October 4 ~ Where am I in the story?
Sermon by Pastor Joel
Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:7-15
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46
This week, we remembered our country’s difficult history with Truth and Reconciliation Day. We heard stories about the terrible toll of residential schools and the struggle for people to move on from that tragic policy.
At the same time many of us followed the developments around the Cornell University sexual assault case. There has been intense debate about what should have happened, and what didn’t. Who should have stepped up, and who didn’t. The more details unfold, the more we decide where we stand.
This happens so often – when we hear stories of sexual violence or racism or scandals by politicians. Our conversations focus on what we think really happened. Who was in the wrong? Who should pay? Whose side am I on?
But I’d argue there is a more important question – one with more potential to stop the same injustice from happening again and again.
This harder, more thoughtful question is: Who would I have been? Whistleblower? Activist? Defender of the status quo? Bystander?
Would I have demanded justice for my indigenous neighbors when I saw their children taken from them? Would I have asked questions when I knew the school was operating in my town?
Would I have believed the victim? Would I have challenged the group at the risk of being cast out? Would I have spoken up when everyone else was staying quiet? Or would I have convinced myself it wasn't my business?
In our world today, we see clearly how much one power-hungry or corrupt leader can change the course of history. They may start the injustice. But the uncomfortable truth is that throughout history most great social wrongs were only sustained by ordinary people who failed to see themselves clearly in the story.
Segregation. Residential schools. The exclusion of women from public life. The criminalization of 2SLGBTQI+ people.
Most people living through those moments did not think they were the bad guys. Most thought they were decent people. And that is precisely the problem.
Today's Gospel is about people who cannot see themselves in the story.
Jesus tells what seems at first like a simple, though grim and tragic, parable. A landowner carefully plants a vineyard. He builds a fence, with a watch tower and wine press and then leases the vineyards to his tenants. But when the harvest arrives, and servants come to collect the landowners share, they beat them and kill them. The landowner sends more servants, and they are also killed. The landowner then sends his son, for surely the tenants will respect the son. But they beat and kill the son as well.
Jesus then asks the religious leaders a question: "What should happen to these tenants?"
They don’t even hesitate - they know exactly what justice requires. They condemn the tenants. They identify the villains. They pass judgement.
And then slowly, it begins to dawn on them: The chief priests and the Pharisees realized that he was speaking about them. They are the tenants they have just condemned.
The trap that Jesus lays for the Pharisees, depends on one basic truth of human nature. We are very good at identifying sin in other people. But we are often blind to that same sin in ourselves. That is the genius of Jesus' storytelling.
That question is just as uncomfortable today as it was then. The temptation is always to place ourselves beside Jesus. But the Gospel tell us again and again to look at ourselves more honestly. Where are we really in all these stories?
When we read about homelessness, about Indigenous communities waiting for clean drinking water, about violence and exploitation, are we the person helping, the person noticing, the person passing by? Are we, in fact, part of the problem?
Martin Luther said, God’s law functions like a mirror. The mirror does not condemn us, it shows us the truth, and some truths are unpleasant.
In our second lesson, we hear Paul reconciling his own personal unpleasant truth. Paul was a respected, successful Pharisee. He had a list of shiny credentials. He was convinced he was doing God’s work. He considered himself the hero in his own story. Until he met Jesus and realized he was the opposite.
Many people would have continued to living a self-serving lie. But Paul made an incredibly brave choice: he chose to look at himself honestly, and own his mistakes. Staring into the mirror, he no longer saw a hero. And that honesty, not only allowed him to change, but helped him learn how to spread positive change to others. Where else does any transformation and any repair, any reconciliation, begin but with honesty. With truth.
Thankfully, discovering we are not the hero is not the end of the gospel, but the beginning.
Because once we truly recognize ourselves in the story, we have a choice. Just like Paul. Just like the Pharisees. We can become defensive. Or we can change.
God has not abandoned the vineyard. God is still tending and pruning and nurturing it, hoping for a good harvest. And that is the work of the gospel-led life as well. To have the courage to see when we have failed, when we remained silent or judged too quickly, when we benefited while others were harmed. And then, having looked in the mirror, to become better than we were yesterday.
When we read the Gospel, when we watch the news, when we encounter injustice in the world, let us not first ask, "Who is right?" or "Who is wrong?”
But instead: "Where am I in this story?"
Because the moment we can answer that honestly is the moment God can begin to change us. And changed people can change the world. Amen.
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