MT 21: 33-46 

Matthew in the Margins…18th S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017  

Can we almost hear Jesus singing Isaiah’s beautiful old love poem about YHWH & His vine -yard to His critics today? His critics certainly recognise the poem. And, like those long before them fail to recognise themselves in it. Can’t grasp that when it turns into a lament it’s doing so because they in their turn have become the villains in the piece.

Rather than holding a post-mortem on what was happening in Isaiah’s time & comes to a head in Jesus’ day, we need to find ourselves in the story too. Today. Are our spiritual ears tuned well enough to God for us to be faithful servants, slaves, even? Can we hear the warning in the lament & heed it if it applies to us? By this stage of His ministry Jesus is identifying with the Son who falls victim to rebellious share-farmers in His Father’s vineyard. The powers-that-be are dismissive of Him because they’re too sure of themselves. Religiously learned, maybe, but religiously ignorant. Best we discern the key Jesus is singing in to us & sing along in the key our part calls for.

Politicians are probably the ones who most obviously appear today as those who have an exalted view of themselves & their self-entitlement. They’re not the only ones, of course, but they’re easy targets when they get their comeuppance - or should that be come-downance? - for rorting the public purse, for instance. The fall from grace & power of those caught out comes to mind as I meditate on Jesus’ yarn. It is a tale, but how well He captures the vineyard lease-holders sense of self-entitlement! There’s no way they’re ever going to inherit that vineyard! Do we have any such air of self-entitlement as we go about whatever job God calls us to do in His vineyard in partnership with Him? If the answer is, ‘Yes, we do have such a sense’, we have work to do! We have work to let God do on us & in us as part of the vineyard, too!

Though portrayed in this parable / riddle as an absentee landlord, God is not, & never has been separated from His world. Creation is a labour of love on God’s part. Labour in which God calls us to be joint-venturers. Faithfully joint-venturing with God keeps us celebrating God, rather than usurping Him in any jumped-up way.

Does God have any more to show for His investment in the vineyard of Creation with us as under-managers, than under the older regime? Let no false sense of entitlement on our part mean we’re simply trampling the grapes of wrath all over again.

MT 21: 23-32 

Matthew in the Margins… 17th S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017 

The question of Authority keeps raising its head in Scripture & Church, Hebrew, then Christian. Suzanne de Dietrich¹ wrote: ‘True authority isn’t proved by arguments; it is recognised, it authenticates itself.’ Has there ever been a more authentic person than Jesus? How’s our authenticity in comparison with His?

In Jesus God shows how His Rule works from the bottom up; so it happens ‘on earth as it is in Heaven’. Authority must be recognised & exercised, tested to see if it’s consistent with God’s; in communion with God. The authentic God, though, isn’t to be found locked up in the pages of His own book. Lock God up in there, & we lock ourselves in there too - on the wrong page! On the wrong authority! As is happening here.

It’s just after Palm Sunday. The religious heavies are alarmed at what Jesus is up to: riding into Jerusalem as He does with adoring followers; healing the blind & lame; &, shock, horror, cleansing the Temple itself! "By what authority....?" They ask Him. He looks them straight in the eye, &, in effect, says, ”Well, my own actually!" He may be playing them along, but He’s deadly serious!

It’s no use us saying ‘Yes’ to God if we don’t do that yes. Make our ‘Yes’ happen. Make God’s will happen. Jesus has the ‘authorities’ over a barrel & they know it! Instead of showing Jesus up, all they’re doing is showing themselves up as unable to discern God’s authority, Jesus’ authority, any more than they discerned the Baptiser’s!

Jesus is fond of vineyard metaphors. He doesn’t call Himself the ‘True Vine’ without good reason. No doubt He passes many vineyards on His travels. All have some story attached to them. As do all the vineyards of our lives. Versions of this story differ, with the two sons responding to their father in different ways. Evidence of a story being passed down by word of mouth & being modified in the process. 'Chinese Whispers' we used to call it. A warning to literalists! What’s Jesus’ point for us today? How can we bring that out of the Book & into the realities of our own ‘vineyards’, including our congregation? 

To accept God's Authority, God’s Rule the Lord’s Prayer speaks of in its beginning & at its end, means accepting that earthly ways of looking at things need to change. And, change is possible. Like the brothers in the story; even like those who work in fields that may raise our eyebrows &, maybe, our hackles today. To despair of change is contrary to all Jesus is, & all He’s on about. All he stands for. True branches of the True Vine always have a future for God.

¹ St. Matthew, SCM, London, 1961 p.110

MT 20: 1-16 

Matthew in the Margins… 16th S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017 

In this passage Jesus repeats the lesson & punchline of Ch.19 : the last will be first & the first last. It’s also an extension of His teaching about ‘little ones’. He’s not really on about new converts to faith being welcomed & rewarded as much as ones who’ve always been faithful. There are other aspects to consider. 

At heart, today’s parable isn't about money, work practices, labour relations, or any of that kind of thing. It’s bigger than that. It’s about, Jesus is on about, the topsy-turvy World we’ve made out of what YHWH God created; & the topsy-turvy way God rules this world. What God is out & about looking for round the clock are faithful workers living according to God’s topsy-turviness rather than the world’s ways. Even when we don’t understand; when we may not agree; when we don’t want to obey! I see three qualities of God’s Rule here: i) God is maddeningly Generous. ii) God is mind-bogglingly Just. iii) God's Generosity & Justice are inescapably Present Tense. God is always the God of Now, never yesterday, or even tomorrow. 

Jesus’ own life reflects an ongoing struggle with all three of these issues. Who better, then, to be our Guide through the vineyards of life? But what about those who’d love to live in reach of a fruitful vineyard where they could work for a living, but instead are condemned to survive in slums, on rubbish dumps, take cover in war zones or live under plastic sheeting in refugee camps? Or those trafficked by their own or other countries along life’s way? Those always at the mercy of disease & poverty & human predators?

Jesus doesn't use the word 'compassion' in this story, yet it underlies the whole tale. The compassionate God is always out & about, one way or another, looking in one place or another for those who’ll work for Him. Work His way for Him. We know the Good Shepherd is always out & about looking for sheep that have strayed. Jesus, though goes so far as to be on the look out even for sheep no-one else wants. Those that others pass by, pass over, pass up on in the queues of life. Most of us think of there being four directions: North, South, East & West. Celts think of five: the above four plus  Here! And ‘Here’ is where God is, just as God is always ‘Now’ time-wise! 

So the Good News is not only that even those late out of the starting blocks can be winners, but they are, we are, winners Here & Now. God's Rule isn't competitive. Everyone who genuinely wants to, comes first, Here & Now!

MT 18: 21-35 

Matthew in the Margins…15th S. After Pentecost… Revised 2017

Forgiveness & arithmetic don't make good companions. The unimaginable sum owed by the first servant & the trivial amount by the second, are exaggerations on the part of the Master Story Teller. Jesus knows how to put a point across! But the question remains: do we 'get it' any more than Peter does? Than the first servant in Jesus’ yarn does? Even after what God has done for us in Jesus? Do we know, have we forgotten, or are we just blase about just how much God has forgiven us? In the face of which, anything someone else ‘owes’ us, & asks forgiveness for, fades into insignificance. 

Do you ever despair, as I sometimes do, at what can seem an over-emphasis on sin & confession in our liturgies. Is this simply a hangover from medieval days, or is there something of the ‘sinister’ lurking here? After all, in Jesus we’re forgiven people! Are we still not convinced forgiveness sticks every bit as much as, more, even, than sinning does? Do we need to re-emphasise that we’ve been forgiven & live in a state of forgiven-ness? One symptom of how confusing this can be is an odd practice that once cropped up in our part of the world, i.e. that after confessing our sins, & being assured of God’s forgiveness, we were then launched into the Kyries too! Liturgies need to be a celebration of forgiven-ness rather than a constant, nagging, reminder that in some cases the church doesn’t get today’s parable either!

The forgiving king is one of only three people apart from Jesus (all three are parable figures) of whom the word compassion, 'being moved in your gut' is used. The other two are the Forgiving Father, & the Good Samaritan. It’d be great to be counted along with them, not as parable figures, but real life ones. Little Jesuses so ‘moved in our gut’ at the plight of the hurting & unforgiven that we go in to bat for them whatever it takes.

We can only experience God's Rule where forgiveness is the expected norm, as ‘we forgive those who sin against us’ as Jesus puts it in His prayer. When there’s no forgiveness on our part, we remain alienated from the Forgiving God. Loved, still, but alienated. Trapped by our own not-doing on the flip-side of God’s compassion when there’s no reason for us to stay there!

One last word - by Jesus Himself: Forgiveness is from the heart, from the depth of our being; or it isn't forgiveness at all! 

MT 18: 10-20 

Matthew in the Margins…14th S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017

Guardian angels are, in a sense, boundary riders where heaven & earth overlap. In Jesus God reaches out to us across all the boundaries we set to embrace ‘little ones’ trapped in systems that put them down & keep them down. Jesus' inclusiveness, & therefore, God’s, extends to children & all the other ‘little ones’ overlooked & excluded by our societies. If we believe in guardian angels (I do!) let’s join their ranks as honorary members. Take the risk, as Jesus does, of crossing boundaries to make ‘as it is in heaven' a reality on earth, too. 

A heaven that’s only ‘up there somewhere’ can simply be an escape clause, an escape hatch. Leaving God’s 'little ones’ & God-self stuck with no way out! 

God operates on the ‘ from the bottom up’ principle, not from the top down. Otherwise, Jesus would have come as a very different Messiah! Might even have got Himself elected! Had His statue erected all over the place - not just in churches that have such things - till someone decided it was time to pull Him down & move on!

Still on the subject of guardian angels, Jesus’ train of thought extends to shepherds - of four & two legged sheep! There are many ‘sheep’, ‘little ones’, lost & gone astray out there in today’s margins. Mind you, Jesus may need to revise His arithmetical figures with regard to the numbers of losts & founds today!

Being a disciple means being at the same time a faithful sheep, & an under-shepherd to the Good Shepherd. Carrying the Christ in people, lost or not, across boundaries standing in the way of God’s inclusiveness. There are many issues dividing us today. Depending on where we’re fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to live. Issues, boundaries such as biblical & other forms of  fundamentalism, same-gender marriage, sexual discrimination of all kinds, jobs & their availability, health cover, adequate social security…the list goes on & on. When Jesus rebukes Peter for ‘thinking as humans think, not as God thinks’ [last Sunday, in MT 16:23] He means us to learn Peter’s lesson, too. We need to discern God’s mind as Jesus reveals it by His Spirit before we shut others out from being pushed or kept outside the boundaries of society. Binding & loosing powers are all about boundaries. We need to take the time & invest the spiritual effort required to discern which are of God’s scheme of things, & which are of the way we ourselves think or feel. As well as discerning how God might think about issues, we also need to discern how God feels about people! 

When she doesn’t want to talk about a subject, my grand-daughter will sometimes say to me “Don’t go there, Grandad!” I take her to mean, ‘Don’t go where angels fear to tread!’ But do let’s be alert to their footsteps & footprints, & do let’s tread in them! For God’s sake.

P.S. Suzanne de Dietrich in one of her writings some years back wondered if the bit about treating someone like a pagan or a tax-collector might be dominical humour; meaning such persons need even more mercy & compassion! Interesting? Provocative?

MT 16: 21-28 

Matthew in the Margins… 13th S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017

Oops! Peter’s in trouble! In deeper water than when trying to walk on water awhile back. Oops! Jesus has just called him ‘Satan’ after he tries to dissuade Jesus from going through with what will be required of Him as the Anointed One. Not long before, Peter’s recognised Jesus as the Christ, though clearly not fully understanding what this will entail. Who did? Who does?

Peter will soon be in trouble again - Oops! again -when he suggests prolonging Our Lord’s Transfiguration (in a reading that won’t recur as we’ve already celebrated that in preparation for Lent). The water will get deeper still in the High Priest’s courtyard when Peter will actually deny Jesus. Several Oopses!! [But the end of John’s Gospel tells of reconciliation that’s taken place.] To return to today’s passage, in calling Peter 'Satan' is Jesus seemingly shifting the ground towards today’s common understanding of Satan as God’s enemy? Away from the H.B. (n.b. Job) understanding of Satan as what in Australia we might call ‘Counsel Assisting a Royal Commission’? Whose job it is to get to the truth of a matter by teasing out the evidence in a case.

Our passage & what’s going on in it, centres on v.23 where Jesus dresses Peter down for ‘thinking in human terms, rather than God’s’. One lesson from Jesus & Peter today is that the more we discern 'the mind of God' on any matter with each other, the less we’re likely to experience a Satan-like fall from grace in lonely splendour. Today it’s Holy Spirit, not any human or other Satan who helps us discern the mind of God.

 Kosuke Koyama put it long ago¹, ^‘There is no convenient way to carry a cross....if we put a handle on the cross to carry it as a businessman carries a briefcase, then the Christian faith has lost its ground. Jesus didn't say “Take up your lunch box & follow me”. A cross is a juggernaut, an out-of-our-control consequence of discerning the unfolding of the mind of God in human affairs. Trying to get a handle on the cross can make us as much a stumbling block to God's Rule through God’s mind as Peter is accused of being here.

Jesus demonstrates that He must enter His Passion, as he demonstrates everything else - by going through with it! That's how we're called to follow, too; by going through with what we, in concert with other faithful, discern God’s mind for us to be. There are no handles on the Cross, or on Resurrection, for us any more than for Jesus.

Too much concentration on the Son of Humanity’s apocalyptic role can lead us into escapism. The very opposite of the engagement in human affairs that the very-much- earthed Son of Humanity represents. Take heart! God Rules in our margins as well as in religious centres & one day, in clouds of glory. The Son of Humanity brings the way God Rules to a head in His death & resurrection. Could any future coming, no matter how glorious, really challenge, up -stage that greatest of all Cosmic Events?

¹ No Handle on the Cross, SCM, London, '76, p.7] 

MT 16:13-20

Matthew in the Margins…12th S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017

Our local government rates (taxes) arrived today. Never welcome, but at least we can afford to pay them. Others in our community are asking questions like, ‘How am I going to pay them?’, ‘Where’s my next meal coming from?’, ‘Am I ever going to get a job?’, ‘Which bridge can I safely sleep under tonight?’, ‘Should I leave my abusive partner?’, & many more. We all live, & maybe, die, with big nagging questions of our own. Questions important in our own lives may help us preach questions important to Jesus. Like today’s, ‘Who are people saying I am?’, then, “Who do you say I am?” Questions can be more enlightening than some answers!

We’re in Caesarea Philippi, where Herod (undeservingly called ‘Great’!) had built a temple in honour of Augustus. ‘Sucking up’ to Caesar!’ Raising the question, ‘Who really rules?’ Caesars, or would-be’s, strutting the stage where we live, or somewhere else? Or, God? Answers to Jesus’ 1st question show people struggling to recognise the God in Him. Despite YHWH pointing towards Him for centuries. A question for us is, ‘Would we have recognised this unorthodox Messiah with His unique rule from the bottom up, rather than the top down, back then?’ A second question for us is, ‘Do we recognise Him in our lives right now?’ Which is where Jesus’ own 2nd question kicks in.

Peter’s confession that God’s Kingdom, Power, & Glory are implicit in Jesus - though later events show he’s a bit shaky about this  - is the rock on which God builds His church & His world. Anything less may become a mill-stone that will drown us or grind us down, rather than the rock on which our faith is built!

The ‘keys of the kingdom’ are in our hands now, not Peter’s! To use to open the world’s closed situations up for God & God’s people. To open us up from what we’ve locked ourselves into. To release others from what they’ve been locked in or out of.  Keys like love, joy, peace, openness, forgiveness & others like them are all in Jesus’ bunch. When God asks, “Where are those keys I’ve given you?” it’s no use us fumbling in our pockets for them, hunting around for them, looking to see if we’ve locked them in the car, or even asking others, “Have you seen those keys God gave me?” Lose them, or just not use them & they soon rust up & become unserviceable.

We once used to pray, maybe still do, to the God ‘whose service is perfect freedom…’ but our freedom only comes when we use the keys of God’s kingdom to set ourselves & others free from things that lock us in - or out!