2017-10-09
Brooke Strong
Reformation Sermon series: Sola Scriptura
Scripture: Matthew 21:33-46
Today’s lectionary gospel reading takes place in the last week of Jesus’ life. He has made his triumphant entry into Jerusalem on the day we celebrate as “Palm Sunday”, and right after that, he manages to infuriate the chief priests and scribes as he over-turns the money-changers tables in the temple. The chief priests of his time question Jesus’ authority as he teaches in that temple, and they get angrier and angrier because he tells them that tax collectors and prostitutes will enter the kingdom of heaven before they will. So just days before his arrest and crucifixion, Jesus tells this parable to those religious leaders- Matthew 21:33-46
We have been focusing on reformation themes during these seven weeks leading up to the 500th year anniversary of the reformation at the end of this month. Our theme for this Sunday is “sola scriptura” – only scripture. The church reformers of the 16th century saw scripture as a lamp, a light, as the moral authority that the church of their time had completely lost sight of. In the early 1500’s, it was the Roman church, and not scripture, that had all the authority. This church had amassed so much of its power by taking advantage of a poorly educated and poorly resourced population, a people living in the dark ages. Most could not read and, even if they could, would have had no access to books, as they were scarce and exorbitantly priced. So they had no way of rebutting what the church taught - a theology of salvation via unfailing loyalty to church leaders, blind obedience to church law, and lavish support of church coffers. The relationship between people and church was essentially based on money. For the rich, this might not have been so bad. But for the poor to have to pay to have children baptized – otherwise they would go to hell, to have to pay to have their loved ones buried in holy ground – otherwise they would go to hell, to have to pay to get married – otherwise they were living in sin and would go to hell – this was a crushing burden. In addition, there were so many sins to avoid that one couldn’t possibly live a righteous enough life to get to heaven. The only way of forgiveness was through one’s priest, and through paying for indulgences, which were certificates signed by the pope that pardoned ones’ sins. Also, if you had a relative that had died without enough good works to get to heaven, you would be coerced into buying indulgences for them, to get them out of purgatory. The average person of that time was crushed by church rules, financial burdens and fear of eternal damnation. It was a great system for the church, for the people, not so much.
For Martin Luther, who wrote 95 proclamations against the church and posted them, marking the beginning of reformation in 1517, the primary motivation for this was not so much theological, as it was pastoral. He saw the excessive burden that church put on those who were already struggling, and the more he read the scriptures, which as a monk he had access to, the more he was convinced that the church had its theology all wrong. He took to heart the beginning of the fifth chapter of Romans: Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.
We are justified by faith – not by works, not by confessing to a priest, not by buying indulgences. This revelation changed everything for Luther – and he proclaimed the authority of scripture over the authority of the church. Luther also believed that the laity should have access to the Bible, and that the church should not be keeper and guardian of the scriptures. In a time when church had all the authority, when priests were the only ones with power to access and interpret scripture, Luther’s beliefs were radical and dangerous. But since his proclamations coincided in time with the invention of the printing press, his ideas began to spread, especially as literacy rates rose with easier and cheaper access to books. Before then, the Bible in western Europe was only written in Latin, which most people could not have understood, even if they had had access to one and had been able to read. A few years later, Luther translated the Scriptures into German, into the language of the people, so the laity could have access to it.
We in the reformed church continue to see scripture as authoritative, as inspired by God, as a rock of our faith. Every week we read and preach on a biblical passage. Today is no exception. So if scripture is, at the reformers proclaim, a moral authority, then what does our parable for today have to teach us? What is the moral lesson to be gleaned from this story?
Although Jesus calls this a parable, it is actually more of an allegory. And as such, it begs the questions: Who does the landowner represent? Who do the tenants represent? What does the vineyard represent?
This passage was written just decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus, so it is probably safe to say that the landowner in the story represents God. As one who sent messengers three times, we can see the owner as God who sent first the prophets, then John the Baptist, then sent God’s very own son, Jesus, to the tenants. All of the envoys of this landowner, of God, met with horrible fates.
And the tenants – who would they represent? Given the vehement reaction of the religious leaders upon hearing this parable – their desire to arrest Jesus right then and there, we would most likely say that the tenants are those God entrusted with the vineyard, God’s chosen people - the Jews. Matthew, having known the trajectory of Jesus’ life by the time this gospel was written, implies that the vineyard will be taken away from these chosen people and given to someone else. Maybe in the sixteenth century, Martin Luther might have argued in a sermon that the leaders of the Roman church could have been seen as the tenants – and that they also were about to lose the vineyard that God had entrusted to them.
And so, what might this vineyard symbolize? Perhaps it is the word of God, and in Matthew’s time, the Jewish religious leaders could no longer be trusted with authority to care for this word and interpret it for their people. And if the vineyard does symbolize the word, Luther would have said that this was happening again 1500 years later – the church of his time could no longer be trusted with authority over the word. The word of God was being misused in both cases, benefitting religious leaders, and not producing the fruits that God had intended.
Or, maybe the vineyard stands for God’s love and salvation. Again, the Scribes and Pharisees had this elaborate system of rules and regulations, which people had to follow in order to be right with God. This was putting an excessive burden on those who were poor, which is what had prompted Jesus to overturn tables of commerce in the temple just before telling this parable. Poor people were being forced to buy the prescribed sacrifices at staggering prices to guarantee their salvation. Sound familiar? This is exactly what Luther was protesting 1500 years later! Perhaps this parable tells us that God’s love and salvation are not for sale, that they are not in the hands of the religious leaders, either in the 1st century, or in the 16th century, or even in the 21st century.
When we seek to interpret scripture, Luther put forth a critical component that must be understood together with his “Sola Scriptura” tenet. Lutheran theology proclaims that we must understand that the Bible is the manger in which Christ is laid, that Scripture in both its Testaments was inspired to reveal the crucified and Risen Jesus Christ, the one sent from God to justify and save the ungodly. To understand that the Bible’s primary purpose is something other than the revelation of Jesus Christ (for instance, to understand that the Bible is primarily a book of rules for better living) is decidedly un-Lutheran.1
Without this caveat, we could easily misinterpret much of the Bible, this morning’s passage being a case in point. Passages like this one have been used throughout history to fan the flames of hatred against our Jewish brothers and sisters. They have been taken out of context to say, “See, just like God would take the vineyard away from the tenants, God wants everything to be taken away from the Jewish people and given to the Christians.” Bible passages taken out of context have been used to condone atrocities throughout the ages, like the holocaust in Europe, and like slavery in this country. Scripture was used historically to justify both sides of the debate on slavery: for justifying the institution of slavery, for justifying its abolition. The Bible has also been used on both sides of debates about women’s rights – justifying equal rights, and also justifying oppression. For centuries, Christians accepted slavery and oppression of women as biblically sanctioned, even as they read the same Bible as those who opposed those evils.
And still today, it seems, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Today, too many Christian leaders cherry-pick scripture passages to discriminate and hurl stones at our LGBT brothers and sisters, justifying actions and laws that do not give them the same rights as others, that do not welcome them as equal members of society or of the household of God, that do not accept and affirm their ways of being and of loving. And here I’m going to make a very short pitch for the enlightening and poignant documentary done on this topic called: “For the Bible Tells Me So.”2I urge you to watch it on your own (available through the library or Netflix), or to come a week from tomorrow on the 16th to the FLC to watch it with others and discuss it.
To rightly understand the authority of scripture is to understand it in its broadest themes, in light of Jesus Christ, our chief cornerstone. It is to remember that Jesus said that the two greatest commandments are to Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. The lens through which we are called to interpret scripture is the lens of Christ, who showed the ultimate love when, instead of condemning those who put him to death, in the end opened wide his arms and heart and forgave them.
Over and over, Jesus placed kindness and acceptance, healing and welcome over the social customs of his time. We believe that the Bible is the word of God, but more importantly, we believe that Jesus is the word of God made flesh, is the living word, is at the heart of all interpretation of scripture. He is for us the ultimate moral authority.
Jesus says, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.” That cornerstone sets a foundation to build up lives, to build up people, not to tear them down, not to crush them.
So what is the moral of this morning’s parable ultimately? To view it through the eyes of the crucified and resurrected Christ would not be to view it as a condemnation of the Jewish people. Remember that when Jesus asks the question: “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will be done to those tenants?", it is not Jesus, but rather those who heard the parable who say, "The owner will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time." Rev. David Lose suggests, “That’s part of Matthew’s narrative strategy, I suspect, to have his opponents voice their own condemnation. But it invites us to consider a different question: not what will that landlord do, but what did that landlord do. And to that question we have Jesus’ own answer: the landowner sent his son, Jesus, to deal with all of us who have hoarded God’s blessings for ourselves and not given God God’s own due. And when we killed him, God raised him from the dead, and sent him back to us yet one more time, still bearing the message of God’s desperate, crazy love.”3
That desperate crazy love of God beats throughout the whole of scripture, throughout the whole of Jesus’ life. Any interpretation of scripture that does not begin and end with “Jesus loves me” I would suggest is not an interpretation through the lens of the crucified and risen Christ. Are there challenges for us to take up between that beginning and that end? Yes, undoubtedly. But ultimately what matters most is that right here, right now, just as you are, just as I am – Jesus loves me, and you – and all those we love, and all those we hate. Jesus loves the saints of this world, and the sinners of this world, the faithful followers and the unfaithful tenants. Jesus loves us. That is the chief cornerstone of our faith. Thanks be to God. Amen.
1https://lutherantheology.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/a-brief-introduction-to-sola-scriptura/
2For the Bible Tells Me So. United States of America: Daniel G. Karslake, 2007. DVD
3http://www.davidlose.net/2014/09/pentecost-17a-crazy-love/