Year A
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Psalm 19
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46<\/p>\n\n\n\n
May the words of my mouth O God\u2026 speak your truth\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The writers of Exodus were familiar with various kinds of legal documents\u2026 they knew about many of the different forms used in and around the Near East… and one of them was the suzerain-vassal treaty form\u2026 a suzerain was a king\u2026 a ruler\u2026 a landowner\u2026 and a vassal was a slave\u2026 a serf\u2026 maybe a tenant farmer or sharecropper\u2026 the one had power\u2026 the others did not\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A treaty form like this\u2026 either agreed to… or not… by a people being conquered\u2026 established who the ruler was\u2026 their position in relation to the conquered people\u2026 and laid out the expectations about their behavior\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many of these ancient legal documents\u2026 these contracts\u2026 date to the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BC\u2026 and some Assyrian forms can also be dated to about the seventeenth century\u2026 and they exerted a powerful influence when Exodus was written\u2026 because they’d already been around for almost 500 years\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And having just come out of four-hundred years of slavery\u2026 the Israelites knew what it was to be dominated\u2026 they knew about the hardships that domination brought with it\u2026 and the meager if any benefits it provided\u2026 but using the form of an ancient Near Eastern treaty as the basis of the Ten Commandments in this way\u2026 and for this purpose\u2026 was unprecedented genius\u2026 now the Ten Commandments affirmed for the people who God was\u2026 what God had done for them\u2026 and laid out expected behaviors\u2026 and established an ordered relationship with them\u2026 and now God became their magnanimous suzerain\u2026 and the Israelites became recipients of God’s mercy\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later on\u2026 passages in the Book of Joshua outlined more specifically what they could and couldn’t do\u2026 the rewards for compliance\u2026 and the consequences for missing that mark\u2026 in Joshua 24:19-27\u2026 Joshua said to the people\u2026 basically\u2026 L<\/em>ook<\/em>\u2026 you’d better know what you’re getting yourselves into\u2026 it’s not too late to say No\u2026 because if you say Yes and fail\u2026 the Lord will deal harshly with you<\/em>\u2026 and they said\u2026 We will serve the Lord<\/em>\u2026 and Joshua replied\u2026 You are witnesses against yourselves… by your own words you have chosen to serve the Lord<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now in Philippians\u2026 Paul identifies himself not only as a Jew\u2026 not only as a follower of the Law\u2026 but as a Pharisee\u2026 and because of how ardently he follows the Law\u2026 he considered himself blameless\u2026 as a Pharisee\u2026 he believed that God had disclosed God’s will within the Law\u2026 and anyone who completely obeyed the Law would therefore be in right relationship with God\u2026 but for Paul\u2026 all of this becomes rubbish compared to what he has found in Christ\u2026 Paul has repented\u2026 he has turned his attention from the boundaries of written law\u2026 to the boundless law in Christ\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n There’s a new series on Apple TV\u2026 set in the future\u2026 it depicts a society contained in an underground silo\u2026 hence the series’ name\u2026 Silo\u2026 and it’s huge\u2026 there are 144 levels\u2026 each one forty feet tall\u2026 which overall is equivalent to four Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other\u2026 the residents do not know why they are there\u2026 they do not know who built the silo\u2026 they don’t know why everything outside of the silo is as it is\u2026 or when it will be safe to go outside\u2026 they only know that that day\u2026 is not today\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the physical limitations imposed by the silo itself\u2026 impinge on and exert limitations on the questions they’re able to imagine and ask\u2026 and inform the questions they’re forbidden to ask\u2026 that’s how it was for the Pharisees\u2026 they believed that the only way to please God\u2026 was by perfect adherence to the Letter of the Law\u2026 that nothing else mattered\u2026 and that it could not be questioned\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And Jesus tells them the parable in today’s Gospel\u2026 in which the landowner is God\u2026 the slaves are the prophets\u2026 who are not like actors on a stage worthy of praise or blame\u2026 but are more like the prompters in the wings reminding the people of their lost lines… the tenants are the Pharisees\u2026 and the landowner’s son is Jesus\u2026 and when Jesus asks the Pharisees what they think the landowner ought to do to those who killed the prophets and his son\u2026 their answer echoes the passage from Joshua\u2026 You are witnesses against yourselves<\/em>\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n They ought to have said\u2026 I’m taking the fifth\u2026 but their myopic\u2026 missing-the-point-of-God’s love\u2026 is to put the tenants to death\u2026 and lease the vineyard to others who will make sure the vineyard bears fruit\u2026 and who will share it with the landowner\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the Pharisees\u2026 the Law was the shell of the Silo\u2026 it functioned as their whole universe\u2026 and informed their worldview… they couldn’t comprehend God’s light in Christ\u2026 and even when they saw it\u2026 even when they experienced it themselves and the miracles he performed\u2026 they had no reference point\u2026 they had no way of framing it\u2026 and they would have been afraid to try\u2026 because it would have forced them into a new way of understanding themselves and others\u2026 and all of their power and authority and privilege would be gone\u2026 and unlike Paul\u2026 who had a change of heart\u2026 they couldn’t see to God’s boundlessness beyond\u2026 the rigidity of their understanding needed to be tempered in Jesus’ love\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And Jesus quotes Ps. 118:22 to them\u2026 the stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone<\/em>\u2026 and his remark about it\u2026 is that the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces\u2026 now\u2026 a cornerstone is a stone which forms the base of the corner of a building\u2026 and joins two walls\u2026 but a cornerstone is more\u2026 it can also be figurative\u2026 it can be an important quality or feature on which a particular thing is based\u2026 or depends\u2026 so we can say that the Ten Commandments are the cornerstone of God’s law\u2026 that these Ten Words\u2026 or ten principles form the cornerstone for the Two Great Commandments\u2026 to love God with all our heart\u2026 and soul\u2026 and mind\u2026 and to love your neighbor as yourself<\/em>\u2026 and when we fall on this cornerstone\u2026 when we come face to face with that to which God is calling us\u2026 and become aware of just how far from that goal we are\u2026 not just individually\u2026 but collectively\u2026 when we are called up short by it\u2026 it will break us to pieces\u2026 because we become the tenants who think we can disregard the landowner’s son and keep all the produce for ourselves\u2026 as Psalm 130:3-4 says\u2026 If you kept account of our sins\u2026 <\/em> Lord<\/em>\u2026 who could<\/em> survive<\/em>\u2026 but Yours is the power to forgive<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m usually very observant\u2026 and when there’s an upgrade to my computer’s operating system\u2026 I usually notice almost all of the changes\u2026 most of them are intentional and provide additional features\u2026 but some of them are caused by errors in the underlying code\u2026 and cause glitches\u2026 and if I call technical support\u2026 the question I almost always ask\u2026 is whether this is expected behavior or not\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And compared to what’s going on in the world these days\u2026 what we’re being called to seems like grace that’s too radical\u2026 forgiveness that’s too radical\u2026 and love that’s just way too radical\u2026 but deep down in the underlying code\u2026 and from God’s point of view\u2026 all of that is only normal\u2026 typical\u2026 expected behavior\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so I wonder\u2026 in what kind of silos do we live\u2026 what kinds of boundaries have we enshrined in myopic laws\u2026 which are less about fostering beloved community\u2026 and are more about controlling others\u2026 and from which we need to break free\u2026 so that we can embody Christ’s light\u2026 and so we’ll never have to be witnesses against ourselves\u2026 when we say Yes to God\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Year A Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 Psalm 19 Philippians 3:4b-14 Matthew 21:33-46 May the words of my mouth O God\u2026 speak your truth\u2026 The writers of Exodus were familiar with various kinds of legal documents\u2026 they knew about many of the different forms used in and around the Near East… and one of them was the suzerain-vassal treaty form\u2026 a suzerain was a king\u2026 a ruler\u2026 a landowner\u2026 and a vassal was a slave\u2026 a serf\u2026 maybe a tenant farmer or sharecropper\u2026 the one had power\u2026 the others did not\u2026 A treaty form like this\u2026 either agreed to… or not… by a people being conquered\u2026 established who the ruler was\u2026 their position in relation to the conquered people\u2026 and laid out the expectations about their behavior\u2026 Many of these ancient legal documents\u2026 these contracts\u2026 date to the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BC\u2026 and some Assyrian forms can also be dated to about the seventeenth century\u2026 and they exerted a powerful influence when Exodus was written\u2026 because they’d already been around for almost 500 years\u2026 And having just come out of four-hundred years of slavery\u2026 the Israelites knew what it was to be dominated\u2026 they knew about the hardships that domination brought with it\u2026 and the meager if any benefits it provided\u2026 but using the form of an ancient Near Eastern treaty as the basis of the Ten Commandments in this way\u2026 and for this purpose\u2026 was unprecedented genius\u2026 now the Ten Commandments affirmed for the people who God was\u2026 what God had done for them\u2026 and laid out expected behaviors\u2026 and established an ordered relationship with them\u2026 and now God became their magnanimous suzerain\u2026 and the Israelites became recipients of God’s mercy\u2026 Later on\u2026 passages in the Book of Joshua outlined more specifically what they could and couldn’t do\u2026 the rewards for compliance\u2026 and the consequences for missing that mark\u2026 in Joshua 24:19-27\u2026 Joshua said to the people\u2026 basically\u2026 Look\u2026 you’d better know what you’re getting yourselves into\u2026 it’s not too late to say No\u2026 because if you say Yes and fail\u2026 the Lord will deal harshly with you\u2026 and they said\u2026 We will serve the Lord\u2026 and Joshua replied\u2026 You are witnesses against yourselves… by your own words you have chosen to serve the Lord\u2026 Now in Philippians\u2026 Paul identifies himself not only as a Jew\u2026 not only as a follower of the Law\u2026 but as a Pharisee\u2026 and because of how ardently he follows the Law\u2026 he considered himself blameless\u2026 as a Pharisee\u2026 he believed that God had disclosed God’s will within the Law\u2026 and anyone who completely obeyed the Law would therefore be in right relationship with God\u2026 but for Paul\u2026 all of this becomes rubbish compared to what he has found in Christ\u2026 Paul has repented\u2026 he has turned his attention from the boundaries of written law\u2026 to the boundless law in Christ\u2026 There’s a new series on Apple TV\u2026 set in the future\u2026 it depicts a society contained in an underground silo\u2026 hence the series’ name\u2026 Silo\u2026 and it’s huge\u2026 there are 144 levels\u2026 each one forty feet tall\u2026 which overall is equivalent to four Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other\u2026 the residents do not know why they are there\u2026 they do not know who built the silo\u2026 they don’t know why everything outside of the silo is as it is\u2026 or when it will be safe to go outside\u2026 they only know that that day\u2026 is not today\u2026 But the physical limitations imposed by the silo itself\u2026 impinge on and exert limitations on the questions they’re able to imagine and ask\u2026 and inform the questions they’re forbidden to ask\u2026 that’s how it was for the Pharisees\u2026 they believed that the only way to please God\u2026 was by perfect adherence to the Letter of the Law\u2026 that nothing else mattered\u2026 and that it could not be questioned\u2026 And Jesus tells them the parable in today’s Gospel\u2026 in which the landowner is God\u2026 the slaves are the prophets\u2026 who are not like actors on a stage worthy of praise or blame\u2026 but are more like the prompters in the wings reminding the people of their lost lines… the tenants are the Pharisees\u2026 and the landowner’s son is Jesus\u2026 and when Jesus asks the Pharisees what they think the landowner ought to do to those who killed the prophets and his son\u2026 their answer echoes the passage from Joshua\u2026 You are witnesses against yourselves\u2026 They ought to have said\u2026 I’m taking the fifth\u2026 but their myopic\u2026 missing-the-point-of-God’s love\u2026 is to put the tenants to death\u2026 and lease the vineyard to others who will make sure the vineyard bears fruit\u2026 and who will share it with the landowner\u2026 For the Pharisees\u2026 the Law was the shell of the Silo\u2026 it functioned as their whole universe\u2026 and informed their worldview… they couldn’t comprehend God’s light in Christ\u2026 and even when they saw it\u2026 even when they experienced it themselves and the miracles he performed\u2026 they had no reference point\u2026 they had no way of framing it\u2026 and they would have been afraid to try\u2026 because it would have forced them into a new way of understanding themselves and others\u2026 and all of their power and authority and privilege would be gone\u2026 and unlike Paul\u2026 who had a change of heart\u2026 they couldn’t see to God’s boundlessness beyond\u2026 the rigidity of their understanding needed to be tempered in Jesus’ love\u2026 And Jesus quotes Ps. 118:22 to them\u2026 the stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone\u2026 and his remark about it\u2026 is that the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces\u2026 now\u2026 a cornerstone is a stone which forms the base of the corner of a building\u2026 and joins two walls\u2026 but a cornerstone is more\u2026 it can also be figurative\u2026 it can be an important quality or feature on which a particular thing is based\u2026 or depends\u2026 so we can say that the Ten Commandments are the cornerstone of God’s law\u2026 that these 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