what they actually say.
My old professor of preaching once said that preaching is like shearing sheep. And sometimes, the shearer needs to clip close to the skin. Sometimes, the sheep might even get nicked by the shears. If you are feeling that way—if you are feeling that you have been nicked lately, and too often—I can’t apologize. For I have to preach what the Gospel says and not what I want it to say. But I can tell you that as a fellow sheep, following Him who is the Good Shepherd, I have been nicked by this Gospel too. We’re in this together. And so, together, we listen to the Gospel.
As we do, we are immediately confronted by themes that we have met before. Jesus, in this latest parable, again paints the chief priests and the Pharisees as the bad guys. And again, to grapple with just how shocking that is, we need to see them as the heroes of the story. The chief priests—also known as the Saducees—were that party of first century Jewish life that looked after the Temple and the sacrifices. We met them last week with their question, “By what authority do you, Jesus, do what you do?”
The Pharisees were a party associated not with Jerusalem and the temple, but the surrounding countryside and the local synagogues. They looked after the readying and obeying of the Law—that is, the Holy Scriptures. Now, the two parties were often rivals, with each claiming to be the true source of Jewish identity. But in the peoples’ eyes, both were the spiritual elite. These were the men who were closest to God. From them came the priests that atoned for the peoples’ sins. From them came the learned lawyers who could spell out just how a law thousands of years old continued to apply in daily life. These were the men who ensured that God’s blessing would remain on God’s people. They were “The God Squad.”
And how does Jesus portray them? They are like wicked tenants who beat and murder not only their landowner’s slaves but even his own Son! So, once again, Jesus is turning into villains those whom his followers believed were the true heroes—the ones closest to God.
A second theme is closely linked. Here again we have Jesus’ criticism of religion. What makes the Saducees and the Pharisees the villains in the story is their close linking of religion and power and their insistence to cling to both at all costs. Remember last week, and the Saducees question about authority? Jesus, we saw, reminded them of another source of authority outside their own. He reminded them of the entire prophetic tradition of the Old Testament. The tradition of the outsider, what we might call the firebrand fundamentalist, who overturns religious sensibilities with the Word from God. John and Jesus himself represented the climax of that tradition. And the religious leaders were blinded to both John and Jesus by their desire to cling to the power and prestige given to them by their religious office.
In the Gospel today, the same point is being made, but even more strongly. You have clung to your religious and political power, Jesus says to the chief priests and the Pharisees, not simply by ignoring the prophets whom God has sent to you, but by despising, abusing, even murdering them! And now God’s own Son—the Messiah, the heir of David, the King—has come to them and yet they will not repent and believe. So strong have the chains binding them to power and prestige become that their very religious traditions—the promises and commandments of God—will become the cover for murder. They will orchestrate the killing of the landowner’s Son!
So, heroes are turned to villains; the capacity of religion to deceive and manipulate is exposed. The third theme that this text lays before us is the pivotal claims of Jesus. Jesus himself is the son rejected by the tenants and the stone rejected by the builders. Recognizing the claim of Jesus is the basis on which one will stand or fall.
Jesus is often imagined as very nice. But the Jesus with whom we have had to deal over the almost the whole of Ordinary Time thus far is not at all like that. He says terrible things! Judgmental things! His questions wrong foot his opponents and his teachings confuse his friends. He is from first to last exasperating. Jesus is not very nice at all. At least, not in the middle chapters of St. Matthew’s Gospel. We often turn, when confronted by this inscrutable Galilean rabbi, to the words of Mr Beaver from the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, who assures us that Aslan—the Christ figure in the story—is not safe, but good. I want you to know, however, that if you’re wondering as much about Jesus’ goodness as his safety, you’re not doing one thing wrong. In fact, you are rightly reading the Gospels as they have been given to us.
I do happen to think that our Lord is good—so good we cannot begin to imagine or encompass his goodness in our own conceptualities. But his goodness can never be used by us to get away from having to make a decision about him. He has, in his Gospel, given himself to us again. He is the son. He is the stone. Will we, like the tenants, reject him? They provoked the wrath of the landowner by their actions. Will we, like the builders, reject him? He will “break” and “crush” those who oppose the Lord’s work. It is stark. But what Jesus is doing here is forcing his hearers—both ancient and modern—to grapple with just how decisive the question he raises is. How we answer will, in one way or another, turn our lives completely upside down.
And it is at this point that we can begin to see ourselves in this story. At least, it is at this point at which I see myself in this story. This story reminds me that I am always having to make a decision about Jesus. Always having to hear his questions as they confront the certainties of my life. Always having to wrestle with his teaching as it wrenches all that it is comfortable in my life. Always having to decide whether this son is to be rejected or accepted, whether this stone break me into me into pieces in order to rebuild me, or crush me altogether. Is that true for you too? I hope so. I hope that as we read the book together, as we come to the altar rail together, we are always having to get to grips with Jesus. We are always continually being converted by him, for him and to him, as he soaks his words, his very life into our souls.
There’s only one more thing to say. But first I need to give you a bit of context. This sermon is actually the first in a series on becoming more deliberate about engaging in mission. Over the next three Sundays, we will be reflecting together on learning how to think about our time, talent, and treasure in terms of God’s mission here in Sudbury. This morning’s Gospel forces us to reckon with what Dr. John Bowen called at our Deanery Day last week, missional discernment. By which he meant, learning to look for those places where God is active.
And that is the last thing we need to talk about.
So, perhaps you’re with me so far. Perhaps you are ready to say, “Yes, Father Tim, you’re right. I am finding that I am having to make a decision about Jesus in a way that I never have before! I am baptized and confirmed and even active and yet I’m feeling like Jesus is calling me to something new. And I’m frightened. I don’t know what it means.” If that’s you, that is fantastic! That is wonderful. This is the Gospel for you this morning: “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.”
If we are going to refuse the way of the wicked tenants, if we are going to refuse to be like the builders, if we are going to do business with Jesus, Jesus is going to turn our lives upsidedown. He is going to bring us new opportunities for ministry and mission that have very little—maybe even nothing at all—with maintaining the religious structures of our lives, good and important as those structures are. He is going to bring us new opportunities that will everything to do with bringing the good news of the Gospel to those who are entirely outside those structures.
Let me give you an example which Dr. Bowen gave to us at our Deanery Day. St James the Apostle Anglican Church in Perth Ontario had a problem. When it would rain, young people would break into the church basement and use it as an impromptu skate park. The 8 foot tables even became ramps. The people of the church responded as you would expect—signs went up: No Skateboarding Allowed! Locks were checked, security was increased until one parishioner, Peter McCracken, said, hang on. We are a community that needs young people. Well, here are young people. In so saying, Peter McCracken was refusing to be like the chief priests and the Pharisees—so concerned to hanging on to their religious power that they had become blind to the work of God. No. He saw the skaters at St. James and said, “This is the Lord’s work and it is amazing in our eyes!”
And out of that vision was borne Sk8er Church. A unique outreach to youth in the community that is, at the same time, rejuvenating St. James the Apostle.
The point of the story is not that we should turn the Phoenix Hall into a skate park. That’s St. James’ mission. It’s not ours—that I know of, anyway. The point we can take away from St. James’ experience is that Jesus is going sending opportunities to mission our way here in the downtown, at our businesses and places of work, in our neighbourhoods, even in our homes. Do we perceive them as threats that force us to hang on to what we have? Jesus said that that is the way of death. Or do we perceive them as opportunities to give away the life of the Gospel? Jesus said that this was the only way to find life. Are these opportunities the Lord’s work amazing in our eyes?
I would like to challenge all of us, in this light of this week’s Gospel, to pray both for ourselves as individual disciples and as the Church of the Epiphany. And as we pray, that we would ask God to show us the missional opportunities that are right under our noses. And then, with those opportunities in mind, we will reflect together about time, talent and treasure.