10/2 Lectionary Notes: Jesus Christ, Rule-breaker
First, here is a handy link to The Lectionary Page. You can scroll down to any date and click on "RCL" to see all of the Revised Common Lectionary texts for the day on one page. Here are the the texts for 10/2, the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost.
The Parable of the Wicked Tenants has very obvious and specific meaning within the historical context of its day--Jesus' hearers recognize that and are naturally offended. Which puts us in the story as the "other tenants," for which we have to recognize our responsibilities. As the other tenants, we become the cultivators and stewards of the fruit (which can be equated with righteousness or with the mystery of salvation or with...). We can choose to respond similarly to the original tenants or we can choose to be conscious of and obedient to our responsibilities.
What would responding like the original tenants look like in our current context? Speaking in the metaphor of the parable, the implication is that we would think that by killing the owner's messenger son again (and again and again), we can hoard the fruits of the vineyard for ourselves because the return of the vineyard owner is so distant and remote that it doesn't present any real threat; we can therefore live out our days acting as though we own our own plots of land. Speaking more literally, we may think we can wrest the mystery of salvation from God and sell it for whatever price we choose--for the price of good behavior, for the price of following whatever set of rules excludes the undesirables and only allows in the most moral, the most trusted, the most deserving...the most like ourselves.
Fortunately, the action of the vineyard owner in choosing "other tenants" is ongoing and those who corrupt the fruit with a hefty price tag are not in possession of the mystery of salvation at all! They blindly underestimate the closeness of the owner and the degree to which he cares about the proper cultivation of his vineyard. But what does our obedient response look like? Paul gives us an example: humble confidence, gratitude, a peace that is deep and true even while it is still seeking, a willingness to share in the sufferings of Christ with the knowledge that Christ shows us the way through suffering to the resurrection of the body. What pure faith! Indeed, we are acceptable as tenants only in our acceptance of the Son as the messenger of God. And who is the Son? The Son is an
...ineffective messianic pretender whose idea of saving action is aggravating God's representatives into exterminating him--which, of course, is exactly what Jesus' paradoxical arrival on their scene looks like to them [the Pharisees, teachers of the law, etc.]. And because they will not trust him in such a mild arrival, because they can conceive only of their own vindictive version of the coming in judgment, for that very reason, the real, vindicating judgment--the judgment that will inquire only if they have trusted, not how well or badly they managed--will fall on them anyway, condemning their unfaith (Robert Farrar Capon 451).
More convicted and convicting words from Capon:
Mark and Luke add the detail...that 'they perceived that he had told this parable against them'--a perception that any five-year-old could have come up with, but that still deserves the final word. For Jesus was against them. And he is against the world, too. He stands in judgment against anyone who will not accept his acceptance of the world by faith alone; but he brings down his gavel only on the folly that will not see that he judges nothing else--not goodness, not badness, not anything. And that is such a strange kind of againstness, such a blessed resistance of the world's insistence on judgment by works, that you'd think it would make us all laugh out loud. But the self-justifying world (including an alarmingly large number of Christians who think that being well behaved is more important to God than just trusting his forgiveness) can see it--and him--only as a threat. As any preacher who seriously preaches the Gospel of grace can tell you, the troops are not amused by the prospect of absolutely free salvation. The first instinct of most Christians, after they have smiled indulgently at the preacher's charmingly easygoing concept of salvation, is to nail him to the wall for knocking the props out from under divine retribution for nasty deeds. They do not want grace, they want law. Like the stupid tenants in the parable, they try to stop the coming of the paradoxical Power that alone can keep them in business, and they take their refuge in a lot of prudential nonsense that only insures their going out of it.
They don't stop the Power, of course. Jesus died for the sins of those who killed him--even for the sins of unbelief by which we kill him all over again. In the end, though, it is just sad. How unhappy to put ourselves on the losing end of a deal that even our messing up can't really sour! How melancholy not to believe that all he ever wanted was for us to believe!
How just plain dumb!
As faith communities, we live into the guidance of this parable by guarding against any sort of new legalism that would claim to quantify salvation. In prayer and mutual sacrifice, we must embody the Spirit of God, who moves in a way no list of rules can explain or contain. We must, as a community, perceive what the Spirit is intimating through the Word, through song, through the sacraments, through silence, through story. We must be about right relationship with God and with others founded on the ridiculous faith that grace is sufficient for all.
Song Suggestions:
"Not What My Hands Have Done"
"In Christ There is No East or West"
"And Can It Be"
"We Walk by Faith" by Marty Haugen
"Amid the Thronging Worshipers"