When I was a kid, and my
family went on a road trip, it was always important to me to know where we were
going, and even what route we were taking.
This did have some good results.
For example, when I was about
nine years old, my aunt and uncle moved from Chicago to Santa Maria,
California, which is just a few hours’ drive from my childhood home in
Burbank. Upon moving, they sent out
invitations for a little gathering at their new home, which my parents stuck on
the refrigerator door with a magnet.
When the day came, my sisters
and I hopped into the back seat of our station wagon, and my parents drove us
up highway 101 to Santa Maria. After
several hours of driving, we came to the Santa Maria city limits, and it was
then that my parents realized they had left the invitation with the directions
to the house on the refrigerator door.
And this was long before
people had cell phones or GPS or any other such devices.
I remember my Dad saying,
“Well, how hard can it be? Santa Maria’s
not that big of town, is it?” Just as
soon as he said that, we came to a sign that said, “Santa Maria – Next 6
exits.”
And my Dad got upset and
said, “6 exits! Are you kidding me?”
At that point, I spoke up
from the backseat. “You want to get off
at Donovan, and turn left, then right, then left.”
My Dad was skeptical. Donovan wasn’t the first exit, or the second,
or the third. But he kept driving. When Donovan finally appeared, he got off …
and went left, then right, and then left.
And there, halfway down the block, were my aunt and uncle standing on
the front porch of their new house.
Well, I, of course, felt
pretty good about myself and my abilities.
However, the flip side of this is that it was – and is – often hard for
me to just “go with the flow.” On school
field trips, riding in the bus, I would worry about whether or not the bus
driver really knew the shortest, quickest way to where we were going. Sometimes, when I was a boy scout, we’d be
traveling to a camp that I had no idea where it was. I’d just get in the car and try my hardest to
not bother the driver about where he was taking us. I didn’t want him to think I doubted his
ability to reach our destination – which, in fact, I did. The truth was that it made me anxious because
I didn’t know exactly where our destination was.
One time, I think it was when
I graduated from elementary school, my grandparents decided to take me to a
special place as a graduation present.
And they wanted it to be a surprise.
I don’t like surprises.
Well, I got in the car and
they started driving south from Burbank on Interstate 5. We drove through East L.A. and kept going,
and I began to get ideas about where they were taking me. Needless to say, I knew how to get to places,
and I knew that driving south on I-5 past L.A. eventually led to Disneyland.
I started to get my hopes
up. We kept going on I-5 … but then we
merged right and got on the 710.
And I probably shouldn’t say
it, not here anyway, but my first memory of going to Long Beach was such a
disappointment to me.
But the Spruce Goose – our
final destination – was pretty cool. So
it wasn’t all bad. But I still got
anxious whenever I didn’t know where I was going.
Well, after some time I
realized that I could turn that anxiety into a thrill. Adolescents are, after all, thrill seekers
and risk takers, and for me one of the biggest thrills and risks was getting in
the backseat of a car without knowing exactly
where it was going to take me.
Two weeks ago I began a
sermon series on parables. And guess
what? When I started, I wasn’t quite
sure how long the series would be, or where we’d end up when we get there. It makes it all very exciting. I’m sure you find this as thrilling as I do,
and I know you feel the adrenaline rush every Sunday as I step into the pulpit
to preach!
I began by talking about
three types of parables, and how most of the parables Jesus told are challenge parables. They are stories that challenge our way of
thinking. I talked about the stories of
Ruth, Jonah, and Job, and how they challenged prejudices of the time … and even
challenged those older scriptures that supported those prejudices. In other words, Ruth, Jonah, and Job dared to
suggest that scriptures from Deuteronomy, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Jeremiah were wrong, that there is another way of
seeing things. Then, and now, that is a
challenging thing to hear.
I also mentioned how Ruth,
Jonah and Job – in challenging commonly held prejudices – paved the way for
Jesus and his parable of the Good Samaritan, which did the exact same thing.
Today, I’ll talk about the
challenges presented in some of Jesus’s other parables. Because as I said two weeks ago, if you hear
a parable of Jesus, and it doesn’t make you go “unh?” … If you don’t find it
difficult to accept because it challenges your way of thinking about things …
then you probably haven’t understood it.
And one more thing: a book called the Power of Parable by John Dominic Crossan has been greatly
influential to me in preparing these sermons.
If these sermons have got you thinking, and you want more, I encourage
you to attend Founders Day at Chapman University next March, where John Dominic
Crossan will be the featured speaker.
In the 18th
chapter of Luke, Jesus tells the parable of a Pharisee and a tax collector who
went in to pray. And when we read this
story, we often read it as an example of how we are to pray, and how we are not to pray.
The Pharisee enters, makes a
big show, and says, loudly, “thank you, God, that I am not like that sinner,
that tax collector, over there.”
The tax collector, meanwhile,
humbly bows his head and whispers, “God, be merciful to me, for I am a
sinner.” And Jesus concludes the story
by saying that this tax collector’s prayer was the better one.
Now, we hear this parable,
and think, okay, this is how we should pray, without a lot of fanfare, without
a lot of showing off. It’s an example of how to pray.
And we miss the deeper
challenge that this parable presents.
The question is: why was the “bad example” in this story
a Pharisee? Pharisees were good people,
respected for their faith. So often in
scripture they are used as a bad example that it’s hard for us to imagine this,
but the Pharisees were perhaps the holiest people of their time, and they
encouraged other people to live lives of holiness.
Tax collectors, on the other
hand, deserved no respect. First of all,
it was well-known that when they collected taxes, they always charged a little
more than they needed to, and pocketed the difference. That in itself was bad enough.
But the very fact that tax
collectors willingly collected taxes on behalf of Rome meant that they were in
collaboration with the powers of oppression.
The Pharisees believed that
if the people of Israel lived lives of holiness, God would intervene and end
this oppression; God would free them
from Roman occupation and establish a new kingdom, if only the people were more
faithful.
But the tax collectors didn’t
seem to care about any new kingdom. They
cast their lot with the kingdom that already existed: the oppressive kingdom of
Rome. They sold out, believing that
money, and a safe, comfortable existence was more important than living by
one’s beliefs.
So why would Jesus have the
Pharisee be the bad example of how to pray, and the tax collector be the good
example?
That’s the challenge.
In the story we heard read
this morning, a similar thing happens.
It’s a story about a nameless
rich man, and a poor man named Lazarus.
The challenge in this parable
is right there in that one introductory sentence. If you missed it, then let me ask you this: A few weeks ago, a young pop star made news
because he was accused of speeding recklessly through his quiet gated
community. Did anyone hear who that was? Who was it?
Justin Bieber.
In the weeks since, how many
people in L.A. County have received traffic tickets? According to one estimate I saw, 150,000.
Does anyone know the names of
those 150,000 people? No. Not unless one of them was you.
And why is that? Because Justin Bieber is famous. He’s rich.
He’s a superstar. And everyone
knows his name.
But those 150,000 people are
just… normal people. They’re nameless.
So let’s start the story
again. There was a [nameless] rich man…
How could a rich man be nameless?
Everyone knows the names of those who are rich and powerful. Rich people aren’t nameless… except when
Jesus tells a story.
And at his gate lay a poor man, whose name was Lazarus. In this story, it is the “nobody” who gets a
name. And Lazarus was covered with
sores. In other words, he couldn’t
afford any health care. And he was
starving.
The person you passed on the
freeway offramp, holding the sign, looking for a handout … who knows his
name? No one. But in Jesus’s story, he has a name.
Both Lazarus and the nameless
rich man died. Lazarus went to heaven,
and the nameless rich man went… to the other place.
Why did Lazarus end up where
he did, and why did the rich man end up where he did? Neither of them is
described as being particularly good or particularly bad. The nameless rich man was punished just
because he was rich; Lazarus was rewarded just because he was poor.
According to John Dominic
Crossan, these are not stories which Jesus could have told in a minute or two,
and then had people walk up to him when it was over and say, “Nice story,
rabbi.” No; probably, there were
interruptions, disagreements, and debates breaking out in the middle of his
telling, so that the telling of the story probably took an hour or two.
Rewarded just because he was
poor? But everyone knows it’s the rich
who are rewarded…
A nameless rich man? Everyone knows the names of the rich and
powerful… A nameless rich man is just as
absurd as a good tax collector… or a good Samaritan. It’s just too hard to imagine…
One more parable for today,
from Matthew 20:
A landowner went out early in the morning to hire
laborers for his vineyard.
A landowner is, by
definition, rich and powerful. Not many
people owned land. And in order to
maintain his hold on his land, there is a good chance he was ruthless. This particular landowner seemed intent on not
hiring any more workers than was absolutely necessary.
He went early in the morning
to where the day-laborers were gathered and said, “I’ve got work for only so
many people; get in the truck, I’ll take you to the vineyard, and pay you the
daily wage.”
All those who didn’t get in
the truck said, “What about us?”
And the landowner said,
“Sorry, I only need this many.”
Well, later the landowner
realized he did need some more
workers. So he drove back and hired a
few more. He did this again several more
times throughout the day. He figured it
was better to hire too few workers, because there were always people waiting to
be hired, and he could always go back for more.
It would be worse to hire too many in the morning, and then have to pay
them even though they weren’t needed.
It’s this kind of shrewd,
financial thinking that allowed him to hold on to his land.
The people listening to Jesus
tell this story would have identified with the day laborers. And every time the landowner was mentioned,
they’d frown and get a bad taste in their mouths. That landowner – like all landowners – is so
cheap; why didn’t he just hire more workers in the first place?
And then… the last time the
landowner came back to the crowd of people, he said: “Why have you all just been standing around
here doing nothing, being idle and lazy?”
Well, that did it. Those listening to Jesus must have been just
beside themselves. Isn’t that just how
landowners are? They complain and criticize
the workers for not working, when they themselves have left them behind. Why have they been standing around all day
doing nothing? Because no one has
hired them!
This story isn’t just about
one landowner and his workers. It’s
about the whole economic system under which the people lived. It was a challenge to the whole set-up of
society.
And it most certainly got
people talking.
But wait. There’s one more twist to this story. When it came time to pay his workers, the
landowner paid them all the same.
Whether they were hired early in the morning, before sunrise, or at 5:00
in the afternoon, each worker got the daily wage.
And preachers have tried to
make sense of that and explain it in ways that make sense to their
congregations. But really, what else can
one say to that, except: “Unh?”
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