James 3:13-18; Matthew 21:33-46
Peacemaking and World Communion Sunday: October 2, 2011
When I was in college, I was given a bumper sticker – I don’t remember who gave it to me – but I loved it immediately, and I’ve internalized ever since. It said: “If you want peace, work for justice.” It made sense to me: You can’t have peace if people are oppressed – if injustices exist.
All these years I’ve thought my job is to work like crazy for justice so there might be peace. Fight the systems which have injustices built in. And because these are really complicated systems, and those who benefit use their considerable power to maintain them, sometimes you have to fight really hard.
“Fight.” It’s usually a metaphor for me. I don’t get in fights with people I think are supporting unjust systems – we don’t meet in a dark alley somewhere and duke it out. But it’s not a metaphor for everyone who works for justice. The systems are so powerful, so ingrained, that those who benefit are sometimes willing to use violence to keep things as they are. And so, sometimes to get justice it seems like the only option is to fight – literally. Use violence to fight violence for the sake of justice, because once justice is restored, the argument goes, the fighting can end and peace will reign.
At first, the author of James seems to be an early forerunner of my bumper sticker. In this passage, we’re told – just like the bumper sticker – peace and justice go hand in hand. You can’t have one without the other. But is he saying the same thing as the bumper sticker? Or is he, actually, turning it completely around? “A harvest of justice is sown in peace,” the author writes. It seems he’s saying peace first, then justice. Could it be that the order matters?
If this is what James is saying – you have to have peace before justice – I find it challenges much of what I have believed, and I’m not entirely convinced this makes sense. To not resist injustice wherever we find it seems wrong. And if we don’t set things right – change unjust systems, how can we ever have peace?
At first, it seems impossible that we would find a message of peace in today’s gospel lesson. We tend to read this as an allegory, and read this way, not only are the tenants violent, but if God is the landowner, God is violent. After the tenants, meant to be the Jewish leaders, kill the landowner’s son, meant to represent Jesus, Jesus asks what the landowner will do to the tenants, and the chief priests and elders answer, “he will put those miserable wretches to death.” God. God will put them to death.
We do usually read this as an allegory. And, honestly, I do think Matthew meant this as just such an allegory. But did Jesus? Did Matthew and Jesus say the same thing? Were they trying to make the same point?
It’s kind of an odd question – one we don’t usually ask. We think Matthew knew precisely what Jesus said, and then wrote it down, precisely. And that’s how we know what Jesus said. That’s the whole point of the gospels – to know what Jesus said and did. And so we assume Matthew’s words and Jesus’ words are one and the same. But is this always true?
Remember that the gospel writers relied on someone else’s eye witness account. People who were there wrote down what they heard and what they saw. But the gospel writers weren’t there, so they used what these other folks wrote down in order to put together their account of Jesus’ life. Now, we might assume it doesn’t make a difference that the gospel writers weren’t there. If those eye witnesses wrote things down pretty accurately, then Matthew’s gospel should reflect pretty accurately what Jesus actually said and did.
But we know Matthew didn’t write things down exactly as those first witnesses did. We know he – and the other gospel writers – sometimes added things, changed things, left some things out, and said things in a different order. We know this because even thought the authors of Mark and Luke used the same source, their gospels aren’t the same as Matthew’s. Even this parable looks a little different in each of the three gospels – they all changed parts of it.. Each changed the words and added some things, or took things out, in order to emphasize a point they were trying to make.
So even though Matthew probably meant this as an allegory, with the landowner as God, we can’t assume Jesus did. In fact, people who have studied this passage in depth have concluded that Matthew added some things to what Jesus originally said. He added some things in order to make it an allegory that made sense to the people living in his day – decades after Jesus’ death. Many scholars think what Jesus said ended at the point where the land owner’s son was killed – leaving out all the parts that explicitly connect the tenants to the Jewish leaders, the son to Jesus, and the landowner to God. And, in my humble – decidedly non-scholarly – opinion, there are some pretty good reasons to think Jesus didn’t mean it as an allegory.
The Greek word for “landowner” in Matthew is literally “house despot” – which of course has terrible connotations. A despot is someone who exercises power tyrannically. And it seems like the landowner in this story is a lot more like a despot than the God we see revealed in Jesus. We know back then, the land had actually been taken from the peasants and given to aristocracy. These new landowners made profit by collecting what they wanted of the fruits of the field and using cheap labor to work the land. These farms were stolen and those from whom it was stolen were now forced into near slave labor and subsistence living – at best.
The landowner in our story is just like every other landowner at the time. He set things up to ensure maximum profits, he built a watchtower so no one would get out of line, he employed people who made so little and struggled so much to survive that they resorted to violence – he set up and participated in a system that was unjust from the start. This is not God, this describes the human reality at the time.
We see this kind of thing happen today. Despots running countries pushing people into poverty, taking away their rights and freedoms, and eventually the people rise up against their oppressor, often violently. It’s a system we know, and it was certainly a system Jesus’ hearers would have recognized – it was where they lived – and where they were often crushed. Jesus was pointing out that if the system itself is full of injustice, no matter what anyone does, violence is inevitable…violence is built it. Maybe in telling this story, Jesus was saying they need an entirely different set up – a new vineyard – a vineyard of peace.
We know Jesus came to institute a new system – he announces right off the bat that he came to bring the realm of God. The realm of God is set up differently from the realm of Rome. No absentee land owners living high off the backs of others. No watchtowers meant to keep people in their place. No pitting one group against another, leaving them to fight each other for survival. No violence.
Working for justice within a system of violence will likely lead to more violence. If we keep trying to work within flawed systems, we will find justice only through the violence embedded in that system. We need a new system – we need a new field: A field of peace, in which justice can be sown. We need spaces within our world that are peaceful, spaces separate from the violent trappings of unjust systems.
Problem is: creating such a field is no easy matter.
James describes how we might go about it – and while his instructions sound simple, they don’t exactly come naturally for most of us. He says we must be pure, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. We can’t be boastful or have selfish ambition in our hearts. I don’t know about you, but if he hadn’t lost me at pure, I’m definitely in trouble when it gets to “willing to yield,” and “without a trace of partiality.” As an opinionated person, sometimes stubbornly so, I struggle to live up to James’ ideal. I suspect we all do. And so, we can feel like we’re trapped in the old ways – fields of peace are hard to come by.
A headline in the paper this week was, “Banks to Make Customers Pay Fee for Using Debit Cards.” The reason for the fees, of course, is that new federal regulations have cut down on profits by limiting other fees and interest the banks can charge. The regulations were put in place to protect consumers, especially those who were being hurt most by these things. In other words, the idea of the regulations was to bring some justice into a system that often preys on the poorest in our communities. The reality is these regulations have started a financial arms race of sorts. The more we try to impose justice, the harder the system will fight against it, and the angrier people at the bottom get, the harder they will try for justice, the more forcefully the powerful will respond, and so on.
The decisions are made by the people at the very top of these banks – the ones furthest removed from the people affected by their decisions…the ones like the absentee landowners – they’re fighting to keep the same-set up…to keep the vineyard running exactly as it is: keeping profits high no matter the cost to others. The people it affects, the ones who pay the price and the people working in the banks who see how much it hurts, they are helpless and just grow angrier each day. It makes me think maybe we’re trying to work for justice within a system not set up for justice, and so it is futile.
But as I read the article, I also got to thinking about the microfinancing program we have here in Grinnell – the program our church helped to start. I realized it starts with an entirely different playing field. This program was created completely outside the banking system for people who are most hurt by banks. The people in charge of the whole program meet directly with the recipients, there are no fees, no interest, no scary papers to sign, and no hammer when you can’t pay. It looks completely different, behaves differently, feels different. It is more just. It’s a different kind of vineyard – a field of peace.
It’s world communion Sunday. This table is meant to be a field of peace. It’s meant to be a place where the set up is different: all are welcome, all are equal, all are broken and wounded when we come, and all are made whole in Christ. There is no hierarchy, authorities might try to restrict who comes, but the very nature of what communion is resists such things because it is not the authorities who set the table, it is Christ – and as we know, Christ dines with everyone…no exceptions.
Here we create a pocket of peace in which justice can be sown – and it happens not just here, but around the world – every time we set this table and invite everyone to share the feast which has been prepared. We don’t usually think of communion as something that undermines unjust systems, as an act that fosters justice; but the simplicity of the elements, the expanse of welcome, the lack of requirements, symbolizes that no one can be denied what they need. We don’t have the right to judge or exclude or charge or control. No one profits, no one pays. It’s a statement about what the world should look like when we leave this table.
Later, after we take communion, we will pray together. We will pray: “May we be strengthened and challenged by all who have shared in this meal, both here and around the world. May we be sustained in our struggle by these elements, drawing strength from this divine feast. May we carry in our hearts the life and peace embodied in this bread and wine, that we might be a message of hope and reconciliation to a desperate and hurting world.” This is a political is supposed to have ramifications for how we live in this world. And it’s not meant to incite us to fight, to overthrow…instead we are to carry in our hearts the life of peace, which is where justice can be sown. Amen.
