The work we already know to do
Proper 23A | Matthew 22:1-14, Exodus 32:1-14
Jesus is at the Temple in Jerusalem. He had only, the day before, entered the city on a donkey and flipped the tables of the money-changers. A visual parable of God’s humility in the seat of human power and order. He came back the next day to be confronted by some of the Temple’s leaders.
And again, Jesus challenges them to rise to the challenge Jesus is giving us all. To see the dream God has for all of creation. To not only do the right thing, but the good thing. That we might bring the Kin-dom of God Jesus is revealing into the kingdoms of Earth.
To them, Jesus may as well be speaking another language.
For the last three weeks, we have gone through this grave moment in order. From the initial confrontation, to the parable of the wicked tenants, and now, to this second parable.
Now, there’s something fueling this misunderstanding. Fear.
These people confronted Jesus because he messed up the Temple. The Temple they are responsible for. This feels wrong to them.
But these are the same people who have called Jesus a heretic and sought his death for half of the book of Matthew at this point.
They are both just and unjust.
There is genuine conflict here. And in the time we’re living in, we have grown so afraid of dealing with conflict and being honest with how far from the dream of God our conflicts take us.
Yes, Jesus did mess with the Temple. And he did flaunt the rules.
So, there is a kind of moral ambiguity here that we are either loathe to entertain or love to bathe in. But I think doing either leads us to forget the context. That Jesus confronted people who are on the wrong path.
Jesus came there to confront them for the way they treat the weakest members of the community.
To reveal to the world that isn’t the Kin-dom of Heaven.
This is: to be as God’s children. Embracing the love of God and sharing God’s grace. It isn’t about keeping the inheritance, but the responsibility of living it.
Then Jesus tells two parables.
The first is about wicked tenants who try to own the master’s business, like would-be kingpins trying to assassinate the boss and usurp his power. And the leaders quickly realize this parable applies to them.
Then Jesus goes at them again. This time, with a dark parable about invited guests who refuse to attend a wedding. And how easily all of those guests can be taken out and replaced.
Perhaps we thought it was a democratizing parable when it started. A parable about out-of-touch elites being replaced by the masses. A picture of equality and generosity. But it is also dark. Dependent on a spiteful king obsessed with how people treat his son.
It would be easy enough to overlook the darkness if it ended with replacement. We could read it in the best light and focus on the generative and the necessary. But then the king gets mad because one of these replacement guests didn’t wear the right clothes. He didn’t show up in the proverbial three-piece suit.
And this king, who we were trying to celebrate for his welcome, is suddenly enraged and condemning this man.
We want him to be a gracious king, but now we have to confront the fact that he’s a mob boss, slaughtering his opponents and then kidnapping and disappearing someone for “disrespect”.
The darkness Matthew depicts in the teachings of Jesus become very striking in Jerusalem. And their purpose, all the more difficult to comprehend.
But what strikes me is how I want to assume the parable is calling the Temple leaders to task for not showing up to the wedding of God’s son. And to make that make sense, I have to overlook murder, capriciousness, and an authoritarian’s addiction to order.
It doesn’t make sense…unless the king isn’t supposed to be the complete and total definition of God.
This started with a question of authority.
And the question from the leaders is about Jesus’s authority to throw a dinner party and invite whoever he wants. And Jesus asks them about following God’s authority.
Can God invite us to go in a new direction? Is that possible? To replace the people who refuse to show up? And the one who’d kick out a homeless person because he isn’t wearing a suit? Are we willing to replace the king?
The context of the parable is about God’s authority to do stuff now and through us. Not in our obedience to our traditions as if these were the work of God themselves. They are the signals, the beacons, which direct us to where we can do the work of God.
Our practices, feasts and fasts, daily offices, weekly eucharists, are not the ends themselves. They are the vehicle that brings us to communion with God and our neighbors. They are the order in our world which align us with the love of God.
Our Idols
This is why I love having this gospel paired with the story of betrayal from Exodus. Not because it is a story of sin. But because it is a picture of fear. The people are afraid God and Moses have abandoned them. In all of forty days. They get to work melting the gold at what, week three?
Oh, he’s never coming back. Better forget everything we know about God and do the opposite!
There’s an absurdity to this story that should help us see that it isn’t about people who turned to sin because it made sense. They turned to it when they specifically knew better. They had something that made more sense and allowed their fear to compel them in another direction.
Like knowing we’re to love and choosing instead to hate.
And rather than paint a picture of evil, it shows how easily fear draws us away from the good we know we’re called to. Because Moses wasn’t gone long enough for people to forget everything.
Please. These are the people who experience God’s liberation of them through the Red Sea and hear God say I’ll be with you in this cloud and then they complain that God has abandoned them and is trying to starve them to death.
Our fear compounds our forgetfulness. And so we think protecting the Temple by protecting Rome is what God wants. Or that inherited tradition is the only way for God to speak to us. Forgetting that God speaks through us.
Overcoming Fear
Friends, there is so much going on in the parable Jesus tells. And in the experience of wandering in the wilderness. But what God reveals to Moses and through Jesus is the desire to help us live in a more just and righteous world. One that isn’t predicated on domination or exploitation. It’s built on Shalom. Peace, justice, health, wholeness.
And the root of our confusion is fear. Our fear of change, of others, of being wrong.
And the antidote has been consistent from the beginning. It can be measured as a theme throughout scriptures: from Genesis through the Epistles. That, when faced with fear, we suddenly forget how to be just children of God.
Jesus empowered his disciples and named them apostles while he was still with them. He sent them out into the world to heal and proclaim the Good News.
And they, like us, got lost. Afraid. Of doing the wrong thing. Or being abandoned. Running out of food. Being victimized.
And it isn’t that the fear is wrong. But the idea of being abandoned is! Of not knowing what to do. We know what to do!
No murder! No stealing, exploiting, claiming for ourselves what isn’t ours! Give it back! Restore relationships! Love your neighbor like you deserve to be loved. With all of your heart and soul and mind and strength. Because that is what our love of God looks like.
Actual love.
And it looks like freedom and equity and justice and hope and peace and health and wholeness. It looks like food on the table every night. A bed to sleep on. Not because you’ve earned it—being alive earns it! We are to have it because we all need it.
And our work doesn’t end when I lose my bed. Or when you finally find one. It ends when we all have one. Anything short of that is injustice.
We need love. And our neighbors need love.
And because we need that love to be tangible, we reach out in love. Including those people we call enemies. People we fear. Or those who we make fear us.
Loving also means we destroy our need to dominate and control. We break down our border walls and make the immigrant our friend.
This is God’s command. And all of that other junk is our fear. Which includes fear of humiliation. Or betrayal. Pernicious sins that eat at our hope and joy and make us miserable.
The only cure is to love other people. Let go of that corrupting sin and serve our neighbors. Let them lead us.
We can’t beat swords into plowshares if protecting ourselves and making others feed us is our goal.
Jesus tells us to drop our swords and carry the cross. A cross of love and devotion and trust. Not only when its easy. But in everything. Especially now. Because that is walking in the way of love.
We share in the love of God in Jesus Christ. Because that is the heart of the Kin-dom of Heaven. Our work and our very way being.