The Patient Work of Lent

Transcripts are computer-generated and may not be 100% accurate.

Justin: Thanks Maggie. Hey everybody, how are you today? Good, good, glad to hear it. This morning we are continuing in our Path to Palm Sunday series. And this was a series that Fuller, gosh, Luther, not Fuller, that Luther Seminary crafted. And they created it to coincide with the faith action that we're going to take on Palm Sunday at the Capitol. And I'm going to talk about that in just a minute, but as we get closer and closer to Jesus entering into Jerusalem for the Passover, we're wrestling with texts that call us to sit and deal with the tension that is Palm Sunday. A day of joy and expectation, but also a day of great risk and subversive action.

And so our text for this morning is Mark 12:1-12 and this is a parable that Jesus tells and it is an uncomfortable passage for me. I definitely feel the tension in this one and if I'm being honest it leaves me with more questions than answers, but I do believe that there's some beautiful truth in here for us to hold on to and so I will read the passage and then we will talk about it. So it's Mark 12:1-12:

Jesus spoke to them in parables. A man planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a pit for the wine press, and built a tower. Then he rented it to the tenant farmers and took a trip. When it was time he sent a servant to collect from the tenants his share of the fruit of the vineyard, but they grabbed the servant, beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. Again the landowner sent another servant to them, but they struck him on the head and treated him disgracefully. He sent another one and that one they killed. The landlord sent many other servants, but the tenants beat some and killed others. Now the landowner had one son whom he loved dearly. He sent him last thinking, "They will respect my son," but those tenant farmers said to each other, "This is the heir. Let's kill him and the inheritance will be ours." They grabbed him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. So what will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others. Haven't you read this scripture? The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone? The Lord has done this and it's amazing in our eyes. They wanted to arrest Jesus because they knew he had told the parable against them, but they were afraid of the crowd, so they left him and went away.

This is one of the few parables that scholars agree can be read as an allegory. Now normally we don't want to read parables as allegories because they normally have one big concept, a big idea, and when we start reading too much symbolic meaning into it, we can walk away with some pretty weird ideas. So typically we don't do that, but this parable is a little different. It's pretty straightforward as an allegory: God is the owner of the vineyard. The vineyard and the tower are Jerusalem and the temple. The tenants are the religious leaders who have been entrusted with the moral, social, and religious life of the Jewish people. The servants that are sent to collect on the harvest are prophets that God has sent over time to the people throughout Jewish history, and the beloved son of the vineyard owner is obviously? Jesus. That's right, always a reliable answer at church.

So with a pretty straightforward reading like this, it raises all sorts of questions for me. Like why would the landowner keep sending servants on behalf of himself instead of just showing up himself? Like if it was me, I think that after the first murder, I would probably intervene, right? And that kind of coincides with the ways that we experience God in our lives. I know that many of us have asked the question, "God, where are you? Like have you just totally checked out?"

And so is this parable a confirmation of our suspicions that God has taken a trip and isn't around? It also seems crazy to me that the tenants are willing to beat and kill the owner's son thinking that they can have the landowner's inheritance. Like isn't that weird? Like if I was the boss, the last person that I would give my inheritance to would be the murderer of my son. So that's weird, unless the tenants think that the owner is such a pushover that he's not going to hold anybody accountable for their actions. That's weird to me.

This parable also makes it sound like Jesus may know something that God doesn't know. Like in this story, it appears that God sends Jesus because his rationale is, "Oh, the people just really need somebody that they can respect. Like surely they'll respect my son." But Jesus makes it clear in telling the story that he is going to be executed and killed. So that is another weird dynamic to me. We are left with a lot to process here.

But the thing that is so great about parables is that they don't provide a black and white picture of reality. They give us the opportunity to ask some really good questions. And so the ideas in a parable that make us most uncomfortable are probably where we need to spend the bulk of our time, because maybe there's something there that is worthy of our wrestling. And so that's what we're going to do today.

I've wrestled with this one and I've come out on the other side with some thoughts that I'll share with you guys this morning. But my encouragement to you would be to read Mark 12 for yourselves and wrestle with it on your own because the beauty of a parable is that the things that I take away from it may not be the same things that you take away from it. So the first big idea here that stood out to me was that God is more patient than we ever thought possible. God's patience is all over this story. I think it's great that Jerusalem is represented as this vineyard because planting a vineyard is a slow process. It requires a lot of upfront investment and it can be five years or more before you ever see a grape, before you ever see a return on your investment. And in our story, the owner even puts a fence around the vineyard and builds this tower to make sure that animals and thieves don't sneak into the vineyard. And so God is presented here as a cultivator who is willing to wait for the good fruit that is possible. God is willing to invest the time and the energy that it takes to turn a hillside into a thriving vineyard.

We see that same patience with the tenants as well. You know, God sends these servants to collect on the harvest over and over again even though the servants are beaten and mistreated. As I mentioned earlier, these servants represent the prophets that are sent time and again to the people of Israel to call them to repentance and restoration. And we can see through the story of the prophets how God has been patient with the people. I think of Jeremiah as a really great example. God calls Jeremiah to go to the people of Judah and to call them to start living faithfully again because they had started engaging in cultic prostitution. And the kings and the priests were exploiting widows and orphans and immigrants. And they are given over 40 years to fix these problems and to do something about it. And when they don't, Babylon sweeps in and conquers Judah. But even then, God promises that there will come a day of restoration for the people. God's patience is on full display in the story of the prophets. And God's patience, we can see it, but it may not be something that we are all together comfortable with.

The early church father, Tertullian, he wrote a letter on patience. And here's what Tertullian says about it:

Patience fortifies faith, is the pilot of peace, assists charity, establishes humility, waits long for repentance, sets her sill on confession, bridles the tongue, drives away scandals, consoles the poor, teaches the rich moderation, overstrains not the weak, exhausts not the strong, and is the delight of the believer.

To me, this quote gets to the heart of God's patience in this text. God is cultivating this vineyard that is defined by all of those qualities that Tertullian talks about, peace and charity and humility. And it requires a great deal of patience to see these virtues and values become a reality. And we know that to be true from our own lives, like think about how long you waited for that apology that you never thought was coming; and then it did. Or think about how much patience you had to have for yourself as you started to deconstruct some of your beliefs. And you were wondering if you would ever have a firm foundation to stand on again. And then finally, you did. `Despite our human longing for quick resolutions and quick fixes, the patience of God is a grace that we can all be thankful for because the work of peace and restoration, like that's messy work. But the fortunate thing for us is that God is on that journey with us.

The second idea that really stood out to me in this parable is that when the faithful cozy up to political power, corruption is inevitable. The tenets in our parable are entrusted with the landowners vineyard. So there is plenty of reason to believe that they are fully capable of caring for this vineyard and returning the harvest to the landowner. And it's not even that the tenants haven't produced any grapes. Like there's a harvest here. So the problem isn't the vineyard. The problem is that the tenants are rotten.

In this parable, the tenants represent those religious leaders who have ulterior motives. Rome had an agreement with the chief priests and the scribes and the elders that they could practice their faith the way that they wanted to. They could even have civil authority over the people, but they had to keep Rome happy. They had to make sure that the people paid their taxes, didn't revolt, and that they obeyed all of the Roman laws. A lot was on the line here and Jesus did not like how comfortable the people had gotten with Rome. He was extremely concerned that they had abandoned their faithful witness for the convenience, the power, and the influence that Rome was offering to them.

And I want you to pay close attention to how Jesus presents the corruption. It happens gradually over time. The first servant comes and the tenants beat him up and send him away empty-handed. Then the second tenant comes and they beat him over the head. And in our English Bibles, you'll typically read something like, "They treated him disgracefully." But what the Greek says is that they deprived him of honor, which means that there was some sort of sexual assault that took place here. Then the third servant comes and they kill that one. And then finally the son shows up. And not only do they kill him, but they plan to take all of his inheritance with him. The corruption happens gradually.

Tripp Fuller, who hosts the Homebrewed Christianity podcast, which is great by the way, and I encourage you to listen to that if you haven't, he was talking recently about the current state of the church. And he shares this old illustration about a frog that gets dropped into a boiling kettle of water. And he says that because the water is so hot, the frog immediately jumps out of the kettle. But he said, "If you put the frog down in a cool kettle of water and you turn the heat up gradually, then the frog stays there until it's too late." Now obviously that's not, that's just an illustration, that's not actually true. But the question that Tripp was asking was: If the church is like the frog in this illustration, and has the temperature, the moral temperature, been dialed up over time, over the past few decades, until the point where the church is morally bankrupt and most of us don't even recognize it, the past and the present have so much in common.

And it's evident, and it's concerning because the religious leaders in this text are entrusted with the responsibility to lead the Jewish people in faithfulness. And they're the very ones who in just a few weeks are going to incite the crowds to start chanting at Jesus, "Crucify him, crucify him." They're the very ones who Pilate is going to approach and he's going to say, "Shall I crucify your king?" And they're going to reply with, "We have no king but Caesar." And according to the parable, it's all because they want the power and the honor and the glory that Jesus has for themselves.

And as bleak of a picture as this may be, the opposite is also true. God's people are capable of so much good. The religious leaders in the passage leave Jesus alone. Why? Because it says that the leaders are scared of the crowd. The leadership, yeah, they use their power to protect themselves, but the voice of the people in this moment protects Jesus and they stop an injustice, even if it is just for a moment.

So we have a choice, don't we? Like we don't have to be in the crowd chanting, "Crucify him." We don't have to cave and declare that Caesar is lord. We can get back to the holy work of caring for the vineyard and creating a crop and a harvest that is good and plentiful for all of us. We can use our collective voice to stand for justice and keep those spiritual and political leaders who have power in check.

That's why I'm so excited about the faith action that we're going to be taking together on Palm Sunday. We're going to join 10,000 other Christians at the state capitol building in St. Paul at 2:30 on Palm Sunday and we are going to wave our palm branches and declare that Christian nationalism is not Christian. That the values we hold dear as followers of Jesus are about loving our neighbors well and doing the things that Jesus taught us to do. Welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, healing the sick. So as the church starts to look more and more like Rome and less and less like Jesus, we're going to use our collective voices as the people of God to wave our palm branches, worship God on the steps of the capitol, and declare the way of Jesus.

And the final thing that really stood out to me in this parable is that Jesus stays on the path to the cross knowing full well what lies ahead for him. Our scripture for this morning takes place right after Jesus has ridden into Jerusalem on the donkey and he goes to the temple and he starts turning over the money changers tables and everyone's getting upset. And right before Jesus tells us parable, the religious leaders approach him and they ask him on what authority he's doing the things that he's doing, and saying the things that he's saying. And they're getting angry, and Jesus quotes Psalm 118 to them, "The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The Lord has done this and it is marvelous in our eyes." In other words, Jesus is saying, "You want to know where my authority comes from? The Lord is doing this thing and you are rejecting the stone that is about to become the cornerstone, the foundational piece." But that's okay because the end result is going to be something marvelous and spectacular.

And so two things can be true at the same time. Jesus can be the victim of cruel political and religious systems that sought to maintain power and control and Jesus's death can be an act of faith that God has the ultimate authority to take an injustice of this magnitude and do something marvelous and holy with it. That's the point that Debbie made last week and it's a point that I want to reiterate this morning is that Jesus counted the cost of dwelling among us knowing full well that his execution was ahead of him and he still chose to stand in solidarity with us and that display of love is how God has chosen to begin breaking the chains of injustice and laying a foundation for abundant life.

And so as we continue on this journey through Lent together, what does a passage like this have to say to us about being faithful in these times? I think this scripture is calling us to sit with the patience of God in ways that fill us with joy, bring us gratitude, and make us angry. This parable makes me uncomfortable and I'm not even sure I really like what it has to say about the patience of God. I mean I love God's patience when it comes to me. When I screw up I love that God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love but when I look around me and I see some of the harm and chaos I think God, we really need a bold act of justice right now.

And so Lent invites us into that tension of trusting that God's patience is not indifference and that what's being asked of us is faith that God is still tending the vineyard. Even when we step out on our streets and see what's happening, even when we open our apps and see all of the news that could really bring us down and it just feels like the violence and the corruption are unrestrained. We're being called to see with the eyes of faith that God's patience is actually the space where God continues to build on the cornerstone. That work of wholeness and justice and peace that began at the cross. And in that gracious patience of God we're being called to count the cost of participating in that work together. Standing in solidarity with our neighbors will stretch us beyond our comfort zones. It will cost us relationships and resources and even naive perspectives. Honest repentance will confront the ways that we've benefited from systems that have wounded other people. This is not easy work but it does lead to a vineyard that is going to produce some really good fruit. God's patience doesn't give us room to waste time. It gives us room to be faithful.

And so if there's any truth that I want you to leave here with today, it's that God is not finished yet and God will not stop tending to the vineyard until all those values that we know to be true—the patience, the love, the mercy, and the justice of God—is ripe for the harvest. And we're all able to look at it together and say the Lord has done this and it is marvelous in our eyes.

Let's pray together. God, you are working in the midst of every high and every low. Help us to walk in faith and see the good fruit that's possible in this vineyard. May your loving patience give us the space to work towards reconciliation, to develop relationships in the community, to sit in the pain with our neighbors, to look introspectively at our own hearts. May this season be the time where we lean into you Jesus, our rejected cornerstone and open our lives to the ways that you're working. We believe there is beauty all around us and we know that there are marvelous things in store for the future. So we give you our trust and we ask that you guide us in faith. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.