Last week we talked about our partners in Cuba and the witness we share with them. We talked about Paul’s encouragement to have the same mind as Christ and to be willing to give ourselves over in sacrificial love for one another, and we talked about the way that Jesus called out – and calls out – religious leaders who do not practice what they preach.
I know I said it before, but I want to remind you once more that Jesus is saying all these things during what we think of as Holy Week. Just the day before, he entered Jerusalem with shouts of “Hosannah!” and cleared the money changers from the temple. He’s done some teaching and healing, and he came back the next day. He started his day by cursing a fig tree for denying him breakfast – which seemed weird – but that precedes two parables about bearing fruit and some say that Matthew was making a point beyond assessing the hangriness of Jesus.
We talked about the first parable last week, with the Temple Authorities questioning the authority of Jesus to do “all these things,” like cleansing the temple and letting people shout “Hosannah!” Jesus answered with the parable of the two sons – one who did his father’s will and the other who said he would and did not – as a jab at the Temple Authorities, and as a way to giving priority to the doing of God’s will over agreement with God’s will.
As if that were not enough – Jesus wants to be sure that they know that he is talking about them – he tells them another tale. This one is about some wicked tenants who attempt to take the field under their care by force, even killing the heir to the owner so that they might inherit it themselves.
Clearly, these tenants are in the wrong, and the Temple Authorities levy judgment. They say that the landowner should kill them, horribly, for the death of his son. Of course, we hear that and we can’t miss the parallel with Jesus. One might assume that the early church who heard or read this story already knew about Jesus from some other account, and they would have said the Greek equivalent of “I see what you did there.”
Likewise, the Temple Authorities figured out only a little too late that he was talking about them, and they wanted to arrest him, but they were afraid. They were not afraid of Jesus, or of God’s wrath, or of being wrong. They were afraid that he was right. In their own words, they were afraid that God would “lease the vineyard” to someone else, and they were afraid of losing the support of the people – who thought Jesus was a prophet (essentially the mouthpiece of God).
I want to pause the scene right there. We’ll come back to it later because we need to talk a little more about this “cornerstone” reference. Before we get into that I want to talk a little more about fear. This is a good time of year for that, right? It’s October - spooky season.
All three of our verses have a little bit of fear in them, and last week we talked about “working out our salvation in fear and trembling before the Lord.” If you recall, I said that my understanding of these words is to fear nothing but the loss of God’s presence and to tremble with the hope that we have responded to God’s love with love for our neighbors that is likened to the love we have for ourselves.
In our first reading, we have Moses telling the Israelites that God’s laser light show is not something to fear; God is just testing them and putting the fear of God upon them so that they do not sin. Don’t be afraid of God,; do be afraid, because that will keep you from sinning. Right? Ri-i-i-ight.
Admittedly, that’s a tough sell, although there are plenty of folks who will tell you that faith is all about avoiding God’s wrath. Still, I’m going to go with 1 John 4:18, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.”
That said, these 10 Commandments were more of a legal contract with serious consequences that were agreed upon as a covenant with this God that most of the Israelites barely knew, and then only from stories. I preached a series about this in June, so if you are curious you can go back and see it on our YouTube channel. One of the things that I worked on was finding grace and mercy in these unyielding words.
Generally, what we find here is a pattern that Jesus uses in the Lord’s Prayer and in his summary of the law – which also happens to be the bedrock of our mission and vision statements. As a reminder, vv 1-3 are about reverence for God; v 4 is about self-care; and vv 5-10 are about loving your neighbor. After all of that, we hear about fear and testing, and all I know to do is to ask, “Why?” Really. What is the reason behind this last word about fear?
Hold onto that thought for a minute – right along with Jesus and the Temple Authorities. Now we have two questions about fear. Why did Moses say “Don’t be afraid of God…on second thought, actually, yes, do be afraid of God,” and what were the Temple Authorities really afraid of – or maybe what should they have been afraid of, if anything?
In the middle of all of this is the little church in Philippi. Most of Paul’s letters address some kind of conflict, and Philippians has a bit. Mostly this letter is about Paul telling them how proud he is of them, encouraging their faith, and giving some pretty solid advice, but there is some controversy in our reading today. Jewish followers of the way of Jesus were telling the Gentile followers that their men had to be circumcised, so Paul encouraged them to understand the difference between the commitments of the flesh and the reality of God’s love. He lifted up his credentials as a Pharisee among Pharisees and called it trash, just like in 1 Corinthians 13, where he said, “If I have faith as to move mountains but do not love, I am a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal.”
Nothing but love really matters. Anyone can see. Nothing really matters but pressing on toward the goal of eternal life in God’s embrace - not only in the life to come but in this life, here and now! “Press on,” says Paul, “this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”
Now, where’s the fear in Paul’s words? There is fear in the embrace of strangers. There is fear in the loss of the traditions that have formed people and identified them for generations. Yet, he says, “Fugittaboutit.”
Here’s where this all comes together for me. Jesus told the Temple Leaders stories about people who gave God lip service and acted as Landlords rather than stewards, yet those Priests and Scribes were afraid of the people’s reverence for God. They were afraid for their loss of power. The people are the ones who get it right. These are the ones who have passed down the stories of Moses and the expectation of reverence for the God of their ancestors.
These are the same people that include the sex workers and tax collectors (whom Jesus mentioned in Matthew 21:32) who Jesus said would enter the Kingdom of Heaven ahead of the Temple Authorities. I would call the part about the cornerstone that follows it the mike drop, but even that is a set up for a deeper cut. “How about another story? The Kingdom of Heaven to be like a Wedding Banquet where a dignitaries rejected the King’s invitation, so he invited those on the streets instead.”
As a set up, Jesus reminds these Authorities about the authority of God, and the way that the praises sung for God’s deliverance in Psalm 118 describe his entrance with festal palms and the expectation of a cornerstone for a new foundation. His words are threatening and confrontational, and they respond out of fear – not reverence, but fear. I think that’s what all this really comes around to – fear or reverence.
I have a symbol called “Gye Nyame” on my desk that comes from Ghana and it means, “Except for God, fear nothing,” and I keep it there to remind me of the importance of reverence. Treva and I went to Ghana for a travel seminar in seminary, and there were faith statements like this everywhere. We saw Emanuel Tire and Lube, and God Is Bigger Than Any Trouble Fashion Boutique, and even the Jesus Saves Saloon! I imagine (or at least I hope) it is much the same, as there was a sense that one should revere God with all aspects of life, which is what I think of with “Except for God, fear nothing.”
The Apostle Paul said (Romans 8:38) that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, so truly, we have nothing to fear. We have a goal to press toward. We have a vineyard to cultivate and fruit to harvest! Unlike the fig tree that started Jesus’s day with frustration and cursing, we are bearing fruit! I gotta say, from the first day I met the members of this congregation until now, I have seen harvest after harvest in times and dates I never thought possible. Right now, there is an orange tree on the grounds that is heavy-laden. Next to it is another that failed to thrive but is still sending shoots from its rootstock. Which describes us best? I say the orange tree.
The thing is, the harvest comes regardless of how wicked or righteous the tenants might be, so let us press on toward the goal of righteousness! Let’s celebrate the past, but let us be defined by where we are headed – and we are headed for the embrace of God! Here, in this place, we get a glimpse of it, but only through our reverence for God – and that is what helps us experience the embrace of God everywhere, all the time. Truly, that’s what it’s all about. At least I pray it may be so with you, and that it might be with me, and to God be the glory – now and always. Amen!
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