Matthew 21:23-32
September 25, 2011
Some passages in the bible lend themselves well to asking the question: Where am I in this story? Which character am I most like? This is one such passage. So, this morning, I’m suggesting we each take a little time to think about which character in this passage we are most like. It should go without saying that few if any of us will find ourselves in only one of the characters. We are complex creatures, and we will all likely see ourselves in each of the characters at any given time.
Having said that, let me introduce the characters in this story – and they kind of group together a little bit.
Chief priests and elders
Jesus and John the Baptist
A father and two sons
Tax collectors and prostitutes
Let’s start with the father and two sons. They’re in the parable Jesus tells. They are less characters and more like tools the author uses to illuminate other characters in the story. They are a part of a parable in which a father asks his sons to go work in the vineyard. The first son told the father that he would not go work in the vineyard, yet he ended up going. The second son said he would help out, but in the end was a no-show. Matthew has Jesus use these two sons to compare the chief priests and John the Baptist.
The chief priests and elders are like the second brother. They say that are going to do God’s will, and then they change their minds and do nothing of the sort. By virtue of taking on such a privileged and powerful role within the religious hierarchy of the day, they have a huge responsibility. They are saying to the people– committing to God and the Israelites – that they will fulfill the duties of these positions in accordance with God’s will. They say they will go to the vineyard.
But did they? Well, what were they supposed to be doing? Primarily, these folks were the ones that had the power to confer forgiveness on people. And forgiveness figured prominently in one’s status within the religious community. If you are forgiven, you are in. If you are not, you are out. They were responsible for helping people, by granting forgiveness, be restored to the community. Though there were probably some great priests out there, just as there are today, Jesus thought some had lost their way on the way to the vineyard.
For some, their job had become more about power than grace, more about exclusion than restoration and reconciliation. There were entire classes and groups of people who couldn’t even approach to ask for forgiveness, much less receive it.
For example, they were exclusive – only accepting people who were Jewish. They also had requirements for forgiveness that for some were impossible to fulfill; there were rituals that cost you money, or required travel for long distances. And they were legalistic. Unless you did everything right, or were completely free of whatever was making you unclean – even if you had no control over it, like leprosy, for example – you wouldn’t get forgiveness…which meant, of course, that you were on the outs. The priests may have claimed to be doing God’s will, but at some point, like the second son, they had lost their way.
In contrast, John the Baptist and Jesus are like the first son. They shunned the notion that they would call themselves priest or elder – neither of them tried to claim the power that came with these positions. Their power would come from a different source. Their authority, as Jesus explained, came from doing the work of God in the world, not from a title. They weren’t saying they were priests, yet they were doing precisely what the priests said they would do.
Quick quiz: Do you recall what John the Baptist, hint, hint, did for a living? That’s right! He baptized people. We think of baptism today as the front door into the Christian community. We focus on how it makes someone a member of our church or the Christian faith. But for John, baptism was first and foremost about the forgiveness of sins. It was about offering a new beginning. Refreshing people with the water of life. Even though John didn’t have the okay from the church, he was doing exactly what the priests should have been doing…
For everyone. We have no story, no record of John refusing to baptize someone. In fact, what we see in the bible is that crowds and crowds of people, from all walks of life, flocked to John out in the wilderness, and received a new life, forgiveness, not from the church, but directly from God. John was just the messenger – it was not his place to decide who would get in and who would not. If you came – if you wanted more than anything a new life, you were plunged into the water and when you arose, the old was washed away.
When Jesus used the parable to show what the priests should have been doing, it was probably more than enough to infuriate the priests and elders. But they were doing even more than that; Jesus wasn’t done with the lesson. He wanted everyone to know that he was expanding the job description – dramatically. Not only were they forgiving the sins of those who were repentant, and a part of the Jewish faith, as priests were supposed to do, they were letting all sorts of other people in as well.
Jesus didn’t require people to perform the rituals of repentance - to meet the requirements the church had created - in order to be a part of their community. And, to the shock of many, he expanded God’s love beyond Jewish community, not requiring conversion to a particular religion in order to be welcomed into God’s expansive realm.
Just in case the priests didn’t yet have steam coming out of their ears after they hear the parable that implicates them, Jesus says tax collectors and prostitutes will enter the realm of God before you.
Which brings us to our last two characters. Tax collectors and prostitutes were both despised by the religious authorities. They certainly weren’t eligible to receive the forgiveness of the priest. Tax collectors were Jews who collected taxes from their fellow Jews to give to the Roman Empire. They made their living – their income was derived – by charging more than they would then need to give to Rome. Some became extremely wealthy this way. They were considered traitors.
Basically, the tax collectors found themselves in a system that destroyed life more than it gave new life. It sucked them in. They didn’t resist it, they didn’t care that though they were quite comfortable, people were being crushed by the way things were. Why should they care? Everything was fine for them. They never challenged the Romans, never questioned their ethics – that would have upset their life, probably landed them in jail – for sure they would end up joining those who were suffering. I suspect these were not horrible people. They had simply succumbed to the culture of the day because it served them well.
It’s a little more difficult to know exactly who Jesus was referring to when he named prostitutes. We have a very clear picture when we hear that word, but it had a much broader definition in Jesus’ day. Certainly it included people who exchanged sex for money. And likely such people were – just like most prostitutes today – were doing this because of economic realities that gave them few other choices.
But many times the word was used to indicate that someone was a non-Jew…one who didn’t follow the moral codes of the Jewish religion. There was much distaste in the Jewish community for the sexual practices of the Gentiles. The Gentiles – simply meaning “non-Jew” – seemed to have sexual acts as a part of their religious rituals, including women who slept with a number of other men in some kind of cultic rite – women who Jews called prostitutes.
The bottom line was that when the Jews in Jesus’ day heard the term prostitute, they thought “outsider,” “not us,” “immoral,” unnatural. Unless such people were to convert to Judaism, follow the commandments, they were getting’ nowhere near that temple or the priests who ran it. Forgiveness was not an option. Inclusion was completely out of reach.
Now here’s the thing: if Jesus had hung out with tax collectors and prostitutes in order to preach to them, the religious elite might not have fussed. After all, who would have objected that tax collectors and prostitutes were forsaking their sinful lifestyle, making restitution, and seeking a life of righteousness? The priests believed that God offered forgiveness when sinners repented.
What infuriated the authorities was that Jesus was not explicitly or directly asking tax collectors and prostitutes to do any of this. Jesus seems to have accepted them as they were and was freely having dinner with them without requiring that they first clean up their lives.
So those are the players: Now we ask, “Where are we in this story? Who are we?”
Maybe we see a bit of ourselves in the priests. We call ourselves Christian but then act at times in ways that are opposite of what we say we stand for. There are times our actions alienate the very people we should be reaching out to. There are times we put up barriers that get in the way of people experiencing God’s grace and being a part of the community.
Those times we are like the priests, we can remind ourselves of the radical nature of the realm of God. We can visualize all the people we hold in low esteem walking into the realm of God in great joy because of what awaits them there. Maybe we can see them dancing and laughing after being baptized and being released from judgments and expectations. Maybe we can see them so joyous that we only want to join them.
At times we are like John the Baptist – maybe even Jesus. Think about those times when someone you knew felt the crushing weight of judgment, and you responded with grace. Or the times you have given someone a fresh start, even when the world around you never would. We are like John the Baptist and Jesus whenever we see someone not through the eyes of our culture, but through the eyes of Christ.
And when that happens, we need to be aware of it. We need to name it, celebrate it, so that we know and remember what it feels like, so we can return to it time and time again.
Maybe we are at times the tax collector. Those are the times we find ourselves trapped in a culture that destroys…where every purchase, every action has potential implications for someone at the bottom of the ladder. Maybe we need clothes, so we buy something made in sweatshops, without even being aware. Maybe we want to be safe, so we agree to laws that take away the rights of minority groups. Maybe we want to remain comfortable, so we don’t challenge the status quo if we think it will affect us.
At those times, when we feel trapped, when we realize that there is no way to completely extract ourselves from the culture and systems in which we live, remember that we still get to dine with Jesus. We get to come to the table, and be a part of the realm of God…we get glimpses of an alternative world, even if we can never completely escape the dominant culture. We are never written off. We are loved. No elaborate ritual required. We don’t have to go off the grid, give up our way of life, before we are welcomed at Christ’s table.
And finally, I suspect we have all at times felt like the prostitute – not in the sense we think of, but as someone who feels so outside, so beaten down, so misunderstood, so judged simply for who we are, that we can’t imagine we will ever be accepted and loved for who we are.
But even when we are so beaten down and marginalized, and lonely, and hurting, if we find communities that reflect the one Jesus was building, we will find a welcome – we will find grace and love. No creed required, you don’t have to be the right religion. You just need the desire to be loved, and the deep yearning to be a part of God’s work in the world.
Jesus may have been talking to the chief priests and elders in this story, but Matthew was hoping the people who would read his gospel were the ones like the tax collectors and prostitutes. He wanted them to hear the incredibly good news that God’s realm is for everyone, and you don’t need people in power to grant you entrance. Finally, the people who Matthew was always writing to was the early church – and by extension to the Christian church throughout history. And the message is clear: be like the first son. Regardless of your title, regardless of what you call yourself or say you are about, what matters is how you act, who you welcome, and how much you reflect the love, grace, and radical inclusion of God. Amen.
