Sermon

The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (RCL, Year A, Proper 21)
September 28, 2008

The Reverend Kay Johnson

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Jesus says (in the gospel we just heard), “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” He is speaking to the chief priests and elders -- the leaders of the community.

Think of that issue spatially...the chief priests and the elders of the community are the insiders, the powerful, the authority figures -- and the tax collectors and the prostitutes are the outsiders -- the marginalized -- the cheater who is hated by his own people, because not only does he do the dirty work of the hated Romans but he also takes a cut of the taxes they impose, for himself...and the woman who sells her body -- also to the Romans -- because that’s all she has to sell. They are the outsiders. But now Jesus says they are going in...into the kingdom of God, into God’s presence...before the “insiders” are...

Things have been turned upside down, spun around, yanked out of the normal way of thinking...which is what the Gospel always does. “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” The savior of the world...born out back because there was no room for him where the nice people had gathered. God’s own son sent to the electric chair...always that reversal, in the Gospel, that challenge to automatic assumptions, like, “crooks are bad, nice people are good.”

At Church of the Epiphany, where I worked one summer, there is an early morning Bible Study on Sundays, attended mainly by homeless people. And one day, when we were talking about “what would Jesus do” today, one of the participants said, “If Jesus were alive today, he’d be on the street.” I agree with that.

Jesus stands on the street -- with all the people that society can’t deal with.

Jesus stands with the outsiders...because inside is often not such a good place to be. Inside is where you are valued by the way you look, the way you dress, the job you have, how much money you have, how many things you own. Inside is where politicians send other people’s sons and daughters to kill and be killed in war. Inside is where the richest society in the history of the world allows its own children to be homeless. (The average age of a homeless person is...nine.) Inside is where it is acceptable for a CEO to make unheard of amounts of money (the CEO of Wal-Mart makes about $135 every minute) while countless low wage workers work long hours and come home at the end of the day with not enough money to live on. Inside is where, when financial structures fall apart, the rich may be uncomfortable, but it’s those with less who lose their homes.

No wonder Jesus is on the street. He stands outside, and looks in, and weeps, at the mess God’s children have made. Jesus looks in and hopes, that perhaps somehow, some way, some day, they will get to work and clean up that mess.

If you’re on the street, Jesus stands with you.

I think the gospel message is often different for different people. What Jesus has to say to the poor is not always the same as what Jesus says to the rich (and we are rich, if we have a home, and a good job, and enough money for a decent life). To the poor, Jesus says, I love you. I am one of you. You belong here. Let me love you. Let me tell you how beautiful you are. Take strength from me.

To the rich, Jesus says, be careful. You are not valuable because of your riches. You are not valuable because of your achievements. You are not even valuable because of your virtues, although I am glad of them. You are valuable for the same reason the poor are: because I love you. And the purpose of your riches, and your achievements, and your virtues is only this: to help make God’s creation, of which you are part, more and more what God desires it to be.

Jesus doesn’t abandoned us middle-class folk. But he tells us that our true identity lies, metaphorically, “on the street.” That’s where our heart is intended to go -- to the homeless person, the low-wage worker, the man in jail, the woman on the street -- rather than to the successful person we admire, or the wealthier-than-us person we envy. Jesus stands with the people on the street. And so should we.

When we read, as we did in Matthew, about the Master asking his sons to go work in the vineyard, it’s important to remember that the image of a vineyard, in the Bible, is a very rich one. The vineyard is Israel, and so by extension society -- the world and the nations -- maybe even just life itself.

And it can also be the deep and sweet-smelling image of your own, particular life in Christ.

We can apply this parable personally as well as socially. I think many of us of live -- metaphorically -- with a “tax collector and a prostitute” inside ourselves. Those parts of ourselves that are fragile and insecure, lonely, longing, corrupt. Paul talked about being in the wilderness last week, and we all resonated with that. In earlier weeks this month, other parishioners shared painful parts of themselves. I got so frustrated about something this week that I lay down on the floor and howled. And so ashamed about something I had done that I blushed to look at myself!

Treasure moments like that. They are holy moments. The outsiderness of Jesus should remind us that when we are deep into what is ugly and what is smeared, Jesus is right there. The love of God is not partial.

There’s a poem by a Sufi mystic named Hafiz that seems approriate here:

“Now is the time to know
that all you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider
a lasting truce with yourself and God?

Now is the time to understand
that all your ideas of right and wrong
were just a child’s training wheels
To be laid aside.
When you can finally live
with veracity
and love
...
My dear, please tell me
Why do you still
throw sticks at your heart
And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
that incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time
for you to deeply compute the impossibility
That there is anything
but Grace.

Now is the season to know
that everything you do is sacred.”

When we are called, in various parables, in various ways to “work in the vineyard,” hold that image in all its depth and breath. A vineyard in the hot sun is about sweat and hard work and weariness -- even exhaustion. But it’s also about warmth and beauty, about the earth-marked, but very real joy of people working together, and it is about the abundance of the harvest.

When the Master asks his sons to go out, it is God, asking God’s children -- us -- to go out into life, to help shape the world as God created it to be. A world in which we are at home, even in the depths of every struggle. A world of justice and compassion...a world where there is no inside and no outside, but instead a single whole, in which every human being belongs. In the world as God created it to be, everyone has a job to do, and everyone receives a fair wage for the work they do. Everyone has a home, and a future, and enough to eat. And everyone knows that they are loved. When you say it out loud, it doesn’t seem so impossible, does it? Somebody said “Great social forces are simply the accumulation of individual actions. “ (Jeffrey Sachs)

Son, daughter. Whether you think of yourself as an insider or an outsider -- Go work in my vineyard today, says God. Whatever your particular task is, go do it. I’m already there, says God. I’m already here. Come help me.