Pressing Onward Toward the Goal

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

Philippians 3:4b-16
Matthew 21:33-46


It is World Communion Sunday, celebrated by Presbyterians on the first Sunday in October every year since 1936, reminding us on this particular Sunday each year what we know every time we celebrate communion: that the risen Christ bids us come from east and west, north and south, across every border of human design to feast with him in eternal grace. To re-member his broken body through the sharing of bread and the pouring of wine. To continue his commitment to feed all who hunger and sate all who thirst. To proclaim boldly his death and his resurrection and his coming again in glory; to trust the heavenly banquet prepared for evermore.

It is World Communion Sunday, celebrated by Lutherans and Methodists and everyone in between, reminding us on this particular Sunday each year what we know in our hearts every time we celebrate communion: that this table to which we come—begging—does not belong to Madison Square Presbyterian Church, or to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), or even—I would dare to suggest—to any organized institutional “visible church” at all . . .

The table belongs to Christ. And Christ bids every one of us come.

It is a table to which broken and suffering people have come for centuries, seeking spiritual sustenance and finding it in abundance. It is a table to which hungry and thirsty people have come, seeking literal food and drink and finding it in abundance. It is a table to which self-satisfied and self-righteous people have come, seeking forgiveness of sins and assurance of pardon and finding it in abundance.

It is a table of grace.

It is a table that takes us as we are and transforms us into who we can become. And whenever we come to the table, we quite literally come from across the globe, from across the centuries, from across all time and all space to share a meal with everyone who has come to this table before us and everyone who will come to this table after us and everyone who hungers and thirsts on this planet right now with us. Including Judas, and every one of us who knows betrayal. Including Peter, and every one of us who knows denial. Including the Beloved Disciple, and every one of us who knows what it is to witness suffering to the end. Whoever we are, we come to the table. And we are One Body. And we are at peace.

It is World Communion Sunday. And as we gather across time and space to feast with our Savior, we join with other Presbyterians in offering a tangible response to this peace that passes all understanding when we collect our special offering to the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program. And we say with our gifts of dollars and cents that we want this gift of grace we receive at the table, this gift of peace we receive at the table, to be made real in the world beyond these walls. Because we know we live in a world that is far from the promise of the peace we experience at this table. All we have to do to know that is to read the Sunday paper this morning.

I have been thinking much about this table and its gift of peace, as I have studied the Scriptures that are before us this Sunday, both in my own prayerful discernment and with our newly formed Teach the Preacher group who struggled with me to make sense of such a violent parable from Matthew’s gospel on such a Sunday devoted to peace.

If we are going to put the parable of the Wicked Tenants in the context of the table to which we come, we should note that the conversation most likely takes place on Monday or Tuesday of Holy Week in those high stakes days between Palm Sunday and Easter when tensions are high and Jesus is just beginning to draw the kind of attention that will soon have him arrested and crucified on trumped up charges later in the week. This harsh, violent parable about killing and casting out and crushing under the cornerstone is told three days before the Last Supper, four days before the crucifixion, six days before the resurrection (let us never forget that part!), in the earliest part of that Holy—yet terribly violent—Week that forms the foundation of our faith as followers of Christ. That week we re-member every time we come to the table.

In the context of the violence of that horrible—yet Holy—week, we have another vineyard and another landowner. Perhaps he is the same oikodespotes from the parable of two weeks ago, but this time he is an absentee landlord who thinks he has done everything necessary to protect the fruits of his land with a fence and a watchtower and tenants who will take care of things until the plentiful harvest. He thinks he is secure. He thinks he has paid the price for peace.

But the harvest goes terribly wrong. The tenants to whom the landowner entrust his crop decide to hoard the abundance that never belonged to them in the first place, inciting a cycle of violence that leaves multiple people injured or killed, including the beloved son of the landowner, himself. The vineyard is utterly decimated. Blood is flowing where wine should have been poured. The body broken, the blood shed. Exactly what we re-member when we come to the table.

There is too much brokenness. There is too much bloodshed.

The later Christian interpretation of this parable is, of course, that the chief priests and the Pharisees are the wicked tenants and that their “rejection of Jesus” means the kingdom of God has been given exclusively to Christians. That the rejected cornerstone (meaning Christ, himself) will crush those who rejected it. And so the cycle of violence has continued, as Christians throughout the centuries have come to this table identifying ourselves with the “good tenants” to whom the vineyard of God’s kingdom has been given and have then gone from this table vindictively using this parable to justify anti-Judaism—and anti-whateverism—in its most ugly and violent forms.

I don’t think that’s what the table is about. I don’t think that’s what the parable is about.

The chief priests and the Pharisees, to whom the parable is directed, know that what the wicked tenants have done is wrong. They are, in fact, the first to name the injustice, the first to speak the anger that would surely be in the heart of anyone whose servants and sons were all murdered by such wicked tenants. The chief priests and Pharisees will, in fact, identify themselves most closely with the landowner in this parable. Many of them are landowners, themselves, wealthy enough to leave their vineyards in the hands of trusted tenants while they tend to their religious duties in Jerusalem: their own “table of Sacraments,” if you will.

What the chief priests and Pharisees do not see—either by choice or by ignorance—is that the cost of their identification with the average household despot of the Roman Empire perpetuates further economic barriers against the most vulnerable peasants who seek the solace of their God at the Jerusalem Temple. It has been the problem with the Temple hierarchy since its inception, almost since the time of Solomon. The Jerusalem elite builds up the temple at the expense of the poor. And Jesus calls them on it, just like the prophets before him called their chief priests on it—holding up a mirror to the undercurrent of fear and greed and violence that perpetuates this system . . . and that will eventually take his own life. Which, of course, we also re-member at this table.

Two thousand years later, on this World Communion Sunday, as we re-member the stories of that horrible—yet Holy—week, can we honestly claim to be the “good tenants” who replace the religious leaders of Jesus’ day with our own more excellent fruit of the kingdom? Or does the same mirror Jesus held up to the chief priests and the Pharisees of his day reveal our own fear and greed and violence even now?

I would argue that it does. I would argue that we, like the apostle Paul, cannot yet claim to have “reached the goal of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” Just look at our hoarding. Just look at our wars. Just look at the vineyard we pollute with utter disdain. I would argue that we come to this table clinging, like Paul, to “Christ and the power of his resurrection”—especially on this World Communion Sunday—because we know there is too much suffering in this world, and we know we are too much a part of that suffering, and we know that we do not want to be anymore.

We know that we need healing and wholeness and hope and that we don’t quite have it yet in its fullness. We know that peace on earth begins with us: with our families and with our co-workers and yes, with our own congregation. We know we come to the table broken and suffering, hungry and thirsty, self-righteous and self-satisfied, desperate for a second chance.

And we get it.

Because this is a table of grace. It is a table that takes us as we are and transforms us into who we can become. So come to the table, whoever you are, wherever you are from, whatever you have done, whatever you have left undone. Come to the table. “Forget what lies behind” . . . let it go . . . it is over and done . . . it is in God's redeeming and resurrecting hands. “Strain forward to what lies ahead, as we press on tighter toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” The future is before us. The future to which Christ calls us. And it truly can be a future of peace. Because peace really is here for us in the bread and in the cup, as we re-member the broken body of Christ, and transform a week of ever-escalating violence into a meal of resurrection life. Let there be peace on earth, we pray as we come to the table; and let it begin with me.

I pray it may be so.

Amen.