Unflattering Selfies
Matthew 21:33-46
“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, 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 at the harvest time.” Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.
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Selfies, we've all taken one whether we admit to it or not. In case you don't know what a selfie is, and if for some reason you've never had the opportunity to take a selfie, it is the action of holding your mobile device in a way where you can take a picture of yourself. It's sometimes hard, though, to find the perfect angle to take such a picture. Many times, it feels like the pictures we take are unflattering for one reason or another. So it's not just about the angle, sometimes the places we take a selfie are unflattering, and in those instances, people will let us know we've made a mistake. Jesus is one such social commentator, as he tells the religious leaders that the picture of themselves might not be appropriate. Or at the very least, not as flattering as they would have hoped.
To ride the selfie illustration train a little longer, I want us to imagine some places where we could take some selfies, but in reality, it's not a good idea for many reasons. For example, would you take a picture of yourself while visiting Chernobyl (site of one of the most devastating nuclear accidents)? Or how about taking a selfie at the USS Arizona Memorial (a ship sunk during the attack on Pearl Harbor)? Finally, a double whammy, what are your thoughts about on a selfie at the Ground Zero Memorial or the historic home of Anne Frank? None of these places are appropriate places to take a picture that screams, "HEY, LOOK AT ME!" Yet, would you be surprised to learn that people have taken pictures of themselves at places like the ones we just named? When we get so wrapped up in ourselves, we forget who is truly in charge of our universe and the people who exist around us.
We have at our disposal tools that people could not have imagined twenty or thirty years ago. However, our stewardship of such resources has put us on a path of self-absorption and arrogance. Perhaps it's more apt to say we are more self-centered than those who came before us. And when our selfishness causes us to stop producing good fruit in God's vineyard, common sense would tell us that it's time for a change of tenants, which is what seems to occur in the parable Jesus tells today. If the land is not producing fruit and is not being cared for, then it would seem that the owner has every right to kick out the bad tenants. We may think that we're doing a pretty awesome job, but if our lives, our hearts, are not bearing life-giving fruit, we should be worried or at the very least concerned. Because, like the bad tenants in the parable, we often seem to double down on our bad habits.
Taking a selfie in an inappropriate place is probably the tamest example of how our distorted sense of self-importance harms the people around us. This warped understanding of ourselves exists in the moments we fail to treat one another with respect and dignity. In the moments when we think that our "freedom" is more important than other people's health and safety, that is an example of not bearing fruit in God's vineyard. When we fail to stand for love and instead promote hate and fear, that is an example of not bearing fruit in God's vineyard. And when we ignore the mounting cries for help because we think it might make us look bad or cause a stir, that's an example of not bearing fruit in God's vineyard. The vineyard wasn't meant for us, one person in a world of millions. The vineyard that God tasked us to till and prune serves generations. Every time we fail to care for the least of these and love our neighbors, we are killing the ones God sends as the evil tenants dispatched of the servants and landowner's son.
We may think that the landowner's decision to keep sending emissaries was foolish. I mean, the landowner sent a handful of messengers to check on the tenants of the vineyard, and every time the tenants disposed of them. Nevertheless, this is not a parable about a foolish landowner. In a culture that highly valued a sense of honor and shame, the landowner would expect the tenants to treat their son the way they would treat the landowner. For the people listening to the parable, they would have understood that by this time, the landowner would have replaced the tenants with someone new. Jesus highlights how this landowner is different and is patient, if not naïve, from the perspective of us, the listeners. It's here that Jesus begins to comment on our waywardness and selfishness and says, "You know this part about you killing the landowner's son? That's lived out in all the moments you neglected to welcome me and ignored the voice and cries of those I asked you to love."
Friends God placed in our lives an abundance of good things to help us tend the vineyard. God gave us our intellect, our speech, and our ability to use our body to cultivate the fertile ground that exists within our hearts and souls. Today we find a cautionary word, sprinkled hope, that we can grasp onto within the reading for today. The cautionary word or cautionary tale is heard in Jesus' address to his adversaries:
“Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”
The cautionary tale is that there is still much we need to do. There is a lot of hurt, a lot of pain, and we must fix what we broke. God will keep sending emissaries to preach and tell us where we need to go, but we need to listen and we need to respond.
The good news is that God is the landowner, who demonstrates an abundance of patience. Certainly, there are still moral and ethical implications for our inability to respond to the messenger's God sends, and yet grace is abundant and provides us with an opportunity to change our hearts. I'd like to think that the people who took selfies in places that were unflattering and inappropriate learned from their mistakes. And I'd hope and pray that as we continue to hear and see the broken places in our communities, we learn that doing something to fix it is our responsibility. Christ is the cornerstone that we reject in all the occasions where we let our selfishness take hold. Christ is the cornerstone that is the source of all that is good. And Christ is the cornerstone that will shatter our self-centered way of living, calling us to act as the hands and feet of God. Amen.