"who let the riffraff in?" by anna blaedel

Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16
Matthew 21:23-32
September 28, 2008

I need to begin this morning’s sermon with a confession. You know the age-old adage, “Do as I say, not as I do?” This past Friday, my day off, I started my morning meditating on the 46th Psalm, “Be still, and know that I am God.” I prayed that God might slow me down, might help me place prayer and prayerful work at the center of my day, and slip slide the stacked schedule away. Slow down. Be still. Breathe. See the people and world and beauty and brokenness around me, rather than rush forward, frenzied, to the next to do list task. This was, about, 8am. By 2pm, I was rushing down 218 towards Iowa City, late to pick up my sister, late for our planned and eagerly anticipated afternoon together picking apples at Wilson’s orchard, late to sit together and ask, “How is it with your soul?” I am sorry to say it was the flashing lights of the State Trooper behind me, not my morning prayer that managed to slow me down. So, before you read it in the newspaper, hear it from me. Sometimes words are not enough.

As a religious leader, an elder in the church, a pastor commissioned to preach the Word of God and help lead the people of God, I mess up. I forget what grounds me. I fail to find ways in my daily life to live God’s welcome, to witness to God’s love. I forget who I am, and whose I am. Oh, how I wish I could hide behind the disclaimer, “Do as I say, not as I do.” In this morning’s gospel lesson from Matthew, Jesus reminds us, reminds me, why this doesn’t cut it. Sometimes words are just not enough. Faith that doesn’t result in faithful action is just talk. Faith that doesn’t result in faithful action is just talk.

This is a terrifying truth for a preacher. This was a terrifying truth for those to whom Jesus directed this morning’s gospel parable. It is important, when reading this story, to remember that it follows right after Jesus has stormed into the Temple, and, so disgusted by the greed and hypocrisy he finds in this house of worship, throws over the money changer’s tables. Now he dares to show his face again. It is also important to remember that John the Baptist has just been beheaded. Jesus is treading through dangerous political territory. Community tensions are high. Perhaps even higher than in an election season, in a church where Republicans and Democrats worship side by side. The Jesus we meet in this story is not what those in power might call a respectable person, not a nice, Midwestern, people-pleasing sort of guy who goes out of his way not to offend anyone or make waves or cause a ruckus. Jesus confronts them. And it ain’t pretty.

The respectable characters in the story are, without doubt, the chief priests and elders. They are the religious leaders, those who have invested in the community, those who preserve order and smooth over disagreements and minimize disturbances in the status quo. Respectable, we are about to learn, does not always equal faithful.

“Just who do you think you are?” they ask Jesus. “By whose authority do you say such things?” So, in typical Jesus fashion, Jesus responds with a parable. Refuses to offer an easy answer, and instead makes them, makes us, work a little, wrestle a bit, to figure out a faithful response.

A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, “son, go and work in the vineyard today.” He answered, “I will not;” but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, “I go, sir;” but did not go. “Which one is obedient? Which one responds faithfully?” asks Jesus. The one who says the right thing and fails to follow through, or the one who messes up the initial response, but then shows up in body and spirit to do God’s work? The one who speaks the language of faith, who can quote scripture and never misses a Sunday, but is caught up in pretence and power and prestige, or the one who fumbles through the Lord’s prayer, maybe doesn’t even know one gospel story from another, but works in the world to build the kingdom of God on earth, to do daily what the Lord requires, doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God?

Whew. The chief priests and elders know they are in trouble now. Perhaps felt a bit like I did when the flashing lights pulled up behind me. Caught.

And Jesus doesn’t stop there. “Truly I tell you, “ says Jesus, “The tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the Kingdom of God ahead of you.” Jesus doesn’t even have the decency to say the repentant tax collectors and prostitutes, those who have cleaned their act, put themselves together a bit, smoothed off the rough edges? Nor does Jesus stop at saying the riffraff have a place in the Kingdom of God. The first shall be last, and the last first.

Scathing. Scandalous. Jesus speaks an unpopular truth to power and places the riffraff closer to God than religious and political leaders of Holy Jerusalem. Jesus not only lets the riffraff in, he welcomes them.

He says that we can only build the Kingdom of God, only be the Kingdom of God, to the extent that we welcome the riffraff. This is in direct conflict with religious law and political policy and social standards. The riffraff. Those who are unclean, unworthy, unaccepted and unacceptable. The outsiders. The poor. The undocumented workers, the single mothers, the non-Christians, the gays and lesbians, those in prison…Who else are the riffraff of our time? And then Jesus goes even further. Claims it is God who ordains such behavior. God who welcomes the riffraff. God who makes a special place for “those people.” The chief priests’ response no longer seems so outlandish, does it? “Just who do you think you are? By what authority do you say such things?”

My mind was still stuck on this perplexing story, my soul trembling at the thought of preaching on it, as I watched Friday’s presidential debate. Both McCain and Obama have hinged their campaigns upon change. Given our current economic crisis, or our environmental crisis, or our educational crisis, to say nothing of foreign policy, it really should come as no surprise that “change” is a necessary hallmark of this election season, on both sides of the aisle. Before and during and after the debate, words flew, some of them eloquent and convincing and even convicting. But, sometimes words are not enough. One commentator concluded, after Obama and McCain finished, that the debate had been little more than an exchange of banalities. “Politicians can come together,” he remarked, “to borrow almost a trillion dollars we don’t have to help people who don’t need it for reasons we don’t quite know.” What are we saying, what are we doing, when we cut government assistance for the poor, but allow for billions of dollars of corporate bailout? What are we saying, when we arrest Postville workers but give amnesty to wall street billionaires? What are we saying, when we commit to worshipping and serving a Savior born a Palestinian Jew, but believe higher walls and tougher borders offer us security? What are we saying when we call ourselves Christians, but wonder who on earth, who in heaven, let the riffraff in?

This is a hard story for us religious leaders to hear. It is a hard story for people in the pews to hear. It was hard for the chief priests and the elders to hear. This is why, Jesus told it. This radical, startling Kingdom of God is the central theme of Jesus’ preaching, the central theme of God’s Good News. And building it, living into it, becoming it, is the central theme of our task as Christian community.

As we move into the final stretches of this election season, you will not hear me preach partisan from this pulpit. I do hope, however, that we might wrestle together, talk with each other, about what kind of changes we want to see, what kind of changes we need to be a part of, to help order our lives and communities around the gospel of Jesus Christ. What does it mean, to respond faithfully? What kind of changes do we need, as a community of faith within these walls, and as citizens of this nation, in order to practice what we preach? Faith that does not result in faithful action is just talk. And, sometimes words just aren’t enough. Amen.