24 and considering and celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. Well, today, and all

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1 Luke 20:9-18 Dangerous You may be wondering why we are in Luke 20, when last week we were in chapter 24 and considering and celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. Well, today, and all this month, we are studying the teachings of Jesus in the Temple, and we are doing it now because there was no time to do it before: Palm Sunday and Easterconsecutive Sundays, and so this is our first chance to examine the stories Jesus told that final week in between the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and his crucifixion and resurrection, a chance to look at the controversies and the antagonism between Jesus and the priests and scribes and elders of Jerusalem and the Temple. These sermons grow out of the sermon two weeks ago on Palm Sunday and particularly those verses in Luke 19 where Jesus stopped the parade and wept over the holy city. That part of the story is not in any other gospel, which should always cause us to take notice; and the words Jesus said at that moment are intriguing. Here was Jesus, looking down upon the Temple, the epicenter of Jewish faith, but he doesn t talk about righteousness or eternal life or how he wished they would follow the Law more faithfully; doesn t complain that the temple sacrifices may have become mere empty ritual; concepts we might expect from one who

2 ceaselessly preached absolute obedience to the Jewish Law. He says instead, Oh, if you knew how to make peace! As though, belief in God and adherence to religious rules could be defined by that one moral ideal, peace. Let s see if we can decipher his meaning as we look these four Sundays at the teachings of Jesus and his encounters with unbending and powerful men. Here is the story of the vineyard. I don t know of a single scholar or writer who doesn t see this parable as an allegory of God and Israel. God is the owner of the vineyard; and the nation of Israel or God s people or the Jewish religion are the tenants of the vineyard; and God, the owner, sends servants, the prophets, at various times to collect what God is owed, but in each instance the tenants beat and abuse the prophets, and refuse to pay the rent, or the owner s share of the harvest; until finally, God sends his son to the vineyard, and the tenants recognize him and plot to murder him so that the vineyard can be theirs. Indeed, we see in the gospels how the nation rejected Jesus, and handed him over to be crucified; and we know the resolution of the story, the destruction of the tenants- just as Jesus tells it herewe know from history how Jerusalem fell a generation later. The history of these events is important to Luke, because he is telling the story of Jesus and the church, its beginnings and its growth and its expansion outward. We may not notice at

3 first that line in verse 16, that the vineyard will be given to someone else. For Luke, that someone else is the Gentile world, where the gospel goes forth in the book of Acts, by the preaching of Paul. So this parable fits perfectly with the overall story Luke is trying to tell. Jesus tells this story to the people, but he speaks in the hearing of the religious leaders. And they understand his meaning, that they are the tenants who mistreat and disbelieve God s prophets; they are the ones who want to take over the religion as though by right or privilege, and run it as their own property or business or empire. The very leaders of the faith, who teach about God and obedience, who lead the religious community in acts of worship and sacrifice and morality; the leaders of the city who make laws and represent the people in halls of government; these are the very ones Jesus accuses of leading rebellion against God. And they are unhappy with him- they wanted to take him right then. But they are also cowards; verse 19 says they were afraid of the people. So this is Jesus first teaching in Jerusalem that last week before his crucifixion. This is the obvious and accepted interpretation of it; this is Luke s larger intent in telling the story of the beginnings of faith in Jesus Christ. And here also is a clue to Jesus sorrow over Jerusalem when he entered the city days earlier,

4 that they do not know how to make peace: in the story, we see their greed and pride, their lust to possess faith, even to control God, and to control people by censoring and controlling access to God. These are the opposite of peace. I keep wondering, why wouldn t the tenants pay? If we read the story literally, it must have been greed: If he s not around then, I ll keep what I make- I work hard, I ve earned this; I built this up from nothing! If we read the story allegorically, it must have been pride: If he s not around, then I ll do what I want, I ll speak for him! We likely think of pride as a shortcoming of some people who think a little more of themselves than they should- a too confident self-evaluation; but a better understanding of pride is the unyielding certainty of some that they are complete and perfectly capable on their own, and so reject humility or brotherhood or spirit of community or compromise. In religious terms it expresses itself in selfrighteousness, so that anyone who disagrees with the self-justifying person is demeaned and condemned. The prideful person is sure he speaks for God. But where the word of the Lord commands- over and over in scripture, in factcommands unity of spirit, caring, love, and fellowship- peace, in other words- in those places, the prideful person rejects God.

5 Religion is a dangerous game, and we play it sometimes like Monopoly, buying up every property to control whole sections of the board, building our own little empire, so that it s all mine, and everyone has to pay me. Some religious folk wish to become the head of a holy empire, to control how others think, so that religion becomes for them not a joining of hearts and minds to make peace or to bring comfort and hope to the hungry and the hurting; rather, they use it to justify their preconceptions and attitudes. Some may use it to make laws, not for the betterment of people s lives, but for the arrogant joy of telling others how to live. Oh, these attitudes may come in the form of we re just trying to save souls, but it doesn t bother them at all to ruin lives: to condemn, to divide, to create misery, even to kill in the name of God. Because a perfect synonym for pride is control: the prideful person knows best, he is sure of it, and he wants to control you. How else can we explain the religious fanatics of 9/11; how else to explain the shooting at the Sikh Temple last year, or the burning of mosques in Tennessee and other places around the country, or the killing of Dr. Tiller in his church in Wichita, or the wars of aggression; how else to explain parents that urge on their bullying children, and the rhetoric of hate in political and religious speech against people who are different? If we are serious about the gospel of peace and following the

6 Prince of Peace, then we will find ways to love one another, we will go out of our way to act mercifully; and our legislatures will enact laws that ensure justice for all, not just for the rich; and our state and national governments- full of those who claim Jesus is Lord- will pass moral budgets; and we will begin to talk and listen to one another; we will begin to care. If we do not, then we are like those tenants who wish to kill the owner s son, in order to possess the vineyard. These are not liberal versus conservative issues, but rather, matters of either pride or humility, of either avarice or compassion. If our ways would be the ways of Christ, then we must yield to his perfect love for all people. Jesus tears and Jesus life call us to peace, and so our job is not to force others into our version of repentance, but to repent for our own sin and to strive every moment to love as he loves. One place we can join together and express our peaceableness is at the Lord s Table. Here is our profession to the world- and to one another- that we yield ourselves to Christ s gospel of peace and unity and hope; and even, that we give ourselves to one another, with an unspoken promise of loving each other. The peace of Christ be with you.

7 Now, my experience with you is that you are not among those prideful and selfish and self-righteous ones. Quite the opposite. But they are out there, and they are dangerous to us all. Because they are rebels against God. Maybe the question for us is this, are there ways that we exalt these who are so full of divisiveness? Don t listen to them. They are not on the side of peace. We know who they are by the ways they belittle others and so readily place blame: it s the commies, it s the immigrants, it s them gays and lesbians, it s the Muslims. Always somebody else. Instead of looking outward for scapegoats, let s be amazed, and rejoice, that God can love me and yet love so many so different from me; let us decide to find strength in the diversity of cultures and philosophies, in the church and in the nation; let us be willing to gain new insights, new understanding, as we listen to other viewpoints; let us make friends as we learn to love one another; let us make peace by loving even our enemies. And in this way, perhaps, we will save the vineyard from destruction.