Proper 22A

There are times when the gospel according to Matthew makes me want to tear out my hair. This morning’s gospel is provides one of those moments because for me it is nothing more than a text of violence. Its final message of God’s judgement is hardly encouraging, even though it was directed at the Pharisees and chief scribes. We have to remember that Matthew’s community, as young and small as it was, tended to operate out of a culture of fear and part of that fear expressed itself in very strong condemnation of the outsiders, particularly the religious leaders.

After hearing the story of the tenants who kill every person whom the master sends, including his own son, the listeners respond to the question, ‘And what do you think they master will do to those tenants?’ with ‘He will put those wretches to a miserable death.’ Their response is clearly one based on human justice, not on divine mercy. It is one that comes from the tradition, ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ Quid pro quo. One for one. You hit me, I’ll hit you back.

Sometimes the quid pro quo system of working out difficulties creates even more troubles. As Jesus moves in with lightning speed to rebuke his listeners, it becomes clear that he is referring to them and their response to Jesus’ message. God, the vineyard owner has tried to get their attention; the vineyard, Israel, is at their mercy and the second set of people the owner sends are the prophets. The people of Israel are the ones who have not listened to Jesus’ teachings; they are the ones who have alienated themselves from God. The message in this allegorical parable is as clear today as it was then: do we reject the messengers whom God sends? When someone threatens us, do we kill them?

More important to this parable than the failure of the workers to recognise the one sent to them who embodies the mercy of God. Even after the second time, when the workers once again reject the message-bearers, the owner tries one last time, sending the most precious person in all the world, Jesus, into our broken world to take upon himself our human flesh, to live and die as one of us, to be resurrected from the dead.

Citing from Psalm 118, words that we always hear on Palm Sunday, Matthew’s Jesus speaks of the stone that the builders reject becoming the cornerstone. A deeper message of the parable, then, is though we may reject Christ, God still builds a future and a hope upon Christ for us. God’s mercy drowns out the collection of all our sins, and there is still mercy left over. It is a pretty amazing claim to make, and yet we do every time we gather as a community in the eucharist.

The parable instructs us to turn away from injustice and violence. Yet all one has to do is look at the morning news to see that little has changed. This world is no less violent than it was in biblical times. Maybe it is worse because we can do so much more damage to one another and the world knows about it instantly.

Instead of turning to violence, Matthew instructs us to turn to compassion. This compassion is one that invites us to take risks, to question the system, to interject politics into our spirituality when we see a situation that clearly is unjust. Compassion requires strength, and wisdom. If we act out of compassion, we can perhaps save ourselves from ourselves. If we have any doubts of the power of compassion, we need go no further than remembering the owner of the vineyard, God, who sent Jesus to be with us.

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Doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with God has been much in my mind and heart over the past several years as day in and day out, I hear about wars, suicide bombings and other acts of violence around the world. Playing counterpoint to that incessant drumbeat is the reminder that there have been courageous voices of peace and compassion in our times.

Wednesday, 2 October was the 139rd anniversary of Mohandas Gandhi’s birth. Gandhi had every reason to lash out at his oppressors, to incite his followers to violence. In his time, India was a colony of the British Empire; its subservient status meant it was desperately poor, without political or economic resources to change its circumstances. Britain took freely from India’s coffers, giving nothing back in return. The course of his life saw him become a lawyer, travel to South Africa, and suffer the same indignities to his person as did the native African people.

At that moment, Gandhi decided that he would never use force to win a cause: as he said, ‘I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.’ Second, he decided to use non-violent means to effect change. He objected to violence because ‘when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.’

Instead, he and his followers practiced yet one more saying of his, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world.’ They celebrated their Hindu religion, they did not try to imitate the British, but rather became themselves. They critiqued government and law not according to human concepts of justice, but according to God’s overarching mercy and desire that all be one. Lastly they understood that all things and people are connected and therefore merit respect.

Gandhi’s quest for peaceful means of addressing the world’s inequalities and tragedies, is reminiscent of another person who lived much longer ago, Saint Francis, whose feast day was yesterday. (I find it a wonderful coincidence that we remember these two spiritual giants in the same octave.) Whether or not the peace prayer actually was written by Francis, it remains emblematic of his teachings that have been passed down.

In both cases, we learn of a life of compassion that is built on the Great Commandment. Our presiding bishop said of that yesterday, ‘The mission of God, in which The Episcopal Church participates, is to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. We cannot do one without doing the other. We believe that it is in serving the least among us that we discover the image of God, and the presence of a suffering Christ. It is in serving those least that we rediscover our common mission, which transcends our differences. Jesus weeps at the bickering of his brothers and sisters, particularly when they miss him in their midst.’ Granted, she was saying this upon the vote by the Diocese of Pittsburgh to leave The Episcopal Church to join the Province of the Southern Cone, but her overall message of service to and compassion for the other matters more to me in this context.

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Can we understand what God means by compassion? Can we understand that compassion is not just human justice and is more than band-aid fixes to the world’s sorrows, that it means delving into the systemic inequities that perpetuate suffering? Can we understand that compassion in the words of Frederick Buechner, ‘is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy for you too.’ (1) In other words, these of Dorothee Soelle, ‘I can never be what I am supposed to be as long as others are not what they are supposed to be. You, too, can’t be what you are supposed to be before I become what I am meant to be. That is just how the world is made.’ (2)

We may not be Gandhi or Francis, but each of us in our own way can stop the hurt that goes around, and try to bring about the New Creation that God desires for the world. As a reminder, or for starters, turn to page 833…

END NOTES

(1)Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC (New York, NY HarperSanFrancisco, 1973, 1993), 18.
(2) Dorothee Soelle, The Silent Cry (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 277.