Can Orthodoxy Survive in Secular Sweden?
Are you ambivalent?
At that time, as Jesus was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, he saw two boats by the lake; but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had ceased speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” And when they had done this, they enclosed a great shoal of fish; and as their nets were breaking, they beckoned to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” For he was astonished, and all who were with him, at the catch of fish which they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; henceforth you will be catching men.” And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.
Luke 5:1-11
John Chrysostom commented on this story and he said that this was the second time that Peter was called by Jesus. Why did he say that?
In the gospel of John, Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist, and the next day he meets Andrew, Peter and other disciples. But in this gospel story from Luke,
A few chapters earlier it says that John the Baptist was put into prison. Today’s story takes place after John the Baptist was put into prison.
John Chrysostom points out that Jesus is using Peter’s boat to sit and teach the crowd. Jesus already knew Peter in today’s story. Jesus had healed Peter’s mother-in-law just a few days earlier (in Luke 4). John Chrysostom also points out that when Jesus met Peter the first time, Peter’s name was Simon, but Jesus gave him the nickname Peter. But in today’s story, Peter is already called Peter. This is the second time Jesus calls Peter to come and follow him.
Why did Jesus need to call Peter two times? Didn’t Peter follow him the first time? I think it was a very difficult thing for the disciples to leave everything and follow Jesus. I think they needed time. I think some of them started to follow him but needed to go home and take care of some business, and then came back. I don’t think it was a simple thing for them to leave all their obligations and wander around from village to village with Jesus.
Perhaps one of the biggest hinderances for Peter was that his mother-in-law was sick and he was obligated to care for her. James and John had a father called Zebedee. Someone needed to care for him.
What has always bothered me about this story is that it appears that Jesus just doesn’t care. One person comes to Jesus and says, “let me bury my father and then I will follow you.” And Jesus says, “let the dead bury the dead.” It sounds like Jesus doesn’t care. In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. Jesus does care.
What the disciples were experiencing when they first encountered Jesus was ambivalence. When we are ambivalent we want two different things. Although we know we cannot have both we want both. We stand there like deer in the headlights and we cannot choose.
Ambivalence is our inability to accept the truth about which problem in life is the biggest problem in life. There are many problems. Many challenges that we need to grapple with in life. For example, I need to eat. That’s a problem I have to solve. I need to get a job and work and buy food. I need shelter.
What about the problem of the government? The problem of social issues? Those people over there are doing bad things. That government is doing bad things. That religious group over there is doing and teaching the wrong thing.
Another problem that we need to solve in life is fitting in. Humans are social animals. God made us that way. e need to fit in. We need to be part of the team, part of the tribe. We need friends.
These are not non-issues. These are critical issues for our health. What happens when we are surrounded by people who are alienated and disgusted by our faith and our worldview and by our values? Or what if we are surrounded by Christian people who hate the sobriety and solemnity of our Orthodox faith? What if we have friends who think that the most important part of church Is entertainment and the fueling of an emotional addiction? What if these friends of ours can barely contain or hide their utter dismay at the way our Orthodox faith does not even try to cater to those passions? What if we have friends who think that religious people are reactionary and dangerous?
These are legitimate problems and concerns. Our pain and our anxiety are legitimate.Jesus does not dismiss our problems. Jesus knows more about them than we do.
In today’s gospel Peter has an empty boat which Jesus uses to preach from. All the people thronged around Jesus and he was about to fall into the water. So he gets into Peter’s empty boat. Peter has time to row Jesus out into the water because Peter had not caught any fish the whole night before. Peter does not have any fish to take to the market. Peter has nothing better to do this day because he has not caught any fish.
John Chrysostom points out that when Jesus came to Peter and James and John they were mending their nets. And John Chrysostom says that this shows how poor these fishermen were. When the nets were breaking and wearing out they did not have enough money to buy new ones so they had to patch them up by hand. So not only have they caught nothing this day, their nets are also old and worn out they can barely manage even when the do catch fish.
When we suffer from our ambivalence we find that whatever it is that we allow to compete with our dedication to Jesus, whatever that is, is itself always going to fail, regardless. If we do not allow our minds and our hearts to follow Jesus completely then our sin and our bitterness and our anger and our resentment are always going to undermine whatever we were hoping to accomplish. Unless God founds the city, the builders build in vain, say the scriptures.
Unless the highest truth in our minds is Christ, unless the truth we speak loudest about is Jesus, unless the first person to whom we belong is Jesus, all other things will fail to some degree or another.
For example, we allow our minds to be colonized by the foreign invaders called news anchors and pundits. We allow them to come in and occupy our living rooms all evening. We allow politics to sit on the throne of our hearts. When that happens, we find that although we try to care about the salvation of the world we cannot muster any power of imagination to imagine that people would actually meet Jesus and believe. We begin to struggle to imagine how Jesus could change their lives. The evidence for the fact that we lose our imagination is how utterly committed we become to a message of condemnation and alarm. There is nothing imaginative or hopeful in condemnation. We have no joy left over, no hope for what the power of the Most High could mean for our neighbours. Because the rage of politics has ensnared us like a net, it has caught us. Rage and judgment and righteous indignation cripple our ability to hope and to imagine a world where the Saul who persecutes us can become Paul, the great apostle. We say, “those people are hopeless.” All our mental energy, all of our attention, all of our urgency is already devoured by the sea monster of political rage. We do not preach a message of hope but of doom. The solution we truly believe in is not Jesus, but policy and action.
People who can only express despair and dismay over the political situation in the world have nothing to offer a visitor to the church. There is no good news to be told, only judgment. The vitriol becomes toxic because political rage has no ability to see the power of God which is expressed in quiet humility and patience.
Some of us have a different problem. In our circle of friends, we self-censor and avoid bringing any attention to our faith. We try to pass as “normal. ” But when a friend of ours is in obvious pain, or has suffered a great loss, when someone needs us to believe for them, to hope for them, we find that we have sanitized our language from all mention of God so much that although we long to be able to tell the suffering person, “I will pray for you,” and although we long to actually sit and pray with them, we find that we cannot. We have almost forgotten how.
Whatever feeling of belonging we may have purchased is quickly lost because we become strangers to our true selves.
Not only are we failing to make the world a better place because of our rage, and not only are we failing to find true friendship and true companionship by pretending to be someone we are not, the net of our faith also becomes old and worn out. We are not catching fish and our nets are broken.
Then Jesus says, “let your nets down.”
When Jesus tells Peter to let his net down Peter is sceptical. Peter tells Jesus, “We were fishing all night and we didn’t catch anything.” Basically, Peter is saying, “look, Jesus, no disrespect, but there aren’t any fish to catch. We already tried. But because you told me to, I will try it.” Peter is humouring Jesus. It is safe for Peter to do this because he feels certain he will not lose face. Peter is getting ready to tell Jesus, when there are no fish, “It’s okay, Jesus, don’t feel bad. You’re not a fisherman, Jesus, you couldn’t have known that there were no fish there. (even if we did tell you). Don’t worry about it.” That’s what Peter thought he was going to say.
They let down the net and they catch so many fish that the nets are bursting and breaking. Maybe the nets are ruined now. Maybe this is the last catch of fish that these nets can manage to get to land.
The problem that Peter could not tear himself away from in order to follow Jesus was that he needed to catch fish and make a living. And now Jesus has shown that he is able to solve that problem. Jesus can give him fish. Jesus knows about our worries and concerns. And he does care. He is able to provide. He does provide.
Jesus does care about the things we are worried about too. Jesus does care what happens in our society. But his solution is different than ours. Jesus saves by preaching a righteousness that is greater than the Pharisees. He saves us by showing us a vision of humility, by allowing himself to be crucified.
Jesus does care about our need to belong. And his solution is to tell people, “come follow me.” Jesus creates a community by his obedience to his Father. By serving and loving.
As Orthodox Christians we have something that all our peers need. Jesus knew that he had something everyone needs. That is how he found companionship and community and a sense of belonging.
We will not see how Jesus is providing for us unless we also allow him to solve the one problem which is greater than all our other problems. There is one challenge that is more urgent than all the others and we cannot see how Jesus is filling our nets unless we figure out which problem is the biggest problem.
When Jesus fills Peter’s net with fish, Peter says to Jesus, “depart from me for I am a sinful man.” Peter has many problems and challenges and obligations. But suddenly he understands what his biggest problem is. He realizes what the one thing needful is. Peter’s biggest problem is that he is sinful, not that his mother in law needs help, not that he needs new nets, not that he didn’t catch any fish.
I don’t know about you, but I always imagined that the decision to follow Jesus was always a one-off take-it-or-leave-it moment of crisis. Each person made their mind up once and that was it. That is how the gospel stories sounded to me.
Today’s gospel suggests to us that it was not so simple even for Peter and the other apostles. Maybe that’s why Jesus is always saying, “no one who puts his hand to the plough and then turns back is worthy of me.” Because some believed but struggled. Some wanted to but did not know how. Some people did not think they were worthy.
Followers of Jesus struggle with ambivalence. Jesus does not judge us for our ambivalence. Rather, Jesus is waiting to help us conquer our ambivalence.
Peter’s words reveal his deepest fear and his deepest worry. “You can’t help me, Jesus. I am beyond help. There’s no point.” That is what Peter is saying. “I am going to mess up. I’m going to fail. I’m going to ruin your ministry, Jesus. Run away from me.”
Peter was willing to take a chance on letting Jesus find the fish in the water. But can Jesus find Peter in the deep dark ocean of sin? Can Jesus fish Peter out? Can Jesus take away his sins and make him whole?
Can Jesus heal your pain so that you can feel confident that his grace is sufficient for you? Can Jesus change you? Can Jesus give you peace even when the leaders and politicians have gone astray? Can Jesus make you shine with the light of his love? Can Jesus speak through you to suffering people and save them? That is the biggest question. And the answer is yes.
When Jesus dies for us on the cross he shows us that the only problem that matters is that I am a sinner and the sinful world is perishing. The biggest problem Is that I cannot become who I am created to be unless Jesus calls me to come and follow him.
When Peter realized that his greatest problem was his sinfulness and his lack of hope and faith Jesus gives him a lifeline. Jesus says, “I will make you a fisher of men.”
I know who you are. I am what you need. I am who you need to be. I am carrying the pain you feel. I am the resurrection and the life. Jesus says, “all power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”
Turn the news off.
Walk away.
Go mend the net of your hope and faith in the kingdom of God. So that you can become a fisher of men. Devote your energy and hope and urgency towards the redemption of the people you know.Reserve the throne in your heart for the one who can solve our biggest problem.
In the book of 1 Kings we read this story:
Elijah went … and found Elisha son of Shaphat. [Elisha] was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen, and he himself was driving the twelfth pair. Elijah went up to him and threw his cloak around him. Elisha then left his oxen and ran after Elijah.
“Let me kiss my father and mother goodbye,” he said, “and then I will come with you.” (literally: I will walk behind you)
“Go back,” Elijah replied. “I will not stop you.”
So Elisha left him and went back. He took his yoke of oxen and slaughtered them. He burned the plowing equipment to cook the meat and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he set out to follow Elijah and became his servant.
(1 Kings 19:19-21)
Elisha was called to become the apprentice to the greatest prophet Israel had ever known. He made his acceptance of that calling into a clear public statement of faith, and he dedicated his great choice to God as a sacrifice. He gathered people around the choice he had made. He did not only burn the plowing equipment, he burnt his bridges. Now there was no turning back. Elisha put himself in a position of such vulnerability towards God that he had to see how God provided for his needs since no one else could provide for him. Now he had no other livelihood so only God could help him.
Jesus, let me also slaughter the oxen of my worries, let me burn the yoke of my fears so that I may sacrifice together with you. Help me to put off my ambivalence and make myself dependent on you alone, so that I will always remember what is most urgent. Help me to walk behind you.
Take up your cross
ST. PAUL’S LETTER TO THE GALATIANS 2:16-20
Brethren, knowing that a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law, because by works of the law shall no one be justified. But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we ourselves were found to be sinners, is Christ then an agent of sin? Certainly not! But if I build up again those things which I tore down, then I prove myself a transgressor. For I through the law died to the law, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
MARK 8:34-38; 9:1
The Lord said: “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power.
We are reaching the end of the feast of the elevation of the cross. Great feasts in the Orthodox Church have a forefeast and an afterfeast. The forefeast in most cases is one day, and the afterfeast can be four, six or eight days, or in the case of Pascha 38 days.
The last day of the feast is called the apodosis, the summing up, Apodosis almost means the “saying goodbye” to the feast. Since the elevation of the cross was on Monday, tomorrow is the leavetaking and today is still the afterfeast.
All of this past week if we had been celebrating liturgies every day we would have heard gospel readings and epistle readings referring to the cross because of the feast of the elevation of the cross. “Take up your cross and follow me.” “We are crucified with Christ.” “The cross is a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles.” And so on, and so forth.
Sometimes I think we are desensitized to the meaning of the cross because we have so many beautiful and ornate crosses in our churches. It is perfectly fine and good to make a cross beautiful but we should not lose sight of the paradox that is involved when we do that. The cross was about as elegant as a hangman’s noose or a guillotine. The cross was an instrument of death and torture. And talking about death offends many modern people today. At the very least it makes them feel uncomfortable. Even many Christian are very uncomfortable with talking frankly about death.
One of the reasons we do not like to think about suffering and death is that we see our life as the period of time during which I get to experience as much as possible. Life is the time for me to find my true self-expression, to explore all the mystery of ME. Self-realization, fulfillment, the specialness of ME. Our society thinks that meaning in life comes from experiences. It’s like coloring in a picture. The more different experiences you have, the more the picture is coloured in.
Did you get to play on the sports team in school? Did you have a nice birthday party? Did you get to have a wedding? Was it amazing? Was it your dream wedding? Did you get to have kids? Did you get to go to college? Did you graduate? Did you get to see your grandchildren go to college? Did you travel? Did you own a house? Did you have a hobby? Did you achieve some fame and recognition in your career? Will they talk about you after you die? Did you keep fit as a fiddle at age 90, and swim thirty laps a day, and walk five miles a day until the day you died? Were you doing crossword puzzles on your 95th birthday? Were you amazing and noteworthy and special? Would someone tell your story on Facebook ten years after you died? Would you get more than fifty likes?
This way of viewing life takes the emptiness we feel, the sense of meaninglessness the lack of purpose, and it makes them the engine and the governing principle behind how we live at the expense of all other considerations. Life is seen as the time during which I must be allowed to fill my empty existence with everything I can possibly get my hands on.
But some people don’t get a lot of these experiences and good things. Some people never get to travel. Some people never get to go to university. Some people don’t even have a place to live.
So the me-centred way of viewing the world, the view in which my emptiness is king, says that either those people deserve to suffer because they haven’t worked hard enough. Or else the me-centred worldview says that poor suffering people wouldn’t have known how to enjoy the good things even if they had them. People whose lives are not filled with riches
and luxury and success and noteworthiness, ordinary people, suffering people, people who need a bit of extra help: these people are just seen as losers. What was the point of their existence? It would have been better if they had never been born. That is the logical conclusion of a worldview in which my emptiness is the guiding principle for all my choices.
I know one young man who has special needs which mean that he will probably never have a job or get married. He is fortunate to be able to live on his own, but he requires a lot of assistance even to make that happen.
His mother and father, people who have bought into the notion that the meaning of life is to consume and experience, these are people who think that your worth in life is how much you earn, they actually told him that if they had known how he would turn out they would have aborted him. That is the insidiousness of the materialistic view of life. It is hurtful and evil.
I read an article by a woman who is wheelchair bound. When she became pregnant the doctors just assumed that she didn’t want to keep the baby. “What if the baby turns out like you?” That was what the doctors were basically saying, even if they were somewhat subtler than that. They just assumed that her life wasn’t worth living. Actually, they assumed that her existence was worthless, was nothing but a tragedy and a mistake, because she could not experience the kinds of things they could, like running a marathon or skiing down a mountain. Because her life had challenges and pain therefore they saw it as worthless, something to be avoided at all costs. They completely discounted her as a person with a valuable perspective. They completely discounted her experience of life and her perspective as valuable because of the materialist view of the world.
When the empty person gets to the end of his empty life and all his attempts to fill it with experiences and things have failed to make it any less empty, when our bodies and minds give out and we can no longer try to fill our empty lives with things and pleasure we try to fill our existence with days and hours and minutes. The guiding principle changes from getting as many experiences and pleasures and things as possible to being a guiding principle of the fear of pain and fear of death.
This is a person who thinks that any pain is inhumane and unthinkable. “I have the right not to feel pain! Even though I have lived my whole life completely indifferent to other people’s pain.” This is a person tells himself that death can be avoided, or if not outright avoided, then at least postponed and postponed, and then clinically swept away out of sight and out of mind.
He says, “I have the right to a long life. It is perfectly reasonable for me to expect a long life without pain. I have the right to get pumped full of medicines so that I can breathe for six more months. I have the right not to be uncomfortable. And anyone who does not serve me is evil. The doctors and the nurses are evil if they fail to prolong my life by a few more minutes and hours.”
People begin to take the moral high ground, for the first time, about the sanctity of life, about human dignity, about the tragedy of human suffering when they themselves are in the hospital bed. But we know that the correct time to care about human suffering is when you see others suffer.
The price of seeing our lives as a portion of time that we should fill with as many experiences as possible is that our existence is still empty and we are bitter and disappointed. The price is that we have only made the world around us more empty by taking and not giving. The price of this way of looking at life is that there can be no meaning after death. If the meaning of life is pleasure, what meaning can I have when I am not alive to enjoy pleasure?
Jesus says today, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself
and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”
The meaning of Jesus’ life was to give. The meaning of Jesus’ life was to give sacrificially, to shine with the love of God. To enact a worldview of thanksgiving and worship and trust in the sufficiency of God.
The meaning of Jesus’ life is to invite everyone to share the joy of knowing the Father. How can that apply to you and me?
I want to imagine what it might mean to “take up one’s cross.” Obviously, Jesus did not mean that we would be carrying around big huge piece of wood every day. Obviously it is a figurative statement. So what does it mean? I am going to offer some parallel and complementary ways of seeing this lifestyle of taking up one’s cross.
To take up your cross is to carry around an awareness of your inevitable death.You are going to die. I am going to die. There is no way around it. Death is going to happen. Everyone you love is going to die. How are you going to deal with it?
The materialist way is not to deal with it. Our materialist world makes death clinical and sterile. The orderly whisks the body away before it has even cooled. And many people don’t even have a funeral with the casket or the body of the deceased. Sickness and death are hidden behind a clean white sheet and we pretend they don’t exist.
When I was in seminary there was a deacon who worked at the bookstore and he died suddenly, pretty young. And the day after he died, the priests and deacons of the seminary (including my fellow students) went to the morgue, washed the body of the departed deacon and dressed him in a deacon’s vestments. The touched him and held him. And they showed that his calling is eternal. At his memorial everyone came forward and kissed his hand as he lay in the casket. We looked death square in the face. Deacon Gregory had died. We cried. We sang. We prayed. We did not try to bracket out the “death” aspect of the end of his life.
The people who did that processed and grieved much more fully and in much more of a healthy manner than most people in our society do when death is neatly swept under the rug.
Carrying our cross means asking Jesus to help us to approach our powerlessness with humility and patience and love.
Jesus let the time and place in which I am powerless and weak and afraid be a time when I show other people your love. Let the time of my weakness be a time when you save other people. Let my life be a witness to the fact that you are the meaning of life. You, Jesus, are the only thing that can give life meaning since you are the giver of life and the creator of the world.
Let the time between now and when I die be a time when I do not pretend that I can make my life any more special by taking. Let the time between now and when I die be a time when I give and bless and comfort as many as possible. Let me live another day so that I can show your love to another person.
Carrying our cross means knowing that many of the things that enrage us are petty and unimportant. Why should I fight with my neighbour about the fence? I am going to die soon. I am losing my opportunity to love my neighbour. And I am losing the only thing that matters. I am losing the better portion, the one thing needful.
I don’t think there is a single person who would have been more at peace on their deathbed if that gosh-darn waitress had brought them their dinner a bit more quickly.
A person who carries his cross is resigned to the truth of his own insignificance. I am as significant as one who is already not only dead not only buried but forgotten. I am already dirt.
By this I do not mean that we are worthless or unloved. Each person has infinite worth and is loved infinitely by God. But I am not the center of the universe. He must increase and I must decrease.
It will therefore not enrage me when someone disrespects me or dares to question me. Jesus must increase and I must decrease.
We carry our cross when we can say “What does it matter that they don’t appreciate me? What does it matter that they think I am wrong. Jesus, bless them. All I need is Jesus and no one take him from me. I carry the cross of Christ to remind myself that all I ever need in life is the humility to let go. All I ever need in life is the ability not to fight back, the ability not to get embroiled in hatred. All I ever need in life is to be able to love others as Jesus loved me. My ego is irrelevant. Father forgive them.
That is how we carry our cross. Carrying our cross gives us a perspective on life which fosters gratitude, graciousness, generosity. Carrying our cross means doing whatever we can to be reconciled, now. Before it’s too late. Carrying our cross means letting the people we love know how much we love them. Now.
Death is close by. I am carrying the instrument of my death.I know that there might not be enough time later.
The cross is where Jesus ministers salvation to us. The cross is the place from which he shows us his love. The cross is the place where he gathers his community. From the cross, Jesus tells the disciple he loves, “behold, your mother.” He says, “mother, behold your son.”
Carrying our cross means looking at our church not as the place that serves me what I was expecting in the way I expected it, but instead seeing church as the place where I serve. When I carry my cross I ask myself who is it that needs someone to talk to in church? And I go talk to them. Who can I bless at coffee hour by listening? Which child needs an adult in their life to look up to; omeone who cares about them, who has time, who is happy that they came? Which person here is lonely and needs a friend? Is there someone who is visiting our church and needs to be made to feel welcome and wanted? My life is a time of serving others.
Maybe you think to yourself well, that’s fine as long as I am the one who is helping others. But don’t sit down and talk to me out of pity just because you think I don’t have any friends. Thanks a lot! Carrying our cross may mean accepting that we are the recipients of other people’s love. As Jesus committed his life into his Father’s hands and trusted his Father and waited for his Father to raise him up. Carrying our cross might mean accepting the help of others.
When we search for meaning in life by giving and serving and praying and blessing, death cannot be the end. Because the people we have blessed continue to bless others. The gifts that we give are multiplied thirty, sixty and a hundredfold even when we are sown like seeds in the ground. We keep giving. The saints are with God in heaven and keep giving by their prayers. Our gifts and our giving and our love and our blessing of others are a participation in the eternal service of Christ who is seated at the right hand of the Father. Our lives have a divine meaning. One more day of living is one more day to pray and to give thanks and to love.
As we come up to communion, consider that Jesus said “this is my body which is broken” and, “this is my blood that is shed.” We are eating and drinking his death, his willingness to die, his acceptance of God’s will. We are taking into ourselves the view of life which says, “my life has meaning when I lose it, when I am crucified with Christ. Receive the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.
The Wicked Tenants
I’m going to start my sermon today by reading to you from the Old Testament and then I will read you the gospel reading again.
This is from Isaiah 5
“I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. “Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it.” The vineyard of the LORD Almighty is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah are the vines he delighted in. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.
Now let’s read today’s gospel reading.
MATTHEW 21:33-42
The Lord said this parable, “There was a land lord who planted a vineyard, and set a hedge around it, and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and let it out to tenants, and went into another country.
When the season of fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants, to get his fruit;
and the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.
Again he sent other servants, more than the first; and they did the same to them.
Afterward he sent his son to them, saying ‘They will respect my son.’
But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’
And they took him and cast him out of the vineyard and killed him.
When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes?'”
The story of the vineyard and the wicked tenants is a story about the people of Israel and their relationship with God. Israel is a vine. The vine does not yield good fruit. And the consequence is the exile. About 500 years before Jesus was born All of the educated people in Jerusalem Were forced to move to Babylon. All the priests and leaders were taken captive. The temple was destroyed.
The prophesy we read was predicting that this would happen. The vineyard is the promised land of Israel. The hedge represents the city walls or boundaries of the land. The winepress is the altar where the blood of the animals flowed like wine being pressed out of grapes. The tower was the temple. The fruit represents the sacrifices that were brought to the temple.
There is one special difference between the story in Isaiah and Jesus’ story. In Isaiah, Israel is the vine. And the vine fails to give good fruit. Isaiah explains what that means. The rich people in Israel exploited the poor. There was bribery and corruption and immorality. Good deeds would be good fruit. Bad deeds were bad fruit, especially the bad deeds of oppression by people who were pretending to be religious.
In Jesus’ story the problem is that the tenants don’t give the landlord his portion of the harvest. Jesus changed the story a bit. Jesus has introduced a middleman between the vine and the landlord. This modification of the story is made in order to accuse the priests and the leaders of the people. Jesus adds some nuance to the problem. Jesus does not focus on the fruit being bad fruit. Jesus focuses on how the tenants refuse to give any fruit to the master.
In the story of Isaiah is that the vineyard doesn’t get any rain and foreigners invade it and tear it down. Isaiah was writing about how God allowed Jerusalem to be destroyed in 497 BC. Israel went into exile.
Five hundred years later, in Jesus’ day, the Jews still saw themselves in a kind of exile. Kind of. They lived in Jerusalem. They had a temple. But they did not have their freedom. The Romans were ruling over them. And everyone assumed that God would give them back their old kingdom when they started to produce good fruit again. They believed that when the people pleased God, then God would give them back their kingdom.
But Jesus redefines the problem. Jesus says that the tenants refuse to give the fruit. In other words, the priests are dishonest. The teachers of the people were dishonest.
If I had been one of the Pharisees I would have been offended by what Jesus was saying. How can you hold me responsible, I would have thought. “How can you hold me responsible for the sins of the people? The original story said that the people did not bear fruit. And here I am, a Pharisee, trying really hard to follow all the laws. How am I a tenant who refuses to give fruit to God? It’s not my fault.” That would be my reply.
Jesus says to these leaders and teachers of the people, “You don’t admit that you need help. You want to be seen as leaders and as important people. So you sit at the front in the Synagogue and call yourself a Rabbi but you don’t actually have any wisdom to give them. You don’t actually know how to lead the people in righteousness. And you don’t know how to bring an end to the exile. It’s not working.”
Jesus says to these leaders, “You have created a false religion of extra rules minute details, but no compassion. You don’t care about the people you are supposed to serve. You want the respect that comes with being the tenants of the vineyard. But you don’t actually care about the people you are leading. You make their lives miserable in the name of your religion.”
And then Jesus says to them, “I come to you healing the blind and raising the dead and you can’t admit that I know something you do not. Because of me the adulteress repents of her sins. You never convinced her to stop sinning. You don’t care about her. You are her best customers! And yet you tell me that I am from Satan. You tell me that I am cursed by God.”
“Why can’t you just admit you have no idea how to please God? Why can’t you admit that you are a false leader, a false teacher? Why will you not admit that you are a failed tenant of this vineyard?
So Jesus tells this story about the vineyard. The tenants of the vineyard in Jesus’ story never thought to ask for forgiveness. The tenants did not understand that their landlord was kind. And the leaders of the Jews in Jesus’ time did not know that they could simply ask Jesus for help. They could simply come to Jesus and say, “You have something we don’t have. You have something we don’t even know about. Teach us. Help us.”
There is more evidence of the landlord’s kindness which the tenants did not see. The landlord did not evict the tenants after the first time that they beat his servant. The landlord had every right to kick them out after that first offense. They not stop to ask themselves why the landlord refused to retaliate? Maybe they saw the landlord’s love and patience as weakness.
Then the landlord sent his Son. He gave the tenants the opportunity again to admit that they were wrong. He gave them the chance to stop avoiding the truth.
The truth was that they had nothing to give him. Jesus doesn’t say this, but think of the original story. The fruit from the vine was bad fruit. And they knew it. St. John Chrysostom writes about this story and he says that the tenants of the vineyard were lazy and had not done the work. So they had nothing to give the landlord. And the landlord knows this but he wants the tenants to admit it.
The Father exercises restraint even though he is not obligated to exercise restraint. The Father, or the landlord who is God the Father in this story, is showing the tenants how to exercise restraint. He could have kicked them out after the first attack on his servant. But the Father wants them to have a change of heart.
The tenants do not know how to produce good fruit. They have nothing to give to the father. But the Son who comes to them does know how to produce good fruit. He can show them how. Jesus came to his people performing miracles and turning sinners from their sins. He came to show the leaders how to lead by dying on the cross. He showed them how to lead by his condescension. By becoming a servant.
Jesus came to show them that the way out of the exile is to love and serve the poor. They killed him because they wanted power and privilege and because they didn’t care about correctly interpreting the law. They killed him because they wanted his authority without learning anything about his love and humility. That is what Jesus means when he says that the tenants killed the son of the landlord in order to steal his inheritance.
What about us? In Galatians 5, St. Paul tells us about fruit that we should offer to God. What fruit is that?
the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Think of a person in your life who is driving you absolutely crazy. It could be someone at work, or at home or somewhere else. Someone who you can’t stand.
St. Paul says that you are invited to produce the fruit of the spirit. You are invited to love that person. You are invited to let the Spirit produce joy in your heart for that person so that you do not become dismayed or enraged. The Holy Spirit gives you joy because you know that God has given us everything we need. The Spirit wants to give you peace and gentleness.
You are in the same position that the tenants of the vineyard were in. You do not have any fruit to give to the servant of God. Now the servant is coming to ask for the Father’s share of the fruit. And you have to decide whether to admit that you don’t have it or whether you will lash out at the servant of God.
In this interpretation, the servant is the person who drives you crazy. Will you react to that person with anger and malice? Will you condemn that person? Will you judge them and talk about them with other people? Will you give them the cold shoulder and exclude them?
When we are faced with difficult people, Jesus is asking us to see that difficult person as the servant of God. And we are asked to admit our own poverty and our own inadequacy.
We say, “Jesus, I have not worked your vineyard. I have not cultivated patience in my life. I have not cultivated empathy and compassion for others. I have not cultivated self-control. I do not have these things to give to your servant. I only have the thorns of sin and passions to give to your servant when he comes to me. Help me Jesus!
Jesus answers us that he is the one who planted the vineyard, and his blood is the wine in the winepress. We only need to offer him our repentance and our humility he will teach us how to cultivate the other fruits of the spirit. The Son himself comes to us in the vineyard, and we are made free simply by confessing to him, “I do not have any grapes to give you.”
When we admit that, the Son himself will show us how to work the land and how to harvest the grapes. The fruits of the spirit are not things that God demands from us. They are virtues that God wants to cultivate within us. If we will only let him.
We let him cultivate the fruit when we say to God, “okay you have put this person in my life who is causing me distress. What do you want me to learn? In what way do you want me to humble myself? Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.