Sermon: "Christianity is for Losers," October 4, 2020

Matthew 21:33-46
Sermon: "Christianity is for Losers”
Preacher: Rev. Ryan Slifka

Well… here’s a Bible passage that probably won’t make it’s way into children’s Bibles.

A landowner, Jesus says. A landowner, plants a vineyard, complete with winepress. Everything you’d ever need to craft a quality bottle of wine. This rich sommelier then invites some tenants to take it over for a while because he’s going overseas.

And while he’s out of town, he sends some of business reps to collect on his world renowned, growing vintage the harvest. The tenants, however, don’t receive the owner’s servants well. They stone and beat and kill them.

But the owner’s insistent on getting a return on his investment. So the owner sends even more business reps to collect. But same thing. They’re beaten, stoned, and killed.

Eventually the owner then sends his own SON to collect. He assumes they’ll have to respect his own flesh and blood. But instead they mutiny, the try to take over the business for themselves. They kill the Son, too.

It’s an interesting parable, a rather violent story. But it’s also more than a story. Because it’s a parable, one of Jesus’ short stories. Sometimes the meaning of the parables is a little obscure, a little mysterious. But this parable is an allegory. Which means that the meaning is thinly veiled. Not much room for interpretation.

Here Jesus is addressing the Pharisees and Scribes, the religious leaders of his people, of his time. The parable’s all about them.

God’s the landowner in this case. Israel, God’s people is the vineyard, where God has invested time, energy, love.

The tenants are Israel’s leaders, the Pharisees and Scribes. Israel’s leaders, like the tenants in the parable, have harvested God’s people for their own purposes rather than producing good fruit, producing righteousness. They’ve stocked up on self-interest rather than gathering God’s will.

God, being God, has been like the landlord, very patient. He’s sent his servants to the tenants, God has sent his own servants in the form of prophets to change their minds. And each time, the leaders have beaten, stoned, and killed them.

By this point, you can probably guess who the Son is supposed to be. The Son of course, is Jesus—the Son of God—who like the Son of the vineyard owner is sent face-to-face to turn the people around. At this point, Jesus is set on a direct course to end up dead, just like the son in the parable.

In this parable, Jesus is prophetically speaking of his own forthcoming death. He’ll be rejected by the Pharisees and Scribes. Rejected in the same way countless others have been by Israel’s leaders before him. And, if you read ahead, you’ll see he was right. Jesus was rejected. Just as he said.

Here we have in this passage one of the unique and odd things about Christianity. Jesus, the founder of the movement, was rejected. Rebuffed. Denied. Murdered.

We rarely consider just how weird this actually is.

I remember in University having a conversation with a friend of mine from Yemen. A friend who was a practicing Muslim. One day we got on the topic of the crucifixion of Jesus. At the time I wasn’t aware that Muslim’s believe Jesus to be a prophet, a divine messenger. But they don’t believe that Jesus died on the cross. They believe that he was saved from that fate and ascended to heaven.

“God wouldn’t do that,” said my friend. “Do what?” I asked. My friend told me that Jesus couldn’t have been crucified because God wouldn’t allow his prophet to undergo such shame, such humiliation. God wouldn’t fail like that.

It’s not just Muslims, either really. We rarely consider how weird it is. For us, suffering, pain, failure, rejection… these are all things to be avoided. I mean, we spend a lot of our lives hiding from them, medicating them away. Because they hurt. They expose our weakness, sound forth our inability to all.

The mere existence of our mere mortality challenges faith itself. If there is a God, that God could only be in the business of joy, success, strength, power. Not rejection, failure, pain.

But this passage has it front and center. It’s rejection, rejection, rejection. Jesus is part of a long line. And not only was he rejected, it wasn’t just an accident of history. The weirdest thing is that it was somehow apparently all part of the divine plan.

Okay. So after Jesus tells this parable, he asks the Pharisees and Scribes to finish it for him. “So,” Jesus says. “Considering the fact that the tenants have rejected the landowner’s messengers again and again, killing them and even his son. What do you think the landlord’s gonna when he gets back?”

The Scribes and Pharisees answer like any of us would answer. VENGEANCE, of course. “Well, he’s gonna crush those tenants in the winepress and put up flyers for new ones. Duh.”

But Jesus says something perplexing in response. In response, he quotes the Bible. He quotes Psalm 118. Haven’t you read, Jesus says, haven’t you read that:

“The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone? This was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.”

“This means the whole deal’s gonna be taken away from you,” he says. And it’s gonna be given to someone who’ll finally bear good fruit. You trip on this stone, you’re gonna shatter to pieces. If it falls on you you’ll be crushed.”

This Psalm is a thanksgiving Psalm. Where the Psalmist thanks God for being rescued from his enemies. And it’s being applied to Jesus. Jesus is the cornerstone that these guys will reject. His rejection is a failure, but not ultimately. Jesus will be rejected by the world, crucified, died, buried.

This, Jesus says. This is how the owner’s gonna retake his vineyard of creation from the wicked tenants, and plant a whole new crop in the parable. This is how God’s gonna re-take the world from the powers of sin and death, and heal it. Not through success. Not through triumph. Not through power, nor brute strength. But rejection. Suffering. Death.

This is the cornerstone, the rock that will hold against every assault, the boulder that will smash through every obstacle in its way. Even though Jesus is rejected by the world, he’s not rejected by God. Even though Jesus is to be rejected by the world, God is going to use him to rebuild humanity, and the whole of creation.

The cross is the place of suffering, death, pain, and rejection . On the cross, that cornerstone against which all things shattered will itself be shattered by hammers and nails. But the cross is—at the same time—the arena of resurrection. Of renewal, healing and hope. Even stronger than the forces that break open the cornerstone of the Lord is the power of resurrection which surges forth from its cracks.

So what does this mean for us? Each of us have been hurt, each of us have been wounded and rejected in some way. By others, by the world. By ourselves. Face it: it some way, we’ve all failed. Failed at work, failed spouses, failed our children. And we’ve been failed by others. I’ve been thinking particularly this week about those of us who are indigenous. Those of us who have been made to felt lesser, or never felt like we’d ever measure up to expectations. That we can never be as good as we need to be, or complete. Many of us are living lives that haven’t lived up to our deepest hopes and expectations. We aren’t the people who we believe we’re supposed to be.

This is the truth. The soul-crushing truth.

But the good news is, friends, the good news is that the good news was made for us.

A few years ago the Anglican Priest and commentator Giles Fraser wrote a piece for the season of Lent. It was titled “Christianity, When Properly Understood, is a Religion of Losers.” A lot of people of the internet jumped on it while only reading the title. Some Christians were insulted—stop mocking us! And some atheists whole heartedly agreed because—after all—you’d have to be a loser to believe this stuff.

But Fraser meant neither. Here’s what he wrote:

“The Christian story,” he says. “The Christian story, like the best sort of terrifying psychoanalysis, strips you down to nothing in order for you to face yourself anew. For it turns out that losers are not despised or rejected, not ultimately. In fact, losers can discover something about themselves that winners cannot ever appreciate – that they are loved and wanted simply because of who they are and not because of what they achieve. That despite it all, raw humanity is glorious and wonderful, entirely worthy of love. This is revealed precisely at the greatest point of dejection. The resurrection is not a conjuring trick with bones. It is a revelation that love is stronger than death, that human worth is not indexed to worldly success.”[i]

Here Fraser was repeating the same sentiment of the Psalm Jesus quoted back to the Pharisees. “The stone the builders rejected has become the chief corner stone.” That though we may beare failures. Though we may beare rejected by the world. We’re not rejected by God. Even when we reject God, we’re not rejected by God.We reject God, but God chooses us.

So, my friends, the question is, who are you? Are you the one who, like Christ, has known rejection? Is your life scarred by suffering and shame? Or are you the one who, like the wicked tenants, done the rejecting? Have you scarred others, and in the process, had the vineyard of your life taken away? I have a hunch, most if not all of us are some mixture of both.

In either case… in both cases… the good news is that in Jesus we are met by a God who, like the owner in the parable, relentlessly seeks after us, over and over and over again, only to reclaim us and the world for his good purposes. In Jesus, we meet a God who knows our suffering, who knows our shame, our pain and rejection, has experienced it first hand. But doesn’t write us off or shy away.

Christianity is for losers, because in Jesus, we meet a God who meets our suffering, hurt, and failure head on, embracing it and us in the process. And somehow transforms it. Uses it for the good of all.

Christianity’s for losers. The stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. It’s the weirdest thing about Christianity. It’s the weirdest thing, but also the best thing. Because it’s not only weird—it’s true.

AMEN.

[i] Giles Fraser, “Christianity, when properly understood, is a religion of losers,” The Guardian online, April 3, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2015/apr/03/christianity-when-properly-understood-religion-losers