Lent V, Year C

Isaiah, 43:16-21
Philippians, 3:8-14
Luke, 20:9-19

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Tucked inside the front section of last Thursday's Post was an article by Rick Weiss, 'Pre-Humans May Have Traded Killer Jaws for Bigger Brains.' ⁽¹⁾ It began: "The evolutionary split between early humans and ancestral apes may have begun with a tiny mutation in a gene for jaw muscles - a lucky break that allowed the skull to grow and make room for the enormous brain that would eventually become the hallmark of Homo sapiens." Early primate skulls, like today's non-human primates, had enormous, powerful jaw muscles which cramped the brain, limiting its size. The controversial theory holds that gene mutation resulted in much smaller jaw muscles that allowed the skull and brain to begin to grow from generation to generation.

Modern gene research has identified a gene - which is called MYH16 - that causes the development of jaw muscles in every non-human primate species - apes, gorillas, chimpanzees, monkeys. In human beings, however, this gene has been disabled by a tiny mutation. That's why our jaws are much smaller and less powerful than other primates. A team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania has calculated that this "gene was first disabled about 2.4 million years ago - just before the skulls of early humans began their stunning increase in size, launching the meteoric ascendance of the human species."

The director of the University of Washington's genome center said that this new theory supported his belief that "at a molecular level, humans are going to emerge largely as degenerate apes." Another way of saying this is that human beings became human beings "not so much because of mutations that brought radical improvements but because of genetic losses, failures, and glitches - such as the loss of MYH16 - that also brought advantages."

I don't know if any of this is true, but I love the irony, and even more it seems to conform with the general sense of the gospel. What seems bad to us is often good, indeed very good. God makes our failures and mistakes fruitful. This is the cross. What seems like folly, weakness, and failure to us is divine wisdom, strength, and victory. We rejected and did the worst we possibly could do to Jesus, and he made it the means for us to have eternal life, the means for us to have hope, the means for us be united with him.

What the theory that humans are degenerate apes shows us, what the cross shows us, is the great limitations of our perspective, the frailty of our understanding. It impresses upon us the importance of humility, that humility should be a core quality of ours. It was a fundamental characteristic of Jesus' personality.

Humility is exactly what the husbandmen, the tenants, the farmers of the vineyard lack. They seek position and wealth and power, and they violently, unjustly grasp for it. The parable is an allegory, that is: the owner of the vineyard represents God; his servants - his messengers - represent the prophets; the owner's son represents Jesus; and, the tenants represent Israel. The vineyard represents God's efforts - his time, his patience, his work - to make a fruitful harvest. The owner had let the vineyard to long-term tenants, who were to produce fruit for him. When he sent his messengers to collect, the tenants treated them shamefully. The owner could not tolerate the way his tenants had treated his messengers so he sent his son, the rightful heir. The tenants, however, were full of pride, full of self-seeking, and they threw the son out of his vineyard and killed him. God's response to this atrocity will be to come and destroy the tenants, casting them out of the vineyard, and he will invite others to come into the vineyard.

In other words, Jesus is the rightful successor to the prophets, and he has come to complete their work. Like the prophets, he challenges Israel to be faithful to God, to honor God, to live up to their moral responsibilities, to bear fruit. God had charged Israel with living justly, and she had acted unjustly; God had charged Israel to be an example, his witness, to the heathen nations, to have her corporate life display God's grace and love. Israel had rebelled and had not acted justly, but had killed God's faithful servants and had been hostile to the nations.

The parable explains the movement of the gospel from Jews to Gentiles. During S. Luke's day, many Jews remained as followers of Jesus. But more and more, it was Gentiles who were following Jesus. The Romans had destroyed Jerusalem in about 70 A.D., just a few years before Luke wrote his gospel. Luke probably understood the destruction of Jerusalem as God's judgment upon Israel, as God destroying his tenants, and handing the vineyard off to others. The Gentiles were now coming into the vineyard, and their charge was to witness to God and to be faithful to God and to produce fruit.

We make a huge mistake to particularize this judgment, to say that this is God's judgment only upon Jews. Nothing could more miss the gospel's sense. The folly, the pride, the injustice of the tenants is not just the truth about Jews, but about all human beings. We are not humble, but eager for position and power. The parable is a warning to human beings in every age. Christians in our age should notice that when the Church becomes too self-absorbed, too self-righteous, too lax and libertine, too distracted, too enmeshed in power and wealth, God finds and entrusts others with his gospel, others who will produce fruit.

Who are the tenants of the vineyard today? Increasingly, Christian mission is shifting. Western Europe and America took the gospel to so much of the world, but today the Church in the West is weakening. Its energy dissipating, often getting bogged down in internal issues rather than taking the good news to people, rather than focusing on mission, rather than emphasizing how Christ changes lives. The Church in the West has much less of a place in our public life and in individuals' lives than it formerly did. But in Africa and Asia, the newer recipients of the gospel, there the Church is alive, abundant, and growing rapidly. These are Christians focused on mission.

The tenants make the same mistake we all make at various times - rejecting the stone which becomes the keystone of life. The Church gives us Lent to reflect on how we've rejected Christ, how we've not been true to our responsibilities, how we've neglected producing fruit. Each of us has failed. Each of us needs more humility. In reference to today's gospel, Bishop Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, the Diocese in which the Church of England tends to put especially bright, brilliant minds, asks:

. . .what should we expect to happen when [Jesus'] followers go today to the places of power and injustice? What sort of reaction will the gospel receive when it is announced in places where people use religion - including Christianity! - as a means of reinforcing their own security instead of shining God's light into the world? ⁽²⁾

The reaction is often rejection. Following Christ requires us to put aside our own concerns, our own security, to show God's light more strongly. Followers of Christ should expect rejection by the world, rejection by the places of power.

Where followers of Christ most want acceptance is within the Church, and more particularly within our parish family. Our parish family is now wrestling with a difficult decision about whether we might have women serving at the altar. I do not welcome disagreement, but I do not take differing points of view to be a weakness. To the contrary, healthy families discuss issues, including issues where there is deep, strong emotion and disagreement. All families have disagreements, and healthy families discuss them, move forward together, love one another.

I know that if a member of my family was dealing with a major issue in their life, and they did not discuss it with me, I'd be crushed. I'd want to talk about it with them - civilly, respectfully, charitably - searching for God's will. If I ultimately disagreed with them, that's sad, but it wouldn't separate us. That's not a healthy family. I recognize that my point of view may be mistaken, that what seems bad to me is often very good. Shallow love is loving people because they are what we think they ought to be. Christian love is loving people regardless of their behavior. As I said at his funeral, I think of Fr Meisel telling me, "The Lord loves each of us, and that's what he wants from us, loving those who speak ill of you and betray you. It's hard. It's the cross, Father."

Often, to know what is most noble, most honorable, we have to keep the big picture in mind. Last Monday, March 22^nd, at our noon mass we commemorated Father James DeKoven. In the second half of the 19^th century, Father DeKoven was a professor of Church history at Nashotah House, an Anglo-Catholic seminary in Wisconsin. He was elected bishop of Wisconsin in 1874 and bishop of Illinois in 1875, but he never served in either capacity. In both cases, the rest of the Dioceses in the Episcopal Church did not provide enough consents to his consecration. Nasty, hard-ball Church politics are not new. Fr DeKoven was too high-church; his faith and practice too catholic. He advocated for extreme high church ritual and devotion. He was too closely associated with incense and genuflections and chasubles and candles on the altar to be a bishop in the Episcopal Church in the 1870s. These 'externals' were important to him because they symbolized the real presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, the real presence of Christ with us and in us. We can be grateful that the Episcopal Church has changed, and largely because of faithful, steady people like him.

At the General Convention in 1874, DeKoven said:

You may take away from us, if you will, every external ceremony; you may take away altars, and super-altars, lights and incense and vestments; . . . and we will submit to you. But gentlemen, . . . to adore Christ's Person in his Sacrament - that is the inalienable privilege of every Christian and Catholic heart. How we do it, the way we do it, the ceremonies with which we do it, are utterly, utterly, indifferent. The thing itself is what we plead for. ⁽³⁾

Regardless of how we feel about issues of the moment, we have to remember why we're Christians, what we're doing when we worship, the love we are to exhibit in our every act. We're here to serve God, to spread the Gospel, to build up the Church. We're here to grow in mercy and humility. We're here to grow in faith, hope, and charity. This parish is a special place where all of this happens, and when we keep our focus on this, we can work out our differences together.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

1. Rick Weiss, 'Pre-Humans May Have Traded Killer Jaws for Bigger Brains,' The Washington Post, 25 March 2004.

2. Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone, SPCK (2001), p. 239.

3. Lesser Feasts and Fasts.