This is not a pretty parable. Matthew is
talking mighty tough. A landlord purchases land, makes some improvements, and
then leaves. After an undetermined amount of time, he sends his representatives
to collect what is owed him. Instead of the tenants handing over what is owed,
they beat and kill the landlord’s representative, not just one, but two, and
then they kill his son. How can this even begin to reveal the kingdom of God?
This absent landlord, who knows how long he’s
been away, finally sends in some of his people to check on the place. Maybe the
tenants thought he’d permanently gone away, maybe they thought he’d just never return;
maybe they thought he was dead. You’d think that after the first murder, the
landlord would quit. Well, that landlord is just crazy. And, what’s even
crazier is this landlord sending his own son, after all this violence, as if
something about that is going to change. As if people who have been beating and
killing are just going to stop being violent because they just decided they
don’t want to do that anymore.
Crazy indeed, crazy love. It’s not just crazy;
it’s crazy love. The kind of love that brooks no reason, that will listen to no
counter argument, and that will never, ever give up, risking even violence,
rejection, and death in order to testify to God’s commitment to these
tenants…and to us.
It sounds to me a lot like us, as tenants I
mean. Such violence, such injustice, such foolishness. And God’s crazy love for
us never, ever, ends. Makes me want to cry really, and I believe God weeps
every time we, God’s children, turn to violence to solve our problems or to
exert power. How can we go on being so violent, when we have a God whose love
for us, for all creation is so amazing, so abundant. How can God continue to
love us, when we keep on falling down, when we keep on blaming, mistreating,
and hurting one another?
But we really are just like these tenants. The
tenants carry on the work of the vineyard. It’s not fair is it? To do all the
work and the landowner gets all the profits. The tenants are entitled to a
piece of the pie, the tenants are entitled to some of the profit, why not kill
the landowner’s son and get the inheritance? This parable highlights our own human
sense of justice and righteousness and even entitlement. We are the tenants.
But in this parable, that is not the landowner’s, God’s, sense of justice and
righteousness.
We hear this story all the time. About how
unfair this life is. It’s that transaction with God again. If you work hard,
and do everything right, your reward should be wealth and happiness and
blessings from God, we think that’s what’s fair. But that’s not the truth. The
truth is that many of us work hard, and pain, and suffering, and tragedy is
still part of our lives. We are not entitled to success, or happiness, or even
blessedness. We sometimes even talk about what we deserve or don’t deserve. We
work hard, we deserve a good life, we deserve recognition. We deserve a life
free from pain, free from heartache. But that’s not the way God works, it’s not
the way scripture shows us and it’s not the way our lives show us. We
experience pain and heartache, and we experience happiness and fullness of life.
Maybe Matthew tells this kind of a violent
story because we cannot hear, truly hear, the stories that show us God’s
compassion, God’s mercy and justice. Maybe Matthew tells this kind of a violent
story because Matthew knows we are a violent people. But you know what? I don’t
want to be that way. I don’t want us to be a people who don’t pay attention to
God, to Spirit, to Love. I don’t want us to be an entitled people, an
exceptional people. I don’t want us to be a violent people. I don’t want us to
go on and on watching people getting killed, and begin to accept that as
normal. I don’t want to see it anymore.
I want us to be a compassionate people. A
merciful people. A just people. I want us to be people who love one another and
care for each other, whether or not someone deserves love and care. I want us
to follow Jesus, the one who shows us how love, the one who shows us how forgiveness
and healing work. The one who gave everything, so that we may have life. So
that we may have life, not wealth, not happiness, but life.
So how do we do that? How do we be a community
of compassion, and of mercy, and of justice? Do not be afraid. Indeed, it is
fear that gives rise to violence. Fear of the ones who are different from us,
fear of losing what we have, fear of losing our loved ones and fear of losing
our very lives.
You see, we are all broken, and it is that
very brokenness that makes us compassionate, or hateful. I’m reading a book, Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson. When we
gather at Diocesan Convention, we’ll take time to talk about this book. In it
are many stories of incarceration, and many times I have cried as I listened to
the stories of people whose lives have turned for the worst, and yet who
continue to have faith, hope, and compassion. One story in particular though
illustrates our brokenness, and the compassion or hatefulness that results.
Bryan Stevenson tells the reader about a guard
at the prison where he is visiting a client. The client, Avery, is there
because after a life of foster care filled with emotional and sexual abuse, he
hears the demons in his head and that results in stabbing a man and killing
him. Mr. Stevenson regularly visits the prison as the legal counsel, he reports
to the warden and then is signed in, all according to the proper procedure. The
first time Mr. Stevenson encounters this particular prison guard, he is
questioned extensively, bullied, and then subjected to a strip search, all
against the law. Mr. Stevenson had seen a truck in the parking lot, a truck
with confederate flag stickers plastered all over it. The prison guard makes
sure Mr. Stevenson knows that is his truck. Mr. Stevenson listens to Avery, but
the only thing Avery wants is a chocolate milk shake. Each time Mr. Stevenson sees
Avery in prison, Avery asks for a chocolate milk shake, and Mr. Stevenson replies
that he cannot get a milk shake into the prison. After many visits and much
work, a court date is set for an appeal of Avery’s conviction, with the
evidence of Avery’s upbringing in the foster care system. That same prison
guard is the one who brings Avery to court each time, and he listened to the
proceedings. When Mr. Stevenson encounters that guard again at the prison, he
approaches with trepidation, but the guard is a changed man. He tells Mr. Stevenson
of his own abuse in the foster care system. He says he thought he was the only
one who had been treated that way, and realized Avery was treated even more
poorly and violently than he. The guard learned compassion as he looked into
the eyes of the one he had judged a loser. He learned to respect the Bryan
Stevenson, the lawyer who was helping so many on death row. He even stopped at
a Wendy’s on the way back to the prison after court one day, to buy Avery a
chocolate milk shake.
We are all broken by something. We have all
hurt someone and have been hurt. It is in that place of our brokenness, that
makes us compassionate or hateful. Our brokenness is the source of our common
humanity. We have a choice, to be compassionate or to be hateful. Embracing our
brokenness, leads to mercy. Jesus comes into that place of brokenness and says,
let go of the hate, let go of the bitterness. Do not take revenge or
retribution. Instead, know that we are all in this together, you have been
dealt a life that is yours, filled with good fortune or bad, filled with love
or abuse. You are capable of extreme compassion, you are capable of
forgiveness.
Jesus’ love is the love that is unreasonable,
it is the love that will never, ever give up, risking the violence showered
upon him, the rejection of his friends, and death on a cross. And on that
cross, Jesus loved, saying, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.
We know, that love takes a decision. We know
that compassion means doing something. Look into the eyes of the ones you are
afraid of, and be transformed. And then, get to work. Work to relieve the suffering
and pain of another, and your problems will begin to feel small. Work to change
laws that are unjust, work so that our community is compassionate. And bring a
chocolate milk shake to someone this week. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment