Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 15, 2007
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

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Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

So, this parable raises a few questions for me. Anyone else a little troubled by it? We’re not alone. Many scholars wonder what Jesus means when he says the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who acts this way. Is Jesus saying God is a vengeful king who sends troops to destroy those who won’t come to a banquet? That God burns a whole city because some won’t come? That God orders someone to be tortured for not wearing the right attire? I’m not sure I want to be at that banquet.

I long to be at the banquet described in our Isaiah reading, the feast God will make for all peoples in God’s promised future. An abundance of joy, nourishment and life for all peoples, all nations, all the earth – that’s a feast I want to attend. But a banquet with an angry king at which others die before I can get in?

I’m not so sure.

Jesus tells this parable when responding to the Jewish religious leaders who have challenged his authority. The traditional interpretation is that Jesus is telling those leaders that they are the ones who refuse to attend the banquet; they are like the man who refused to wear a wedding robe – who refused to be clothed in God’s righteousness. And further, that Jesus is saying anyone who doesn’t respond to God’s invitation, who refuses to be clothed in righteousness, is condemned to hell.

As Christians separated from their Jewish roots they started thinking that all Jews, not just the leaders but all Jews, were the invited guests who refused; whereas Christians were the ones who got to go into heaven. Good news for us, not for anyone else. According to this interpretation, the moral of the story is: “When God calls, go! Put on God’s righteousness and you’ll go to heaven. If not, watch out, you’ll go to hell.”

Yet, parables are not little morality tales in which there is a neat and tidy lesson. And we should always be suspect of interpretations that tell us we’re OK and everyone else is not. Parables are meant to disrupt our easy answers and challenge our certainties. As New Testament scholar Amy Jill Levine points out, “If we hear the parable of the wedding banquet and are not disturbed, there is something seriously amiss with our moral compass … It would be better if we perhaps started by seeing the parable not as about heaven or hell or final judgment, but about kings, politics, violence, and the absence of justice. If we do, we might be getting closer to Jesus.”

After all, Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who…”. In most of his parables about God’s kingdom, Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is like …”. So maybe Jesus is comparing and contrasting the kingdom of heaven with how the world works. One clarification – when Matthew says “the kingdom of heaven” he isn’t talking about a place we go when we die. He is talking about how things will be on earth when God reigns, when God’s justice and mercy prevail. Throughout scripture, God’s coming kingdom looks a lot more like the Isaiah feast than this wedding banquet, so maybe Jesus is comparing the way things are now to God’s coming kingdom. Maybe he’s challenging the religious leaders who are good at exclusion and judgement, who are going along with the violence of the Roman Empire, who expect God to be about judgement and wrath. Maybe he is pointing them to something new.

I honestly don’t know. I don’t know why Jesus told this parable and what it means for us. I do know it has been used to justify violence against Jews. If they are the guests who refused, then maybe they can be destroyed, their cities burned. I wonder if the traditional interpretation prevents us from glimpsing and living into God’s coming kingdom of mercy and justice?

Yet, I also know that we all so often oppose and resist God’s justice and God’s invitations to full abundant life. I do want God’s justice to prevail and I know justice involves some type of judgement. How does God respond when we resist and oppose God? How does God bring justice in our violent world?

We aren’t given answers to these questions. We are given, instead, the faithful and sure witness of Jesus – the ultimate expression of God’s kingdom at work in our world.

In Jesus, we see the one who chose the way of nonviolence. We see someone who looks a lot like the man at the end of the parable. Jesus was willingly stripped of his place of honor at the divine banquet; Jesus remained silent when questioned. And, in his suffering and death, he was cast into all the darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth in our world.

Jesus entered this violence and suffering and in the face of it all, he continued God’s feast. Jesus feasted with the outcasts and the privileged. He fed the hungry and called all to hunger and thirst for righteousness.

As Jesus invited everyone to the feast, he exposed all the ways we exclude ourselves and others from God’s mercy and abundance. He exposed all the brokenness and violence within as well as around us.

But even our sinfulness and violence, even death itself could not stop Jesus from calling us to the feast again and again. The risen Christ is now at work in the feast of his very body and blood to draw all people into God’s promised future.

At this feast, we’re shown that we all stand in need of God’s mercy and grace. At this feast, we receive it abundantly. We are given the nourishment we need to join the work of bringing in God’s kingdom.

At this feast all are welcome, all have a place – especially the outcasts and the sinners. From this feast, all are sent out to serve those in need. We are sent out to go where Jesus goes, to follow him to the places of suffering, to invite others into God’s abundance. The meal we share today is the ultimate foretaste of the feast to come, the foretaste of God’s promised future.

Thanks be to God.

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 8, 2017
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

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Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

“When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they realized that he was speaking about them.” So at least they got something right. The Pharisees get a bad rap in the New Testament and in the Christian tradition. A Sunday School song called “I Just Wanna Be a Sheep” captures this anti-Pharisee sentiment with a verse that goes, “I don’t wanna be a Pharisee, a Pharisee? I don’t wanna be a Pharisee, ‘cause they’re not fair you see. I just wanna be a sheep, bah, bah, bah.”

The Pharisees get a bad rap, but here they at least have the wisdom to know that Jesus is addressing their sin, challenging them, convicting them.

This is wisdom that we could use as a nation; it is wisdom we each need in our own lives. We are so quick to point fingers at everyone else, to identify others as the problem. In the wake of another mass shooting, Americans have spent a lot of time blaming others as we’re prone to do whenever these horrific events occur. We blame “evildoers” and terrorists, the NRA, Congress, the president, video games, social media and poor parenting. It is important to address these things and the role they play in our society. We need to reflect on the larger forces shaping our life together and engage in the political process.

At the same time, we also need to look at the seeds of violence and evil within each of us. We need to consider the fruit of our own lives. Are we producing the fine grapes of justice and righteousness or the wild grapes of evil and violence?

When we take an honest look at ourselves, we see that there are all sorts of wild grapes growing. There is violence in the vineyards of our lives. Violence has a hold not only within those who commit murder like the shooter in Las Vegas or the tenants in this parable. It also lives within each of us.

Violence rarely starts as something explosive, rather it works to find tiny openings – just enough space to start to grow.

Often it begins through indifference to the needs of others, as well as indifference to our own needs. When we work beyond our weariness and deplete our reserves, when we rely too much on ourselves, then we’re more prone to anger, explosiveness and reactivity. From indifference, violence spreads into impatience – impatience with our family members, other drivers on the road, and all the incompetent people we meet everywhere, especially when we’re looking for them. We get easily offended and quickly move to outrage.

Violence also shows up as resentments and an unwillingness to let go of hurts and slights. We make assumptions and give ground to prejudice. We consume more and more of the earth’s resources, harm- ing the planet and others around us.

This can seem like small stuff in the face of mass shootings, but these are the ways violence takes hold and grows. As author Jan Richardson writes, “Violence doesn’t spring forth fully formed, it gestates in small acts and individual hearts, and when we don’t attend to what’s going on inside us, the destructiveness within us accumulates and spills over into the world around us.”

This parable of Jesus speaks not only to the Pharisees and chief priests but to each of us – there is violence in our vineyards.

So, what should the owner of these vineyards do in the face of the violence? What should God do about the evil within each of us? That is the question that Jesus asks the Pharisees and chief priests. They answer that the vineyard owner should put the tenants to a miserable death. They answer with the assumption of revenge and retributive justice.

They have good reasons for answering this way – this is how the world works. It is how God chose to respond to injustice and violence in the time of Isaiah when Israel’s vineyard was destroyed and God’s people were sent into exile. Also, the Old Testament permits taking an eye for an eye, a hand for a hand.

This was intended to encourage proportional responses to violence. If you lost an eye, you could only respond by taking another’s eye, you couldn’t take their life. But it quickly became vindication for seeking revenge. So, the Pharisees and chief priests have good reason to think the landowner will destroy the tenants who have been so violent.

Yet, Jesus points them to a different answer. He says that God is doing a new thing. God is creating a whole new way of being in the world – a way built upon Jesus, the cornerstone.

This is the way of restorative justice rather than retribution. It is the way of mercy and peace rather than revenge. In Jesus, the old ways are being crushed and broken apart and God’s new kingdom is being born.

Jesus is a son who was sent into a violent vineyard, who was beaten and killed. Yet, his death did not bring down divine retribution. God did not put us all to a miserable death as punishment for killing Jesus.

Instead, God responded to Jesus’ death with new life, raising him from the dead. God chose to bring life rather than retribution; God chose to forgive rather than punish.

Violence and death do not have the last word. God’s new life prevails. Now the risen Christ is present with us in the vineyards of our lives, our communities. Christ is present in the word, in his body and blood, to cultivate our vineyards. He asks us to examine the fruit of our lives – he challenges us, convicts us of our sin. He also brings the assurance of God’s mercy, the assurance that nothing can stop God from working new life for each of us and our vineyards. God is present in Christ continuing to choose new life rather than retribution, continuing to forgive rather than punish.

With the life-giving presence of Christ, we too can get to work in our own vineyards. We can practice letting go of the things that lead to violence – letting go of indifference, impatience, resentments and easy outrage. We can practice the things that lead to peace within and without – tending to our own and others’ needs, practicing patience, listening to others, forgiving. We can cultivate peace within so that we are more able to work for restorative justice and peace in our world.

We can do this work trusting that it doesn’t all depend on us. The risen Christ is present and at work in our vineyards, in the vineyard of our world. And nothing, not even death, can stop God from working new life for us and for our world. As the body of Christ in the world, we get to be a part of that work- beginning in our own vineyards.

Let’s take a moment of silent prayer.