This Week: Proper 22A
Gospel: Matthew 21:33-46
There is a naked simplicity to the gospel this week. And yet, it is somehow also deceptive.
The bulk of the passage is the parable. And the intent of the parable is obvious to everyone. Not just the reader but to the people hearing it.
And unlike parables told to the disciples, this one is told to the Temple leaders. And it appears to condemn them for their response to Jesus himself!
The fact that all of this is so obvious, my using the careful word “appears” is almost comedic. Like journalists needing to say “alleged” when we all saw something happen.
The proximity of this parable (and Jesus’s explanation) to its subject is so obvious that we might be inclined to call it bold, cruel, or direct. As a rule, we don’t like insults to people’s faces—at least not to those whom we say “have it coming.”
And that idea, that the line between OK and not OK is something we call “deserving it” is a pretty unsavory and unsatisfying border.
Perhaps we don’t dwell on this concept much. At least until we see the Prince of Peace project a harsh cruelty to someone’s face.
Then we might wonder where that line between good and bad really is. And the fact that it might be something quite like the famous Supreme Court ruling on pornography: we know it when we see it: is not terribly satisfying.
What are we looking at?
One way to deal with this is to do as I did in this week’s reflection. That we see, not what Jesus is describing, but what he’s not, as part of the directive.
This makes more sense when we come to the end of the Jerusalem teachings in Matthew 25. That our focus isn’t on all of the terrible junk that other people do. Or that our job is to reprove them. Or catalogue other people’s sins.
And it isn’t even to not sin.
Our job is to do good. Be good. Love. Show up with love to love.
And this might be hard to render from a parable of wicked tenants told to Temple leaders as a rebuke.
But doing good is the ballgame. And that doesn’t change when Jesus talks about the terrible stuff people do.
Maybe this isn’t a challenge for you.
Awesome!
But I know it is a challenge for many. And that is particularly hard the later we get in the gospel of Matthew. Jesus’s dark turn here has us wading into dark thinking. But it begins, not with the darkness itself. But with Jesus’s willingness to condemn the wicked rather than redeem.
The tension for Jesus is pretty obvious. But its paradoxical character is less so.
Jesus speaks about a God willing to redeem anyone. And a God who would punish the unrepentant with great relish. There is a kind of incompatibility to these. Particularly for the universalist. And yet, those who are eager to draw boundaries and condemn seem to ignore the earlier command to show never-ending mercy.
This is the paradox: a need to express the unlimited love of God and the limits of acceptable human behavior.
And while many seem to pretend there isn’t a paradox here, most of us can see both the limits of their grace and a joy in punishment—or else the inverse of that: extensive grace, but no joy at all in enforcing boundaries.
Nothing about this is easy. But it does seem necessary. And it makes more sense as paradox than as consistent.
Because there must be limits.
It’s just not our job to pretend we’ve got them all figured out.
Paradox
There is no doubt that Jesus understands that he is offering a paradox to people. But he also doesn’t entirely see it that way either. To him, it is quite honest.
And this, too, can be unsettling for some. Obvious for others. Novel to many.
But I think the trouble many of us feel is not whether or not the theology or teaching of Jesus is consistent. Or that we are doing everything we’re supposed to do.
The trouble is in our sense of logic.
We set the trap for ourselves.
Because the paradox is a concept of our own creation. We make these ideas exclusive and all-encompassing. We think of logic as matters of extremes; of either/or; the binary.
We’re the ones who speculate on whether God can create a substance that God is unable to lift. The logic baffles us. And we think it must be possible and yet it is impossible. We want to render these things as meaningless and yet also use them to define our very belief in the divine.
But this isn’t pure logic. We are playing games. Setting logic traps. Impossibilities that render a verdict before one begins to plead the case.
We insist that it must be: if one yes, then the other no. And yet our tradition says yes to both. Impossible! we shout. Because the logic says that we must choose.
But it isn’t a fair choice. It’s rigged to disprove. Precisely because it is impossible.
The logic trap needs to limit God’s power or might. But only because we set the trap that way. The same goes for the love of God.
The inclusion example
The most famous modern example is the paradox of inclusion.
Those who want to make an inclusive society desire the inclusion of everyone. But there is one group they must exclude: people who seek to exclude.
It sounds hypocritical. But only in a rigged game. One that ensures inclusion itself be impossible by making exclusion inevitable. That isn’t logic, balance, or binary, but a trap!
In this way, it is easy to recognize that, for a society which seeks to protect the lives of all people, including Jews, it doesn’t allow Nazis to kill them. But we pretend the logic doesn’t allow this. That inclusion means allowing murderous enemies of inclusion to be inherently equal and welcome.
This is the same terrain Jesus is walking, isn’t it?
Remember the context. These are people seeking to kill him. They confront him. And his response is to say that they are making it harder for God to redeem them. Because there’s isn’t a way of mercy, but cruelty. They are choosing to be cruel.
This is consistent with the message Jesus offers elsewhere. That he is the gate. And the gate is wide open. Anyone can get in. And the only reason you are not inside is that you have chosen to not be.
The most eloquent modern parable reflecting on this comes from Flannery O’Conner. Her short story, “Revelation,” depicts an old, southern woman, whose hubris and confidence of her own spiritual superiority must surely render her fate positively sealed. Except that she can’t countenance how all these other people are going to the Good Place, too.
Distracted, on purpose?
All of this abstraction—about our ultimate fate and the will of God—has a way of leading us far away from the substance of the Kin-dom, doesn’t it? Of course, it isn’t without consequence or value. It’s just not where we started or what we came for.
We came for love. Doing good. Creating genuine community.
And doesn’t all of this feel a bit…far from that? Like we aren’t actually trying to be good people in this? But we’re, instead, counting angels on the head of a pin?
I think we get distracted on purpose. Both because we want to and because Jesus does seem to lead us there.
This passage comes to us this way; on the side. A distracting question of process that we find too much clarity on. But it hits me like the point in the semester when the professor warns us of the tangent. That we have to take it. Follow it to its conclusion. And then come back.
And the warning isn’t to avoid listening. But to not forget where we were! This is important, but it isn’t the central theme. The central theme, we’ll get back to. This will inform it. Just don’t confuse it for the point.
In short: don’t hate the wicked.
Don’t get tangled up in wickedness that we might outwicked the wicked. Remember mercy. God’s redeeming love. And our place in transforming the whole world.
All of that is still the point. This is a detour that informs that. To not only ensure we know what we are to do, but who we become if we don’t.