Perhaps we should in the literal sense, or at least in some way. “Ah,” we say, “if only I had the chance I would show them. If only I had my way, I would put so-in-so in his place, and show him who was master. I would see to it that I had my rights, and more than that I would have power. I would make others serve me.”
And Christ comes meek and riding upon an ass. He is the king of kings, but he doesn’t mean to be king after our pattern. For him, kingship doesn’t mean acquiring power and claiming rights. It means service, love, giving, humility, sacrifice. Not that he is a feeble king. Read the rest of Zechariah’s prophecy which Mathew quotes. He is just, and having salvation. But he comes to deal with our problems at their roots, not by substituting one tyranny for another, but by replacing tyranny with love. What he does for us is to release us from bondage to sin, to selfishness, and thus to death.
The king does not come where or as you expect him. God is not often to be found in the earthquake, the wind, the fire. He is in the still small voice. You must not measure him by your own yardstick. You must let him be, what he means to be. You must not construct your own picture of God in terms of your own human instincts. You must listen to the words of the prophets and the apostles who declare to you what he is truly like.
Especially in this Advent time, you must listen with renewed wonder to the story of all the Son of God has done and endured for you. For this is the miracle of all miracles. If you can be blasé about this, you can be blasé about anything. The Son of God himself who was in the form of God, to whom the life of heaven was home, stooped into our world to be born in a stable, to live in a humble home, to be forsaken, despised, mocked, scourged, spat upon and crucified; to celebrate his highest triumph on a donkey’s back. And all this to deliver us from our sins and from death, and from the power of Hell.
This is how Christ comes—quietly, simply, humbly. You must watch for this or you will not know how to serve him. Do you recall his own parable? There were people who would have served Christ, but they were looking out for a king in his splendor. It would have been magnificent to take even a lowly place in his splendid retinue. But they never saw Christ, for he was there in the person of his little ones, cold, naked, lonely, hungry, sick, and in prison. Hence “depart, ye cursed, into everlasting torment.” I am already moving in to the next point. We must consider how Christ is to be served.
HOW CHRIST IS TO BE SERVED
The story we are dealing with will tell us three plain, practical things. First, Christ is proclaimed. Meek and lowly though he is, there are some who have seen his glory, and like the prophet they cry out “Behold, the king!” There is no higher Christian service than the bearing of witness to Jesus Christ. That is what the Church is for. It stands here not so people can get together and practice their common hobby, religion. It stands here so that Jesus Christ may be proclaimed and exalted. You have a right to expect this from your ministers and preachers. They should not come here to talk about themselves and air their own opinions. Anyone who stands in this pulpit has one duty, and one duty only—to lift up Jesus Christ before this congregation.
Equally, it is the obligation of every member of the congregation to proclaim and exalt Jesus Christ. It is not quite good enough to say that you must do this by a Christ like example. Each one must do this in plain speech that his friends can understand. For the goal of all of this is to bring persons into Christ’s service. I should hesitate to use an illustration of this that Luther used.
See what the apostles did, he said, in preparing Christ’s triumph. They brought him the ass to ride on; indeed they brought him two, the grown ass which was broken to the saddle, and the colt which was still unbroken. These suggest, wrote Luther, the Jewish Christians who were under the Law, and the Gentile Christians who were not. I hesitate about this because I should not like to compare every member of this congregation with a donkey of one kind or another! But what Luther meant by this rather crude illustration was absolutely right! It is the goal of Christian preaching and is meant to be the mission of the church to bring everyone to the service of Christ.
Secondly, people share in the ministry of Christ by their prayers. “Hosanna to the Son of David.” This is a time of prayer. It is not merely a place where we listen to prayers, it is a place where we pray—all of us. And most of us have not begun to guess how much the prayers of the people contribute to the life of the church. This should be a praying people, praying for the minster and the preaching of the Word, praying for the fellowship, and especially its neediest members, praying for the world.
Finally, there were men who took their cloaks off and made a saddle for the meek and lowly king. They contributed their own possessions to the triumph of Christ. And why should we not remember this aspect of Christian service? There are many of us who are deeply convinced that this place for the preaching of God’s Word, this house of prayer, should stand here, who will never preach a sermon or offer a public prayer. My father was one of the greatest preachers I have ever known; he had a brother who literally would not dare to give out the number of the hymn. But there is service for all in the house of God and in the work of Christ. Not only for those who can put their hands deep into their pockets, but for all, for there is none who can do no kind of service. This is not merely a matter of beautifying the structuring but of adoring the Gospels, a task which the New Testament knows can be done by slaves.
“The king came unto thee, meek and riding on an ass.” Let us go to meet him, giving ourselves for the humble redeeming love in which he comes, proclaiming his Name, praying with his people, serving him and his little ones in the church and in the world.
“THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN”—Matthew 21.33–46
[Preached ten times from 2/24/87 at St. John’s College Durham to 2/10/00 at Bede College, Durham]
At first sight, this is an easy parable; a plain, straightforward story, and an equally plain straightforward lesson to be learned from it. The story? Here is a piece of land, laid out as a vineyard. The owner does not live on it, doesn’t work it. He has leased it to tenants with a straightforward contrast—no fault to find here, unless you object on principle to the private ownership of land and the means of production. The terms of the contract are clear; a certain percentage of the produce of the vineyard, possibly in grapes, possibly in wine, is to be paid by way of rent to the owner. The leasers break the terms of the contract, failing to pay the due percentage of the product, and in the end seek to gain not only the whole of the product but the estate itself. Naturally, the owner is displeased, gets rid of his tenants, and looks for new workers.
And the interpretation is easy. God expects obedience. God expects his workers to fulfill their contract; he looks for obedience and he means to have it. If those to whom he has at first entrusted the opportunity and privilege of working with him, fail to take up the opportunity and privilege they will be removed from their position and he will find others who will do better. God, you might say with some misgiving, gives nothing away. From those to whom much has been entrusted, much will be expected. There is no security of tenure in the service of God. Fail to produce the goods and you are out. Perhaps it is at this uncomfortable point that we ask whether the parable is quite so simple.
There are problems in the story. Don’t people seem to over-react? One can understand that the tenants would rather keep all the produce of the vineyard to themselves than send some of it off to the landlord but was it necessary to hurt, kill, stone the messengers, including in the end the owner’s son? No one likes seeing the small brown envelopes in which the income taxman sends us his demands, but you don’t go and murder the taxman who sent them. And could the tenants reasonably hope that murdering the intended heir was the best way to take his place and get hold of the inheritance? It does not seem to be the best way to wheedle your way into the father’s will. On the other hand, provoked as the owner must have been, would he take the law into his own hands, and seek revenge by killing off the tenants? Putting it all together do we have to say that the realism of Jesus’ parables breaks down here?
Not completely if you look in C. H. Dodd’s Parables of the Kingdom you will find a good deal about absentee landlords and the real and supposed rights of tenants, the way in which economic motives could be mixed and reinforced with nationalistic and revolutionary motives and interests, and the violence that sometimes resulted.