Pentecost 19

19^th October 2014

“Give to God what belongs to God...”

Revd Andrew Bain

Readings:

Isaiah 45: 1-7 – I am the God of Israel, who summons you by name

Matthew 22: 15-22 – Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar

“When the chief priests and Pharisees had heard the parables, they realised that Jesus was speaking about them”.

Just imagine you’ve been described as wicked vineyard tenants who kill the owner’s son; ungrateful wedding guests who don’t show up to the most gracious invitation ever. Who would want to be the baddy in the stories this young preacher is just enthralling the people with? The scribes and Pharisees aren’t used to being typecast as anything other than admirable. So they respond by acting out the very behaviour for which they’ve just been condemned. They set a trap for the owner’s son. The final trap will need thirty pieces of silver and a disillusioned Judas. For now this is only a verbal trap, but the clever Pharisees, they think it’s a killer. “Get out of this one”, is what they’re thinking.

The search for the killer question is something we’ve got very used to in our media age. We’ve watched politicians squirm under the relentless fire of Jeremy Paxman, almost skewering some hapless minister with a question he can’t or won’t answer. In our recent pre-referendum debates we saw the same tactic at work with each side looking for that knock-down question that just shows your opponent unable or unwilling to tell the truth the questioner wants to hear – although, in fact, this kind of question has little or no interest in truth. It’s just a weapon.

 Matthew couldn’t make Jesus’ questioners any slimier if he tried: “Teacher, we know that you are sincere and teach the truth of God”. This unctuous approach, nakedly trying to catch Jesus off-guard, doesn’t just paint them as that snake in the grass tempter who shows up regularly for Jesus (as in the wilderness – even the Devil can quote scripture); it also shows that behind their weasel words there’s something else. There’s the fear, just a grain of it, that maybe this Jesus just might be the owner’s son, the expected One. It’s only a suspicion, but it’s one they’re determined to stamp on, because if he is, then the game’s up. They’ve a lot to lose.

So in their minds this is a lose/lose situation for Jesus. If he says: Withhold your taxes; don’t pay money to this heathen occupying power, then the wrath of Rome will soon be down on his head (and they’ll make sure of that) and he’ll alienate all the poor quiet folks who only want a quiet life because life’s hard enough already – they know what revolutions cost people like themselves, and it’s always in blood. But if he says: Pay the taxes, be good, dutiful citizens of the Empire, then the zealots, who want him to use his popularity to raise an army and throw the Romans out – never mind all this “Consider the lilies” stuff – they’re going to give up on him and look elsewhere for their Messiah.

It’s a killer question. It’s a great question. They must have been rubbing their hands with glee. But Jesus subverts it totally. Because their question focused totally on this Caesar, the fearsome emperor who has the power of life or death over everyone. But suddenly Jesus brings up God. They didn’t see that coming. This is the God of Isaiah for whom even kings and emperors, even Cyrus of Persia (the Caesar of his day) are in his hands. And in a heartbeat this ground of a killer question in which they had so much confidence just slips from beneath their feet.

These questioners are supposed to be experts in the faith, but Jesus, this preacher from some backwater village in Galilee, has outdone and undone them all. “This is Caesar’s face, isn’t it – so give him what’s his. But what about what you give to God?”

So, having arrived incensed because they and those who sent them know where they fit into these stories of Jesus, and they don’t like it one bit, now they’re trapped again in a role which hasn’t been written for them by Jesus, but which they’ve chosen for themselves. The ungrateful tenants, the guests who spurn their Lord’s invitation, they’re now shown up again as threadbare, unworthy heirs of the Covenant. They’ve missed the mark again, got themselves exactly where they wouldn’t want to be and shouldn’t be.

And that’s a thought that should maybe make us not too judgemental about these messengers of the Pharisees. Because missing the mark, finding that you’re acting the wrong part in the story, speaking the wrong lines, putting your hopes in the wrong things, making the bad choice – well, I never do that, or do I?

But of course I do. I reject the invitation to the wedding banquet whenever I refuse God’s invitation to give him the gift of my trust and obedience. When I choose to take someone down rather than build them up, speak unkindly about someone; when I withhold forgiveness in spite of the fact that God’s forgiven me countless times; whenever maybe I choose to sit in darkness even when I can hear him calling me. You know, I’ll give to Caesar because I have to. As the tax adverts say threateningly nowadays: “We know where you live”. I’ll do what the world expects or what makes me look good.

But the Lord of the universe to whom I owe everything never coerces me in any way at all – ever. He just sends invitations, beautiful gilt-edged invitations, to join the banquet of life with Jesus joyfully, generously, holding nothing back. I don’t have to act out these miserable lines that Matthew writes, which could be for any of us, to be always the one who refuses, the one who sends apologies and won’t join in. We can re-write the script. And next time an invitation comes – an invitation that in some way says “Choose life” – we can, this time, say “Yes”, or as Jesus puts it: Give to God what belongs to God. And we know that means everything. Amen.

PENTECOST 16

Sunday 28^th September 2014

“Two Sons”

Peter Davey

Readings:

Philippians 2: 1-13

Matthew 21: 23-32

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.

Our Gospel reading this morning from Matthew contains one of those little stories of Jesus that are so deceptively simple. A father has two sons and he says to the first son, “Go and work in the vineyard son”. And the son says “No, dad, I have better things to do!”, but then he goes away and does work in the vineyard. The father says to the second son, “Go and work in the vineyard son”. And the son says, “Yes, dad, of course”, but then goes away and doesn’t work in the vineyard. Which one of the 2 did the father’s will? They say, “The first”. And then Jesus puts in the punchline, “Believe me, prostitutes and dishonest tax-collectors will enter the Kingdom of Heaven before you!”

Now Jesus was directing this story to the Jewish elders and authorities in the Temple in Jerusalem, but let us not kid ourselves. In 21st Century Dunbar, this story of Jesus is directed towards us and all Church goers. So what do we understand by this story?

Well it seems to me that the first son represents those people in our community  who, for various reasons, are on the edge of society. In Dunbar we might think of drug dealers, vandals, prostitutes or thieves. Such people know that they are not honest and upright citizens and they don’t even pretend to be. The second son however represents those people who see themselves as good citizens who try and live lives according to the values they were taught as children and particularly those who are trying to be good Christians. These people try their best to live honest lies adhering to the moral code they were taught by their parents or by the church or what they read in the Bible. To be honest, I think most of us fit into the second son category. These two sons are very much like the two sons in another famous parable of Jesus; that of the Prodigal Son. The first son is the one that takes his share of his father’s inheritance and goes away and spends it all on drink, drugs and women. And then, when it all goes horribly wrong, he realises what a complete fool he has been and returns to his father to beg his forgiveness. The second son in that story is the one who stayed at home and did his duty, but when his prodigal brother returned he resented his father’s generosity and love for his brother saying, I have been here doing my duty all these years and you never threw a party for me!”    In this story Jesus is saying that you are better off being a prodigal and then recognising yourself as hopeless, rather than trying to live a good life and being self-righteous. The point Jesus is trying to make is that entering the Kingdom of Heaven is about dying to self and becoming like a child, relying totally on the love and forgiveness of the Father. The reason prostitutes and tax-collectors enter the kingdom first is that they are more likely to acknowledge their unworthiness while the so called good people think they can rely on their good deeds to get them into the Kingdom.

But in our gospel story Jesus says that the 2nd son says he will work in the vineyard but then doesn’t do so. This is because what Jesus means by working in the vineyard is bearing the fruit of love and compassion in our lives like that of his own life but such a life is impossible without the Spirit. That is why the very righteous Pharasee and Temple leader nicodemus was told by Jesus that “he must be born again of the Spirit”. For only the Spirit of Christ in us will allow us to bear the fruit of love and compassion. Our own self is incapable of doing it and we have to get it out of the way, to die,  and let the Spirit of Christ abide in us. But first of all we must recognise our utter hopelessness  to truly love our neighbour and then we can allow Christ to live in us.

Now you might be sitting there and thinking, “Ah yes, but it is all very well for you to stand there and say these things, but aren’t you also one of those in the category of the second son?”, and you would be right! I was brought up as a Christian and live a reasonably upright and moral life. I go to church on Sundays and do good deeds from time to time. It is for each one of us to meditate on this parable of Jesus and decide if we are indeed one of the self-righteous ones that Jesus is so critical of. This is where Paul’s words in the epistle are so helpful. He writes, Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”. Each one of us has to reflect on whether we do have the mind of Jesus, and every day surrender ourselves to the Spirit of Christ and allow him to live in us and love through us. No amount of reading or studying will transform our minds into the mind of Christ. Only the Spirit can do that. As Cardinal Newman puts it in the prayer I love so much, “Jesus, flood my soul with your Spirit and Life. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly that all my life may only be a radiance of yours.” This transformation is a long process and we have to work it out for ourselves. 

In the epistle Paul puts it this way, “Work out your own salvation in fear and trembling. For it is God who is at work in you enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure”.

So let us, through contemplation and in the privacy of our own hearts, allow the Spirit to transform our minds into the mind of Christ so that our thoughts, words and actions may be those of Christ Jesus born from love and compassion. The good news is that Jesus tells us in his parables that once we recognise that all our efforts to be good and righteous are useless and we too come to the father for forgiveness, the Father is waiting to welcome us into the Kingdom.