In Christ, our liberation is bound up in each other

Today’s Gospel contains a truth that is very hard to accept. How hard will depend on who you identify with in the story.  As long as we think of the bad guys in Jesus’ story as someone else, we can jeer and catcall and relish in the comeuppance they get. But if begin to see that the violent, greedy stewards who kill the messengers as us… well, that’s another story.

In Jesus’ parable in Matthew, a landowner gives over the operations of his vineyards to some tenants. He sends people to the vineyard to retrieve his income and to get an account about how they are caring for the vineyard. In each case, the messengers are beat up or even killed. Eventually the landowner sends his son thinking that they will respect him. But the tenants do to him what they did before: they murder him.

Now, notice what comes next: Jesus doesn’t end the story but asks the ones to whom he is telling it to fill in the blanks. “What do you think the landowner should do?” They say, “Punish these brutes and put them to a miserable end!” Jesus then turns the tables of his critics and says, “the stone which builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.”

This parable was remembered by Matthew’s church as an explanation for why the Church was becoming more and more Gentile, while becoming less and less Jewish in their populations and in their traditions. In short, Matthew is saying “you had your chance; now there is a new chosen people in town!”

I always approach this passage with great care, because it has been the vehicle and justification for two millennia of often violent anti-Semitism and Western white supremacy.

So be careful! As soon as we begin to think that the Church or the Gospel, is our personal possession, or that we have the right answer for a “perfect” church, we are setting ourselves up to take the role of the possessive stewards in this story.

If you don’t believe me, look at how the history of the Church is filled of moments when otherwise faithful people have gotten the bit in their teeth and have run rough-shod over the very church they were trying to preserve or reform.

One hundred years ago, an Episcopal bishop named Paul Jones was driven from his office for speaking words of peace during the First World War.

Not ten years later, another Episcopal bishop, William Alexander Guerry, was assassinated in his own office by a priest of his own diocese of South Carolina, because Guerry bucked the Jim Crow segregation that had taken hold of the church when he wanted to not only desegregate the churches but elect a black suffragan bishop.

I love the identity statement of the United Church of Christ and sometimes wish it were our own. It says, “God is still speaking.” But can we discern that voice when it comes to us?  Sometimes we refuse to attend to that voice, and sometimes we interrupt that voice and talk over what God is saying to us. In either case, we essentially kill the heir hoping to receive the inheritance. 

I think of this every January when Martin Luther King’s birthday rolls around. How many of us participate with civic, religious, and business leaders, replay a small portion of his 1963 Lincoln Memorial speech—the “I have a dream” speech—tip our hat to racial equality and for the rest of the year ignore how we both participate in and benefit from a system of racial division that is still present 400 years after Europeans first set foot on this continent? Yet, as soon as someone proposes something concrete about addressing the roots of racism, let alone echoes a mere slogan, how often are we are the first to say “Yeah, but… all lives matter!”

Looking back, we remember with shame the church’s response to prophetic voices concerning racial injustice, the role of women, and the full inclusion of LGBT persons. You don’t have to look far— everyone loves Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the 20^th century martyr, until we realize that his critique of “cheap grace” is really talking about our complacent use of the church and her sacraments to maintain the status quo. Everyone loves Pope Francis’ warm inclusiveness until he starts to talk about economic justice and calls on us (and his church’s hierarchy!) to live more simply. Suddenly, the cry is “what does he know?” and “Why can’t he stick to ‘moral’ issues?” as if race, peace, poverty, and economic power are somehow not moral at their core! 

And every year, we come to the Feast of St. Francis and bless our pets, which is a good thing, but we do Francis an injustice if we stop there. If we really look at Francis and his view of animals in comes much more closely to what now call "creation care." And his attitude towards the poor was both radical and deeply compassionate. Some wonder if he did not come home from the Crusades suffering PTSD, which might explain some of his stranger behaviors (like going about naked in public) but also points us to an attitude toward peaceful relationships quite extraordinary for his day--and ours! 

In a famous encounter, St. Francis of Assisi took a risk when he crossed the battlefield between European Crusaders and Arabic Muslim forces near Damietta, Egypt, and met with Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil and preach his faith in Jesus Christ. He did not convert the Sultan but he opened a dialogue that would eventually lead to peace between the warring sides.

So, if we simply domesticate Francis and restrict him serving only as a patron for our pets, we will miss the radical vision for the Church as a vehicle for peace and justice to bring about reconciliation among people and nations. 

The behavior of the landowner in today’s Gospel in confronting the wicked tenants may be hard to accept, but it is familiar! It is the behavior of God! Like the landowner, God sent prophets to teach the scriptures and proclaim the demands of justice, and that message was condemned and rejected. God tries again and again until even his Son Jesus is met with rejection and death. But the voice of their prophecy is never extinguished, for nothing can stop the word of the Lord.

So how does this story of rebellious tenants and the long-suffering landowner end? We are offered two conclusions.

The first comes from those who are gathered around listening to Jesus. In their indignation and horror, they cry out that these rebellious tenants be put to a miserable death – and then be replaced with honest substitutes. They advocate exclusion and violence, an ancient and popular notion… that leads absolutely nowhere!

Jesus has another idea. He quotes the psalms: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.”

So instead of fighting evil with still more evil, Jesus offers a different way. He says that it is precisely the rejected stone is the foundation something new! The Gospel, of course, is talking about the death and resurrection of Jesus, who was rejected, betrayed, and abused by those around him. Who, in his rising from death, becomes the cornerstone for a new creation rebuilt from the ground up.

There are lots of more recent examples that show how rejected stones become central to what is built.

During the Nazi occupation of Denmark, the Danish king, King Christian the Tenth, rode his horse daily through Copenhagen streets, surrounded by applauding crowds. He told the Germans that he would risk death to keep the swastika from flying over his castle, and they relented from displaying their flag there. These acts of defiance turned the king into the cornerstone of the remarkably successful Danish resistance that featured schoolboys, amateur saboteurs, and underground clergymen who kept the Nazi killing machine off balance for years. The Germans wanted normalcy in Denmark, and the resistance movement worked through strikes and other actions to deny them that. A prominent indication of their success was how a majority of Danish Jews were safely transported to neutral Sweden through the help of their fellow citizens.

Back in 1986, Ferdinand Marcos was reelected as president of the Philippines in an election tainted by widespread electoral fraud. Martial law was imposed, and Marcos made personal loyalty the criterion for military promotions and economic privilege. But the People Power movement led by Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino, Jr., and, after his assassination, by his wife Corazon, stood up to the regime. When civilian protesters met military units that refused to fire on their fellow citizens, it was not long before Marcos went into exile.

Remember Nelson Mandela, who for decades was an inmate in a South African jail? He became the first elected president of the new South Africa. When he was sworn in on May 10, 1994, the former prisoner who became president vowed that “never, never, and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.” Once rejected, he became the cornerstone.

An Australian aboriginal activist named Lilla Watson said, “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” How will you and I put this truth into practice, not simply in what we say, but in how we live?

We might start by recognizing that whomever we call an enemy comes to us bearing a gift, and that we when meet our enemy we are meeting ourselves. Because each enemy comes to us bearing some broken, rejected part of ourselves. By accepting that enemy, we accept back that part of ourselves. By continuing to reject that enemy, we remain in a fragmented state inside. Acceptance of our enemy, welcoming the other, embracing those we would cast out, means we are changed and so is our enemy as we are together propelled toward a new and unexpected creation.

We affirm in our Creed, that when Jesus was crucified, “he descended to the dead.” Before going to resurrection, he went to the place where death reigns and meets us in those places inside us, in our culture, and in our deeply ingrained history that deals death and works against life and wholeness. He meets our rejection and violence with love and transforming power. And in his resurrection, he makes it possible for us to meet our enemies with new, transformed eyes. He leads us (as our Prayer Book says) “from prejudice to truth… [delivers us] from hatred, cruelty, and revenge,” and makes all of us able and ready to stand reconciled before our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the chief cornerstone of God’s renewed creation.

Matthew 21:33-46

Watch your mouth: On truth, friendship, and character

For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.

-Aristotle

A buddy of mine on Facebook-- a fellow Episcopalian who belongs to another parish-- disagrees with me on many things, often political in nature and he loves to engage me on my social media feeds.


He adores President Trump. I don't.
He thinks Brexit is a great idea. I don't.
I think he thinks a wall along the southern US border would solve a lot of problems. I think it's a fool errand.He thinks climate change is either a hoax or just nature doing it's thing. I'm worried and believe that humans have had a profound impact on the environment.

But we engage each other as people, and so when we agree, we do, and when don't, we say so!

What we don't do is call each other names. One element of our periodic debate is that he is always respectful towards me and this encourages me to continue to be respectful to him. He'll never change my mind (or at least I don't think he will) about certain issues and I will never change his. He has corrected me when I've been wrong, and I accept that. But we talk (at least electronically) and we know that, even in our separate churches, we share the same communion table and follow the same Lord. 

One thing I avoid doing on the interwebs is reading the comments. For every little clever gem that gets posted there is a dump-truck full of dross. Call me a hypocrite... I will periodically comment, and I suppose that my gem is someone else's dross. But this does lower my blood pressure, it also means that this just adds to my digital isolation.

So he does me a service, for which I am grudgingly grateful. You see, I am like a lot of users of the internet. I have my favorite sites and either by answering certain questions or liking certain sites and posts, the almighty algorithm has figured out what I like and feeds me more of it. If it weren't for my buddy, I might think that the whole universe agrees with my obviously enlightened and well-reasoned positions on nearly everything.

Call it an echo-chamber. Or a silo. Or whatever, I live there. 

My pal helps me see the world a bit more broadly. And sometimes that reveals to me some things that are pretty darned ugly. 

Yesterday my twitter and FB exploded with posts claiming that Greta Thunberg, who spoke at the UN this week, and the thousands of young people who went on climate strike last week have somehow been brainwashed by, I don't know, somebody. And their objections come down to something like "Isn't it terrible to use a child in this way!" 

This appeared in the New York Times today:

Fox News apologized after a pundit, Michael Knowles, called her “a mentally ill Swedish child” on one of its programs on Monday. (Ms. Thunberg, who is 16, has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, and has called it “a superpower.”) The network called the comment disgraceful, and a spokeswoman said Fox had no plans to invite Mr. Knowles back.

Mr. Knowles, who writes for the conservative news site The Daily Wire, defended his remarks on Twitter, where he accused Ms. Thunberg’s supporters of exploiting her. The notion that she was being used as a puppet was repeated by others, including the conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza.

The day before Ms. Thunberg’s United Nations speech, Mr. D’Souza likened her image to ones used in Nazi propaganda, posting a photo on Twitter of Ms. Thunberg, wearing her signature long braids, next to an illustration of a young woman with a similar hairstyle standing in front of a swastika flag.  

Other outspoken figures on the right sounded similar notes. Sebastian Gorka, who worked in the White House briefly under President Trump, wrote on Twitter that Ms. Thunberg’s remarks were “disturbingly redolent of a victim of a Maoist ‘re-education’ camp.”

Laura Ingraham, the Fox News host, called Ms. Thunberg’s United Nations speech “chilling” on her Monday night show, and ran a segment about how climate change “hysteria” is changing American youth.

The segment included a clip from “Children of the Corn,” the 1984 movie based on a Stephen King novel in which children in a farm town murder adults. 

Now nothing gets me riled up quite like seeing otherwise adult people piling on a kid. Even a kid as articulate and media-savvy as Greta Thunberg. But just as I was getting the most riled up, I have had to stop myself. If it is wrong for people to treat Thunberg this way, then why is it okay for me or the people I happen to agree with to do it?

Ethics are pesky that way. 

Case in point: yesterdays address to the United Nations by President Donald Trump. He basically said that the way of the future is nationalism unleashed. Every nation for itself. Never mind that both fascism and communism were defeated by the concerted, combined efforts of the nations of the world (at the cost of a great many lives along the way). Never mind that everything from international travel to mailing a postcard overseas to being able to telephone or e-mail a person across the globe or share information in the internet are all possible with international cooperation. And you would think that being such a fan of capitalism, the idea that international markets--and the possibility of making and selling lots of things--are only enhanced by these international relationships. 

But no! According to his address at the UN yesterday, It is every nation for itself. Borders are beautiful. Cooperation is for losers. 

Now it would be easy for me to fall into the same trap... I think that the idea of decreasing international cooperation and feuding with other nations over more and more things we used to work out together in places like the UN and the dozens of international conventions that govern our global common life is is a very bad idea. These conventions and organizations have done much to preserve peace and extend prosperity over the past 75 years. They are not perfect but they sure beat the heck out of the alternatives! 

It's when we fall into the trap of resorting to name-calling and character assassination that trouble me. It is easy to do, and so difficult to stop. 

When we are start being strident towards our neighbor, filling our language with bluster, implied threat, and imputed motives that the seeds for disharmony and misunderstanding grows. We might feel the short term rush of having silenced the other guy or putting our opposition in its place, but we have created the seeds for future conflict that will eventually consume us all. 

I firmly believe that one of the ways we overcome the games, manipulation, and the drama is to keep cool. So just as I think people shouldn't beat up on Greta Thunberg, I think it is unhelpful to only pile on insults and characterization on the President or anyone else we disagree with.

Everyday ethics, not to mention being faithful to the Gospel of Jesus, means that we tell the truth, and we that we respect the people we are telling it to. We must name evil for what it is. We must not think that doing evil to fight evil will somehow result in a good. We must do the things that evil hates.

Don't get me wrong. Satire and humor are essential. The best satire gets us to think about issues differently. And one of the first signs that a person is too wrapped up in themselves or that their view of the world is too constrained is when they lose the ability to laugh at themselves. So keep it up Trevor and Stephen! 

I have a feeling that as we move into this new phase, with talk of impeachment in the air, we won't need to exaggerate or pontificate. We need to stay cool and focused. The true character of a lot of people will come to fore all on their own. And while bringing out the worst in people might create a short term gain, in the end the people who build themselves up by tearing others down will ultimately be crushed under the weight of their own debris.

And the same thing is true for responding to climate change and caring for our environment. Do what we must to get the conversation going: protest, petition, organize, teach the science, plan realistic responses, and all the rest. Yup, even satirize. We won't need to exaggerate or beat up on those who either disagree with us or, especially, on those who don't understand the problem. 

At the same time, we will need to deal with the fact that there will be those who won't mind or care if their behavior is unethical or sensational in order to make their points or to stop this movement. Don't let them deter you. 

As we move into a new phase, with both impeachment and global warming in the air, and with an election just around the corner, we will have to deal with a lot of hype, a lot of emotion, and a lot of spin. Opportunities for hate and division abound. 

Scripture is filled with good advice about watching one's mouth. These days it's not just the tongue that can get us in trouble but our keyboards and our memes. First Peter 3:10 comes to mind which reads “Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.” 

I am reminded over and over again that the line between being a prophetic witness and a total jerk is pretty fine. So it is important to speak truth and also to mind my mouth. 

If we are going to get anywhere on effecting real change when it comes to climate, poverty, racism, and social division, it will be essential for us to balance our clarity with our charity. Speak the truth. Hold fast. Lead with love.

The thing that I am learning from my pal is how to listen and how to be more articulate, and how not to resort to cheap shots, distracting accusations, or easy characterizations. If a cause is worth the struggle, it is worth doing honorably.