Preaching text: Matthew 21: 33-46
To paraphrase Forrest Gump, “Human is as human does.” We’re an interesting lot. Full of emotion, passion, love of life, and yet also consumed by fear, hatred, and a whole host of vices we’d rather not talk about. We’re a “savage child race” as the Q being in Star Trek called us and he’s not wrong. Six or seven thousand years of civilization and we’re only now just starting to acknowledge that people who are a little bit different in terms of gender, skin color, sexual orientation, whatever might actually be human after all. Like us, the same, only different. And that’s okay. Wow, what a radical thought.
I wish that was more of a joke than it is, but for much of human history, we’ve been looking for every excuse under the sun to look down on others. Hence why I find parables like the one Jesus is telling in our Gospel to be so problematic. Without question, this is one of those texts we Christians have used to justify our persecution of the Jewish people. God loves us more than you. We’re your replacements. You rejected Christ, so we’re better than you. And so forth.
Again, I wish that was more of a joke than it is, but the blood of millions of people over the past 2000 years makes it deadly serious. But we got this text wrong. It was never meant as an indictment of the Jewish people. It was meant as an indictment of the same sort of self-righteousness that has littered our history with the corpses of those who didn’t measure up to our moral standards. Ironically, it condemns those who killed the Jews out of a misplaced sense of self-superiority rather than the Jews themselves.
It all centers on what the Pharisees were in the time of Jesus. Paul gives us some insight into their mindset in our Second lesson today. He was, after all, one of them. Zeal was their defining characteristic and they were determined to be the best most devoted most moral Jews possible. Some undoubtedly did this out of passionate love of God, but others it is clear did so in order to feel superior to others. To lord over them how much better they were at keeping the law. But regardless of whether their intentions were good or self-serving, they too had misinterpreted the Scriptures.
Now, in fairness, it’s an easy mistake to make because people have been making this same mistake since the law was first given. Consider the Ten Commandments. We all know them and if you need a refresher, they stand as our first lesson today. Look at the way they’re written. All those “Thou shalt nots” and what have you. Can you see the problem? The way the commandments are written focuses one to turn their morality inward. It’s all about me and what I do for myself in my relationship with God. That’s a problem.
If you keep reading through the rest of Exodus and the rest of the Torah, you quickly discover the Commandments are the beginning of morality, not its end. “You shall not murder” really means “Take care of your neighbor.” “You shall not covet” really means “Be satisfied with what you have.” The law now moves outward, becoming as Jesus so beautifully paraphrased it “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But so many never get that far. The Pharisees included.
Thus, over the course of the Old Testament, God has sent prophets to remind the people what the law was always supposed to be about. It’s not inward, it’s outward. Care for the less fortunate. Healing for the sick. Charity for the poor. Welcome for the stranger. It is all these things. But the self-righteous did not want to listen, often outright murdering prophets who told them what they didn’t want to hear. And then, at last comes Jesus, the Son of God, who brought the same message. And we know what they did to him.
Is the message of the parable becoming clear to you now?
The Pharisees are still with us but they’re not Jews anymore, they’re Christians. Christians caught up in their own sense of superiority, thoroughly convinced their dedication to the law makes them better people than everyone else. The Church, and in particular the American Church, is infested with them. Like they did in Jesus day, they run society. Oh, not quite as directly, but you can see their work all over the place.
The sick? Hah, healthcare is a privilege for those who deserve it. Homeless vets? Well, we prefer vets who weren’t captured or wounded or damaged, don’t we? The poor? Well, they’re all criminals, eating their steaks on the government dole. The stranger? Coming to take our jobs or worse, they could be terrorists! Bad hombres!!!
We’re a nation of Pharisees. Full of sanctimony and judgment. And people like Matthew Shepard and Trayvon Martin give silent testimony to the fact that we still are more than happy to kill and murder those who don’t measure up to our standards. And people like Martin Luther King and more recently Heather Heyer give similar testimony to what we often do to those who call us out over it.
Savage child race, indeed.
It needn’t be this way. The law of God reveals his heart, his hope that all his children here on Earth would love and care for one another. That we would work for each other’s well-being. Jesus is, in so many ways, the ultimate demonstration of that. He was one of us; he was human. And he loved his neighbors. He healed the sick. Welcomed the stranger, treated all with fairness and equity. He demonstrated in powerful ways what God’s law was really about. Not a bludgeon to beat people with nor a pedestal on top of which we are meant to stand and crow about how great we are, but a guide on how to love in God’s way.
That’s what Jesus wants of us. That’s what the Church is meant to be, a place of love and welcome to all people. Not a place that demands a moral perfection that none of us can truly reach, but a place where all can come to dwell in the love of God and neighbor. Human beings are social creatures and one other lesson of history is that we thrive best when we work together to care for one another. God knows that, and perpetually urges us toward that path. He wants what’s best for us so we, in turn, can want what’s best for one another. Amen.
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