Community in the Midst of Conflict
- Steven Cooper
- Jan 18, 2009
- Series: Luke 2009
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01/18/09
Harbor DT/UT
“Community in the Midst of Conflict”
Luke 20:1-20
Introduction
“Who do you think you are?” This is the question that gives birth to the events in our passage today.
Religious conversations have changed. There were times when people would ask questions about the resurrection or about the virgin birth or about if the Bible was inspired by God. People who were able to come up with good answers to these questions were able to convince people to become Christians.
But now it’s different. People don’t care much about proofs and evidence. Today religious conversations go one of two ways—First, people share their different perspectives and then each goes away a little more informed. Or second, one person makes a comment that sounds like they are right and the other person is wrong, and things quickly devolve into an argumentative exchange. During that exchange, the one being pushed typically feels and often says, “Who do you think you are? Who are you to say what’s right for me? And how can you possibly claim authority over me?” It’s a good question and one that should be handled with love and care, without arrogance.
“Who do you think you are?” This is the question posed to Jesus in our passage today v2. And this is the question that continues to be posed to him and to us today.
I. The question gets to our hearts, II. The question produces conflict, III. The question produces community
I. The Question Gets to Our Hearts
Jesus has just completed cleared out the temple. He made a whip and cleaned house—driving everyone out. You can try this yourself sometime. Go into a store, or a bank, or an office and start overturning tables and yelling at people. You’ll hear feet pounding as whatever security is available will come running. That’s what is going on here. The religious leaders come up and ask him, “Who do you think you are? Where do you get the authority to do these things?
A. Maybe you wonder the same thing today? How can the church say what it does?
1. You announce judgment on us? On what authority?
B. This can be a legitimate question. So many people honestly want to understand why they should listen to Jesus.
1. Even Christians ask—what does it mean to have Jesus as my authority?
C. But these leaders don’t really want to know. They are looking for Jesus to condemn himself. They want him to say that he is a king so they can turn him into the authorities and be rid of him. Jesus’ response shows their hearts. V5-7—They don’t want to answer his question because they aren’t concerned for anything but their own power. They want to get rid of him, that’s why they’re asking.
1. Christians fall into this trap sometimes. Do I really need to let him lead in every area of life? You have an area of your life where you really don’t want Jesus telling you what you should be doing. Maybe it’s a relationship. Maybe it’s a situation at work. Maybe it’s an area of your life where you think you’re entitled to have your own way. “I give Jesus everything, but I don’t want him messing with this part of my life.”
2. Asking the question—who do you think I am? Gets to the heart. Are we asking because we really want to know? Or are we asking because our lives are threatened by Jesus’ authority and we’re getting defensive? Either way we’re going to get an answer.
Who does Jesus think he is? So far he’s the one who gets to our hearts—who shows us where we stand in terms of his authority.
Second…
II. The Question Produces Conflict
Jesus tells parable—this story with hidden truth—to show what happens based on our response to who we think Jesus is.
A. The story of a vineyard and its owner isn’t just a random setting Jesus made up. This comes right out of the OT—Isaiah 5. v7—The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are the garden of his delight. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed, for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.”
1. So God is the owner, the religious leaders are the tenants, the servants are the prophets, the Son is Jesus.
2. This parable is telling the history of Israel. It’s the same history that Jesus has indicted the religious leaders with before. Luke 13:34—O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! The point is that the nation of Israel is God’s special love. He planted it and has nurtured it and cared for it. He rescued Israel from danger and famine, and He appointed leaders to help Israel to have a relationship with him.
3. But over and over again throughout their history, Israel’s leaders have done the exact opposite. They have oppressed the people, they have grown rich by fleecing the peoples’ money and amassing power to themselves.
4. God has sent them prophets over and over again, but the leaders don’t listen to the prophets. The last prophet sent to them was John the Baptist, and he ended up getting his head cut off.
5. Jesus is now God sending his Son in hopes that the leaders will finally realize the error of their ways and they’ll return to a relationship with God.
6. TODAY: If we’re honest, there’s some of the tenants in us. We live in God’s world, we enjoy his blessings, we take things for granted. When God calls on us to give him what he’s due, we get offended that he would even ask.
7. What has God asked of you that you don’t want to give him? What are you unwilling to give up?
B. Jesus is telling this story because he wants you to be appalled at the tenants behavior.
1. I know people who have rented out homes to others before. There is a scam that some people have engaged in—I’ve heard this story multiple times of people who move into a place, pay rent for two months, and then they stop. At first they give excuses—we’re waiting for money to come in, we’ll pay you don’t worry. A few weeks go by, and they say that they’ll pay both months together when the new month rolls around. Month two comes and they still haven’t paid. So the owner (or the property manager) issues an eviction notice. But the people don’t leave. The law says you have to go to court and get a court order to force them out. By the time you get a court date you’re at the end of month 2 or the beginning of month 3. And the renter is now living in the house free of charge. To get a court order, the paperwork the owner has to fill out are atrocious—incredibly detailed. If there is anything—anything wrong with any of the paperwork, the case gets thrown out of court automatically without the judge ever even looking at the merits of the case. It takes another couple of months to reschedule a court case. It is common that it takes 6 months or more to evict someone in the state of California. All the while, the owner is having to pay for the property and is receiving no rent. And the renter is living in the house, laughing!
2. Please note, I’m not talking about honest renters who are having trouble paying the rent. I have personally been in a situation where we were worried that our rent would not be received and we’d be in trouble because it didn’t arrive on time. I also have good friends who have struggled to pay their rent because of job loss. I’m speaking specifically about a scam that people engage in where they intentionally move into a place with no intention of paying their rent.
3. When the process finally concludes and there is a court order to remove the tenants, there is no recovery of the past months of rent, the tenants are simply ordered to leave. Ah!! I’ve had some good friends who’ve had to go through this and it is so frustrating and appalling to me!
4. This is the effect that Jesus wants his story to have, you’re supposed to be fuming inside. “What? They can’t do—they did what? Three times? They killed the son? Uh, they’re evil! Can’t someone do something about that?!”
5. While you’re frustrated, you start making the connection. “Wait a minute. The Bible says that Israel is a vine, and God is the one who planted her. And the farmers in the story ‘talked the matter over’(v14). That’s the same thing that the religious leaders just did with Jesus about John the Baptist—they ‘discussed the matter among themselves’(v5).” And it dawns on you. Jesus is talking about the leaders! He’s exposing them and condemning them!
6. This sets off further dialogue with the leaders. V16 says, “When the people heard this,” but in the Greek it’s ambiguous—it could also be that the leaders were the ones who said this, and that makes more sense because they are the ones who wouldn’t want this to happen. They reply, “May it never be!” They were appalled not at the behavior of the tenants, but at the implication that they were the tenants. Everyone loves a good story until we find out it’s speaking about us!
C. Jesus wants you to know that God is angry—he won’t stand for this. He will take action. He is taking action.
1. He looks right at them (v17). He quotes their own Bible to them. Ps 118—you reject me, but God has made me the foundation stone of his new building. To reject me is to fall under judgment.
2. God will destroy the leaders and replace them. This echoes 1Sam 2 with Eli’s sons. There is nothing that God hates more than hypocrisy—and when it comes from religious leaders, he will move to bring them to judgment.
3. Jesus’ followers will replace them. Jesus is going to raise up the 12 disciples to lead his followers.
4. This exposes people today also—it exposes non-Christians who don’t want to submit to Jesus’ authority. But it also exposes Christians who want to claim the love of God, but want to reign in Jesus’ authority so it doesn’t affect their lives. We’re all tempted to want the blessings of the vineyard, but not to love and appreciate the vineyard owner who put us here.
5. Conflict erupts as we’ll see in the ensuing chapters. The leaders want to kill Jesus, they just don’t want to get killed by the people when they do it. So they are now looking for a way to trap him.
Who is Jesus? Now he’s the one with authority to judge those who reject him. Now our Third point. This question gets to the heart, it produces conflict, now third...
III. The Question Produces Community
A. The son comes in hope. He comes with possibility.
1. It’s amazing to me that the owner sends the son in hope that the tenants will respect him. He’s still hoping for a relationship with these people.
2. Even as he announces judgment on those who reject him, he’s also giving them another chance to return to a relationship with him. He’s still inviting them to come clean, to confess their motivations and have integrity.
3. If Jesus can forgive these, then he can forgive any baggage we bring.
B. There’s a way to escape judgment. There’s a way for them. There’s a way for us.
1. There is a step that has been left out. A step between the killing of the Son and the judgment of the Father. Jesus is rejected and goes to the cross.
2. In the parable the murder of the son brings judgment. But in his own life, Jesus transcends even his own parable—In Jesus, the murder of the son brings forgiveness. Jesus will be rejected, he will be murdered, but even in his murder, he will say, “Father forgive them, they don’t now what they are doing.” His death becomes the source of forgiveness because he takes our punishment.
C. This is unheard of. This is ridiculous. This kind of forgiveness is appalling. How can God continue to hold out grace? And yet he does. Ever one of those rulers had opportunities to turn back to God. They were given another 35 years before judgment would strike. How much time do you have? Do you have 35 years?
D. Who does Jesus think he is? Yes, he gets to our hearts. Yes, he creates conflict with the religious leaders, but at his heart, he is the Lord of Grace and Forgiving Love. And it’s this Jesus who creates community. It’s this grace that creates community.
E. As Jesus makes these claims—some people believe him. They’ll hear the claims of Scripture and think, “I believe this. I think it’s true.” As they come to grips with what is going on inside them, they’ll realize that there is something different in them. If you believe this, you sense that difference. When you experience this grace, it gives you the power to love and share it with others.
F. In its essence, this is the church: it is the community of people who have experienced this grace and forgiving love and want to share it with others—with each other and with those around them. This grace fills us to overflowing and it spills out into all of life.
Matthew Parris, “As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God”
embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.
I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.
but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.
But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.
G. This is the joy of the church. This is the joy of genuine community. We need to embrace this. Jesus, in fact, wants us to embrace this, because he knows in his day, the only way that his followers will be able to handle the coming storm—his own death and then the persecution that they’ll have to endure, is for them to stick together in a family. Are you doing that? Are you experiencing not only this grace, but are you experiencing this community? Are you providing this community to others? Are you a source of community to others here?
H. No matter what the challenge. Jesus’ conflict is escalating and he knows where it will lead. He is preparing his disciples for it because they are going to be handed the baton. He’s preparing you too. He’s preparing you to be able to weather the conflict in your life. Not just disagreements with people, although certainly that. We all have struggles—financial, relational, work—and it’s our commitment to Jesus, our belief in him that joins us to each other and enables us to support each other with the strength that comes from that faith. He’s handing you the baton. Will you take it?
From The Times
December 27, 2008
As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God
Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people's mindset
Matthew Parris
Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.
It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.
Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.
I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.
But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.
First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.
At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.
We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.
Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.
This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.
It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.
There's long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.
I don't follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.
Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.
How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it's there,” he said.
To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's... well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity.
Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.
Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.
And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.
