Readings – 1 Thessalonians 1. 1-10; Matthew 22.15-22
“Paul, Sylvanus and Timothy, to the Church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace.”
Jan Lievens, St Paul Writing to the Thessalonians, painted 1629, now hangs in the Kunsthalle Bremen.
“Paul, Sylvanus and Timothy, to the Church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace.” These words may not seem very significant, but it is likely that they are the earliest written in all the New Testament. St Paul dictated them in the year 50 or 51 to the Church in Thessalonica. Thessalonica remains very much a part of today’s world, the second largest city in 21st Century Greece, roughly comparable in size with Bristol. In St Paul’s time, Thessalonica was also an important city, and a wealthy one, capital of the Roman province of Macedonia.
We are all used to hearing Paul telling off Churches in his letters for backsliding from his teachings. But there is no hint at all of this in today’s reading. Instead, the Thessalonians are praised for their faith, and the power with which they have received the Holy Spirit. It also seems obvious from the way Paul congratulates his readers on turning “to God from idols”, that this church comprises one of Paul’s first big successes in converting Gentiles to faith in Christ. In particular, Paul praises the Church in Thessalonica for its endurance, persisting in the faith “in spite of persecution”.
Why might these gentile converts, in a diverse Roman provincial capital, have faced persecution? Well, their faith in Christ would have meant that they no longer participated in important local pagan cults – for example, we know Thessalonica was the stronghold of devotion to Isis. Nor would they have participated in the cult of the Emperor. None of this would have endeared them to politically and economically powerful interests. When faced with a choice between Christ and Caesar, the Thessalonians chose Christ, and perhaps this most of all is why Paul is so fulsome in his praise of them.
Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot and St Mary’s, Potterne
Readings – Philippians 3.4-14 Matthew 21.33-46
“I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus…”
This morning’s readings give us an intensely personal and impassioned passage from St Paul coupled with one of the more difficult and judging of Jesus’ parables. I think this pair of readings is profoundly relevant to the times we are in and the state of our Church. Christ’s words judge the Church of our time forcefully, and St Paul points a way out.
Marten van Valckenborch, The Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen (ca. 1580-90). Hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Let’s start by looking at the gospel reading, the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen.
Most of our Sunday gospel readings this year come from Matthew, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that as we’re coming towards the end of the year, we’re coming towards the end of Jesus’s public ministry in the story. So although it’s October, this Gospel reading is set in the Temple in Jerusalem in the last few days of Jesus’ life.
This parable might explain why the religious hierarchy in Jerusalem had come to fear and hate Jesus so much. The story is a sort of fictional representation of the history of God’s prophets in Jerusalem – most of them were mistreated or even put to death, at the hands of people like them. The landowner represents God, and in the end sends his son, obviously representing Jesus, to try and sort out these unruly tenants and get them to give him some of their grapes as rent, as they agreed. But they kill the Son. Jesus’ audience assumes the landowner would rightly put the murderers of his son to death. Jesus doesn’t actually confirm that, but He makes it clear that, “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the Kingdom.” Bear that in mind – we will come back to it.
Our epistle comes from St Paul’s letter to the Philippians, and recalls his faith as a young man, and how he came to believe Jesus Christ was the son of God. The young Paul was proud of his Jewish heritage and that he had always remained the staunch Jew he was brought up to be. Except for one problem: Paul was so convinced he God’s man that he forgot that God in the Hebrew Bible was clear that He wanted mercy rather than sacrifice and love of neighbour. Paul, however, thought his faith gave him the right to duff up the people he considered God’s enemies, foremost among those being the Church in its first years.
Thinking he was an expert on pleasing God, Paul found instead that God had to hit him with a bolt from the blue to put him on the right path. Writing with the benefit of several decades’ hindsight, Paul was glad that his preconceptions had been shattered. Paul had lost everything considered valuable by ordinary standards, but he willingly paid that price to gain his faith in Jesus Christ.
In trying to meet God’s standards through his own efforts, Paul found out that he didn’t even know really what God’s standards were. Instead, in following Jesus Christ, he learnt that he could never meet God’s standards, but instead had to throw himself on God’s grace – and in abandoning his self-will, he found true liberation.
So what does all this have to do with our situation today? Well I think the church lost its way in the middle of the 20th century, in a way somewhat reminiscent of the young Paul. Paul was, in his own words, confident in the flesh – confident in his heritage, his intellect, and his faithfulness. The churches of the Western countries, very much including the Church of England, became overconfident in its brain. As we entered a world of nuclear power and television, the Church thought it was much too advanced for these hoary old Hebrew fairy stories, and started thinking the idea that Jesus rose from the dead was primitive. It told itself it had “matured” beyond this, that the rest of society had matured beyond it too, and that for the Church to survive it would have to abandon belief in anything supernatural.
If you’ve been paying attention to the readings in Church on recent Sundays, you’ll have noticed that we haven’t had the Palm Sunday Gospel – unsurprisingly in early autumn. So it’s a little startling to find this week’s Gospel catapulting us into the middle of Holy Week. We don’t read Matthew’s Gospel entirely in sequence during the year, so we’ve skipped over Christ’s final journey through Judaea and Jericho, and find Jesus in the Temple arguing with the chief priests and elders.
Paolo Veronese, Christ Among the Doctors (ca. 1560). Hangs in the Prado, Madrid.
The religious leaders are playing what they think are clever word games. But although they present themselves as having power and authority over the Jewish people, what this debate exposes is how afraid they are of public opinion. We also know that they rightly fear the Romans. So they’re performing little verbal dances, determined to get one over on Jesus, but also aware that saying the wrong thing could enrage either the Empire, or the crowds who admire this popular, if strange, preacher, as the admired John the Baptist.
By the time Matthew’s Gospel was written down in this form, perhaps forty years after Holy Week, the pointlessness of these games of had been brutally exposed. In the year 70 the Romans destroyed the Temple, halfway through a brutal eight-year Jewish revolt which ended, inevitably, with a Roman victory. The chief priests and elders in Jerusalem were absolutely not capable of managing the relationship between an all-powerful Empire demanding obedience and a fractious and resentful Jewish Palestinian society.
I’m afraid the word games and meaningless hair-splitting remind me rather of the politics of our own time. While it’s easy to blame our leaders for that, like the Jerusalem Temple authorities of Jesus’ time, they live in fear of fickle public opinion—the opinion of us and people like us—and the evident enjoyment the population takes in a bit of mob anger, albeit mostly expressed on the phone-in shows and on social media. At the same time, the long-term mega trends of the modern world, be it galloping technology, migration, climate change, or whatever, seem as beyond our leaders as the ever-rising tensions between Roman power and Jewish resentment were for the clerical gentlemen at the Temple. Perhaps it’s an inevitable part of the human condition that rulers spend much effort on irrelevancies they can control while ignoring the real problems that they possibly can’t.
Now, here’s a point that’s easy to miss in all this. It is very obvious from this exchange that Jesus can play these political word games like a pro. He puts the chief priests and elders in their box with a calculatedly sharp answer, as He does so often. But Jesus isn’t interested in playing these games for too long. While the religious authorities are desperate to stay on the right side of public opinion, Jesus already seems to be aware that it will turn against Him, and soon.
This is where we see the magnificent paradox that sits at the heart of the Christian faith. Christ has already warned His followers, in Matthew chapter 16, so not all that long before these events, that anyone who tried to save their life would lose it, but anyone who lost their life for His sake would save it. When we lose our lives for Christ’s sake we save them; it’s only because Christ died on the Cross that eternal life is open to us.
