Luke

In the church, we view St. Luke as an Ox.  

What do oxen do?  In the time before mechanized farming and agriculture, something was going to have to pull the plow, something was going to have to do all the hard work of hauling, pulling, and tirelessly treading out what had to be trodden.  In those days, it was oxen that did that work.  Think of Babe, the big blue ox, a creature of such size and strength that it is legendary.  The tireless workhorse companion of Paul Bunyan, the legendary woodsman of American folklore.  

Now, Paul Bunyan is uniquely American, one of those tales that was born from effort, work, and the clearing and taming of the American continent, and his story doesn't exist in other parts of the world.  Truly a new world creation.  But Paul Bunyan, though he was larger than life, could clear trees and strap hams to his feet, doing all that stuff, could not have accomplished what he accomplished without the presence of Babe.  His companion.  The one who pulls his load for him.

Babe, in many ways, is seen every bit as otherworldly in his abilities as Paul Bunyan, you know.  Babe isn't a regular ox who is bound by normal limitations.  Rather, Babe is otherworldly in appearance, as well as in attributes.  He's enormous, powerful, and blue, to indicate just how outside of the normal ox experience we're talking about.  What I do want you to remember, though, and to ruminate on as we move forward, is that Babe is crucial to the Paul Bunyan story.

In the story of the Bible, no book is about Luke.  No book, not even scenes in books are about Luke.  Even though Luke himself transcribes and writes down an awful lot of what we would deem to be absolutely vital information, he doesn't tell his own story at all. Rather, he is there to tell an intensely important story, and to pass that information down through the centuries.  He is there to let people know who this Jesus is, but unlike the other Gospel writers, he doesn't stop there.  Rather, Luke's story continues, to the time of the church.  Luke shepherds them through a difficult time in discerning who they are after the time of Christ.  Luke documents the change in the church from being a Jewish sect to being a true global religion, with adherents all over the known world.  And it is Luke who shows you the first gentile converts, and the rift and healing that they brought to the faith.  Luke's Gospel has Jesus telling his followers to take the faith to the ends of the earth beginning from Jerusalem, and in the Acts of the Apostles, also penned by Luke, we get to see what that looks like. 

Paul's missionary journeys, imprisonments, times in jail, shipwrecks, are all catalogued by Luke as well, who tells you about where Paul went, so that his letters that he writes to the churches may seem all the more sincere and real, from a real person in a real time and place.  Through Luke's words, you can hear about the effort, the risk that Paul took, you can see the changes in Paul happening over time, so that when you read Paul's letters, you can see a fully fleshed out individual, from the outside as well as from his own perspectives.  In fact, Luke's account of the work of the apostles is so crucial that it is essentially required reading for anyone who would venture into the letters of Paul. You should know who this man is and where he went in order for his letters to matter to you.

Here's a fun exercise.  If you're in the grocery store, and you have your shopping list, it is of infinite importance to you, because it tells you all the things that you need at home.  But if you're in the grocery store, and you find someone else's shopping list, it is of no value whatsoever, given that these aren't things you need at home.  Now, they may be similar, and may have some of the same things on them, but without it being connected to you in some appreciable way, it's a fun look into someone else's life.  That's all.  You see, the letters that are written to Rome, to Corinth, to Thessalonica, all these letters take on a much more human component because you and I have voyaged with Paul through his journeys.  We've seen him move from being an ardent persecutor of the church to its strongest advocate.  We've seen him leave his former life behind, and take on a new name, and a new identity.  When his letters reflect this, we nod along, because we've seen this happen. We've seen Paul do this, have come to know him through Luke, so when Paul writes of himself, we have seen it all happen, and appreciate it all the more.

But the books aren't about Luke.  Luke just makes them happen.  He takes down the information, compiles it, presents it, and sticks with Paul all the way.  Luke isn't at the center of the story, far from it.  But he is the reason that you know it the way you do.  And this is where I get back to Paul Bunyan.

In the iconography of the church, Luke is seen as the hardworking Ox. The one who pulls the load, who gets the job done.  Paul Bunyan cuts down the trees, but Babe pulls them away.  Paul is doing the work of the evangelist to the nations, difficult, dangerous work, but who is it who completes his evangelism, not just to those people at the time, but to you through the centuries?. That's Luke.  What Christ and Paul do, Luke records, transcribes, writes down and complies, so that you may not know Luke's story, but that you may know theirs.  And it worked. It worked brilliantly. 

The holy scriptures would be so much poorer without the work of Luke.  In fact, the Christian faith may very well have been completely different without him.  For all we know, without hearing of Cornelius, or of Pentecost, or of the Ethiopian eunuch, the Christian faith may have remained a Jewish sect.  But it didn't.  Christ never intended for it to be, and Luke tells you how that happened.  The work of the steadfast, unflappable, sturdy and hardworking Luke, laboring to bring us what Paul and Christ have produced.

The fruit in its season

 I bet this parable makes you quite uncomfortable.

If it helps, the initial hearers didn't seem to care for it too much either.  The reason we don't much like this parable is because it gives you the real understanding that you can play a game, and lose.  Most of the time, we like to forget that's possible.  We like to think that this is participation trophy time, and that everyone, no matter how well or how poorly they do, will come out okay in the end. Consider the end of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Willy Wonka says of the children who come undone in his factory that "It'll all come out in the wash," even as they are turned purple and maimed. Fine fine, so even though Charlie Bucket wins, nobody else really loses.  Nobody else really suffers the massive consequence that their behavior would suggest.

That's how we like to think about things. It'll all come out in the wash.  There will be more time, more moments, everyone will get a shot to be right with God in the end.  But Jesus, when he speaks to his audience in the reading from the Gospel, is making it clear that the vineyard will be given to other tenants who aren't quite as willing to kill the landlord's son.

So maybe it doesn't all come out in the wash. Maybe CS Lewis is right when he says that if you're playing a game, you have to be able to lose.  That's real stuff that happens, to be sure.  When it comes time for the good people of the time of Christ to pick a side, they define themselves by rejection of Christ and his word.  I want you to think about the specific time that these readings take place - Jesus has just cleared out the Temple, has just set up court there, and is teaching and preaching from there, and when he does, the people listening to him get angrier and angrier the more he talks.  They do so because Jesus is telling them, parable after parable, that they've chosen the wrong path forward.  This is easy to do, of course. Though the Bible is quite clear, we like to behave and act as though it's supremely complicated - that is, how could we possibly understand the subtle nuance of the words '[the lord of the vineyard] will bring those wretches to a wretched end and will rent the vineyard to other tenants who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.'  How could we possibly work out the subtlety of the son being sent to the tenants, the tenants killing the son, and then the vineyard being taken away from them.  If you want further clarity of this, the Bible straight up tells you in black and white what's up "When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus' parables, they knew he was talking about them.  They looked for a way to arrest him, but were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet."

The Pharisees and the chief priests get this, why don't we?  Why are you carrying water for the Pharisees so hard, to try and get them to not be held to account by these very simple and straightforward words.  And why are you doing the thing you're not supposed to do, which is after Jesus says what's going on, to step to him and say, in the words of Peter "Never, Lord."  Who are you to say that?

Now what the Pharisees didn't get is that the Parable isn't a guarantee of the future.  Think about Scrooge's conundrum where he faced his grave, saying to the ghost of Christmas future 'are these the signs of things that will be or can be?'  For the Pharisees, they could ask that same question. This parable, is this a parable of what must be, or what will be if things do not change? And the answer is that these things are not set in stone.  They're not a guarantee of what must be in perpetuity.  The people who are having the vineyard wrenched away from them don't have to.  This isn't a predestined racial thing, where the citizens of Israel are being passed over for the Gentiles.  This is something else entirely.  How do I know?

Because of Paul.

Paul walks this through in his own body.  Paul lives this out in his flesh.  He talks about himself as being a Hebrew of Hebrews: Circumcised on the 8th day, of the tribe of Benjamin, a persecutor of the church, zealous as to the law, all that stuff.  But Paul, when he runs into the reality of Christ as relates to forgiveness of sins, counts all those things to be rubbish for the sake of gaining Jesus Christ as his savior.  Paul lives this in his own flesh, as someone who had been disregarding the owner of the vineyard, as someone who had been dismissing the landowner, had not been bearing fruit in keeping with repentance, all that.  Paul has to confront the Savior, Jesus, and the conflict between the two cornerstones that were the possibilities for him.  On the one hand came the cornerstone that Paul had been building up off of so far, circumcision, tribal membership, all that stuff, contrasted with the cornerstone of Christ, which was forgiveness of sins, resurrection of the body and life everlasting.  For Paul before, the law was a way of attaining God, of obedience and arrival into God's vineyard.  But for Paul as a Christian, he understood that the law was not something that he could ever attain, and by thinking that he could, the law itself became twisted and misunderstood. 

Here's the best way that I've found to be able to explain it.  If you're thinking that the law is something that people should reasonably be able to keep, then these things should be observed, and done.  But if the law is too hard, then it must be changed to fit what is possible.  That's what happens with the law of the land, you know.  The law of Canada changes over time to fit new realities, generally conforming itself to the behavior of its citizens.  If people are incapable of keeping the law, then the law tends to change to fit what people are currently doing.  Instead of posting a sign saying 'keep off the grass,' the attitude becomes to put a path wherever people are currently wearing through the grass down to the dirt.  

But if you keep on changing the law to fit where you are currently at, then the law becomes baser and baser.  In effect, if the law gets ground down to the lowest common denominator, it will end up being only what we are capable of doing fully, and given how broken people are, it will end up being less about what people are able to do, and more about who people were able to be.  Think of how things get defined over time - becoming a matter less of faith, of duty and obedience, and more a matter of right birth, right opinion, right ritual.  And the problem with this is that it becomes defined by an ingroup with a very large outgroup.  

When the owner of the vineyard comes to the vineyard looking for the fruit in keeping with repentance, with the fruit of the Spirit, the people were incapable of bringing it forward because they'd redefined things so heavily to be about who they were rather than what they believed.  And when Jesus arrives to tell them to repent, they resist, fighting him all the way, believing that they have nothing to repent of, given that they've been right this whole time.

Paul believed that until he encountered Jesus, and grappled with his ideas with seriousness.  There, he found something intense. The law was far larger than he'd ever expected, and that his plan to make it smaller had led to him keeping all of God's messengers out of the vineyard.  When the son comes to the vineyard, what is he looking for? Faith, repentance, belief all those things, not for you to keep the law perfectly, he has done that for you. Then the law can stay what it is, pure and holy, and not dependent on our ability to keep it.

Paul, in working that out in his own flesh, brings forward to his hearers then as well as now, the reality of what was possible, and what the Pharisees should have realized as well.  That you can forget what was behind, and strain on towards what is ahead. All are invited, you know, and Jesus desperately wants the Pharisees to be in the kingdom.  And what it comes down is that vineyard will not belong to those who cast out the the prophets and kill the son.  It will belong to the ones who offer up the fruit in the proper season.

But those, as Paul himself found out, can be the same people.  Alleluia.