Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 22A, October 8, 2017; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
Exodus 20:1-4,7-9, 12-20 Then God spoke all these words.
Philippians 2:1-13 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call in Christ Jesus.
Matthew 21:33-46 Listen to another parable.
O God of grace, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may and cost what it will.
Today is the Sunday that we formally begin our annual pledge stewardship campaign for 2018. This year, our theme is “Generosity on the Journey.” Letters have been sent from Nancy Coppelman and Liz Levin, asking you to begin to plan your financial commitment to this parish’s mission next year. While the amount that you pledge for next year is a very individual and personal decision, the fact of your pledge is a much-needed promise to support this community’s work for justice and peace, for healing and renewal. Your pledge is an indication that the ministry of this community matters greatly and that Emmanuel Church is worthy of your generous support. Pledge cards will be mailed to you in a few weeks. If you are not currently on our mailing list and would like to be, please fill out a pew card and put it in the offering plate or speak with me after the service. Pledge fulfillment provides nearly 100% of the cost of staff and programs at Emmanuel Church.
Today is also the Sunday following another particularly horrible mass shooting. I say that because, if a mass shooting is defined as four or more people shot, not including the shooter, then on October 1, the day of the mass shooting in Las Vegas, there had been 1,516 mass shootings in 1,735 days in the U.S. [1] There were two things, widely reported that I want to correct: first, this was not the worst mass shooting in U.S. history unless one only counts white people (which one must not do), [2] and second, this was not a gunman acting alone, because none of us ever acts alone. Whether or not we agree with one another, we belong to one another.
Today is the Sunday that our lectionary calls for reading the oldest example in our scripture of instructions for how to live long and well in community (how to live as if we understand that we belong to one another). The passage begins by telling us that God the Author spoke all these words, reminding the people first that it was God Who brought the people out of slavery. It was God Who brought the people out of the narrow places – mitzrayim – between rocks and hard places – also known as Egypt in the First Testament. This moment marks their new beginning – a fresh starting point for the community – another chance to live in an entirely new way. And God is expressing God’s will – God’s desire for God’s people. “Listen,” God is saying, “I have moved you out from a place of dishonor and disrespect, of shame and strife. You are free. You are not trapped. You are not enslaved. I have redeemed you. You are valuable. You are precious to me. And here’s how you, my beloved, will behave when you have no other gods more important than me. Here’s how it will be when you know deep in your hearts that you are my people.”
I love to preach about these rules for living well in community. There is a Chasidic prohibition against making idols of the commandments – an important teaching that I wish were more widely known in this country. [3] There aren’t any provisions for what happens when they are not listened to, but there are terrible consequences; and we live with those consequences every day, don’t we? These words of the Holy One are absolute proclamations. The sense in Hebrew is of a teaching, and a description of a hoped for future. The late Dorothee Sölle calls this passage “a prophecy of the future” in her book, To Work and To Love. With the exception of two, which I will get to in a minute, the verbs in these proclamations are all imperfect tense in Hebrew, indicating ongoing or incomplete action. Grammatically, they’re not in a command form.
Perhaps you remember that the sense of these proclamations is something like this. God is saying, “When you have no other gods before me, here’s how it will look; here’s how you will behave.” Listen to how different it sounds, “You shall not commit adultery.” versus “When you have no other gods more important than me, you will not violate your primary commitments in relationship”. Or “When you have no other gods before me, you will not murder – indeed you will not even desire to murder. You won’t steal. You won’t even desire to steal. You won’t covet. You’re getting a fresh start – and here’s how I want it to be for you from now on. I want you to remember that you are beloved and free. Here’s how I want it to be with you so that you can live well from now on.” These words from God are about a vision of shalom in the future.
The two exceptions, where the verbs are in more of a command form, are remember as in remember the seventh day to be holy [infinitive absolute verb form]. And honor as in honor your father and your mother [command]. Of all these words that Moses heard from the Holy One, only two proclamations are in command form. I’ve often wondered if they are in command form because they are the most difficult of the whole list to accomplish – perhaps they require our best attention. I’m going to start with the second one first. “Honor your father and your mother so that you can live long in the land God is giving you.” Honor is not the same as submission – it’s much more sublime than that. It has to do with dignity and integrity and respect. The word means “weigh heavily.” In other words, don’t take your parents lightly. They gave you your life. That is not nothing.
Remember to keep the seventh day holy. This is the most challenging of all and it always has been – a day per week is nearly 15% of your waking hours to refrain from work. That might be the most foolishly extravagant thing ever commanded to a people, without enormous wealth, in the history of the world – and the most necessary. Sabbath-keeping is not so much about a long list of dos and don’ts – it’s about what Walter Brueggeman calls a “disciplined and regular disengagement from the systems of productivity whereby the world uses people up to exhaustion.” The primary purpose of Sabbath is to experience God’s pleasure in creation – to feel refreshment and reverence and joy. Sabbath is the best antidote to resentment. Don’t we have such a deep thirst for refreshment and reverence and joy? It’s why so many of us are here.
Today is the Sunday when we are invited to hear the vision of the future shalom being proclaimed in our Torah portion from Exodus, and to understand from our Gospel portion from Matthew that all is not well yet. That was true when Matthew wrote his Gospel and it’s still true.
I must start with the end of our Gospel portion and say that chief priests (or Sadducees) and Pharisees (or proto-rabbis) were two separate and distinct “parties” within first century Judaism, with different philosophies and methods of practicing faith. I asked our deacon, Bob to read what I think is a closer contemporary iteration: “When the leaders of the Catholics and the Protestants, or when the leaders of the Democrats and Republicans heard Jesus’ parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him (because he was stretching every last one of their nerves) but they feared the crowds because the crowds regarded Jesus as a prophet.” In other words, Jesus’ teaching was troubling across a wide range of religious leaders. I can’t say often enough that if we fail to understand this or any other mention of religious folks as a critique of ourselves and our own leadership, of our own fruit production, we do violence to the text, and to Jesus himself.
You may know that in Jesus’ time, parables were teaching tools intended not to give answers but to extend invitations to “inspire and humble, challenge and comfort.” [4] And if Gospel means good news, where is the good news in this disturbing story of an absent and naïve landowner and the violent tenants, a disturbing story of escalating anger and violence that has compromised the harvest of good fruit? What is this story telling us about how to figure out what really matters in the communal quest for abundant life?
The Good News in this parable is that the vineyard is going to be given over to tenant farmers who will produce and deliver the harvest – the fruits of the kingdom or realm of God. According to Matthew, it matters how people behave – how people produce and deliver the harvest. What are the fruits of the realm of God, also known as the fruits of the Spirit, in Biblical terms? You know them – these are fruits that good tenant farmers are to be planting, growing and harvesting. The Apostle Paul listed them in his letter to the Galatians. He was not inventing this list – he was remembering and reciting the fruits of the realm of God. The fruits are: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control.
In every conflicted and even violent situation that I can think of we can ask and usually answer helpful questions like: How can we sow love in the midst of this hatred? Where do we recognize ever-present grace in a terrible situation of violence or neglect? What would increase the well-being of the participants in this conflict? Can we bear with the hard work a little longer (if we keep sabbath)? What would be the kindest response? Where is the most morally excellent path – to use Thoreau’s words: “the path, no matter how narrow or crooked, on which you can walk with love and reverence?” What will help us grow fidelity and gentleness at the same time? How can we reduce our own reckless behaviors? As we struggle to figure out the next right thing to do, we can ask ourselves, what is the loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, self-controlled thing to do next? So then today is the Sunday we can give thanks for this place, Emmanuel Church, because this is a community that helps us to pray again for the wisdom, the strength and the courage to do the next right thing.