The Message of Matthew | Michael Valliant

Listen to the Overlooked

Background: Last Sunday’s Gospel reading was Matthew 21:33-46, known as The Parable of the Wicked Tenants. It’s the second of three parables Jesus presents to the Temple priests, elders, and Pharisees, painting a harsh picture of how Israel is not living up to their name in their disobedience to God. This is the text of a homily I presented to the Christ Church Easton Zoom prayer service. Since our time with the Gospel is also a discussion, questions and answers people had changed and shaped things somewhat differently than what is written here.

“Listen to the Overlooked”

This conversation between Jesus and the chief priests and Pharisees began last week for us, when Jesus entered the Temple and was grilled by the priests and the elders about who he thought he was and where he gets his authority. And Jesus gave them a parable about a father asking two sons to go work in the vineyard, the first said he wouldn’t go, but then did, the second said that he would go and then didn’t. And Jesus made sure they caught onto the chief priests and the Temple leadership being the second son, who talks a big game, but then doesn’t do what they said they would.

And now Jesus takes it further. He relates the parable of the wicked tenants to them. This isn’t about saying one thing and then failing to deliver. This reaches another level. It’s outright disobedience and being self-serving despite all they’ve been given.

Michael Green in his book, “The Message of Matthew,” says:

“This parable unveils the flagrant disloyalty of the leaders of Israel. God had given them a wonderful vineyard to cultivate; he had given them all the necessary equipment to do the job (a winepress, a watchtower for shelter and burglar patrol, a wall to keep out the wild pigs and other trespassers). He had put his trust in them. And what did they do? The history of Israel tells the story starkly. In brief, they appropriated his goods, rejected his prophets, denied his rightful claims on them and killed his Son. They were given freedom as well as trust, but the day of reckoning is at hand: they will be held accountable for the way they have exercised that freedom.”

This is helpful to know how Jesus felt about the priests and Pharisees. In a reading we haven’t discussed in this part of the lectionary, the start of Jesus entering the Temple here is him driving out all who were selling and buying and overturning the tables of the money changers. This is the time of table-flipping Jesus. And now he is telling it like it is.

Jesus is calling out those who have been charged with doing God’s work, but who instead are looking after their own assumed power. But let’s not tell ourselves that what we are reading is simply supposed to point out and remind us of the disobedience of past people and generations—is it possible that church today, that we might also sometimes be the wicked tenants who tried to act like the vineyard was theirs and ignore the will of the owner?

Jesus then goes into quoting Psalm 118 verbatim when he says:

“The stone that the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone.
This is the Lord’s doing;
it is marvelous in our eyes.”

In this case, the SON and the STONE can be thought of as the same. Where they are ignoring and casting off John and Jesus, a new movement will begin that will have them as the main cornerstone, the foundation.

Let’s take a step back and look at some reasons why Jesus might be so upset with the chief priests and the Pharisees. What do you think?

They are putting the letter of the law over the intent.
They have ignored John the Baptist and now Jesus.
They are more worried about maintaining their own power than they are about the welfare of their people.
They are being exclusive rather than inclusive.
They are ignoring their responsibility to the poor, the sick, the downcast.

And what is it that Jesus is doing that is different? What do we see when we look at Jesus’s ministry?

He includes those who have been excluded—tax collectors, prostitutes, sinners, and when called upon, Gentiles.
He is healing the sick and caring for the poor.
He isn’t concerned about status or worldly power.
When it comes to things like the Sabbath, Jesus is following the intent of the law, not the letter of the law when it comes to helping people who are hurting.
Jesus views himself as a servant first, he is there to help, and to lead by serving.

Let’s fast forward to our time. Even though we wear his logo and worship his name, are we still ignoring Jesus? What would it look like for the church to be obedient, to follow him and live as he did now?

Talking about the rejected stone, the rejected Son, Fr. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and writer who we are studying, says:

“Jesus reminds us that sometimes it is the overlooked person who is the one we need to pay attention to.”

Who are the overlooked people now who we might want to pay attention to?

I doubt anyone can hear the things that Jesus taught and look at the life he lived and say, “no, that’s just a bad idea.” I wonder if part of what happened to the Pharisees and to the world today is that our hearts are out of step with God and that gets in the way of our following.

I’ve been reading Meister Eckhart lately, who lived from 1260 to 1328. He was a German Catholic theologian, mystic, and a part of the Dominican Order of Preachers. He is someone who seems to help me get out of my own way and do a better job of being open and listening for what God might want to say to me.

Let’s try a couple of his sayings and see if there is something helpful:

“Breaking Through”

Too often I decide what my
life should be and whether

there is from in it for You
while You sit in a deeper

place within me, wondering
what it will take for me to

make more of all the things
in my life—the good and

the bad—and so to learn to
break through to find You

in all that is and let You
take form in me in all that

I was and am and will be.

I wonder if too often our own ideas of what we should do push out any room in our hearts for God to operate. Did the Pharisees and chief priests have such fixed ideas of who God was and how he would speak to them, that it prevented them from stepping out in faith to trust the new direction John and Jesus offered?

On top of that, I wonder if what Jesus was modeling, what he was showing those in power was too radical, too much of a change for them when they came to enjoy so much the power and the status they had.

Here is one more from Meister Eckhart on what it looks like to follow Jesus:

“You Rise by Stooping Down”

With You everything
is upside down

and inside out,
for You rise by

stooping down,
and call me

to follow in
the footsteps

of your descent,
where I find

that You and
I are one

In being and
even in power.

Jesus rises by stooping down. He became incarnate, he humbled himself, and he called and showed himself to be a servant. Where we are in Matthew’s Gospel is Jesus on his way to the cross, to his death. He is trying to get everything he can across to his disciples, as well as being critical of the Pharisees, giving them another chance to repent and obey.

We have seven Sundays left in the lectionary year. Something to consider in the way these readings are presented to us. We read and reflected on Matthew’s telling of Jesus being arrested, crucified, and resurrected earlier this year, in Lent, Holy Week, and Easter.

We finish the church’s year with this series of teachings, warnings, and parables, and then November 26 is “Christ the King” Sunday, and the last reading we will get from Matthew before moving into Advent and the new year for the church, will be Matthew 25:31-46. Those will be the words we hear and reflect on to close this Gospel and then begin our Mark year.

Does anyone know the story?

Here is a key takeaway:

“Truly I tell you, just as you did (or did not do) it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did (or did not do) it to me.”

What will we do with new life?

Lead in: I just finished my second year of seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are going to school. July 15 and 16 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.

Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.

The Gospel reading for July 16 was Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23, “The Parable of the Sower,” where Jesus tells a parable to large crowds gathered by the sea to listen to him, then explains it in private to his disciples.

The image used at the top of the page is “The Sower” by Vincent Van Gogh.

What Will We Do with New Life?

How many people have heard the “Parable of the Sower” before? And how many people have then sat and tried to figure out, “Hhhmmm, which kind of soil am I?”

That’s a fair question to ask. We want to figure out how we relate to the story. At the same time it takes the Gospel message and makes it all about us, the readers or listeners.

I wonder though, if we might hear the Parable of the Sower and wonder what it tells us about the character of God? What can we learn about His kingdom?

Let’s start with the soil. By itself, soil is just soil. And it will go on being soil. But when the Sower adds a seed, that’s when transformation happens; the soil becomes a part of the process of new life springing forth.

Michael Green, in his book, “The Message of Matthew,” tells us:

“It’s not just ‘a farmer’ who went out to sow his field. It is (literally) ‘the farmer’ and he comes bringing the precious seed which can transform the soil. The kingdom comes when the soil and the seed get together. It is a marriage of seed and soil. The seed is the word of God proclaimed by the Sower of God. And the kingdom begins to come to life when the ‘soil’ receives the seed of the word for itself. Then it begins to germinate and shoot.”

In Matthew’s telling of the parable, Jesus is the Sower, and God’s Word, spread generously into the soil, adds what wasn’t there, what we can’t add on our own, what we need God to do. And that changes everything. He changes everything.

Through his sowing of the Word, Jesus is creating his kingdom in and among us. And listen to how He sows: some seeds fell on the path, other seeds fell on rocky ground, other seeds fell among thorns, other seeds fell on good soil. God is not stingy with his seeds, he spreads them everywhere. And that’s good news for us, for sure.

Why is that good news? First, we can’t create this transformation, this new life, on our own. We can’t plant the seed, it’s not our seed. We need God to take the initiative. Forgive me a cheesy pun, but in my head I hear a version of Tom Cruise’s voice from the movie Top Gun saying, “We feel the need for SEEDS!” And I apologize if that is the only line you remember from this sermon.

There are more reasons why it is good news that God is not stingy when he sows his seeds. As mentioned, we have a tendency to hear this parable and try to figure out which kind of soil we are.

Am I the path, where the birds come and eat the seed up? Am I the rocky ground, without much soil, no depth and the sun scorches and dries up? Am I full of thorns, choking the seeds? Or am I good soil, bringing forth grain?

I wonder if this is one of those multiple-choice questions where the answer is: “E: All of the above.” What if on any given day, we might be one way and on a different day another?

Catch me on a Monday and I am distracted, maybe I’ve just been in an argument, or I’ve just gotten some bad news, or the washing machine has overflowed just before I have to leave for work. In those moments, I am not fertile soil. Don’t look for grain coming from me then.

But I don’t have to stay that way. Jesus is going to sow the seeds of God’s Word and I might miss it the first time, but I can have better days and better moments, and be more open and be more fertile. And I might not always stay that way either, as much as I want to.

God’s willing to work with us. No matter what soil we are, he’s going to sow the seeds. But he wants us to get it. He wants us to be fruitful.

Matthew’s Gospel is known as the discipleship Gospel. The author wants us to understand what it means to follow Jesus, what the costs are, and what’s expected of us.

At the beginning of today’s reading, Jesus goes and sits beside the sea. That sounds nice, like something we can relate to living on the Eastern Shore. Then such big crowds gather around him that gets into a boat. The thing about being in a boat on the water, sound carries. He’s created his own amplification system.

And he tells the big crowds about the sower and the seed. And as he finishes his teaching he says, “let anyone with ears listen!” Knowing not everyone will understand.

The way today’s reading is put together, we jump from verse 9 to verse 18, where Jesus explains the parable. But the part we jumped over, is the disciples coming up to Jesus after he has been preaching to the crowds and they ask him why he speaks in parables.

So the second part of today’s reading is Jesus speaking directly to his disciples. No big crowds. And now he focuses on the soil. He asks the disciples to look in the mirror. He asks us to look in the mirror.

If through God’s Word, if through sowing these seeds, Jesus is bringing forth new life, if that’s his example to us, if that is what he is showing as the character of God, what does that ask of us?

He’s asking us to be open, to be receptive, to be good soil. And Jesus spells it out for us clearly. This means, “to hear the word and understand it, to bear fruit and yield, whether a hundredfold, sixty, or thirty.”

What does it mean to bear fruit here?

I want to go back to a couple weeks ago, to something Fr. Bill Ortt said: he said that wherever a believer is, wherever a disciple is, there is the kingdom of God.

As believers, as disciples, we bring the kingdom with us. Well, jeez, what does that mean? Here is another from Fr. Bill—and this is so helpful. Fr. Bill told us to think of it as KINGSHIP rather than kingdom. That we are closer to understanding when we think of it as a RELATIONSHIP, not a place.

To bear fruit, to carry that seed, that new life from God, sprouting in us, would be to have a different, deeper, relationship with God. To put God’s love at the center of who we are, how we live, what we do. To live differently than what we see going on in the world today.

This is not a matter of reducing the moral of the story to, we should all be better people. In fact, we might not want to try to reduce Jesus’s parables to simple morals anyway—they have a tendency to expand and confound our thinking and increase our wonder more than they do to clarify things.

Jesus is giving us a story about the Sower, (he calls it the parable of the sower, not the parable of the soil), about the word of God (the seed) creating new life where there was only soil. And maybe we don’t take enough notice in real life, watching seeds crack open, start to sprout, blossom, BLOOM. Have you ever watched that happen over the course of days, weeks, months in your own garden? I am always late getting vegetables in and right now my tomatoes are green and just taking shape on the vines. And I get excited every time I go water them. Do you get giddy and overjoyed at the very simplest things?

What about thinking about yourself that way, and your relationship with God. What if our hearts were full of gratitude for this new life that has been given to us, that has nothing to do with anything we’ve done?

How do we respond? Maybe we want to do our best to cultivate the soil of our hearts, of our lives, so that God’s Word can take root, can crack open, can bloom, and bear fruit? Maybe our thanks to God IS to bear fruit—to carry that seed, that new life, into who and how we are in the world.

No matter what kind of terrain I am at the moment, Jesus is sowing the seeds that offer me new life. What an incredible gift. What am I going to do with it? What are we going to do with it?

I want to leave you with the words of Debie Thomas, from her book “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories,” and what she wishes for the church, and what we might take from the Parable of the Sower—

“How I wish we were known for our absurd generosity. How I wish we were famous for being like the Sower, going out in joy, scattering seed before and behind us in the widest arcs our arms can make. How I wish the world could laugh at our lavishness instead of recoiling from our stinginess. How I wish the people in our lives could see a quiet, gentle confidence in us when we tend to the hard, rocky, thorny places in our communities, instead of finding us abrasive, judgmental, exacting, and insular. How I wish seeds of love, mercy, justice, humility, honor, and truthfulness would fall through our fingers in such appalling quantities that even the birds, the rocks, the thorns, and the shallow, sun-scorched corners of the world would burst forth into colorful, riotous life.”

Jesus has sown new life, God’s love, into the soil of our lives. What are we going to do with it?

Send Us Out

Lead in: I just finished my second year of seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are going to school. June 17 and 18 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.

Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.

The Gospel reading for June 18 was Matthew 9:25-10:23, where Jesus calls his 12 apostles and sends them out to further the work that he has been doing: curing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing lepers, and casting out demons, with warnings about what will happen to them.

“Send Us Out”

In January 2017, I had just started working at the church and I remember sitting down with Fr. Bill Ortt. It was time to start Bible studies and kick off The Alpha Course and he asked how I felt about everything. I said, “it’s daunting. And exciting.”

I was starting things I hadn’t done before. Anticipation and anxiety were in the water together. And all I could do was jump in.

Saying that, I can’t imagine what was going through the minds of the 12 disciples when Jesus calls them in today’s reading. So far in Matthew’s Gospel, they have seen Jesus teach, heal, and cure diseases; they have heard him give his Sermon on the Mount. They watched Jesus make a leper clean and were afraid for their lives on a boat as he commanded a storm to stop. When they got off the boat, he drove demons out of man everyone was afraid of; and we heard last week how he cured a woman who had been hemorrhaging for 12 years and then he raised a leader from the synagogue’s daughter from the dead.

Now he calls the 12 together and says, okay, your turn. Now you do it. “Proclaim the good news, the kingdom of heaven has come near, cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” Wow. No nerves or pressure there.

The disciples have been riding the bus that Jesus was driving, but he was making all the stops and doing all the work. They were just along for the ride. They probably didn’t realize what “Follow me” entailed.

Let’s look at today’s text just before Jesus sends them out to see what prompts him to do this. He’s going about to all the cities and all the villages teaching and proclaiming the good news and curing every disease.

And then Matthew tells us: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore, ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” And Jesus calls his 12.

The time is now. The harvest is ready. People are lost, hurting, sick. And Jesus needs those he has called to help him, to be the laborers.

This is the first time in Matthew’s Gospel that he refers to them as “apostles,” which means those who are sent out.

What are they sent out to do? Help people. Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. Do what Jesus has been doing. They are to share in and further his calling, his mission, under his authority. Go to where people are hurting. Care for them, give them hope. The things you do when you love someone.

As Matthew was making the point to get these things across to his readers then, they are still intended to speak to us now. Michael Green was an international evangelist, pastor, and author. In his book, “The Message of Matthew,” he gives us a way of thinking about Jesus’s mission charge to the apostles by summarizing it in five words: see, care, pray, receive, go.

SEE: “When Jesus SAW the crowds”—this is first and foremost, the apostles had to SEE the needs of those who were suffering or in trouble. We need to do the same.

CARE: “When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them.” Green points out that the word Matthew used for having compassion means “he was moved in his guts,” he was stirred deep inside. For the first apostles, or for us, when we see people suffering, we are called to care deeply.

PRAY: “Ask the Lord of the harvest to send workers into his harvest.” We are not the Lord of the harvest, that’s God, and we need to ask for his help and guidance. Stay connected to Him.

RECEIVE: And what Green says here is that the apostles, and we, need to receive training from Jesus, which they do both in watching him, in being with him, and in being sent out by him; and that they also need to receive authority. “It will not be you speaking but the Spirit of the Father speaking through you.” We need to allow ourselves to be open to, and filled with God’s Spirit. It’s not about us, it is about what God can do through us.

GO: Jesus commands, “Go,” and “As you go”… that’s the thing about being sent out. They and we actually have to go out. In preparing them for what’s to come, Jesus doesn’t lecture them about weekly church attendance. He sends them out and warns them that it is going to be dangerous.

Jesus and apostles. Fresco in Cappadocia

Jesus spends some time on this warning. He goes over the rough things that are on the horizon for the apostles. It’s going to be difficult, and it is going to be costly. “But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

Debie Thomas in her book, “Into the Mess,” says when it comes to faith, “Discomfort is what success looks like.”

“If our overriding priority as Christians is to secure our own comfort, then we cannot follow Jesus. The discipleship Jesus describes will disorient and disrupt us. It will make us the neighborhood weirdos. It will shake things up in our families, our friendship circles, our churches, our communities.”

Caring is costly. As a society now, we are flooded with images and stories of worldwide suffering, violence, sickness—and what is the most common response? Change the channel. Close the laptop. Don’t think about it. Or better yet these days, find someone or a group of people who don’t agree with us and blame them. If we make it a point to care for the marginalized and cast out, we risk becoming marginalized or cast out ourselves. Jesus asks us to step out and take that risk.

When we care about those around us, we open ourselves to getting hurt. When we open our heart to love someone, sooner or later, pain is a part of that love. Love in this life also has loss lingering behind it.

The apostle Paul has a sense of that loss, of that cost, when he writes today’s reading from Romans. He finds something in this suffering:

“We boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans 5:2-5)

Jesus didn’t send the apostles out alone. He was with them. He cared about them. And he doesn’t send us out alone. He cares about us. And when we go through the pain and suffering that loving God and each other can bring, Jesus shows us that suffering can point ultimately to hope, and hope in God does not disappoint us.

If we are doing the work that God has given us to do, loving like Jesus, in a world that pushes back against it, we are going to struggle. I will tell you something that is amazing to me: we have so many people in our church community, who have used the struggles, the suffering, the loss they have experienced as a launching point either for ministries that they have helped start, or who are showing up for people in new and deeper ways because of what they have been through. They don’t want others to go through the same struggles alone.

That’s part of what being sent out looks like. Seeing, Caring, Praying, Receiving, Going.

A number of years go in Fr. Bill’s 30-week Kerygma Class, he drew two circles on a white board, one that had arrows pointing inward, and one with arrows pointing out. He talked about the circles as churches, inward facing and outward facing, and asked which one looked more like Jesus’s idea of love and caring? Barbara Coleman, now the Reverend Barbara, put her hands on top of her head with her fingers facing up to show the arrows facing out. And that has been her apostolic antler reminder ever since. We don’t see Barbara as much here anymore because she discerned a call to become a Deacon. She was ordained here in this church in October 2020, and now serves multiple parishes in Dorchester County, and heads up the food pantry. She calls herself the “Deacon of Dorchester.” She’s been sent out.

“Apostolic Antlers” from Rev. Barbara, Fr. Bill, and our Kerygma Class

Another part of today’s reading that keeps stirring me up is how the apostles learned from Jesus. He didn’t ask them to do anything he wasn’t already doing. Beyond his teaching, I bet they learned as much from watching him, from being around him, and from trying to do what he did.

It’s Father’s Day weekend. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads here. I’m convinced that we learn more from watching our fathers, our parents, and who they are, than from anything they might tell us. At least I hope that is the case, as neither of my daughters seem to listen to anything I say… The story about watching who someone is that that comes to my heart happened leading up to Halloween many years ago. So you get a quick Halloween story in June. Sorry, I’ve got the microphone.

From the late 1970s to the mid-80s, Easton had an annual haunted house that was unparalleled and unrivaled. In terms of scariness, creativity, and ingenuity, Disney World fell short of the haunted houses that the Easton Kiwanis Club put on. My father was a part of the Kiwanis Club and our whole family jumped into helping, for a good chunk of September and all of October each year.

They moved from place to place—from an old house on Dutchman’s Lane, to the old Idlewild Elementary School, when it was left empty in Idlewild Park. There were spot-built hydraulic floors, an illusion where a man changed into a werewolf on stage; swinging rope bridges, chainsaws, and even a flamethrower. The last two years of the haunted house, it was on a property in the woods off Manadier Road, at the end of Dutchman’s Lane. People had to park in front of what is now Auto Zone on Dover Road, and ride buses to the haunted woods.

The last year they held it, my friends and I as teenagers were given our own area along the wooded trail, a rundown old farm building, to create our scene to scare people. It was right next to where the buses pulled in.

One night a crowd got off the buses, a big crowd, most were in their 20s, and after riding the buses out there to this dark, deserted woods, they were scared, freaked out, didn’t want to go in and started screaming and shoving, not listening to anyone—it was the beginning of a riot. No one could calm them down and things were elevating past a boiling point.

From where I was standing, I could see my Dad come out of the woods, walk right up to the guys in the front of the crowd, who no one wanted any part of dealing with, and he stepped right into the mess, right where someone was needed. He diffused the whole situation. The entire crowd calmed down, made peace, and the evening, and the show, went on.

That night was more than 35 years ago and I have never forgotten it, watching my dad help restore order out of short-fused chaos. Talking about it later, he said, “I have no idea what I would have done if it turned violent.” He didn’t think, he acted—not just sent out, he seemed shot out, going to where the critical need was. There have been times when I have called on his example in chaotic situations and tried to live into that, diffusing things, and trying to bring peace.

God connects us to people we can learn from; we are always being shaped.

I have to imagine that as Peter, John, and Matthew the tax collector were sent out, and their ministries expanded, that they had their own experiences of watching and learning from Jesus as he healed, cared, loved, and brought peace. They could call on their experiences of watching him. And as we read and discuss the stories of Jesus in the Gospels, we learn how to model ourselves after him. What would Jesus see? What would he care about? How would he love? Who would he send?

How about us? Are we ready to see, care, pray, receive, and go?