Dangerous hearts

Proper 21 Year A 2017

October 1, 2017

    A little bit of context for today’s reading from Matthew; Jesus has entered Jerusalem on a donkey to shouts of “hosanna to the son of David!”.. And after he entered Jerusalem, he went into the temple and turned over tables, and drove out the money changers.  To say that Jesus was making an entrance, would be understating it.  He was ready for a fight with the authorities, and they were angry enough for one.  Jesus was causing all sorts of chaos, and people were questioning what they had always done; they were questioning their leaders and they were questioning what it actually meant to be part of the kingdom of God.

    In that time and place, those who had power made the rules, and they were the ones who believed that they were closest to God.  They did everything right; they followed the purity codes and the law; they gave what they were supposed to to support the temple and their mission; they observed all the fasts, all the festivals… if they were questioned the could point to the law and claim themselves to be righteous.  And, typically, they weren’t questioned all that often, and there was some sort of peace that agreed on people’s status and where they fit into the grand scheme…

    That is, until Jesus showed up.  He was everything they were not;  he had relationships with prostitutes, beggars and thieves; he didn’t always follow the law, and if fact, sometimes downright disregarded it for what he believed was a greater good; he wasn’t wealthy; he didn’t care about aligning himself with the empire; he was always questioning authority; he was always telling people that they were loved by God, something that many of them had never heard before; he healed people and restored them to community;  in short, Jesus was trouble, and once he showed up in Jerusalem, with shouts of joy that might have alluded that he was the true king of Jerusalem, well, it was game on.

    And, Jesus only makes his own situation worse by continuing to take digs at the chief priests and elders.  They wanted to know who had given him authority to do and say these things, and Jesus knew he had them… John’s life was already given because he was the herald and prophet that paved the way… nothing that the elders could’ve said about John’s baptism would’ve helped them… either they were going to show themselves to be the hypocrites they truly were, or the crowd was going to be enraged by their disbelief in John’s baptism.  They were stuck; and they knew it, and Jesus certainly knew it.  And so, while they are weakened, he tells yet another parable about the kingdom of God that shows just how merciful God is; just like last week’s lesson about the vineyard and the workers who come at the last hour, God has more than enough mercy for everyone and, the added dig is of course, that those who believe themselves to be righteous in their own eyes, may not be in God’s eyes.  Ouch.  Nothing about Jesus’ message that day is subtle or soft peddled, and it made him dangerous, at least as far as the current leadership was concerned.  If this donkey riding rabble rouser wasn’t silenced, everything they had built, all of their power, would be gone.  So, now, not only was Jesus dangerous, but now he was in deep, deep danger, and he knew exactly what he was doing.  He didn’t really care about their power games; he wasn’t interested in serving the empire… he was interested in serving God… and some days Ceasar and God were confused in the eyes of some… and certainly in Rome, Ceasar was a god… Jesus had no such confusions, and he was more than willing to point out those who did.

    And, I am sure, that as certain as Jesus was of his need to point out the discrepancies he saw in what following God ought to look like, I bet there were moments of fear for him… but it wasn’t the fear that the elders had; their fear was about losing status; his was about his life and the life of the people he loved; he knew his actions were also putting them in danger.  Soon enough, he would learn just how afraid they were, and how their fear would cause them to deny him… but for now, Jesus was focused on bringing good news to prostitutes, tax collectors and all who lived on the outer margins of society… and the more he focused on good news the more dangerous he became.

    Beloved, Jesus didn’t die because he was a nice guy… he died because he was willing to confront injustice when he saw it, he was willing to love those no one else loves, no matter what the institutions around him said.  Often those confrontations meant that things didn’t look the way others had assumed… he meant all that last shall be first stuff… gold and fine robes and adherence to the purity codes were not what were going to get you a place in the kingdom; loving God and loving your neighbor, now that might be the golden ticket that got you in…   the elders didn’t really seem to care about their neighbors… they only cared about what was in it for them…

    Our calling as disciples is not primarily to be nice,,, that’s a good thing as far as it goes, but sometimes we have to overturn some tables and point out the grave injustices around us.  Christianity has lost its sense of danger… most of us have forgotten that we need to challenge the empire, and that living in the kingdom means that we might have to hang out with some folks that don’t look like we do.  Our society needs to be challenged now just as much as it did then.  Loving God by loving our neighbor is the mandate… loving even when we are afraid, loving those no one else loves, loving instead of grasping power… and all of us in this room have more power than the people who come here in search of a meal or a bus pass… how can we turn away from that power and extend a hand of love?  How deep is our discipleship, is it the kind where we attend church and do all the right things, or is it the kind that we live even when we aren’t here, so that our words and deeds are good news to the poor and hungry?

    I suspect for most of us it’s a little of both… May we love, and learn and grow to be the children who do God’s will, even if we haven’t done a great job of it so far.  There is always time… What danger might God be calling us into today?