Bristol Lutheran
Matthew 21:33-46
Pentecost 17A
10-5-2014
God is good, all the time, and all the time, God is good.
It was a fun chant, our summer theme at Luther Park. A simple rhythmic
melody, that united kids together from different congregations, across
Northwest WI, spending one week of their summer. We started the week,
Sunday night, teaching this chant, and during days that followed, the group
became more and more comfortable, kids gained confidence. You could feel
the anticipation, waiting for this chant, every time we gathered together.
Psalm 100 says…. And at the end of the week, as parents picked up their
kids, this was the goodbye.
In a week at camp, most of the gain is the experience of
playing and having fun, singing songs, in the name of
Christ, but this chant around the verse or theme, always
became the tangible gospel kids could bring home.
Even 12 years later, I still remember this chant, well most of it. I had to ask
some friends for help as we tried to piece it together.
God is good, all the time, and all the time, God is good.
But is that really true…
12 years later, I see and hear things that make me
question if God is good, all the time.
I wonder where God is in the Israel/Palestine conflict, Syria, Iraq, or the
Sudan for that matter.
I think about the epidemics of cancer,
Ebola, and genetic diseases like cystic
fibrosis and multiple sclerosis.
I am fearful of the bad chemicals that are in food, including the
unnatural amount of addictive sugar.
I question our societal inclination towards
violence, vengeance, and retaliation.
I am saddened at the growing concern of homelessness, hunger,
unequal wages, and other characteristics of poverty.
I am stunned at the lack of help, or
compassion for the poor, except in isolated
instances.
It makes me want to say, God is good – most of the time, some of the
time, a little of the time.
This gospel doesn’t help.
But if we only read this story at face value, it doesn’t give us a very good
image of God.
Granted Jesus again uses a parable, an
allegory, a way to make a point.
How is God good, all the time, if when he finds out what the tenants did, to
his servants and his son, he will come back to put those wretches to a
miserable death?
Or if we keep reading, did our good God
send Jesus, the cornerstone to crush,
kill the Pharisee who oppose Jesus?
If we say yes, then we paint an image of a vengeful, wrathful God who is out
to get anyone who doesn’t believe the right thing, act the right way, or say
the right words.
But, if we can read this story as an allegory, we
hear Jesus trying to evoke a reaction. The
attitudes in the parable drive the story, they don’t
necessarily describe God’s mode of operation.
We can’t know the way God chooses to work. Allegory is a tool, and literary
instrument that is used in this way for spiritual care. Remember, the
community that Matthew is writing for is very different than our congregation
today, and for whatever reason they needed to hear the gospel in that
moment.
For me the parable produced two reactions.
Maybe the stirring that this parable caused a response similar to what
we asked… wondering since God is good all the time, how does God
act when people go against God.
When God has given us everything we need, including life itself, and we
don’t show appreciation the way God has asked, does God kill us, condemn
us, and throw us out… …Nope. How do we know that?
We have more of the story. We know what happened when
those who where given everything by God, turned on God.
When the crowds literally killed God’s son, God didn’t
retaliate. God saved.
When Pharisees planned the death, and the Romans put him on the cross,
God responded with resurrection. The very death that should have caused
anger and bitterness is the event that gave you and I life, for today and for
forever.
Yes, the cornerstone, Jesus does crush
opponents, not by death, but by
undeserved grace and love.
The second reaction, I thought about is maybe the spiritual care needed, for
all of us, is to know that God is not absent, even if and when we think God
is. Often if something bad happens, we think God must not be there. In fact
that is when much of the trouble in this story started.
But God is never absent, God said so. God isn’t the
landowner that goes away for some time. God is here
through God’s people, through God’s Holy Spirit.
Even if we still see evil or wonder why God would let this or that happen,
God is already intervening, often through you and me, to make the bad,
good.
God has come to us in love, God has made us, we are God’s people. We
are given a kingdom of resources to use with one another to share that love,
to tell the story of love in Christ, to show others that God is never absent.
God of course wants us to do the right thing, to act
faithfully, to respond generously, to show
appreciation fully, to help our neighbors, to love
one another. But that is our response to being in
relationship with a God who calls us children.
Nothing we do or don’t do changes that fact that we are God’s loved sheep
in God’s green pastures.
When we act out against God, God has shown
time and time and time again to send us
forgiveness and grace. Not because it is
deserved, but because God came down to us in
love. That is where it starts, and ends.
God, one who judges us finally, is the one who loves us most fully.
And if we fail, can’t do the right thing, or
forget to remind others that God is never
absent, God still makes it good in the end.
The parable isn’t about divine retaliation against us when we fail because of
greed or self-preservation. It isn’t to scare us to be good. It shows that God
can’t be caught up in the cycle of violence and settling score. Instead, God
ends that cycle.
God risks violence of all kinds, in order to be in relationship with humanity.
God has transformed the bad, into good, because of Christ.
That is why we can chant, God is good all the time, and all the time God is
good.