Fruits of Peace

“Already in the 1^st century, Jesus’ own disciples had abandoned his non-violent way for the soul-satisfying

thirst for vengeance.”

what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce

A s a text for Peacemaking Sunday, this parable from the Gospel of Matthew, frankly, isn’t much help. As an allegory for salvation history, it is pretty straight forward. The owner of the vineyard sends first his servants and then his son, both of whom are mistreated and killed. So the people of Israel rejected the word of the prophets and crucified Jesus. That this is what happened, there can be no denying.

But what are we to make of the response? That those who committed such acts will be put to a “miserable death?” That the Kingdom will be taken away from them, and they will be “broken to pieces” and “crushed”? Are we to understand that Jesus himself spoke such words and welcomed the death of his own people?

I want to suggest, along with a host of Biblical scholars, that these words– at least in the form we have them– more closely reflect the sentiments of Matthew and his community than they do the life and words of Jesus. More than any other gospel, Matthew’s gospel is filled with warnings of vengeance. The stories and parables that he shares with Mark and Luke, in his version, are frequently appended with images of being cast out in to the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. It is a testimony to just how deeply violence is hard-wired in the human psyche that already in the 1^st century, Jesus’ own disciples had abandoned his non-violent way for the soul-satisfying thirst for vengeance.

Within Matthew’s community, the sentiment is understandable. Writing at a time when the followers of Jesus had been thrown out of the synagogue, persecuted, jailed, and perhaps even put to death, that they should take a certain glee in the notion that those who have perpetrated such deeds against them will get what they have coming to them— by the hand of God, no less!— is perfectly understandable. Yet how incongruous these sentiments are with the ministry of Jesus, who would not allow even his own disciples to strike back in his defense.

It is one thing to understand the impulse towards vengeance among a persecuted minority in the first-century. But to read these words in our day and age, when it is the Jews and not the Christians who are in the minority, to read these same words after Auschwitz without condemning them is not only wrong, it is irresponsible.

O ur impulse is to forgive the thirst for vengeance among those who have themselves been oppressed or victimized. Family members of murder victims who want to see the killer of their loved one put to death. People in Darfur who seethe with murderous hatred toward the Janjaweed militia who burned their homes and massacred their families. African Americans who have borne the burden of centuries of White racism. Understandable, yes, but defensible, no. Our parable this morning serves as a warning to the danger of such sentiments, however understandable, when this very text inscribed in Holy Scripture became the pretext, centuries later, for the murder of six million Jews in Nazi Germany. The impulse toward vengeance has a long, long memory, as the history of Northern Ireland, Rwanda, Israel-Palestine, Bosnia, Serbia, East Timor, Sudan and South Ossetia amply demonstrate.

It was part of the genius of both Gandhi and Martin Luther King to discern at the heart of Jesus’ teaching and ministry a proposal to break the cycle of violence. They understood, as few others have before or since, that hatred destroys the heart of the hater as surely as it does the object of one’s rage. Early in the Civil Rights struggle, King wrote:

“To meet hate with retaliatory hate would do nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love; we must meet the physical force with soul force.”

“We become what we hate. The very act of hating something draws it to us. Since our hate is usually a direct response to an evil done to us, our hate almost invariably causes us to respond in the terms already laid down by the enemy. Unaware of what is happening, we turn into the very thing we oppose.”

“In the spiritual renaissance that I believe is coming to birth, it will not be the message of Paul that this time galvanizes hearts, as in the Reformation and the Wesleyan revival, but the human figure of Jesus. And in the teaching of Jesus, the sayings on nonviolence and love of enemies will hold a central place. Not because they are more true than any others, but because they are the only means known for overcoming domination without creating new dominations.”

W here do we start? Our parable, as unhelpful as it has been, offers a clue. The Kingdom of God will be taken away from those who have reaped violence. It will be given to a people that produce fruits of the Kingdom. And what might those fruits be? Certainly not the vengeance to which the parable itself points. But the fruits of peace. The fruits of nonviolence. Those acts of resistance to the world of domination that Jesus practiced in his own life.

Where does it begin? Well, as the old song puts it, it begins with me. It begins with a change in our own heart that we will not return evil for evil, hate for hate, violence with vengeance. It begins with committing ourselves to do one thing, however small, to break the cycle of violence that so infects our lives and our world. It may be to no longer hit your own children, to stop teaching them by your actions that might makes right. It may be to reach out to someone or some group that has harmed you or your forbears and to work toward reconciliation. It may be to search your own heart and to lay aside any hatred that lingers there toward those who have done you harm. It may be to reach out across the barriers of your own race or class or community to embrace those who are different from you, and thereby demonstrating that you are not the enemy. Or, perhaps the most difficult for many of us, it may be to listen patiently– without being defensive– to the hurt, anger, and rage of those who have been victimized. You need to search your own heart to know what is the most meaningful step God is calling you to make in your own life.

Or it may be that the most important fruit of peace you are called to produce in your own life are the fruits that make peace possible. I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that said, “Peace begins when hunger ends.” Yesterday, twenty-five of us participated in the Pilgrimage Service Day, spending the day helping low-income seniors with projects around their house through Christian Community Group Homes. Through the volunteers that support Christian Community Group Homes’ program called “Age in Place,” hundreds of seniors are enabled to remain in their homes. Each week, nearly half a dozen church members and friends work together to serve the homeless through our Open Table program. Some of you tutor children after school, or mentor young people, or work on non-profit boards, or support the work of WIN, or help provide care for those with AIDS or HIV, or support the struggle for greater inclusivity in church and society. We don’t usually think of these activities as being about peacemaking, but as Ashley reminded us last week, the work we do in the world for the sake of others, whatever our age, whatever our abilities, is the work of peace.

I an Fraser, a former warden of the Iona Community in Scotland tells the story of visiting Costa Rica, where he was the guest of a woman who lived in a poor section of San Jose.

She had little education, and her home, like all the houses around, was sub-standard and tiny for the eleven members of her family who lived there. Her husband left at five in the morning each day and worked until seven at night selling vegetables to support the family. They both belonged to a neighborhood group which tried to see how changes which were need could be brought about.

One morning the woman was chatting with a friend. She said that the whole community must be roused to press for a fairer deal. Her friend protested that this was rather the responsibility of the local government officials. The tone sharpened: (I was within earshot)

“Do you think Jesus Christ came to change life so that it was more the kind of life God wanted to see, or to leave it as it is?”

“Do you think Jesus Christ meant to change life by himself, or did he mean us to share in the work with him?”

“Then how can you believe in Jesus Christ and let things stay as they are?”