Matthew 21:33-46

“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country.When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.” So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.” Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

It was Martin Luther King Jnr who concurred that the truth will set you free.  But he added, “…but first it will make you very angry.”
There is something in this encounter between the Chief Priests, the Pharisees and Jesus which reflects just how the truth which Jesus had proclaimed to them in the metaphor of the rebellious tenants, made them very angry.
Matthew however, throws out another important detail that hints at the cause of their anger, namely their fear.
The Priests and Pharisees want to destroy Jesus, but he has the adulation of the people who think he is a prophet.
So the Priests and Pharisees, who are threatened by Jesus, are also afraid of the crowds.  The fear is palpable, don’t you think?
I know what it is to get angry.  I can literally seethe and seize up with rage!  If I consider my anger rationally though, most times I am not angry for the reason I think.
I am enraged because a subconscious fear or insecurity is surfacing and my anger is a way to avoid dealing with my fear.
I have spent my life in South Africa, dealing with racism.  By the way, not only white people can be racist.  But having lived with racism in this milieux I recognise that the angry violence of racism is fuelled by the fear of those distinctively different from ourselves.
Witness if you will the Islamophobia sweeping the church at present and you will see what fear can do.
So let’s not deny our anger for politeness sake.  But let us be clear from whence our anger is fuelled.

Matthew 18:21-35

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?”Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.“For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Forgiveness is a difficult thing if it weren’t Jesus would not have said so much about it.  His whole life seemed to be a chain of forgiveness events.  If one looks at the opposition to Jesus in the gospel narratives there were ample opportunities for him to develop a victim mentality.
The oppression of his mother, the difficulty of his birth in a foreign town and as a homeless person, the genocide of his peers due to Herod’s obsession with him, the life of exile in Egypt, the obscurity of life in Nazareth, the misunderstanding of his disciples, the crowds, his home-people.  Even his own mother seems not to have understood him at times.  There were ample chances for Jesus to become an embittered victim.
Yet his life is not one of victimhood but of sacrificial victim-being.  Victim being is different from victimhood because in victim-being Jesus allowed himself to be sacrificed for the sake of those who didn’t even get him.
How did he do it?
He lived forgiveness.
Forgiveness isn’t some band-aid brush off for those who have wronged us, whilst all the while seething at the injustice, it is rather as Jesus says, a process “from the heart”
That means it is deep and transforming and if I understand the numbers of the gospel lesson correctly, it is repetitive.
Again and again we are called to do what Jesus did as he hung on the cross.  The victim of extreme injustice, he found the capacity to pray, “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing”
I would like to think that he was able to forgive in that extreme moment because he has praticed at least seventy times seven times before, forgiving others.

After almost a year of silence, and profound changes in my professional and personal life, I am once again able to reflect on the Scriptures that mould and mystify me.

My dear blog readers,

Yesterday I returned to Port Elizabeth after four years in the lovely town of Port Alfred.The holiday and retirement destination on the Kowie river was also my last pastoral appointment.  I have retired early from the church so as to pursue a more specialized ministry of Pastoral Therapy. You can read more about that by clicking here  I will be opening the practice doors in the rooms of Dr’s Wannenberg and Benson, 86 Park Drive, in Central PE on December 18th.

As one who follows this blog I wanted you to know that I intend to continue posting here as The Listening Hermit as I love the process and the people which the blogs puts me in contact with.

I do however want to change the perspective of the blog (and you may not even notice this) from reflecting purely as a preacher, to looking at the gospels with my new eyes of a pastoral therapist.  This will afford me the context relevance which is important to my reflections on scripture.

I do hope you will continue to visit and interact with me as you have done.

My special thanks must go to Jenee Woodward of Text Week who has been such an encouragement in my blogging

Blessings to you all

Peter

Mark 13:1-8

As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.

I remember this awful joke from the 1980’s

PW Botha (then President of South Africa), Eugene Terreblance (White Supremacist – Neo Nazi), and Desmond Tutu (Archbishop of Cape Town) are all given an audience with the Almighty and are allowed to ask God one question.
PW Botha asks, “Will the ANC ever come to power in South Africa?” God answers “Not in your lifetime”
Eugene Terreblance asks, “Will the Afrikanders ever get their own homeland?” God answers “Not in your lifetime”
Desmond Tutu asks, “Will South Africa ever have a black president?” God answers, “Not in MY lifetime!”

It’s a terrible joke. But we laughed at it because as whites in power we were arrogant and really thought that the status quo would last forever.

Today that joke is just sad. Simply because all of its assumptions were wrong.

It was the same for the Jewish religion in Jesus day.

There was an arrogance at the heart of its practice.

The temple was inviolable and eternal.
The people of Israel were the chosen race.
Chosen for privilege and power and not for service, they regarded themselves as better than everyone else.

For Jesus to suggest that it would one day be destroyed was both heresy and blasphemy.

Yet barely four decades later in AD 70 the temple was destroyed, and it has never been rebuilt.

Apartheid, Afrikander Nationalism, White supremacy in South Africa have all taken their place on the road to destruction that is the inevitable legacy of humanity.

Of course we are not immune from the same kind of arrogance.
We want our culture, our religious forms, our heritage to continue.
Because after all we are better than other people.
God has favoured us.
Afrikander, British, German, French Hugenot, Dutch, Zulu, Xhosa.
We are every bit as arrrogant as the religion of Israel of Jesus day.
Yet in our lifetimes we have seen the decline of the church and the erosion of Christian influence in society on a scale we could never have imagined.
Could it be that for us too the stones of the temple of our arrogance are falling?

We are about to receive, for the first time in the history of this circuit, a minister of colour in the Wesley section.

Unthinkable just a few years ago.

We as whites were the leaders of the nation, the culture, the church.
Never the majority, we simply ruled as if we were. Because we are English dammit.

What does the gospel say about this?

Jesus is clear. Kingdoms come and go.
The temples of stone will crumble and fall just like the power structures of politics and power.
There will be day when even this our lovely church will be empty, desolate and in ruins.

If you don’t believe me take a drive through the countryside. See the abandoned farmhouses, railway stations and the minig towns that are full of ghosts and rubble.

But you don’t even have to go that far. Just watch the decay of the temple of your body. That ought to convince you.

The question Jesus is asking without saying it is, “What remains?”

If bricks and mortar, culture and control, even our own flesh passes away.

What remains?

Jesus suggests that the inviolable core of reality is the life of God’s spirit in the world.

Isn’t that the place we should be looking to and living from?

Jesus said it like this,‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust* consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust* consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’