Bearing Sin to Change the Human Heart (Matt 21:33-46)

scottfillmer.com

The tenth commandment warning against covetousness takes adjudicating good and evil from outward observance to the state of the heart. (Exod 20:17) I might covet your new phone but never betray the fact to anyone, even myself. Indeed, to hide my covetousness from myself I may well deny my attraction to the phone altogether. In the same way, the miser can hide their miserliness from even themselves with an outward generosity. People came to see that outward observance alone is not an absolute guide, despite what Jesus said in another context. (1) Jesus follows this trajectory when he locates sin not just in committing adultery but in the lustful heart. (Matt 5:27-28) Eventually this new insight, in tandem with the brute fact of Israel's inability to keep the precepts contained in the Sinai covenant, led some to look forward to a new covenant where the human heart itself would be made true to the law. (Jer 31:31-34) This would be God's doing.  God's freedom cannot be constrained by human failure.

Jesus' parable of the Vineyard and the Tenants is of a piece with the above reflection. The parable in the Gospel of Mark has Jesus himself warn of the destruction of the murderous tenants. For all the continuities between the parable and the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the good news of Jesus remains in tension with this parable. Jesus the Son is murdered, true, but the result of his murder is not the destruction of sinners, but their salvation. The risen Jesus comes with a message of repentance and forgiveness, the living embodiment of the forbearance of God, evident in the cross, but now revealed in the Risen One.  Jesus' death and resurrection is for the salvation of all. It is interesting to note that Matthew has changed Mark's version of the parable. (Mk 12:1-12 cf Matt 21:33-46) Mark has Jesus answer his own question. What will the landowner do to the tenants? Destroy them. In Matthew Jesus asks the question, but his opponents answer him. The vengeful god resides in the logic of Jesus' opponents, not in Jesus.


1. In Matt 7:15-20 Jesus seems to suggest that judgment is a little easier than this - after all, fruit is easy to see. But notice that he is speaking of the same issue, wolves in sheep's clothing. Fruit there is, but more subtle than mere observance of law.

But God Intended It For Good

It always seemed to me that Joseph was having a little revengeful fun at the expense of his brothers before he finally revealed himself to them. (Gen 42-45.) But reflecting on the reaction of Judah to the suggestion that Benjamin be left behind has changed my mind. (Gen 44:18-34) Judah has learned something of the evil that he and his brothers perpetrated on Joseph, and at the suggestion of sacrificing the next favoured brother, instead offers himself. So not only has he learned that betraying a brother is wrong, he has even been able to give up his resentment toward the (latest) favoured brother and rise above his father's continued poor parenting. He will give himself up for a favoured brother and out of pity for a father who favours one brother over the rest. The 'journey' Joseph took his brothers on has borne fruit in Judah. That little part of the world was a better place for Judah's new insight and repentance. Add to this Joseph's forgiveness even of his recalcitrant brothers, and the food relief provided by Joseph for his family, and we can affirm that, in this instance, good did come out of evil.  "You intended evil, but God intended it for good." (Gen 45:5;  50:20) Joseph too, presumably, has learnt something along the terrible journey of being sold into slavery in a foreign land. Just at that point when he could have sought revenge upon his brothers, or at the very minimum, pointed out their evil while forgiving them, he places their actions on a broader canvas of God's purposes.

Does anybody learn much at all except through suffering? Gratitude seems to grow depth in people, although often the transformation is not through the kind of gratitude that fears the worst, but the kind of gratitude that grows in a person who has suffered. (Even Jesus learned through suffering. See Heb 5:8.) I wish it were otherwise, and this is not an explanation or justification for evil and suffering, but an observation of real people, myself included. The theological addition is as Joseph says, God intends the evil for good. God's response to evil is not a moralistic separation from evil or a gnostic ignoring of it. God journeys into the story of human suffering, failure and evil. Hence the call of Abraham and Sarah, God's blessing of Jacob, Joseph's travails, Moses and his exile ... and  Jesus and his cross and resurrection. God can use sin to bring salvation.

And if you are looking for a kids' talk on the Joseph cycle, try something along these lines.

When God uses us to bring about good, do you think God uses the good things we do or the bad things we do? (If the answer is 'The good things" that will help the surprise in the sermon.)

So things like ... being kind to someone, sticking up for some kid being left out at school?
Not lying ... not being mean ... ("I find it hard to bring good out of bad stuff like this ... I usually have to start off fresh.") ... Definitely not selling your brother or sister into slavery and watching them dragged off to a foreign country... definitely not being part of a group that nails someone to a cross.
Definitely not. But God isn't restricted like that. God gets involved in our failures and can even bring good out of bad. Like Joseph ... like Jesus ...

Cheap and Costly Unity

"... so that they may be one as we are one." (Jesus, John 17:11)

While reflecting on last Sunday's Gospel passage (John 17:1-11) it occurred to me that unity and union, with God and with each other, is costly. And in the same way that grace is costly - although humans have a tendency to seek the cheap version - so too unity has its costly and cheap versions. The union Jesus looks toward comes at the cost of his life. It is costly, and our discipleship of him is costly, just as the unity in Christ we seek is costly.

Iain McKillop, Jesus' High Priestly Prayer in
John 17, from a series of 7 paintings
 focusing on that last night and Gethsemane.

A reason why unity in Christ is costly is because it does not end the quest for unity prematurely. Human societies feel safer when identity and unity are attained and can then be protected and enjoyed. What I like to call mutual back-slapping (the kind of human unity built on mutual affirmation within narrow parameters of behaviour or belief, and applies to most human organisations, associations, sporting clubs) stops too early in its quest for union. Prematurely ending the quest for unity is why mutual back-slapping doesn't have the capacity to go very deep, and when it meets conflict, has the tendency to paper it over. Moreover, while it might appear that mutual-backslapping groups are relaxed about diversity, this relaxed attitude is because the diversity is not actually part of the unity itself. (Cf 1Cor 12:4-11)  The hard work of including diversity and 'the other' isn't carried through. Community built on mutual back-slapping also falls easily into its alter-ego of the attack-dog, pointing the finger at the 'accused', forming a temporary but false unity on the ostracised.

Churches are called beyond this kind of tribalism (both the mutual back-slapping society and the attack-dog gang are tribalistic). Jesus reminds us of the cost of unity (see John 11:45-53) but also its provisionality. It is because the work of the Spirit in uniting the human race is not yet complete that churches are asked to hold themselves open to including the outsider, and work to make difference a foundation of their community.

This is exactly why unity is costly. Unity grounded in diversity changes the community as it stands, and makes the life of that community less comfortable. When the current unity of a congregation is considered provisional it means that congregation is saying that it expects, even wants, its current identity to change. New people will mean a new identity, both for the existing members of the community and those joining it, requiring both some personal and group dying.

When unity and its cost is understood like this much of the New Testament focus on Christian disunity (e.g see 1Cor 1:10-31; chapters 5-8; 11:17-34; chapters 12-14) and the confusion to identity that new members (Gentiles) bring (to faithful Jewish Christians, see the Gospel of Matthew; Acts 15:1-21; Galatians 2:11-14) becomes understandable. Whether it comes through the personal call to die with Christ or a community's call to die to its current secure identity, union in Christ comes at a cost and humans tend to resist that call.

Was Jesus Treated as Divine in Early Christianity?

Larry Hurtado

Here is a short summary from Larry Hurtado on the state of play regarding the emergence of the belief in the divinity of Jesus. He dismisses those who say that the emergence of Nicean-type theologising is the beginning of the Christian assertion of Jesus' divinity. He says such a proposition "is actually scarcely defensible".  He says it is really a matter of whether belief in the divinity of Jesus was an eruption very soon after the resurrection (months, perhaps a few years) or whether it takes a few decades of development. He opts for the former, and while I started with the "scarcely defensible" position 30 years ago, I have been moved to the eruption theory (emanating from jerusalem) through the sheer consistency and (theo)logic of the evidence and argument.