We Don't Get to Choose (Version 2.0)

I used the theme "We Don't Get To Choose" before, but this isn't a rehash of an old sermon. It's built from a statement on the "Pulpit Fiction" home page: “The tax collectors and prostitutes will enter the Kingdom of God ahead of you - note Jesus does not say that they will NOT enter the Kingdom, they will just enter behind the tax collectors and prostitutes... Why is this a problem? Should we celebrate that we are all going to the Kingdom and if not, perhaps that is what is keeping us away...”

Also, the last time I used this theme, the Rev. Dr. Kirk Jeffery posted a quote from Nick Lillo of WaterStone Community Church. I used it in this sermon.

(By the way, Rev. Dr. Jefffery roasts and sells the best coffee in the world. Just sayin'.)

There's a thing comedians and musicians do called "riffing," where you just take a theme and run with it. Maybe today's riff is, "God loves, so just... go with it."

MATTHEW 21:23-32

When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” Jesus said to them, “I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” And they argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

“What do you think? 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 he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

The road into Jerusalem is strewn with crumpled, dusty palm branches from the day before, and somewhere between there and Bethany, there's a withered fig tree that had been leafy, but barren of fruit, just that morning. The Temple was packed, as always, and though Jesus had overturned tables and run them out the day before, the merchants and moneychangers were back at work. It isn't much of a stretch to imagine that it was one of them who had notified the elders and priests that Jesus was back. “Hey Phil, isn't that the guy from yesterday? The crazy guy with the whip?”

They found Jesus, squatting on the pavement in a corner, a tight knot of people listening as he taught.

Those priests and elders were, in a way, painted into a corner themselves. These days, if someone came busting in the church swinging a whip and turning things over, we would of course call the cops. For all intents and purposes, the priests and the elders, members of the Sanhedrin,

were the cops... they could simply have arrested Jesus, right then and there. But if they did that, the people would very likely riot.

I'm not saying that everyone in all of Judea who wasn't a priest or an elder or a Sadducee or Pharisee believed that Jesus was the Messiah. Most probably accepted that he was a prophet, or didn't care one way or another. But in a tightly packed city like Jerusalem during Passover week, all it took was a few angry people to start a fight, and soon the whole town was rioting, and they wouldn't really have cared why. The Temple elite would have been a good target, what with their sumptuous living and constant demands on the dirt-poor believers for more money and more sacrifices.

And even if the priests weren't torn limb from limb by enraged mobs, the fact remained that Judea was a province of the Roman Empire, under occupation by legions tasked with keeping the peace at any cost. A riot would be violently quashed, and the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate, would determine that the Temple leaders were ineffective and have them replaced, perhaps even jailed or killed.

So this question the elders and priests asked Jesus,

“By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” was truly a loaded question. On the one hand, it may have been a valid question - “Please tell us who empowered you, please help us understand.” Judging by Jesus' reaction, though, it's safe to assume that the priests and elders were struggling to expose Jesus as a fraud and a charlatan, discredit him in front of the people who clung to every word of hope that came from the mouth of this dusty little Rabbi from the middle of nowhere.

In any case, can you imagine the turmoil those religious leaders felt? There was no denying that Jesus was someone special – he spoke prophetically and with absolute authority, and he performed miracles, real miracles! The lame walked, the blind received their sight... and he had even raised a man from the dead. These elders and priests weren't idiots, they had read the Prophets, they knew how God worked to correct Israel over the millenia. Why were they so against Jesus?

Perhaps the simplest, most cynical answer is the true one. They had a good thing going. Wealthy, well-fed, and enjoying what power Pilate allowed them to have, they saw Jesus as a threat to their comfortable lives, and they wouldn't – they couldn't – allow God to send someone, even a Messiah, that they couldn't control.

These priests and elders had responded with an enthusiastic “Yes!” when God had called them to the vineyard. Yet for all their piety, all their dedication to the Law of God, they had, in the end, turned away.

And there. right in front of them, in the small crowd gathered around Jesus – fishermen and laborers, tax collectors and prostitutes – were men and women who had said, when the call came, that they would most certainly not serve in the vineyard. And though they had lived apart from the Law of God, had dedicated themselves to being as impious as humanly possible, had, in Jesus Christ, turned back to their loving Creator.

We don't get to choose.

We don't get to choose how God's Word comes in to this world. Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl, in a barn in the middle of nowhere? Sure, we're used to it now, but think about it... it's ridiculous. Laughable. All wrong.

But we just don't get to choose, do we?

Arrested, beaten, stripped naked, whipped bloody and nailed to a cross to die? OK, set aside this idea of God dying in the first place, to have God die in the most humiliating way possible, amongst criminals, then have his corpse shoved in a rush in someone else's tomb? Preposterous! Unimaginable! Repugnant!

We don't get to choose.

And if you are going to rise from the dead, shouldn't you do it in front of everyone? Or at least find some witnesses that people will listen to! In that day and age, the one hundred percent worst kind of person to appear to, to carry your message, would have been a woman. Yet what does every Gospel tell us? Whether one or two or three or a group, it was women, every time! It makes no sense.

But it isn't our script to write. We don't get to choose.

And we also don't get to choose who God saves. Oh, I have my lists – people and groups of people and kinds of people who in my opinion don't deserve to be in the Kingdom of God. I don't know if anyone else has lists, maybe it's just me.

There's something that Jesus says, though, something intriguing. “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you...”

I am comfortable with the idea of those tax collectors and prostitutes being members of the Kingdom of God. Not so much, though, the elders and priests, the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees...

Here's the thing, though. Jesus didn't say “ the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God

instead of you.” Believe me, I checked, and the Greek word proago, which our reading translates as “ahead,” really does mean “ahead.”

...the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God

>ahead of you.”

I don't think I am talking about Universalism, the idea that everyone gets in the Kingdom no matter what.

What I

do think it means is...

I don't get to choose.

God will call, save, heal, and reconcile with whomever God will call, save, heal, and reconcile. I can't pick the ones I like. I don't get to choose.

I do get to choose how I treat others, though, don't I? I can choose to be like the priests and elders, or like the scribes and Pharisees, comfortable in some imagined theological or moral superiority, looking down on people who, because of birth or choice or whatever, are different than me.

Or... I can understand that, as a beneficiary of the grace and mercy of the living God, I c

an choose to be a conduit of that grace and mercy to others, all others, no matter who they are. I can be a reflection of the Jesus I believe in and try to serve.

Nick Lillo said, “You have never looked into the eyes of someone who did not matter with God.”

We don't get to choose how God acts, we don't get to choose how the wild and ebullient Spirit of God m

oves in the world, we don't get to choose who God loves, or how God saves. But we can choose – we must choose – the part we play as members of the Body of Christ, as citizens of the Kingdom of God.

And that's really the only choice that counts.

We Don't get to Choose!

The Lord's table is long, and wide, and there is room for all. Never doubt this, and never forget it.

Exodus 17:1-7

From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the LORD commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?” But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried out to the LORD, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” The LORD said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the LORD, saying, “Is the LORD among us or not?”

Philippians 2:1-13

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13or it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Matthew 21:23-32

When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”

Jesus said to them, “I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” And they argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

“What do you think? 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 he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

In May of 1998, Stephen Alan Thompson became the seventeenth person executed in the state of Alabama since 1983. There wasn’t any doubt about his crime, there was no outpouring of protest against his going to the electric chair – three people showed up in Linn Park in Birmingham to protest on the night of his execution. Not exactly an international wave of support for the condemned.

He spoke to the family of his victim, saying he hoped that they would at last find some peace. And just before they threw the switch, he raised his hand against the leather restraint and made the International Sign Language symbol for “I love you” – a sign he learned in a prison ministry called “Kairos.”

You see, on Alabama’s Death Row, Steve Thompson had become a Christian.

In our Gospel reading today, Jesus enters the Temple and is confronted by the leaders of the Jewish faith. These are, for all intents and purposes, the guardians of righteousness, the ones who decide what is right and what is wrong for those who wish to worship the one true and living God. They examined the offerings to make sure they were fit for the sacrificial altar, interpreted the Books of the Law of Moses, and were generally the mediators between Yahweh and humankind.

Think of it – here, in the epicenter of the Jewish faith, the Temple, the men who held absolute sway over the spiritual lives of millions of believers were focused on one road-worn, nondescript, homeless rabbi. Amazing, isn’t it?

But people were listening to this rabbi. People were finding healing, hope, and new life in this rabbi, and (I’ve said this before) the one thing a totalitarian ruler can never allow, the one thing that will destroy his kingdom from within, is hope. And the chief priests served at the pleasure of Caesar. A bad day for Caesar meant a very bad day for them.

But it could be that I am being too hard on them, too cynical. After all, if these chief priests and elders took their responsibility seriously, someone like Jesus would have had them worried. He healed on the Sabbath. He ate with prostitutes and tax collectors. He even went into Samarian and Gentile lands to minister to the people there. Every time they turned around, this Jesus fellow was doing something else to stir the people up, and yes, the things he did were good, but he was doing them wrong!

But what does it mean to believe? In whatever context we put it, a pre-Resurrection belief in the one true God, or a post-resurrection faith in Jesus Christ, how do we define “believing?” What constitutes “faith?”

For both the Pharisees and the Sadducees, belief and faith were defined by religious rites, by personal piety, and by adherence not only to the Law of Moses but to specific interpretations of that law. For one to be a true believer, for one to have a valid faith, coming in contact with a Samaritan, a Gentile, or any person who was less pious was dangerous. Merely passing though Samaritan territory made a person unclean.

Yet this appearance of piety was a thin bedsheet which covered evil hearts. In the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, Jesus has nothing at all good to say about the piety of the scribes and the Pharisees: “The scribes and the Pharisees… say things and do not do them. They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger. But they do all their deeds to be noticed by men; for they broaden their phylacteries and lengthen the tassels of their garments. They love the place of honor at banquets and the chief seats in the synagogues, and respectful greetings in the market places, and being called Rabbi by men.

“…Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense you make long prayers; therefore you will receive greater condemnation… Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!”

All that work, all that dogged dedication to every area of the Law… and they missed the whole point!

Meanwhile, Jesus is doing amazing things in areas the Pharisees and Sadducees would never dare to go. He had touched lepers, he had gone to the territories of the Samaritans and Gentiles – going so far as to heal, so far as to feed a multitude in the same way he had fed five thousand in Judea, so far as to share the Good News of the Kingdom of God with men and women who would never have been welcome in the Temple!

Small wonder, then, that Jesus would have been the focus of so much of the chief priests’ and temple rulers’ attention. No wonder Nicodemus had come in the night to find out more about him. Jesus did things wrong, and upset the status quo. When they heard he was coming to the Temple, a direct confrontation was inevitable. The chief priests and the elders were the religious authority in the land, and Jesus needed to admit that he had no authority, he needed to be stopped!

But when prostitutes and tax collectors will get into the Kingdom of God ahead of you, your authority doesn’t much matter, does it?

You see, each in their own way, the Sadducees and the Pharisees thought they had the ability to decide who was worthy of acceptance into the faith, and who – because of birth or gender or any number of other factors – would never be worthy. They thought they could decide who would be allowed to believe, to have faith.

But no. They couldn’t make someone believe, and they most certainly could not decide who was not permitted to have faith.

And in reading the Gospels we see, time and again, that it is faith which so often is the key to the miracles of Jesus Christ. In the ninth chapter of the book of Matthew alone, Jesus performs four healings and an exorcism, and in each of the healings, faith – belief – are vital components. Those who brought a paralyzed person to Jesus displayed great faith. The synagogue official believed that Jesus could heal his daughter. The woman with the issue of blood believed that if she touched only so much as the hem of his garment, she would be well, and the two blind men received their sight because they believed! Over in the fifteenth chapter, the Canaanite woman we spoke of awhile back – not likely even a follower of Judaism – saw her daughter healed because of her faith in Christ, and everyone in her region who came to Jesus in need of healing got that healing!

By contrast, we read in Matthew’s thirteenth chapter that Jesus didn’t do many miracles in his home town “because of their unbelief.”

So people who were allowed to have faith did not, and people prohibited from having faith… well, they had faith anyway!

The Pharisees, the Sadducees, the elders and the scribes and the rulers didn’t get to pick who had faith.

And we don’t get to pick who has faith, either. 

When the Apostle Paul says, in our Epistle reading, in humility, to regard others as better than ourselves, to put the interests of others ahead of our own interest, to be of the same mind as Christ, it was with the knowledge that he was speaking to men and women and children for whom Jesus Christ had died. That same Jesus gave his life for each of us here today. This is a fact: we are beloved children of God, chosen and called by God into the citizenship of the Kingdom of Heaven, welcomed into loving relationship with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Though we are uniquely loved, especially valued, this treasure is not meant to be hoarded, but shared! Shared with everyone, without reservation.

In the New Testament, we meet lepers and prostitutes and tax collectors and pagans and slaves and centurions and eunuchs and people who are crippled and a criminal on a cross who all believe in Jesus Christ, who all enter the Kingdom of God long before the religious elite, the people with the flawless theology and the perfectly crafted doctrine, even notice that a Kingdom of God exists.

And today? Today there are people just like Steve Thompson, who I met at Christmas in 1997 on Death Row at Donaldson Correctional facility, and who I shook hands with one last time in May of 1998, after listening to him preach from the Book of Psalms to his fellow inmates through the food-tray hole in his cell door. Steve was a murderer. But Steve had faith, he believed, he followed Christ.

We don’t get to choose who has faith.

Today there are people like Jay Bakker and Hugh Hollowell and Phil and Stephanie Shepherd and Neil Christopher who share the Gospel in bars and in homeless shelters and with outcasts and misfits, and who see many of these turn to Christ.

We don’t get to choose who has faith.

It is a fact that there is no person you or I have ever met – no person you or I will ever meet – for whom Jesus Christ did not die.

And that Jesus who died, rose again. And that Jesus who rose again will come again. And we don’t get to choose for whom Jesus will come. But we do get to share that joyous good news.

Thanks be to God!