God's Response, Our Response

God’s Response, Our Response

A Sermon on Matthew 21:33-46 and Philippians 3:4-14

By Griff Martin

For the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith

October 8, 2017

Following the Las Vegas Shooting

Incarnate God, we ask that you once again take the Word and transform it into a living and breathing Resurrected reality we can all together experience. Be present here in this space and in these words God for if you are present here then nothing else will matter, but if you are not present here then nothing else will matter. In the name of the Creator, the Risen Christ and the Comforter.  Amen.

I had a nice week planned, I was going to spend the entire week in Yellowstone with a group of pastors working on a project for Nurturing Faith on putting Christ back into Christianity and how churches like ours can help lead this effort, it was a think tank of sorts, a time of spiritual retreat, a time to ask questions that seem very pertinent to the future of our faith. So in advance I prepared the sermon for today, a good sermon on control and ego, the sort of sermon I need. 

And then on Monday morning I got up early to catch my flight to Montana. I had an early flight so I ubered to the airport, made it through security, found my gate, sat down and then I looked up at the tv screen and saw the news for the first time: a mass shooting in Vegas the night before- at this point 50 dead. The worst mass shooting in history, another act of terrorism. I went numb. 

Because the truth is I don’t have it in me. After Sandy Hook, after Pulse, I don’t have another sermon to follow a mass shooting, to follow this kind of terrorism, to follow more senseless violence, a sermon to end another week where we cry and argue and post things on Facebook all while knowing we probably once again will do nothing to solve the real problem. 

And because I don’t have one more sermon for another tragedy- after Charlottesville and Harvey and Irma this year... the well is dry. 

I don’t have another post terrorism or tragedy sermon. All I have is my go to prayer, my most trusted prayer, the one I use the most in my own prayer life: Lord I believe, help my unbelief. 

By the time I had landed I decided to change the text for today... to find a Psalm of lament or an Old Testament prophet, to find the community of God crying out. However here I found a problem: I had travelled light and had no laptop, no biblical commentary. I had a few books with me- a Christian ethicists memoir of struggling to stay in the faith, a book of feminist essays, and a novel about a young couple trying to live in Alaska... and I had ended up at the only hotel in North America that the Gideon’s have not found, no Bible in the bedside drawer.

I did have two sermon files with me- this week and next. I had a manuscript for this Sunday and then 8 pages of handwritten notes on this parable, half of which were simply: what in the world does this mean. So I reread the Matthew parable, the wicked workers: dear God no, not this week... back to my prayer: Lord I believe help my unbelief. 

And then I felt it in my soul, a question, a Holy Spirit nudge, a sacred grab... “Griff do you remember when I preached this parable? Start there and work forward...”

So I did. I remembered when Jesus first told this story. At this point in Matthew’s Gospel things have gotten rough. Just the day before Jesus has turned over the tables in the temple, just a day before that is Palm Sunday, this day Jesus has caused a fig tree to wither and he is full of hard sayings. It is Holy Week and Jesus is in Jerusalem, and he knows what is going on. He knows what is next. There is tension, fear, suspicion and anger. It’s a rough and violent week. It feels like our week. 

And here Jesus starts telling parables that make us long for the Lost Sheep, Coin and Son. These are 40% Brothers Grimm, 40% Flannery O’Connor, 10% Cormac McCarthy and 10% Quentin Tarantino. 

It starts with a landowner purchasing a vineyard, putting up a fence, getting the land ready. Once the vineyard is ready, the owner heads off. Things are in shape and ready to go, so the land owner retreats- to a place on the coast, the mountains or maybe to get another vineyard ready- we don’t know, it’s not ours to know. 

The vineyard does quite well. It produces a good bit. The workers who are working it are filled with pride. Seasons come and seasons go and they are doing so well. They even start to implement some new ideas... these grapes would make a great Merlot, these new champagne grapes might do nicely, these bottles might be better with a cork and not a screw top, if we use these barrels we get another more complex taste, they move the fence, they fix things up. They work so hard that they eventually forget whose vineyard it is, they take charge and they begin to think it belongs to them. They are no longer working someone else’s land, this is their land. It becomes their vineyard. In fact as new workers come onboard, the owner is not even mentioned. 

Until one day when the owner sends a crew to get his wine, to pick up what has been produced. And those working the vineyard rebel, this is their wine- they did the work, they have done everything, where has this owner been the last few years... you can’t take our guns, I mean our wine..

They have forgotten the owner of the vineyard, they have changed the story and they are the star now. And then the story takes a violent turn- they start killing and they keep killing until they have killed the owners very son.  They believe if they kill the son, they will get the land. 

What a parable. A parable that is pretty messed up about a world that is pretty messed up. A parable about people so lost in their messed up world that they forget what the world is really about. A story where folks can get so lost the only thing they can turn to is violence... we murder the vineyard owners son and we murder 59 people at a country music festival. And I say we bc we have not done enough to stop it, to create another world, enough to remind us that the story is not ours, we don’t own the vineyard, we just work it. That is our calling. 

The violence comes when we forget our place in the story. 

Jesus finishes the parable and then asks those listening- those to whom the story is being told- the religious of the day- us: “And what will the owner do next? What should he do? What is his response?”

Kill them all. Revenge. Protect the owners name and land. Revenge his son. An eye for an eye. Violence for violence and death for death. 

And we say the same... more guns, protect our rights including the right to open carry and own assault weapons, protect bump stocks, destroy the NRA and it’s followers, offer prayers or don’t offer prayers, talk about this right now or don’t talk about this right now... if you listen to how we have responded this week, it’s so divisive, it’s so violent and it feels so dead. It’s so us.

We have fallen for the same story: eye for an eye, violence for violence.

Jesus’ question- what should the owner do? And Jesus listens to their responses and our responses and just shakes his head... and then:

“Have you not read in Scripture: ‘the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in their eyes.’ Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to people who will produces the fruits of the Kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush everyone on whom it falls.”

No more violence, just the fruits of the Kingdom of God. 

And this is not a parable that Jesus then stops to explain further. He doesn’t have the time.

I sat with that, thinking that was the end of the sermon and then I heard Jesus ask another question in my soul: “Griff what happens after this parable? Keep going...”

The parable becomes a lived story. The workers do kill the son, on a cross on a hill on a Friday afternoon. The ultimate act of violence. 

And then... the Gospel Words... and then three days later, resurrection. God’s response to violence is and ever will be resurrection, the living Christ, Christ- God incarnate- saying feed my sheep- love one another- bring this Kingdom to earth. 

God’s response to violence is not more violence, it’s an invitation- and invitation to Christ and to produce the very fruits of the Kingdom of God, it’s an invitation to the vineyard once again. 

The invitation to see what Paul sees- to look around at this messed up world and say: “but you know what? None of this is real, we have forgotten. Because the only thing that matters is Christ. All the other things we have fooled ourselves into thinking we’re so great do not matter, all that matters is Christ.”

So what are we to do?

We rest on God’s response to violence, resurrection. We plant our feet firmly there. We remember that we are a resurrection people. That we are called to join God’s story and work to produce a better Kingdom, to produce fruits of that kingdom. And we join in God’s story of the world, and let us not forget that story is about swords into plough shares, weapons into art... this will include civil dialogue on sensible gun control and a move toward wholistic help in mental illness, it’s a story of non-violence, it will be peace, these are part of the greater story we are called into...

We go into the vineyard and we know our place, we know our story, we know our response to violence... and we start planting anew. 

Lord make us instruments of your peace. 

Where there is hatred, let us plant love. 

Where there is injury, pardon. 

Where there is doubt, faith. 

Where there is despair, hope. 

Where there is darkness, light. 

Where there is sadness, joy 

Make us instruments of your peace. 

For it is in giving that we receive, and in pardoning that we are pardoned, and in dying that we are born. 

This world is broken, but deeper and deeper each and everyday I believe a new story is being born. That we live at a crucial turning point in human history. So what are we going to do?

Continue on thinking this is our story, ignoring the real story and living into violence or do we dare finally choose the bigger and better story of faith, hope, light and joy.

Come and with the song of resurrection in our heart, let us lead the way to the vineyard, there is work to do… work that will save us and work that will save our world.

Amen and Amen.

--

Rev. Dr. Griff Martin

Senior Pastor

First Austin: a baptist community of faith

*artwork: Candles, Painting by Orlando Buccino Sacco, obuccino.artelista.com