Kingdoms In Conflict
Sermon
Sermons On The Gospel Readings
Series II, Cycle A
Object:
When Vince Lombardi was hired as head coach of the Green Bay Packers in 1958, the team was in dismal shape. A single win in season play the year before had socked the club solidly into the basement of the NFL, and sportscasters everywhere used it as the butt of loser jokes. But Lombardi picked and pulled and prodded and trained and discipled the players into become a winning team. They were NFL champions in three consecutive seasons, and took the game honors for the first two Super Bowls.
Lombardi was a drill sergeant and a strategist, finding and developing the best in each of his players individually and then crafting a team community that could visualize the prize. "Winning isn't everything," he was often quoted as saying, "It's the only thing!" His Packers proved him true, time and again.
Where's The Team?
Coaching is nothing without a team that responds. Leaders are merely overblown egos if there is no one who will follow. During the tumultuous French Revolution of 1789, mobs and madmen rushed through Paris streets. One journalist reported a wide-eyed, wild-haired wastrel lumbering along one day, feverishly demanding from all he saw, "Where is the crowd? I must find them! I am their leader!"
This is the problem Jesus pointedly identifies in his parable. God is the greatest coach, but the team is unwilling to follow. Because of that, people mill about or wander aimlessly. England prior to Churchill was a patchwork of competing ideologies stymied at the crossroads of the twentieth century's critical international events. India before Gandhi lacked cohesive identity and played a game of competitive kowtowing to expatriate authorities, and it was only turned around when he helped inspire a national common cause. Even more tragic is the situation in the kingdom of heaven.
The problem, as Jesus' story puts it, is that the great leader has come -- twice over, in fact -- but those who are sub-coaches think they can play the game without a head coach. They use a different playbook and try to win minor trophies that will gather dust on their mantles, rather than looking for the winning season that would honor the owner.
Quick History Lesson
Jesus' short story mirrors the vast sweep of biblical theology, and frames it in the strong political language that opens the Pentateuch. In the world of the Bible, Genesis functions as the prologue to the covenant God makes with Israel at Mount Sinai (Exodus 20-24). Modeled after the Suzerain-Vassal covenants widely used in that day to organize affairs between kings and subjects, these covenants had standardized parts. The prologue rehearsed the background to the making of the covenant, and gave reasons why it was necessary. Thus Genesis was built, literarily, in four major sections that each helped ancient Israel understand a portion of the historical necessity that brought about this treaty ratification. Chapters 1-11 told of the good world God created and also the nasty civil war that threatened to destroy it. Chapters 12-25 spoke of Abraham and the way that God selected him to head the team which would become the advance troops in taking back God's world from the evil intruders. Chapters 26-36 are a character study of how Jacob became "Israel" (one who struggles with God) and thus bequeathed the nation with a name and an identity. Finally, Genesis 37-50 focused on Joseph, and described how the nation eventually wound up in Egypt, from which it had so recently emerged. The result was a new and winning team that would form God's estate among the rest of the nations of the world. This is the picture Jesus presents in summary form in his parable.
In Israel's world there were three kinds of covenants regularly made. The first was a "Parity Agreement" which shaped relations between individuals of similar social rank in the ancient world (think of Jacob and Laban forming their parity treaty at the end of Genesis 31). In addition there were two varieties of king-subject covenants. One was a "Royal Grant." This was essentially a gift bestowed by a person of power and political privilege upon someone down-caste a rung or more. Usually the king noticed an act of bravery in battle, or striking beauty in the ballroom, or uncommon beneficence in bearing, and gave a gift in public recognition. One obvious example is that of Persian king, Xerxes, honoring Mordecai in the story of Esther (chs. 3-6). The Royal Grant was always a one-way act, with no specific reciprocal deed required.
The second type of king-subject covenant was known as the "Suzerain-Vassal Treaty." It was quite different from the Royal Grant. It moved on a two-way street, with both parties giving and expecting much. When a Suzerain-Vassal Treaty was ratified, kings would provide safety and food and shelter and relief and community building grants, while the people were obligated to pay taxes, offer troops for the regiments, send food supplies, and enlist in government work projects. Rather than merely a bequest awarded by one to the other as was true with the Royal Grant, the Suzerain-Vassal treaty ensured that both parties invest in the relationship.
Interestingly, in the series of covenants developed between God and Abram in Genesis 12-17, the first three (Genesis 12, 13, 15) appear to be "Royal Grants." Each time a gift is proffered -- land (twice) and a biological heir who will help establish a great Abram-family nation. Strikingly, after each Royal Grant is spoken, Abram seems to lose confidence in the gift. Rather than stay in the land of promise, he runs to Egypt to find better grazing for his crops and food sources for his crew. Similarly, instead of mating again with wife Sarai to realize a biological heir, Abram and the younger Hagar bond to produce Ishmael. Three times God makes Royal Grants with Abram, and each time Abram takes matters into his own hands.
In the fourth covenant ceremony in Genesis 17, however, God changed tactics, and Abram came out of the deal with a transformed heart. There God established a Suzerain-Vassal covenant. In it God promised land and blessings and descendents, but God also called Abram to respond with faith and fealty. Abram was not merely the target of a nice gift; he was now called to share the mind and the mission of the Maker. God declared name changes for Abram and Sarai, and also required the act of circumcision which would publicly mark all the males of the family as "owned" by God.
The outcome to this fourth covenant-making event was strikingly different than that following the previous three. Most notably, when pushed to the limit of trust in Genesis 22, the new Abraham gave evidence that his covenant relationship with God superseded all other loyalties and commitments. Because of the Suzerain-Vassal covenant established in Genesis 17, faith stuck deeply in Abraham's life.
Of course, for the Israelites at Mount Sinai who reviewed this history, the lesson was clear. God's gifts alone do not bind us into God's redemptive enterprises. A faith response and loyal service round out the picture. Without investment on our part, no great blessing of God lingers for our enjoyment. Abraham and his descendents form a great team because they have a great coach who gives the right incentives and demands the right stuff in return.
This is the plot underlying Jesus' words in the parable of the tenants. Israel was blessed by God to share in the divine enterprise of making the garden come alive on planet earth. Unfortunately, too many of the leaders among the people had other ideas, and set themselves up as alternative kings, thinking they could divert the treasures of the kingdom into their own bank accounts. The result was the religious confusion that plagued Israel throughout its later history. Even the prophets could not steer the nation back to obedience and trust for the original great coach and leader.
Whose Fault Is It?
Abbott and Costello entranced an earlier generation with their sidesplitting routine "Who's on First." Pretending to discuss the players of a baseball team, names were confused with positions until tracking the game became an exercise in futility.
Among the religious discussions of Jesus' day, there was a similar confusion of identities. For some, evil was inherent in the system like yin's twin yang. For others, humans had incurred the wrath of the gods and were punished through the spread of vices that flowed out of Pandora's mythical box. Others still believed divine perfection was trapped by a mean-spirited creator into the corrupt and forgetful stuff of human flesh, waiting magical gnostic liberation.
Jesus' design in his sweeping tale is to give a different view of the origins of evil. God is good; creation is good; and human alienation from the good is a late introduction brought about by our sinful choices. For Jesus' audience of religious leaders, the message communicated was that all of humanity had the same opportunities to remain in fellowship with the creator, and all are equally responsible for their distance from God.
But Jesus also couched the story in swaddling folds of never-ending grace. Time after time God initiated a restoration of relationships with humanity. All are welcome to be part of the team. As part of our latter days, in fact, God sent in Jesus to spur the team to new spiritual victories. Jesus is the expression of God's righteousness inserted recently into our world, and the means by which we are attached to the righteous endeavors of God. He is the glue that binds the team together and keeps them connected both to the owner and the game.
By this time, according to Matthew, Jesus has clearly expressed his divine power and wisdom. Enough so, in fact, that he can begin to speak about the sacrificial death toward which he is heading. In these verses he almost shouts out what is about to happen, hoping to shock us into spiritual recovery in a kind of critical intervention. Winning, for Jesus, means playing by a set of rules that has not been used for a long time on planet earth. It is like the "deep magic" of Aslan in C. S. Lewis' great tale, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Most don't understand it, but without it the game becomes a never-ending cycle of violence in which there are only losers.
Forging A New Team
For that reason Jesus gives a brief exhortation about the characteristics that mark those on his team. It is not self-preservation but service that counts. It is not superiority but selflessness that wins points. It is not stridency but sacrifice that finds recognition from the owner of the club. Jesus is building a team that will change the world. Unfortunately, on that day, too few people seemed willing to show up at the try-outs.
There is a scene in Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring, where a partnership is forged among those who would accompany Frodo on his journey to destroy the ring of power. The movie version makes for a very gripping visual illustration, and the original literary text is equally as moving. What comes through is a sense of selflessness as the bond that unites these creatures. Furthermore, each subsumes his will to the greater cause, and trusts an unseen and transcendent good for an outcome that will bless all of Middle Earth, even if the trek itself causes the demise of any or all of the compatriots.
So it is in Jesus' small glimpse of the mission of God. In a world turned cold to its creator, in an age riddled by Delphic oracles and temple prostitutes and emperors claiming divinity, in a little corner of geography where messianic hopes ran high, God called together a strange team to make its mark by playing a different game.
Walter Wangerin Jr., in his great allegory, The Book of the Dun Cow (along with its wonderful sequel, The Book of Sorrows), captures both the scope of the divine mission as well as the under-rated character of the team. If the focus remains on the team apart from the mission, the point is lost. God is reclaiming God's creation, but does so through human agency. The game is fierce and the playing field is rough. Only those who can tear up their personal score sheets in order get into God's game will make the team. Only they are truly called. Only they are equipped to serve and follow and play on the greatest winning team of all time.
Jesus is on the road to the cross, and he calls others to join him in that pilgrimage. The cost of discipleship, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, is self-denial, and Jesus' words are a strong call to that vocation, not as an end in itself or as a means to a self-help goal (like dieting), but rather as a counter-cultural missional testimony. Those who travel this road do not get to Easter without first enduring Good Friday; they do not presume a glorious outcome that gathers the media like paparazzi vultures, but sense that the journey of service brings light in darkness, hope in despair, healing for pain, and faith where power corrupts and destroys.
Have you entered the cause? Amen.
Lombardi was a drill sergeant and a strategist, finding and developing the best in each of his players individually and then crafting a team community that could visualize the prize. "Winning isn't everything," he was often quoted as saying, "It's the only thing!" His Packers proved him true, time and again.
Where's The Team?
Coaching is nothing without a team that responds. Leaders are merely overblown egos if there is no one who will follow. During the tumultuous French Revolution of 1789, mobs and madmen rushed through Paris streets. One journalist reported a wide-eyed, wild-haired wastrel lumbering along one day, feverishly demanding from all he saw, "Where is the crowd? I must find them! I am their leader!"
This is the problem Jesus pointedly identifies in his parable. God is the greatest coach, but the team is unwilling to follow. Because of that, people mill about or wander aimlessly. England prior to Churchill was a patchwork of competing ideologies stymied at the crossroads of the twentieth century's critical international events. India before Gandhi lacked cohesive identity and played a game of competitive kowtowing to expatriate authorities, and it was only turned around when he helped inspire a national common cause. Even more tragic is the situation in the kingdom of heaven.
The problem, as Jesus' story puts it, is that the great leader has come -- twice over, in fact -- but those who are sub-coaches think they can play the game without a head coach. They use a different playbook and try to win minor trophies that will gather dust on their mantles, rather than looking for the winning season that would honor the owner.
Quick History Lesson
Jesus' short story mirrors the vast sweep of biblical theology, and frames it in the strong political language that opens the Pentateuch. In the world of the Bible, Genesis functions as the prologue to the covenant God makes with Israel at Mount Sinai (Exodus 20-24). Modeled after the Suzerain-Vassal covenants widely used in that day to organize affairs between kings and subjects, these covenants had standardized parts. The prologue rehearsed the background to the making of the covenant, and gave reasons why it was necessary. Thus Genesis was built, literarily, in four major sections that each helped ancient Israel understand a portion of the historical necessity that brought about this treaty ratification. Chapters 1-11 told of the good world God created and also the nasty civil war that threatened to destroy it. Chapters 12-25 spoke of Abraham and the way that God selected him to head the team which would become the advance troops in taking back God's world from the evil intruders. Chapters 26-36 are a character study of how Jacob became "Israel" (one who struggles with God) and thus bequeathed the nation with a name and an identity. Finally, Genesis 37-50 focused on Joseph, and described how the nation eventually wound up in Egypt, from which it had so recently emerged. The result was a new and winning team that would form God's estate among the rest of the nations of the world. This is the picture Jesus presents in summary form in his parable.
In Israel's world there were three kinds of covenants regularly made. The first was a "Parity Agreement" which shaped relations between individuals of similar social rank in the ancient world (think of Jacob and Laban forming their parity treaty at the end of Genesis 31). In addition there were two varieties of king-subject covenants. One was a "Royal Grant." This was essentially a gift bestowed by a person of power and political privilege upon someone down-caste a rung or more. Usually the king noticed an act of bravery in battle, or striking beauty in the ballroom, or uncommon beneficence in bearing, and gave a gift in public recognition. One obvious example is that of Persian king, Xerxes, honoring Mordecai in the story of Esther (chs. 3-6). The Royal Grant was always a one-way act, with no specific reciprocal deed required.
The second type of king-subject covenant was known as the "Suzerain-Vassal Treaty." It was quite different from the Royal Grant. It moved on a two-way street, with both parties giving and expecting much. When a Suzerain-Vassal Treaty was ratified, kings would provide safety and food and shelter and relief and community building grants, while the people were obligated to pay taxes, offer troops for the regiments, send food supplies, and enlist in government work projects. Rather than merely a bequest awarded by one to the other as was true with the Royal Grant, the Suzerain-Vassal treaty ensured that both parties invest in the relationship.
Interestingly, in the series of covenants developed between God and Abram in Genesis 12-17, the first three (Genesis 12, 13, 15) appear to be "Royal Grants." Each time a gift is proffered -- land (twice) and a biological heir who will help establish a great Abram-family nation. Strikingly, after each Royal Grant is spoken, Abram seems to lose confidence in the gift. Rather than stay in the land of promise, he runs to Egypt to find better grazing for his crops and food sources for his crew. Similarly, instead of mating again with wife Sarai to realize a biological heir, Abram and the younger Hagar bond to produce Ishmael. Three times God makes Royal Grants with Abram, and each time Abram takes matters into his own hands.
In the fourth covenant ceremony in Genesis 17, however, God changed tactics, and Abram came out of the deal with a transformed heart. There God established a Suzerain-Vassal covenant. In it God promised land and blessings and descendents, but God also called Abram to respond with faith and fealty. Abram was not merely the target of a nice gift; he was now called to share the mind and the mission of the Maker. God declared name changes for Abram and Sarai, and also required the act of circumcision which would publicly mark all the males of the family as "owned" by God.
The outcome to this fourth covenant-making event was strikingly different than that following the previous three. Most notably, when pushed to the limit of trust in Genesis 22, the new Abraham gave evidence that his covenant relationship with God superseded all other loyalties and commitments. Because of the Suzerain-Vassal covenant established in Genesis 17, faith stuck deeply in Abraham's life.
Of course, for the Israelites at Mount Sinai who reviewed this history, the lesson was clear. God's gifts alone do not bind us into God's redemptive enterprises. A faith response and loyal service round out the picture. Without investment on our part, no great blessing of God lingers for our enjoyment. Abraham and his descendents form a great team because they have a great coach who gives the right incentives and demands the right stuff in return.
This is the plot underlying Jesus' words in the parable of the tenants. Israel was blessed by God to share in the divine enterprise of making the garden come alive on planet earth. Unfortunately, too many of the leaders among the people had other ideas, and set themselves up as alternative kings, thinking they could divert the treasures of the kingdom into their own bank accounts. The result was the religious confusion that plagued Israel throughout its later history. Even the prophets could not steer the nation back to obedience and trust for the original great coach and leader.
Whose Fault Is It?
Abbott and Costello entranced an earlier generation with their sidesplitting routine "Who's on First." Pretending to discuss the players of a baseball team, names were confused with positions until tracking the game became an exercise in futility.
Among the religious discussions of Jesus' day, there was a similar confusion of identities. For some, evil was inherent in the system like yin's twin yang. For others, humans had incurred the wrath of the gods and were punished through the spread of vices that flowed out of Pandora's mythical box. Others still believed divine perfection was trapped by a mean-spirited creator into the corrupt and forgetful stuff of human flesh, waiting magical gnostic liberation.
Jesus' design in his sweeping tale is to give a different view of the origins of evil. God is good; creation is good; and human alienation from the good is a late introduction brought about by our sinful choices. For Jesus' audience of religious leaders, the message communicated was that all of humanity had the same opportunities to remain in fellowship with the creator, and all are equally responsible for their distance from God.
But Jesus also couched the story in swaddling folds of never-ending grace. Time after time God initiated a restoration of relationships with humanity. All are welcome to be part of the team. As part of our latter days, in fact, God sent in Jesus to spur the team to new spiritual victories. Jesus is the expression of God's righteousness inserted recently into our world, and the means by which we are attached to the righteous endeavors of God. He is the glue that binds the team together and keeps them connected both to the owner and the game.
By this time, according to Matthew, Jesus has clearly expressed his divine power and wisdom. Enough so, in fact, that he can begin to speak about the sacrificial death toward which he is heading. In these verses he almost shouts out what is about to happen, hoping to shock us into spiritual recovery in a kind of critical intervention. Winning, for Jesus, means playing by a set of rules that has not been used for a long time on planet earth. It is like the "deep magic" of Aslan in C. S. Lewis' great tale, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Most don't understand it, but without it the game becomes a never-ending cycle of violence in which there are only losers.
Forging A New Team
For that reason Jesus gives a brief exhortation about the characteristics that mark those on his team. It is not self-preservation but service that counts. It is not superiority but selflessness that wins points. It is not stridency but sacrifice that finds recognition from the owner of the club. Jesus is building a team that will change the world. Unfortunately, on that day, too few people seemed willing to show up at the try-outs.
There is a scene in Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring, where a partnership is forged among those who would accompany Frodo on his journey to destroy the ring of power. The movie version makes for a very gripping visual illustration, and the original literary text is equally as moving. What comes through is a sense of selflessness as the bond that unites these creatures. Furthermore, each subsumes his will to the greater cause, and trusts an unseen and transcendent good for an outcome that will bless all of Middle Earth, even if the trek itself causes the demise of any or all of the compatriots.
So it is in Jesus' small glimpse of the mission of God. In a world turned cold to its creator, in an age riddled by Delphic oracles and temple prostitutes and emperors claiming divinity, in a little corner of geography where messianic hopes ran high, God called together a strange team to make its mark by playing a different game.
Walter Wangerin Jr., in his great allegory, The Book of the Dun Cow (along with its wonderful sequel, The Book of Sorrows), captures both the scope of the divine mission as well as the under-rated character of the team. If the focus remains on the team apart from the mission, the point is lost. God is reclaiming God's creation, but does so through human agency. The game is fierce and the playing field is rough. Only those who can tear up their personal score sheets in order get into God's game will make the team. Only they are truly called. Only they are equipped to serve and follow and play on the greatest winning team of all time.
Jesus is on the road to the cross, and he calls others to join him in that pilgrimage. The cost of discipleship, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, is self-denial, and Jesus' words are a strong call to that vocation, not as an end in itself or as a means to a self-help goal (like dieting), but rather as a counter-cultural missional testimony. Those who travel this road do not get to Easter without first enduring Good Friday; they do not presume a glorious outcome that gathers the media like paparazzi vultures, but sense that the journey of service brings light in darkness, hope in despair, healing for pain, and faith where power corrupts and destroys.
Have you entered the cause? Amen.
