21^st November 2014

Rev Dr Max Champion at St John's UCA Mt Waverley Sunday 5 October 2014

Lessons - Isaiah 5:1-7; Matthew 21:33-46.

The Parable of the Wicked Tenants is not hard to understand. But it is hard
to stomach! It speaks of judgment on those, like the Jewish leaders, whose
complacency made them hostile to the prophets of old and to God's prophetic
word in Jesus.

The image of the vineyard is used here to describe God's love for his
'people' and to highlight their brutal refusal to accept the prophets and
the 'Son' whom he has sent to proclaim Good News for 'all people'. The
parable ends with the threat that their privilege shall be withdrawn and
given 'to a nation that produces fruits and a harvest worthy of the Kingdom
of God'. (vv 43,44)

The clash between the 'chosen people' and the 'prophets' is a common feature
of Scripture. Isaiah forecasts that Israel's failure to produce fruits of
righteousness will result in her becoming a barren wasteland (5:1-7). In
Revelation, John condemns Roman tyranny and the apathy of some Christian
groups (Revelation 2:1-3:22). Christ, whom many saw as 'a prophet' (Matthew
21:46), pronounced God's judgment on the self-righteous who shunned
'tax-collectors and sinners'.

Talk of 'judgment' is unsettling. We are taught to be 'non-judgmental'.
Christians have come to think of God as a kindly figure who never says a
cross word and accepts us as we are without requiring drastic changes in our
behaviour. We get nervous whenever the Church is accused of being
'judgmental' and defend ourselves by claiming that Jesus spoke about God's
unconditional love for everyone, regardless of what we do.

In the DVD, 'Life of Jesus', John Dickson contradicts this view. There are
30 passages in which Jesus warns of the dire consequences of failing to love
God and the neighbour. While Jesus' proclamation of the 'Kingdom of God' was
'good news' to those who heard it, it was 'bad news' to those who fiercely
resisted him and oversaw his trial and crucifixion (vv 38,39,42). They will
be punished, if not by suffering a 'miserable death', as the audience thinks
is right (v41), but certainly, as Jesus says, by having the privileges of
grace withdrawn and handed on to those who will bear good fruit (v43).

What are we to make of this harsh parable?

The first thing to say is that God's judgment is the flip-side of a
magnificent love that has been revealed to the world through the Hebrews and
in Jesus Christ. It is a most serious matter, therefore, when people (who
should know better) refuse to love God with their whole being and their
neighbour as themselves!

God's judgment is on those who refuse the invitation to be fully human, as
Jesus is fully human.

It certainly applied to Jewish religious leaders, who saw to it that Jesus
was tried and crucified. It also applied to those who persecuted the early
Christians for disowning their Jewish roots. But it should not be
interpreted as blanket condemnation of 'Jews' for the crucifixion. It does
not justify the shameful treatment of Jews by churches throughout history.

Nor is there reason to exclude Christians from judgment. Disciples betrayed
Jesus who warned them that 'not everybody who says "Lord, Lord" would enter
the Kingdom of Heaven' (Matthew 7:21-23; 25:31-46). Paul, Timothy and John
are often aghast at bad behaviour in the churches. In every age, the Church
is apt to become complacent, forget her high calling and fail to produce
good fruit. What does this say to Western Christians in the early 21st Century?

It should disturb us! Sadly, the magnificence of the Gospel of Christ is
often mocked or easily neglected in a culture where most people want a
'faith' that is 'comfortable' - where needs are met and feelings massaged.

In 'Ruins of the Church: Sustaining Faith in an Age of Diminished
Christianity '(2002), RR Reno notes that, when nearly everything is treated
'lightly', it is little wonder that faith in the splendour of God's presence
in Christ is having a hard time making itself heard. Many folk reject the
Gospel of hope in God's good and loving purposes for humanity and the whole
world because we believe that 'nothing finally matters, except the
superiority of knowing it to be so' (p42).

We have lost the capacity to 'judge' between good and evil, beauty and
ugliness, profundity and puerility, humanity and inhumanity. When our small,
distorted vision of reality is the measure of what is right, then we will
eventually tolerate the intolerable. The line between good and evil becomes
so blurred that prophetic words, that challenge us to see history in the
light of God's grand purposes, are lost in the babble of voices telling us
there is no grand purpose to life.

Such is the cultural milieu in which we are called to live that it is
tempting to read the parable as a judgment on a 'wicked' society. Actually,
however, it is a judgment on 'prophetic communities', like Israel and the
churches, which 'stone' and 'kill' their own prophets and 'crucify' the
long-awaited Messiah.

Surely this judgment does not apply to what is happening in our Churches?
Thankfully, we get along much better than in the past. Thankfully, too,
church leaders often make 'prophetic' statements on issues such as poverty,
refugees and gambling that put the Church at odds with prevailing wisdom.
Too often, though, what we think is 'prophetic' simply mimics politically
correct causes that are based on general 'community standards of tolerance
and inclusion'.

It is right to be concerned about public issues provided we do not lose
sight of the unparalleled splendour of the Good News embodied in Jesus and
become blind to what it means for a distinctive 'Christian' faith, theology
and ethic.

Sadly, within many Western Churches today - including the Uniting Church in
Australia - there is deep hostility to the unique claims of Jesus Christ! To
say 'Thus says the Lord' is not thought to be 'prophetic' but narrowly
'exclusive' and not sufficiently open to other 'religious' points of view in
our multi-faith society.

The current debate over Christian education in schools is a case in point.
The Uniting Church is right to question how classes are conducted in
government schools. But the 'solution' of teaching Christianity alongside
other 'faiths' as if they are more or less the same is regrettable, as is
the absence of a strategy to encourage young people to know the riches of
God's grace in Christ.

In some quarters, those who try to uphold the Church's splendid teaching on
the Scriptures, historic confessions of faith, marriage and the like are
isolated, threatened or ignored. The tactics are not as blunt as those in
the parable but they are no less deadly in silencing genuinely prophetic
voices.

This is not a cause for despair! When we are stripped of illusions about our
importance and relevance, we can be a prophetic community that is free to
live in the ruins of the vineyard in a spirit of 'suffering hope' that was
embodied by Israel (among nations), the prophets (in Israel) and Jesus
Christ (for the world). [See v42a and Psalm 118:22,23.] In a shallow age
where much has been 'flattened', it is no small thing to resist hostility
within the church to the splendour of the Gospel and to persist in declaring
that, in the crucified-and-risen Christ, God has judged the sinful world in love.

It is our privilege and responsibility, therefore, to submit ourselves to
God's judgment, to bear fruit produced by grace and to speak the word of
hope, confident that, at the last, God's good purposes for humanity and the
whole creation shall come to glorious fruition.
_________________________________

Rev Dr Max Champion is Minister in St John's Uniting Church, Mt Waverley,
Victoria, Australia.

Dr Champion is a member of the Council of the Assembly of Confessing
Congregations within the UCA.