Where do we find the Good News here?
by Russell Rathbun
Gospel Reading: Matthew 21:33-46
For Sunday, October 2, 2011: Year A-Ordinary 27
Matthew is on a rampage, or Matthew’s Jesus is on a rampage. Brace yourselves, for these next two weeks are filled with murders, miserable death, the burning of cities, the outer darkness, and of course, the weeping and gnashing of teeth. All this seems a little over the top, like, Matthew really dislike the chief priests.
Deconstructing Violence?
These parables against the chief priests are hard to feel right about in our context or their assumed original context. I would like to find a way that to interpret this week's reading in a way that deconstructs all this violent imagery and doesn’t so strongly scapegoat one particular group of people, but Matthew leaves very little room for interpretation.
Jesus says to the chief priests, this means the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to another people. And then Matt, just to drive the point home even further, writes, when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized he was speaking about them.
Pushing It
O.K. I get that in Matthew’s story-world the Jewish religious leaders are the bad guys. I am sure that, as a tax collector, Matthew, had always been treated as a sinner and a pariah by them. So he was a little bitter, he had some baggage, but this seems to push beyond the pale even of parable-type justice.
I can...I can't...
The parable is easily misread as thinly dressed accusation that God sent his son, Jesus to the keepers of his covenant, the chief priests, and they killed him. As a result God will come and take the covenant away from them, put them to a miserable death and give the covenant to others. It is clear that Matthew thinks the religious leaders and their system are being over thrown, I can preach that.
What I can’t preach is the violent Judgment. God does not answer the murder of his son with miserable death for the perpetrators, but uses that murder as a means for the reconciliation of all of God’s people.
The Hardest Question
All of that is wresting with this pericope in its assumed original context, it is even harder to try and read it in our present context. What good does this parable and its interpretation by Matthew’s Jesus do? Where do we find the Good News here?
