May 12, 2019 4th Sunday of Easter Luke 20:1-26

There is a topic about which almost everyone has declared themselves to be an expert.  And that is highway design.  I remember my professor for the highway design class I had in college saying that everyone thinks they can design roads better than the experts.  They say things like, “They should have built this ramp longer.”  Or, “This turn should be wider.”  Or, “They should put a traffic light here.”  And on and on it goes.  Everybody has a solution to a problem.

            My expertise was never in highway design but I did a couple co-op semesters in the design division of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.  Indeed there is much that goes into designing a highway that few people are aware of.  If more people knew that they’d understand why things were done the way they are; but everyone thinks they can do better than the engineers. 

            Now, I will say there are plenty of truly bone-headed designs out there, and the engineers should have their sanity tested.  What were they thinking?  It was before my time, but I suppose the “Can of Worms” is an infamous local example.

            Still though, whatever our jobs or expertise may be, we don’t like it when outsiders come in and tell us how to do it better.  They just have no idea!

            Keep that idea in mind and put yourselves into the role of the religious leaders in Jerusalem when Jesus comes to town for Passover.  You, the experts understand the complexity of things.  You’re studied in the Law and the history of how it has been applied.  You have first hand experience with the temple and all the logistics involved in making it work.  You also know the Romans are breathing down your neck to keep the peace.  It’s a tricky arrangement to keep the Jewish faith alive at all under Roman oppression. 

For example, the Romans considered the Jews to be lazy because they wouldn’t work on the sabbath.  Romans wanted work seven days a week.  You’ve also used your skills and expertise to make the best of some bad situations.  Another example, Roman coins all have graven images of the gods and emperors on them.  They are an offense to God.  But Hebrew currency isn’t legal tender throughout the empire.  So, you’ve struck a compromise.  Jews can use the money they have to use to live day to day, but for religious purposes they are to use Hebrew coins.  Money changers are set up in the courtyards outside the temple building in order to help people change currency.

            It’s all complex.  Times are stressful.  But, as best you can, you’ve created something that works and is as faithful as possible.

            And then you have these nit-wit self-proclaimed religious experts and zealots who show up from the countryside from time to time.  They threaten everything you work hard to achieve.  One particular one is this charismatic preacher from Nazareth and his bunch of uneducated followers, all of them having various states of ill-repute, and they show up at the biggest holiday of the year and cause a ruckus.  Some crowds welcome this Jesus guy with a parade.  That’s okay.  They can have their hometown hero.  But then when he overturns the tables of the money changers and starts challenging everything you’ve worked for years to develop you have serious concerns.

            The religious leaders question to Jesus that began our gospel reading is a very legitimate one: “Tell us, by what authority are you doing these things?  Who is it who gave you this authority?”

            From our Christian perspective this is a very offensive thing to ask the Messiah.  But stay in the perspective of the Jewish leaders.  They are basically asking Jesus for his credentials:  What college did you go to for undergrad and graduate work?  What board and legal certifications do you have?  What school of thought, or great leader are your ideas coming from?

            Maybe think of it this way.  If you went to college, how would it be if you turned in a research paper with no works cited, no bibliography?  You just said that you were your own authority, you knew what you were talking about because you have determined you are an expert, and the professor better just accept it.  What grade do you think you’ll get?

            Or how about this, it’s Mother’s Day.  If you’re a mother how do you feel about getting parenting advice from a person who never changed a diaper, dealt with a temper tantrum, or took care of a sick kid?  Yet from the perspective of the religious leaders that’s exactly what Jesus is doing!

            In order to understand this passage, and the ones we have coming up in the next two weeks, we need to put ourselves in a very uncomfortable place - the role of the religious leaders - and then we discover some very very important things.  We discover that their words are not the words of evil people opposed to God’s will.  Their words are the perspective of people with credentials, wisdom, experience, and education.  They know what they’re talking about. 

Who is Jesus?  By all human standards he’s a nobody.  At most people would call him insightful; for an uneducated man.  But certainly not someone who has any claim to authority.

What we have here is not so much what we would consider to be a conflict between good and evil.  It is a conflict between human logic and God’s grace.

Logic says the forms of religion, and the temple, and the rules that keep it orthodox, and the unavoidable compromises that have to be made in life all have to be taken into account in order to preserve and grow faith.  Grace throws all that out the window.

And sadly, orthodox and faithful as the religious leaders thought they were being, they missed essential things.  In their logical work of preservation they missed the deeper call to love.  Jesus hadn’t come to attack them, but to witness to something deeper.  Nevertheless, good order came before caring for people.  Success came before mercy.  Maintaining the status quo became central.

Let’s not let ourselves off the hook, for do we not do the same things?  What would happen if we decided to cancel this worship service and just have one at 8:30?  Would you still come?  What if we moved weekly worship to Tuesday evenings?  What would attendance be like?  Or if we sold the building and rented space in a storefront on Main St? 

All of these things would be stupid by human logic.  Attendance and income would decline.  Perhaps the church would close.  Many would attend a church who held worship at the proper time – Sunday mornings. 

Yet isn’t that the same as the temple, and keeping the Romans happy, and making sure all was in good order?  You see, we discover a good deal of ourselves in the Jews of Jesus’ day.

God’s grace sounds really great until you really start to apply it.  Then everything can go to chaos.  If there is grace, what are the expectations?  What is to create order?  How do you keep faith from turning into people just following the most charismatic leader of the day?   These are all questions the earliest Christians had to work through.  St. Paul’s writings that made their way into the Bible helped a lot.  But grace is always a challenge.
            I don’t think Jesus was being mean with the parable of the wicked tenants that we read.  You’ll remember that the tenants rejected the owners servants sent to collect the rent.  Eventually he sent his son, who was then killed.

Jesus was just telling a truth.  Humans like to claim and take and keep.  It seems to be deep in our nature.  We just don’t trust God.  And God may not exactly reject us, but we can become so set in our ownership of our own lives that we just leave no room for God to work.

Let’s keep our hearts and minds open.  God will call us to new and unpredictable things.  They will be challenging!  Sure, there will be established things in our lives that will change.  And there will surely be risks.  And some things will seem stupid.  But there is also the joy and delight of seeing God’s grace at work.  There is refreshment when all is turned over to God.  There is freedom when you are not limited by conventional expectations.  And there is joy when God’s kingdom – God’s ways of being – take shape in our lives.