On beyond perfection
Commentary
On Beyond Zebra! Remember the book by Dr. Seuss? Some people learn the alphabet, starting out at "A is for apple," and when they get all the way through to "Z is for zebra," they think they are done. But not Dr. Seuss! Twenty-six letters might be good enough for most people, but it's only the beginning for Dr. Seuss. One of his great "little people" takes us on a tour of life On Beyond Zebra! -- a whole new world of creatures most of us have never seen before. It's a world where things run on different time schedules, and where life itself has a very different feel about it.
This seems to be the case in our reading for today as well. The encounter between God and Israel at Mount Sinai was a lesson about living life in the right way. The Ten Commandments are no mere checklist for meeting up to everyday mediocrity -- they are the building blocks of a better society. Similar, too, is Paul's take on things in Philippians 3 -- the morality of a religious code by itself cannot bring hope and happiness and health; he paints a canvas with deeper hues and brighter lights than mere morality can offer. And certainly Jesus' parable of the tenants makes the point that ethics and morality are rooted in more than just what we can get away with. We are entering a world beyond life as we know it; we are peeking into the meaning of life itself, way beyond social conformity or ethical accuracy. It is the world "on beyond" perfection.
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Although most of the people we speak to today know of the Ten Commandments, few know how the Ten Commandments came into being. Hollywood has its cinematic version, with Charlton Heston as Moses. But the biblical record itself gives us telltale signals that evoke a much richer drama that only preachers can play out with purpose and power.
Exodus 20-24 forms a single literary unit that is crafted in a clear parallel to other covenant documents forged between rulers and their peoples in the ancient near east. A number of elements were typically found in these covenants, including:
* A preamble giving the particulars of the authority giving expression to this treaty.
* A historical prologue explaining the background that has led to this treaty.
* Stipulations that lay out the mutual demands on the parties of this treaty.
* Blessings and curses that describe life in harmony with this treaty and the consequences of defiling it.
* Witnesses who are called upon to ensure the appropriate ratification of the treaty.
* Ratification and renewal clauses that tell of the ratification itself, and describe how this treaty will be remembered and renewed.
Each of these six elements of ancient covenant literature is clearly represented in Exodus 20-24. Yahweh gives the preamble (20:1) and historical prologue (20:2) that sum up the book of Genesis and the international politics of Exodus 1-19. The stipulations are summarized in 20:3-17 and then broadened in 21:1--23:19. Blessings and curses are explained in 23:20-33, while chapter 24 includes both the witnesses (the elders and representatives from the tribes) and the ratification ceremony itself.
This literary understanding of Exodus 20-24 helps to put the Ten Commandments in their proper place and perspective. Rather than being considered merely some ancient list of important behaviors, or the residue of an arcane legal code, the Ten Commandments are actually the life parameters of Israel's identity as the rescued and restored nation of Yahweh. There is an old life (in Egypt) that carried a moral dehumanization (slavery), and from it only Yahweh could rescue Israel. Now that Israel belongs to Yahweh and not Pharaoh, Yahweh outlines the character of society in this new political order.
It begins with divine/human relations. Egyptian myths explained human life as the unfortunate degrading of appendages of the gods. Natural and spiritual realities were co-terminus, and both evil and good were eternal tensions within the system. Yahweh's declarations, however, explained a world-order in which the Creator stood exalted (so there is no need to play around with petty powers -- first commandment) outside the system (thus making all attempts at conjuring the deity up by way of tangible things a silly waste of time -- second commandment). More than that, Yahweh had created all things by way of speaking and naming, so people must be careful about how they name either God or other things named by God (third commandment). Furthermore, the goal of Creation was to establish a relationship between God and God's people that blossoms in time and social interaction, and are not reduced to animal drudgery (fourth commandment).
Similarly, in the makeup of human society, there are boundaries which safeguard human dignity (fifth, sixth, seventh, and ninth commandments) and the livelihoods of free people (eighth and tenth commandments). Although these boundaries are absolute in their moral character, they are not clearly defined by way of all ethical practices in the Ten Commandments proper. Only with the expansions and case studies of Exodus 21-23 do they begin to take moral shape.
This perspective on the Ten Commandments helps to define the ongoing role they play in human society, even after the demise of ancient Israel. If there is a continuous covenant relationship between God and God's people (this is the language of the Bible in both its Testaments), then the human understanding of God that is expressed in the first four commandments and the moral boundaries that safeguard human dignity in the last six commandments remain normative through all ages of human/divine interaction. At the same time, those who live outside of that covenant relationship generally do not understand the implications and ramifications of biblical covenant history, and therefore cannot presume to use the Ten Commandments as definitive outside of its biblical context. In other words, the Ten Commandments do not belong in the courtrooms of any national judicial system as normative to that system. They may be displayed as examples of meaningful ethical codes, but their function is different.
One more thing that may help to bring out the homiletic value of preaching on the Ten Commandments is the ancient Hittite practice of writing two copies of the covenant documents and keeping one in the king's palace and the other among the people at a distance from the capital city. Representations of the Ten Commandment today often picture two tablets of stone (based upon the statements of Exodus 32:15-16) with the first four commandments on one and the last six on the other. This is incorrect. The full covenant (or its summary, like the Ten Commandments) would have been written on each of the stone tablets. The amazing thing about the biblical record was that instead of these two copies ending up at different locations (one in heaven with God and the other in the tabernacle/temple among the people), they are kept in exactly the same spot! In other words, the Ark of Yahweh, with its mercy seat and guardian sentinel cherubim, was the portable throne of God that symbolized God's choice to move in with God's people. Both copies of the Covenant could be kept in the same place because God and Israel were living together!
Philippians 3:4b-14
Credit is a slippery thing, as Paul notes in this passage. You may want it, but if you mention that, you won't likely get it. In fact, you might even get blacklisted instead. Earlier in his life he was trying rack up credit based upon accomplishments he was able to tick off, even pointing to things that took place before he was born (in God's chosen family -- "of the people of Israel;" from a clan that remained faithful to the Sinai covenant -- "of the tribe of Benjamin;" and having pure Hebrew pedigree on both sides of the family -- "a Hebrew of Hebrews"), and to actions taken by others on his behalf (circumcision was a requirement, but to be "circumcised on the eighth day" was to obey both the spirit and the letter of the law). By the time Paul took charge of his own life he was a type-A general of the most obnoxious kind (see the rest of his list in 3:5-6). It sounds a little like the repartee of Gilbert and Sullivan when they have their captain of the H.M.S. Pinafore proclaiming his eminent worth in their operetta of that name. Behind him a chorus declaims and defames: "He is an Englishman! For he himself has said it, and it's greatly to his credit, that he is an Englishman!" All the while, of course, the audience is laughing at his buffoonery.
That is where Paul goes himself -- scoffing at his previous predilections. Then he turns to find credit elsewhere. It is a kind of credit by association. In the last years of his life, composer Louis Antoine Jullien dreamed of writing one final work. He said he would like to set the words of the Lord's Prayer to music. Wouldn't it look wonderful, he asked his colleagues, to have a title page that read: "The Lord's Prayer": Words by Jesus Christ. Music by Jullien? Paul is headed in that direction. What if the script of his life could be written by Jesus, and then played through the melodies and harmonies of Paul's unique character?
The best credit, in that sense, is neither earned nor grasped; it is imputed. This is the morality of the gospel. A story about Abraham Lincoln's Illinois days as a young lawyer serves well to capture it as a parable. An angry man stormed into Lincoln's office demanding that he bring suit against an impoverished debtor who owed him $2.50. "Make him pay!"
Well, Lincoln didn't want anything of the sort to happen. The debtor couldn't pay the $2.50, the creditor didn't need the $2.50, and society shouldn't be run by either such greed or such insensitivity. So Lincoln declined the case.
Unfortunately the man kept pressing, and since Lincoln was the only lawyer available, he was forced to serve the suit. First, though, he charged the man $10 for legal fees. Then he brought the defendant in, gave him $5.00 for his time, and asked if the charges were accurate. He readily agreed, and out of his newly gotten $5 paid the $2.50 he owed. Everyone was satisfied, including the irate plaintiff, who never realized that he spent $10 to collect $2.50!
Now turn that story around and think of it from this angle: A man with no credit is burdened by a debt he could never repay. Along comes an advocate he can't hire to resolve a matter he can't win. Suddenly, in a transaction he could never accomplish, the debt is gone, the creditor has disappeared, and he has money in his pocket! All he had to do was agree to the terms.
So it is in the strange economy of God, says Paul. Don't try to figure it out. And certainly don't claim credit for it. But when morality that lives on beyond perfection is there, you'll know it. And so will others!
Matthew 21:33-46
To catch the full impact of these verses we need to understand two things. First, the Gospel of Matthew presents Jesus as king. He is identified as a royal scion of David in chapter 1, recognized as international king in chapter 2, declares the contours of the kingdom in chapter 13, assumes a right to the kingly palace in chapter 21, and declares his royal rule in chapter 28. Throughout the gospel, Jesus is the king -- sometimes cloaked and sometimes evident, but always ruling.
Second, chapters 21-22 set up a deliberate contrast (see vv. 12-13) between royalty as expressed through the administration of the religious leaders of the day who count themselves as caretakers of God's kingdom (notice that the conversations in 21:12-16 and again from 21:23--22:46 are deliberately framed as occurring between Jesus and "the chief priests and the teachers of the law/elders") and that depicted by Jesus. The chief priests don't know how to properly care for the house of God/palace of the king/temple (21:12-17). They don't recognize the source of Jesus' authority (21:23-27). They present an outward obedience to divine authority that lacks inner love and commitment (21:28-32). They refuse to join the coronation of the king's anointed (22:1-14). They quibble about dual allegiances (22:15-22). They scoff at eternity as if time were theirs to manage and no exams or final grade were to be handed out in evaluation of their deeds (22:23-33; note -- the "Sadducees" include the priest and Levite families). They play games with rules and regulations for behavior while missing the point of ethics and morality (22:34-40; note -- the "Pharisees" were considered the "elders of the people"). The entire passage comes back to where it began in 22:41-46 -- what is the source of Jesus' authority?
At the heart of this longer literary unit comes the story of the tenants. While several of the gospels relate this parable in various forms, here in Matthew's Gospel it is clearly pointed at the priests and elders/Pharisees (see 22:45) -- at the religious leaders of the day. In a theme picked up from the Old Testament, Israel, as a whole, is the special garden or vineyard planted by God in Palestine and tended lovingly there from the time of the Exodus on (see, for example, Psalm 80, Isaiah 5). Those who were given the mandate to nurture health and spiritual depth in Israel on God's behalf were the priests and prophets. They, however, failed both God and the people, and usurped their authority for social or financial advancement. The dark days of the northern kingdom and its ungodly demise (see 2 Kings 17), as well as the whimpering end of the southern kingdom and its exile were brought about because the administrators left to care for God's vineyard thought they could possess it for themselves.
Now, in God's last-ditch effort to rescue the estate, God is sending the heir to heaven's throne, the Son himself. And on the Monday or Tuesday of Holy Week, when Jesus first spoke these words, the last administrators of the vineyard were about to kill the Son out of the deluded fantasy that suddenly the world would belong to them.
Jesus, in telling this story, seems to be giving the priests and elders, the Sadducees and Pharisees, one last opportunity to give up their petty ethics among thieves and learn again the morality of the kingdom. And even if they don't take to the lesson, we ought to give it another listen.
Application
In What Is the Kingdom of Heaven? Arthur Clutton-Brock tells a powerful story of his childhood. He was out for a walk with his sitter, traipsing along a country lane. At a house just before them, three children were romping through the yard, playing games and laughing delightedly. They had climbed a small sycamore tree, gathering leaves and tossing them into the air. They broke off the tender branches from the top of the tree, covered at the time with blazing bronzed leaves, and carried them in a bundle like a bouquet of flowers.
When Arthur and his sitter passed by, the children ran out into the lane and danced about them. Then they presented the bouquet of branches to Arthur in a ceremony of great pomp. It was a magical moment of grace and beauty.
But for some reason, said Arthur, whether from fear or from pride, he refused the gift offered. He ran after his sitter and when they were shortly down the path he turned round to look at the three. He saw them standing in the middle of the road, faces suddenly dragging on the ground. The laughter was gone, and all the pretty flowers they had made were spilled around them in the dust.
Looking back on that moment, Clutton-Brock said, "I felt, in that moment, that I had turned my back on the kingdom of God. Something had been offered to me in love, and I hadn't taken it!" He also said that the sight of those three disappointed faces has haunted him all his life.
The haunting of our lives is the gap between what we know to be truly significant and our own actions that betray days lived by secondary values and systems. Like Israel on the run from Pharaoh, like Paul shifting his theological sights from law to grace, like religious leaders in Jesus' day who were so busy taking care of business that they forgot what business they were in, we need to be haunted back to God.
So it is with faith. The words we speak in testimony mean little until our feet carry us home. That is why the Bible is so insistent on behaviors that go beyond legalism to faith, beyond law-keeping to covenant living, beyond mere morality to something radical "on beyond" perfection. What we believe is written in a story penned anew each day. The test of our relationship with God is not the bent of our theology but the grace with which we receive flowers of the kingdom and the attitude we bear toward all God had made.
An Alternative Application
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20. While the Ten Commandments are often taught or preached by way of a series of messages on each topic, today might be a good day to help people see the whole as a single unit, and dig into the Covenant purposes that gave rise to its expression in the first place. There is enough material above to warrant focusing on just the Ten Commandments and how they form a powerful link between God and God's people, not just in terms of behaviors, but reflecting a cosmic world-and-life view.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 19
(See the Preaching the Psalm column for September 18, for a reflection on the inadequacy of human language to worship the divine, as expressed in v. 3: "There is no speech, nor are there words ...")
"Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer" (Psalm 19:14). With the words of that prayer, many preachers habitually begin their sermons. That verse admirably expresses the complexity of the act of preaching, at least from the preacher's standpoint. For it is not the words alone that carry the message, but the whole demeanor of the one speaking them. If preaching is, as Philipps Brooks famously remarked, "truth communicated through personality," then "the meditation of the heart" is indeed a vital part of the equation. Part of it, also, is the attentive listening of the congregation. Through these various parties, all collectively contributing to the act of preaching, the Holy Spirit is active.
Some scholars have speculated that Psalm 19 is two separate psalms, verses 1-6 and verses 7-14 -- so abrupt is the change in tone between verses 6 and 7. The first part emphasizes God the creator, and the second, God the lawgiver. Yet, on the other hand, both halves are effusive songs of praise (in other words, they belong to the same genre), so it's very possible that the psalmist is just changing gears here, introducing another reason why the Lord is to be praised. In terms of Old Testament theology, the law is seen as intimately bound to the created order anyway -- as in the Genesis creation account, when God's having rested on the seventh day is seen as the foundation of the fourth commandment.
There is another change, of sorts, between verses 10 and 11 -- from corporate to individual prayer. Having finished praising the creation and the law, the psalmist next reflects upon his own particular relationship to the law. The law warns him, protecting him from sin -- although there is an honest acknowledgment that, even with the law to guide him, he does not always succeed in being obedient. He still needs to pray that the Lord "clears [him] from hidden faults" (v. 12).
In the large context of the psalm, then, the closing inscription is not meant to be used in the way it is typically used today (as a pre-sermon prayer for illumination). Rather, it is a heartfelt prayer by this poet, who has just ruminated on the importance of the law, that the Lord protect him from breaking the law, in word or thought.
A sermon on this verse could reflect upon the reality of sin -- how it is not only a question of deeds, but a question of thoughts as well. Jesus' famous teaching about "committing adultery in the heart" (Matthew 5:28) belongs very much to this rabbinical tradition, understanding how pervasive sin can be.
This seems to be the case in our reading for today as well. The encounter between God and Israel at Mount Sinai was a lesson about living life in the right way. The Ten Commandments are no mere checklist for meeting up to everyday mediocrity -- they are the building blocks of a better society. Similar, too, is Paul's take on things in Philippians 3 -- the morality of a religious code by itself cannot bring hope and happiness and health; he paints a canvas with deeper hues and brighter lights than mere morality can offer. And certainly Jesus' parable of the tenants makes the point that ethics and morality are rooted in more than just what we can get away with. We are entering a world beyond life as we know it; we are peeking into the meaning of life itself, way beyond social conformity or ethical accuracy. It is the world "on beyond" perfection.
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Although most of the people we speak to today know of the Ten Commandments, few know how the Ten Commandments came into being. Hollywood has its cinematic version, with Charlton Heston as Moses. But the biblical record itself gives us telltale signals that evoke a much richer drama that only preachers can play out with purpose and power.
Exodus 20-24 forms a single literary unit that is crafted in a clear parallel to other covenant documents forged between rulers and their peoples in the ancient near east. A number of elements were typically found in these covenants, including:
* A preamble giving the particulars of the authority giving expression to this treaty.
* A historical prologue explaining the background that has led to this treaty.
* Stipulations that lay out the mutual demands on the parties of this treaty.
* Blessings and curses that describe life in harmony with this treaty and the consequences of defiling it.
* Witnesses who are called upon to ensure the appropriate ratification of the treaty.
* Ratification and renewal clauses that tell of the ratification itself, and describe how this treaty will be remembered and renewed.
Each of these six elements of ancient covenant literature is clearly represented in Exodus 20-24. Yahweh gives the preamble (20:1) and historical prologue (20:2) that sum up the book of Genesis and the international politics of Exodus 1-19. The stipulations are summarized in 20:3-17 and then broadened in 21:1--23:19. Blessings and curses are explained in 23:20-33, while chapter 24 includes both the witnesses (the elders and representatives from the tribes) and the ratification ceremony itself.
This literary understanding of Exodus 20-24 helps to put the Ten Commandments in their proper place and perspective. Rather than being considered merely some ancient list of important behaviors, or the residue of an arcane legal code, the Ten Commandments are actually the life parameters of Israel's identity as the rescued and restored nation of Yahweh. There is an old life (in Egypt) that carried a moral dehumanization (slavery), and from it only Yahweh could rescue Israel. Now that Israel belongs to Yahweh and not Pharaoh, Yahweh outlines the character of society in this new political order.
It begins with divine/human relations. Egyptian myths explained human life as the unfortunate degrading of appendages of the gods. Natural and spiritual realities were co-terminus, and both evil and good were eternal tensions within the system. Yahweh's declarations, however, explained a world-order in which the Creator stood exalted (so there is no need to play around with petty powers -- first commandment) outside the system (thus making all attempts at conjuring the deity up by way of tangible things a silly waste of time -- second commandment). More than that, Yahweh had created all things by way of speaking and naming, so people must be careful about how they name either God or other things named by God (third commandment). Furthermore, the goal of Creation was to establish a relationship between God and God's people that blossoms in time and social interaction, and are not reduced to animal drudgery (fourth commandment).
Similarly, in the makeup of human society, there are boundaries which safeguard human dignity (fifth, sixth, seventh, and ninth commandments) and the livelihoods of free people (eighth and tenth commandments). Although these boundaries are absolute in their moral character, they are not clearly defined by way of all ethical practices in the Ten Commandments proper. Only with the expansions and case studies of Exodus 21-23 do they begin to take moral shape.
This perspective on the Ten Commandments helps to define the ongoing role they play in human society, even after the demise of ancient Israel. If there is a continuous covenant relationship between God and God's people (this is the language of the Bible in both its Testaments), then the human understanding of God that is expressed in the first four commandments and the moral boundaries that safeguard human dignity in the last six commandments remain normative through all ages of human/divine interaction. At the same time, those who live outside of that covenant relationship generally do not understand the implications and ramifications of biblical covenant history, and therefore cannot presume to use the Ten Commandments as definitive outside of its biblical context. In other words, the Ten Commandments do not belong in the courtrooms of any national judicial system as normative to that system. They may be displayed as examples of meaningful ethical codes, but their function is different.
One more thing that may help to bring out the homiletic value of preaching on the Ten Commandments is the ancient Hittite practice of writing two copies of the covenant documents and keeping one in the king's palace and the other among the people at a distance from the capital city. Representations of the Ten Commandment today often picture two tablets of stone (based upon the statements of Exodus 32:15-16) with the first four commandments on one and the last six on the other. This is incorrect. The full covenant (or its summary, like the Ten Commandments) would have been written on each of the stone tablets. The amazing thing about the biblical record was that instead of these two copies ending up at different locations (one in heaven with God and the other in the tabernacle/temple among the people), they are kept in exactly the same spot! In other words, the Ark of Yahweh, with its mercy seat and guardian sentinel cherubim, was the portable throne of God that symbolized God's choice to move in with God's people. Both copies of the Covenant could be kept in the same place because God and Israel were living together!
Philippians 3:4b-14
Credit is a slippery thing, as Paul notes in this passage. You may want it, but if you mention that, you won't likely get it. In fact, you might even get blacklisted instead. Earlier in his life he was trying rack up credit based upon accomplishments he was able to tick off, even pointing to things that took place before he was born (in God's chosen family -- "of the people of Israel;" from a clan that remained faithful to the Sinai covenant -- "of the tribe of Benjamin;" and having pure Hebrew pedigree on both sides of the family -- "a Hebrew of Hebrews"), and to actions taken by others on his behalf (circumcision was a requirement, but to be "circumcised on the eighth day" was to obey both the spirit and the letter of the law). By the time Paul took charge of his own life he was a type-A general of the most obnoxious kind (see the rest of his list in 3:5-6). It sounds a little like the repartee of Gilbert and Sullivan when they have their captain of the H.M.S. Pinafore proclaiming his eminent worth in their operetta of that name. Behind him a chorus declaims and defames: "He is an Englishman! For he himself has said it, and it's greatly to his credit, that he is an Englishman!" All the while, of course, the audience is laughing at his buffoonery.
That is where Paul goes himself -- scoffing at his previous predilections. Then he turns to find credit elsewhere. It is a kind of credit by association. In the last years of his life, composer Louis Antoine Jullien dreamed of writing one final work. He said he would like to set the words of the Lord's Prayer to music. Wouldn't it look wonderful, he asked his colleagues, to have a title page that read: "The Lord's Prayer": Words by Jesus Christ. Music by Jullien? Paul is headed in that direction. What if the script of his life could be written by Jesus, and then played through the melodies and harmonies of Paul's unique character?
The best credit, in that sense, is neither earned nor grasped; it is imputed. This is the morality of the gospel. A story about Abraham Lincoln's Illinois days as a young lawyer serves well to capture it as a parable. An angry man stormed into Lincoln's office demanding that he bring suit against an impoverished debtor who owed him $2.50. "Make him pay!"
Well, Lincoln didn't want anything of the sort to happen. The debtor couldn't pay the $2.50, the creditor didn't need the $2.50, and society shouldn't be run by either such greed or such insensitivity. So Lincoln declined the case.
Unfortunately the man kept pressing, and since Lincoln was the only lawyer available, he was forced to serve the suit. First, though, he charged the man $10 for legal fees. Then he brought the defendant in, gave him $5.00 for his time, and asked if the charges were accurate. He readily agreed, and out of his newly gotten $5 paid the $2.50 he owed. Everyone was satisfied, including the irate plaintiff, who never realized that he spent $10 to collect $2.50!
Now turn that story around and think of it from this angle: A man with no credit is burdened by a debt he could never repay. Along comes an advocate he can't hire to resolve a matter he can't win. Suddenly, in a transaction he could never accomplish, the debt is gone, the creditor has disappeared, and he has money in his pocket! All he had to do was agree to the terms.
So it is in the strange economy of God, says Paul. Don't try to figure it out. And certainly don't claim credit for it. But when morality that lives on beyond perfection is there, you'll know it. And so will others!
Matthew 21:33-46
To catch the full impact of these verses we need to understand two things. First, the Gospel of Matthew presents Jesus as king. He is identified as a royal scion of David in chapter 1, recognized as international king in chapter 2, declares the contours of the kingdom in chapter 13, assumes a right to the kingly palace in chapter 21, and declares his royal rule in chapter 28. Throughout the gospel, Jesus is the king -- sometimes cloaked and sometimes evident, but always ruling.
Second, chapters 21-22 set up a deliberate contrast (see vv. 12-13) between royalty as expressed through the administration of the religious leaders of the day who count themselves as caretakers of God's kingdom (notice that the conversations in 21:12-16 and again from 21:23--22:46 are deliberately framed as occurring between Jesus and "the chief priests and the teachers of the law/elders") and that depicted by Jesus. The chief priests don't know how to properly care for the house of God/palace of the king/temple (21:12-17). They don't recognize the source of Jesus' authority (21:23-27). They present an outward obedience to divine authority that lacks inner love and commitment (21:28-32). They refuse to join the coronation of the king's anointed (22:1-14). They quibble about dual allegiances (22:15-22). They scoff at eternity as if time were theirs to manage and no exams or final grade were to be handed out in evaluation of their deeds (22:23-33; note -- the "Sadducees" include the priest and Levite families). They play games with rules and regulations for behavior while missing the point of ethics and morality (22:34-40; note -- the "Pharisees" were considered the "elders of the people"). The entire passage comes back to where it began in 22:41-46 -- what is the source of Jesus' authority?
At the heart of this longer literary unit comes the story of the tenants. While several of the gospels relate this parable in various forms, here in Matthew's Gospel it is clearly pointed at the priests and elders/Pharisees (see 22:45) -- at the religious leaders of the day. In a theme picked up from the Old Testament, Israel, as a whole, is the special garden or vineyard planted by God in Palestine and tended lovingly there from the time of the Exodus on (see, for example, Psalm 80, Isaiah 5). Those who were given the mandate to nurture health and spiritual depth in Israel on God's behalf were the priests and prophets. They, however, failed both God and the people, and usurped their authority for social or financial advancement. The dark days of the northern kingdom and its ungodly demise (see 2 Kings 17), as well as the whimpering end of the southern kingdom and its exile were brought about because the administrators left to care for God's vineyard thought they could possess it for themselves.
Now, in God's last-ditch effort to rescue the estate, God is sending the heir to heaven's throne, the Son himself. And on the Monday or Tuesday of Holy Week, when Jesus first spoke these words, the last administrators of the vineyard were about to kill the Son out of the deluded fantasy that suddenly the world would belong to them.
Jesus, in telling this story, seems to be giving the priests and elders, the Sadducees and Pharisees, one last opportunity to give up their petty ethics among thieves and learn again the morality of the kingdom. And even if they don't take to the lesson, we ought to give it another listen.
Application
In What Is the Kingdom of Heaven? Arthur Clutton-Brock tells a powerful story of his childhood. He was out for a walk with his sitter, traipsing along a country lane. At a house just before them, three children were romping through the yard, playing games and laughing delightedly. They had climbed a small sycamore tree, gathering leaves and tossing them into the air. They broke off the tender branches from the top of the tree, covered at the time with blazing bronzed leaves, and carried them in a bundle like a bouquet of flowers.
When Arthur and his sitter passed by, the children ran out into the lane and danced about them. Then they presented the bouquet of branches to Arthur in a ceremony of great pomp. It was a magical moment of grace and beauty.
But for some reason, said Arthur, whether from fear or from pride, he refused the gift offered. He ran after his sitter and when they were shortly down the path he turned round to look at the three. He saw them standing in the middle of the road, faces suddenly dragging on the ground. The laughter was gone, and all the pretty flowers they had made were spilled around them in the dust.
Looking back on that moment, Clutton-Brock said, "I felt, in that moment, that I had turned my back on the kingdom of God. Something had been offered to me in love, and I hadn't taken it!" He also said that the sight of those three disappointed faces has haunted him all his life.
The haunting of our lives is the gap between what we know to be truly significant and our own actions that betray days lived by secondary values and systems. Like Israel on the run from Pharaoh, like Paul shifting his theological sights from law to grace, like religious leaders in Jesus' day who were so busy taking care of business that they forgot what business they were in, we need to be haunted back to God.
So it is with faith. The words we speak in testimony mean little until our feet carry us home. That is why the Bible is so insistent on behaviors that go beyond legalism to faith, beyond law-keeping to covenant living, beyond mere morality to something radical "on beyond" perfection. What we believe is written in a story penned anew each day. The test of our relationship with God is not the bent of our theology but the grace with which we receive flowers of the kingdom and the attitude we bear toward all God had made.
An Alternative Application
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20. While the Ten Commandments are often taught or preached by way of a series of messages on each topic, today might be a good day to help people see the whole as a single unit, and dig into the Covenant purposes that gave rise to its expression in the first place. There is enough material above to warrant focusing on just the Ten Commandments and how they form a powerful link between God and God's people, not just in terms of behaviors, but reflecting a cosmic world-and-life view.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 19
(See the Preaching the Psalm column for September 18, for a reflection on the inadequacy of human language to worship the divine, as expressed in v. 3: "There is no speech, nor are there words ...")
"Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer" (Psalm 19:14). With the words of that prayer, many preachers habitually begin their sermons. That verse admirably expresses the complexity of the act of preaching, at least from the preacher's standpoint. For it is not the words alone that carry the message, but the whole demeanor of the one speaking them. If preaching is, as Philipps Brooks famously remarked, "truth communicated through personality," then "the meditation of the heart" is indeed a vital part of the equation. Part of it, also, is the attentive listening of the congregation. Through these various parties, all collectively contributing to the act of preaching, the Holy Spirit is active.
Some scholars have speculated that Psalm 19 is two separate psalms, verses 1-6 and verses 7-14 -- so abrupt is the change in tone between verses 6 and 7. The first part emphasizes God the creator, and the second, God the lawgiver. Yet, on the other hand, both halves are effusive songs of praise (in other words, they belong to the same genre), so it's very possible that the psalmist is just changing gears here, introducing another reason why the Lord is to be praised. In terms of Old Testament theology, the law is seen as intimately bound to the created order anyway -- as in the Genesis creation account, when God's having rested on the seventh day is seen as the foundation of the fourth commandment.
There is another change, of sorts, between verses 10 and 11 -- from corporate to individual prayer. Having finished praising the creation and the law, the psalmist next reflects upon his own particular relationship to the law. The law warns him, protecting him from sin -- although there is an honest acknowledgment that, even with the law to guide him, he does not always succeed in being obedient. He still needs to pray that the Lord "clears [him] from hidden faults" (v. 12).
In the large context of the psalm, then, the closing inscription is not meant to be used in the way it is typically used today (as a pre-sermon prayer for illumination). Rather, it is a heartfelt prayer by this poet, who has just ruminated on the importance of the law, that the Lord protect him from breaking the law, in word or thought.
A sermon on this verse could reflect upon the reality of sin -- how it is not only a question of deeds, but a question of thoughts as well. Jesus' famous teaching about "committing adultery in the heart" (Matthew 5:28) belongs very much to this rabbinical tradition, understanding how pervasive sin can be.
