Sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, October 1, 2023

Ezekiel 18:1-4,25-32+Psalm 25:1-8+Philippians 1:1-13+Matthew 21:23-32

Who do you think you are?

This is really the question being asked of Jesus by the chief priests and the elders. Just who do you think you are?

This scene we have this morning is the day after Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey as the crowds shouted their hosannas. He threw the moneychangers out of the temple, upsetting the economic equilibrium on which the temple was sustained, and he returned the next day to teach and to heal the sick who came to him.

The chief priests and temple leadership are the gatekeepers of who could do what and when in the temple, so when they challenge Jesus to tell them on whose authority he is acting, they already know that it isn't on theirs. He has no résumé to give them, no diploma from seminary, no letters after his name or references to his character and experience. He's just an itinerant preacher who upset their apple cart when he rode into the city and took a whip to the businessmen in the temple courts. He has no license to do those things. He's been driving around without a license for three years, at least the kind of license they might issue.

Jesus can either say he's operating on his own authority which just makes him a laughingstock, or he can say he is acting on God's behalf, and that's enough to get you killed in those days. Jesus knows, though, that his ministry is not quite over yet, so he doesn't answer the question at all. He asks them a question, putting them in a trap of disavowing the very popular John the Baptist which would inflame the crowds, or they can say the John was truly the forerunner of the Messiah, and that would require them to acknowledge the messiahship of Jesus who is standing right in front of them. And they certainly could not do that.

The chief priests are not principal characters in Matthew's gospel up to this point. He is much more explicit about the sparring between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees. The chief priests appeared early on, just after Jesus is born, when King Herod hears about the arrival of the magi who are asking around about this newborn king, and he calls together the chief priests and asks them when and where this was to take place, because they know these things. They are the authorities. The other two times they show up before today's reading are when Jesus is talking about his impending passion. But between now and the end of Matthew, we hear about them 19 times.[1]

The chief priests know who Jesus is. They simply can't acknowledge him. As Dean Andrew McGowan says, "they are failing to embody their calling as leaders of Israel."[2]

Jesus then puts a parable to them about two sons, one who says he won't do what he is asked to do and then does, and another who says he will but then doesn't. In the context in which he is asking which one did the will of the father, it is a clear reference to those same religious authorities who are supposed to uphold the commandments of God but seem more intent on maintaining their positions. All those tax collectors and prostitutes may have been late to the party, but once they were in, they were all in.

But this little parable puts us on the hook, as well. We come together week after week and listen to stories about how Jesus loved those on the margins and models the way for us to do the same, and yet we make our confession and say the words of the Creed and pray that God's will be done on earth as in heaven, and then we walk out these doors and often don't think about it again until we return the following week. We turn away from those who live on our streets, wishing they just weren't there where we can see them. We're kind of like those people in Jericho who try to shush Bartimaeus who is crying out to Jesus for mercy (Mark 10:46-52, Matthew 20:29-34). That healing happens right before the entry into Jerusalem in Matthew's telling of it. He's already putting folks on notice - let the children come; heal the sick in body, mind, or spirit; feed the hungry; house the houseless; stand up for those who are oppressed.

We say we will go into the vineyard but don't. Not really.

The clear message from the very beginning of what came to be known as Christianity is that we do not live for ourselves alone. As Paul put it in the letter to the Church in Philippi

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, 

who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God 
as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave, 
being born in human likeness. (Philippians 2:4-7)

But we can go back even further. Christian or not, the God who created the universe in the beginning of time gave it all into our care. A moment ago, we heard the prophet Isaiah tell of a vineyard:

Let me sing for my beloved
my love-song concerning his vineyard: 

My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill. 

He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines; 

he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it; 

he expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes. (Isaiah 5:1-2)

And so, the one who created the vineyard destroyed it because

(For) the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
is the house of Israel, 

and the people of Judah
are his pleasant planting; 

he expected justice,
but saw bloodshed; 

righteousness,
but heard a cry!

This was Isaiah's prophecy of the destruction that would come at the hands of the Assyrians when the people of Israel and Judah were scattered to the winds.

I am not one who believes God sends calamities on us. What I do believe is that we often bring calamity on ourselves. Our neglect of the environment leads to ever more violent and destructive weather. The wealthiest 1% of people have more than twice as much as the wealth of the rest of the planet, all 8.1 billion of us. Children have armed guards and lock down drills in schools instead of the rest of us enacting common sense gun laws. And the hungry are getting hungrier and the unhoused still have no place to go.

So, what are we supposed to do when the world troubles are so persistent and overwhelming?  We go into the vineyard and do what we can for our neighbors, not out of pity or guilt, but because our neighbors are not them, they are us. We are all part of God's reign. Take a note from the Apostle Paul:

...but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 2:13)

Who does he think he is? That's who.

[1] Thanks to Andrew McGowan for this interesting note.

[2] Ibid.