As a people of hope
Proper 22A | Matthew 21:33-46
When you drive by a building and they’ve got the Ten Commandments on a monument out front, what do you think?
I suppose they think this will move us to follow Jesus. Or perhaps that we will think something about them. And usually that has something to do with righteousness and doing what’s right in the eyes of God. But that’s not what I actually think.
What I’m usually thinking is “Wow that’s NOT what Jesus would do.”
After all, he was the one who told the pious young man that the commandments weren’t everything. That they alone don’t communicate the sum of God’s grace.
And keeping them doesn’t keep us from violating God’s commands. If he is rich, he’s violating the commandments.
Then later, when asked about the greatest commandment, Jesus sums it up as love God and neighbor as yourself.
Jesus pushes us to see the limits of these commands. And then to push further.
It isn’t enough to avoid being bad. We’re called to be good. Much as it isn’t enough to love God, we must also love our neighbors as ourselves.
We can’t afford to selfishly consume because it impoverishes our neighbors. Loving them means preserving them, empowering them, to live fruitful lives of joy and providence.
This, too, is how he connects wealth with abuse—selfishness with impoverishing neighbor. The first few of the ten commandments are concerned with our relationship to God and the rest with our relationship to our neighbors.
And we usually treat them as statements of personal abstinence. Don’t steal or murder. Things we aren’t supposed to do. But they are all about relationship. And they all deal with possession, property, and exploitation.
It isn’t merely “don’t steal”; as if the act itself can be separated from a place and people. The sin involves everything that comes from stealing. The personal gain by exploiting one’s neighbor.
So it isn’t just Don’t be a jerk. It is also Be a good neighbor.
We were already on this line of thinking.
This season, we’re going through the gospel of Matthew. And the chapter before had the conversation with the pious young man and the teaching about rich people not getting into heaven.
And we have since entered Jerusalem with Jesus, followed him to the Temple where he called its leaders robbers. And then how they challenged his authority and he turned the tables on them again.
That is the moment, isn’t it? When they confront him and he throws it back at them. And they are stuck—choosing between looking malicious or wrong. They could be honest to the gospel and reveal themselves as monsters. Or they could lie and look like morons.
So they, of course, took the third option. Pretend they don’t know. And look incompetent.
This is to whom Jesus tells the parable of the Wicked Tenants. The liars and fools who chose incompetence over honesty. Who will choose murder to silence the truth. Just as Jesus describes in the parable.
And our passage ends with another expression of this malicious incompetence:
“They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds”.
There is no courage in their convictions. Only selfishness, protectiveness, and corruption. No hope or capacity to change. No trust in the people or God.
Just fear. Control. Possession and exploitation.
There’s a challenge for us in this, isn’t there?
This parable isn’t directed to the disciples. It doesn’t teach us a truth of how to be a neighbor like the Good Samaritan.
This parable is to the Temple leaders. To invite them to see their shame and repent.
What then do we as disciples do with that? We want something instructive and constructive and this feels destructive. This can’t possibly be an example of what we’re called to do, can it?
Well, no, it isn’t. Not in that way, anyway. As if this showed us how to be rather than the limits of the commandments: the reminder of how not to be.
The work and the grace for us, then, is not in doing as Jesus here, but in doing as Jesus in all of the things. Remembering all of the teachings that bring us to this one.
Jesus entered Jerusalem knowing he would be arrested, tried, beaten, and killed. And when Peter tried to prevent that from happening, Jesus called him The Tempter and told him to get back in line.
Because this is the plan. To come here. Not in greatness and power, but in grace and humility.
This life takes courage.
Courage isn’t an expression of confidence and strength. We don’t have it when we are certain and have everything lined up.
Courage is for the opposite. When we are afraid and don’t know where we’re going. It’s showing up regardless of whether we have a plan. When we think we don’t have the resources to pull it off.
Courage is carrying a cross on your back when soldiers are carrying swords on their hips.
Recognizing the courage of discipleship, of following Jesus in this way, choosing the cross over the sword, means holding the love of God in our hearts and our hands. In loving and sharing and doing all of the things in our lives with the grace of Jesus.
The one who called fishermen rather than scholars.
Who healed the sick across racial, social, and national lines.
And ate with tax collectors and sinners with grace.
The same Jesus who went to elite dinner parties to remind them that servants are beloved of God. And their exploitation of them is a rejection of God’s love.
All of these stories give us a more robust view of our rabbi and savior. The one whose Way of Love we follow.
And through it all, he simply says to his followers:
“Do this, too.”
Love. Serve. Give. Heal. Proclaim. Courageously. With hope.
This is who we are! Who we are called to be. People of courage. People of hope. Because we are people of the resurrection.
When our vision is only: that we live and die: the recipe is fear and maintenance. We try to live forever. So we can never get sick. Better not age. Use the right skincare products because we know what age we really are, but we don’t want the world to know! Pretend. Lie.
Keep everything the way it is while also trying to turn back the clock and change everything to an earlier time.
And Jesus confronts us and says to us Thank God we change. That grace means we live, die, and live. Death isn’t an end, but a new beginning. A transformation or transfiguration. We can change and be renewed. And that grace makes us younger in spirit than any product can make us appear.
It takes courage to carry this cross, to face our mortality. To love deliberately. And to speak of God’s power with integrity.
To do what the leaders were afraid to do and say that the Spirit has a say. In our lives and our church. In who we were and who we are now. That She has new work for us and work only we can do.
Work of love and grace and hope. In this neighborhood and everywhere we go.
So may we go into the world with such courage and hope; overcoming our anxious hearts and rumbling guts; loving those who others ignore; feeding those who others starve; and making the true beauty of Jesus visible in all of our lives through grace and hope born of the resurrection.