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The Parable of God
Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis April 9, 2006, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Isaiah 5:1-7 Mark 12:1-12
In Mark the pomp and circumstance of Palm Sunday lasts for but a moment. The very next day Jesus enters the temple and, with no hint of hesitation according to Mark, he cleanses it. That is to say, he puts an end to religion, religion being what people believe in instead of believing in God! He drives out the money changers, to be specific, and so calls a halt to the sacrificial system of temple worship lest our humanly devised means of grace be confused with the costly grace of God about to be revealed on the cross! Make no mistake: this is not about Judaism, for he would do the same today in his church! In the eyes of the religious authorities then and now, of course, Jesus’ rage against religion does not cleanse but defiles the dwelling place of God on earth. It is an act that further infuriates the chief priests and scribes who, by now, are out for blood. Therefore on Tuesday morning, when Jesus enters the city again after having spent the night in Bethany, the chief priests, scribes and elders are lying in wait for him at the entrance of the temple. “By what authority do you do these things?” they demand to know. “Who gave you authority to do them?” In good rabbinic fashion, Jesus counters their question with a question: “Did the baptism of John come from heaven or was it of human origin. Answer me.” But the chief priests, scribes and elders cannot. For if they say “from heaven,” they admit their rejection of the servant God has sent to them; and if they say John’s baptism was merely his own fine idea, the crowds—who loved John and believed he was sent from God—will have at them. “We do not know,” they finally concede aloud, all the while believing the actions of Jesus as well as John to be of human origin, to be blasphemous. Neither will you know, says Jesus in so many words, by what authority I act. Then, according to Mark, Jesus begins to speak to them in parables. Parables, as you know, are dense little tales—sometimes only a sentence or two, sometimes a spare story with many scenes. Poetic in the “shock of recognition” they call out of any who have ears to hear, parables are as enigmatic as they are revelatory. I think Jesus speaks in parables because, more than any other literary genre, parables coincide with the hiddenness of God which remains, even as God is being made known through seeds growing secretly or leaven lurking in a loaf. On one hand, the parables of Jesus are so familiar that we barely listen, thinking we know the point. On the other hand, parables do not give up their meaning without the sort of struggle that demands of us our very souls! We would do well, therefore, at the end of a season of Sundays given over to listening for God’s address in Jesus’ parables, to consider just how it is a parable both reveals and conceals the God who is revealed and concealed supremely in the One who speaks in parables. In the first place parables invite us into the familiar world of “darning and the eight-fifteen”. We enter innocently only to find ourselves face to face with a mystery that demands our complete surrender. To put it another way, parables concede to us the world as we have ordered it [think of the beginning of the workers in the vineyard, the prodigal son, the lost sheep, the sower, the good Samaritan]; then without our realizing what or who is coming toward us, the world we know is overturned to reveal a kingdom reordered by God’s gracious reign. Depending on where you stand within the parable when those tables are overturned, you may rejoice with exceeding great joy or reject the grace thus proffered. The triumphal entry and the scene in the temple are parabolic as well! In any case, those with ears to hear are left naked and needing to decide which world they finally will inhabit. In the second place, the truth revealed within the world of the parable can be known only through the parable. We cannot distill a moral point or construct a theological proposition apart from the parable and then discard the parable as if it were no longer necessary. We can know the truth it tells, the world it proposes, only as that truth is embodied through the story. In the third place, a true parable resists sedimented meaning: this stands exactly for that and that for this…forever…end of discussion! Many times the gospel writer or the early church tried to attach fixed meanings to Jesus’ parables, meanings that underscored their own theological certitude. Such readings have been dubbed “allegorical”. But parables rightly heard resist our desire for control. Rather each hearer must enter into the parable anew and decide, at the turn, where he stands and whom she must serve. To wit: “A man,” Jesus begins, “planted a vineyard” evoking both the landscape around Jerusalem and the words of the prophet Isaiah we read moments ago. The chief priests, scribes and Pharisees lean in: Jesus places them in familiar territory, Israel being the vineyard literally as well as figuratively. The owner is portrayed as a foreigner, again a recognizable detail in that large areas of the land were held by absentee landlords in Jesus’ day. But unlike the image of the vineyard in Isaiah where the productivity of the vineyard and so the obedience of Israel is the issue [the vineyard was yielding wild grapes], in this parable, say most commentators, the issue is the tenants who have been given oversight of the vineyard. Allegorically read, an interpretation would go something like this: the owner of the vineyard is God; the vineyard is God’s chosen people Israel; the tenants to whom the vineyard is leased are the religious leaders. This is why the chief priests and scribes perceive Jesus was telling the parable against them! Because the law held that the owner was due a percentage of the produce—a tithe, perhaps--the owner of the vineyard sends a slave—allegorically, God sent the prophets—to collect from the tenants his share. They seize him, beat him and send him away empty-handed. Another is sent and this one is beaten over the head—allegorically a reference to John the Baptist. The owner continues to send slaves who are variously beaten or killed. Then, finally, Jesus continues, “He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’” Allegorically, Jesus must be speaking of his own rejection by those to whom he is speaking, a rejection that has a long history and is about to reach its zenith on the cross at Golgotha. Yet if in these words reworked by Mark and recast by the early church we only hear an allegory whose meaning is transparent, then I suspect we will have missed the more startling truth Jesus has to tell. So obvious is our rejection of God’s messengers, even up until this day, that this cannot be the parabolic turn Jesus’ words would have us take. Listen again! For what is really astounding in the parable is not the behavior of the tenants but the behavior of the owner. He plants a vineyard, provides the usual protective structures around the land and then takes off, entrusting his property to complete strangers. Nuts! Moreover throughout the parable he remains at a distance, an absentee landlord, unseen and known only by those whom he sends to deliver his message. His message is minimal: he means to collect only his share. Yet one by one his messengers are beaten, rebuffed, insulted and killed. He sends them to the tenants defenseless, with neither the power nor the authority that might hold sway. Why on earth this does not end his attempts to get through to his tenants, God only knows! “Although the action of [the tenants] is difficult to comprehend,” writes New Testament scholar Eduard Schweizer, “the action of the owner is far more incomprehensible—[because it is] the gracious action of God.” Grace, in the world we know best, is incomprehensible and only becomes more so as this parable concludes. Late in time in the story we hear the owner speak for the first time, saying as if to justify his sending of the beloved and only son, “They will respect my son.” We are dumbfounded! Surely we are dealing with an idiot whose refusal to give up on these tenants--his refusal to believe they will not respond to his claim--now will result in the death of his own son! The parable, as it turns out, is not about the tenants’ rejection but about the owner’s gracious initiative even his own son’s death will not defeat. Likely the parable Jesus told ended with a question: “What then will the owner of the vineyard do?” We, of course, know what he will do, what he has done, what he continues to do. The owner has not given up on you or on me and so he sends his son, his only son, his beloved still to this vineyard. In fact the one telling the story is the One whom he has sent: is the parable of God. In his flesh and in the first place, he cedes to us the humanity we know so well, entering the world as we have ordered it, and in that same flesh, we meet the God who will not give up on us. In the second place, we are given no way to the truth of God’s love for us except through his life and death, through the events of the week ahead. Were we to formulate a moral principle or a theological proposition based on his teachings, say, we would miss the person without whom we never could glimpse God’s grace. Finally, the parable of God whom we know in Jesus Christ resists our every attempt to control him, to limit the truth he has to tell, to claim for ourselves the inheritance that is his alone to give away. By what authority does the son do these things: by the authority of the God whose love is stronger than death. Have you not read this scripture? “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our sight!” Thanks be to God. |