Using Cash as Kindling ...

Building a fire has always been a bit of an art.  Before the invention of accelerants like gasoline (highly dangerous), and even when you have matches to get it started; you still need to use something to allow the fire to catch.  Small sticks, or dried out shrubbery, or paper – the stuff commonly referred to as kindling.  The idea is that once enough of the kindling catches fire, it will begin to catch the bigger stuff on fire, and so on, until it is burning the big logs in your fire place.  The goal is not to make a “huge” fire, but a controlled fire.  You want something that will safely burn for hours without too much tending to.  And most of the time, if you do it right, you only need the use of matches, and kindling, once; at the beginning of the fire when you are just trying to get it started – not constantly while you are trying to keep it going.

For those that prefer paper as their kindling, magazines, or old news papers work just fine.  But could you ever imagine using cash money instead?  Besides being illegal to destroy US currency (through any means), it would represent the epitome of waste, to literally burn money, for no other reason than to attempt to get a fire going.  A billionaire may not feel the loss as much, but it is a loss none-the-less.  And for most of us, who are far from being billionaires, we would feel the loss quite keenly.  Ask the person you just happen to be close to any moment in time if they have “enough” money, and the answer is nearly always a resounding “no”.  No matter how much money we have, we could always benefit from more.  If we had more, we could give more to the church (a common refrain).  If we had more, we could get out of the debt we are in (though there is even less evidence to support this; the same financial decisions that got us in debt, are the same ones we make when presented with more opportunity to do so).  And for the slightly more honest among us, more money would allow us to get that “thing” we reason we cannot do without.  Few people would refuse more money.  And only a crazy person would burn it, for the sake of starting a fire.

But there are more gifts we are given, some of them directly from God, that we treat like burning cash in response.  It is easy to say our health falls into this category.  We are given health, then we eat things that over time will ruin it.  We take drugs (prescribed or not) that over time do us harm we cannot predict.  We have to breathe the air we have, and drink the water we have; but our choices to protect these resources are less than our greed very often, so our environment becomes toxic, while our wallets get a little fatter.  We are slow to exercise, and quick to sit around.  And then to top it all off, we still do the crazy things from time-to-time that risk our life and limb.  No, I am not talking about rollercoasters, or theme park rides that make you think you are near death.  I am talking more about the stupid decisions one makes when driving their cars, because they “have” to turn left or right, even though they are three lanes away from their destination.  Going another block or two just seems intolerable.  So the crazy driver decides to make that turn, or run that light, or speed up to 20 mph past the speed limit, for whatever reason, and they in turn risk their own lives, as well as yours and mine.  Though most of us are guilty of this at some point or another in our own driving histories.  Causing angels to work overtime.

There is something else our God has given us besides our health.  A gift beyond salvation, and even our health, and ironically just as precious.  He has given us His church.  To be a part of His body, is meant to be a gift to be treasured.  To serve that church, to uphold that body, is akin to a sacred trust.  Yes it is serving others, but what that services does to you, when you love, like He loves, is life transforming.  It brings you a joy, that words are hardly adequate to enumerate.  To be blessed enough, to be able to participate in the redemption of another, has eternal consequences.  Imagine being the little light (where Jesus shines His love through your demonstration), enough to spark an interest in one who knows not the love of Jesus, but because of what they see in you, determine themselves to know more.  Pointing a person to the transforming powerful love of Jesus that changes lives, is the highest pinnacle of service you can perform.  When that person walks the golden streets of our Lord’s city called Heaven with you, they may realize their journey all started because you were able to demonstrate real love, in the face of their real rebellion of it.  And for an infinite number of years, you will both be able to glorify God, for He led you both because you let love flow through you.

That is worth more than cash.  That is the most precious treasure our God has to offer, the lives of you, and those you love, even of those you dislike and the ones that hate you completely.  It is human treasure our God measures, counts, and gave His life for.  It is human treasure that matters most in His kingdom.  His church then, is the place where the human treasure is cultivated.  His church is the organization where the body chooses to cling together, to uphold each other, to share love where it is easiest.  His church is meant to be the place where those with little knowledge can be brought to learn more.  We are to experience more of His love within His church.  Turning that institution, into a weigh station on the highway to hell, is more than burning cash, it is burning lives; God’s treasures.  And it only takes the lack of love to see it done.  When gossip is juicier than consolation, when back-biting more natural than tolerance, and accusation a normal part of combating sin – we make His house a place of burning treasures instead of polishing them.

This is not new to us.  It is one of the devil’s oldest tricks.  But he has not let up on it, since the days of the first church, until the days of our own.  Tempting us, with feelings of righteousness, that we are “better” than our brothers, or even our leaders, and therefore entitled to call a spade a spade, sin by its right name, and take over as judge, instead of allowing God to keep His role.  In our arrogance we take over the mantle of Pharisee and increase the destruction tenfold; for we have both the Old and New Testaments and still we misuse what scripture we have to judge and destroy the treasures of God, instead of loving them out of their current conditions (without judgment ever falling from our lips or eyes).  And in our destructive course, we burn the cash of heaven itself, and position ourselves for an even greater burning realization – instead of a little light of Jesus shining through us – we have become the stumbling block that keeps people from seeing the love of God.  We claim the name, and have no concept of who He is, or what love means.  And this did not start with us, but could it finally end here?

Jesus longs for us still.  He told the first story to us and our Pharisee forefathers in our previous study.  But in case one story was not enough, He will offer another.  In case we could not discern His clear truth to the leadership of His church (and any of us who know Him, and wish to work in His vineyard, are leaders by default), He will tell another of redemption and possibility.  So Matthew in his gospel in chapter twenty-one picks up again with the words of Jesus Himself in verse 33 saying … “Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country:”  Here Jesus tells us in story form, in parable that is, of how we are where we are.  It is God (the householder) who plants the vineyard (His church) and puts up a protective hedge of love around it so nothing from the world can get in.  He puts a winepress in it, so what grows inside the church, can continue to grow and serve an even greater purpose.  And finally, He puts a watch tower in it, so we can see beyond our walls, and provide a beacon of example for those looking who may have lost their way.  This is how His church begins.  The vineyard (or church) is then let-out, or entrusted with, a husbandman, or set of church leaders.  Then our God focuses His attention far away, perhaps looking to build other such vineyards across the world, like ours.

He continues in verse 34 saying … “And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it. [verse 35] And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another.”  Here is where we go so horribly wrong.  It is time for the harvest.  The grapes can be pressed into wine, growing in their usefulness, their experience, and perhaps ready to travel to where the owner of this vineyard is now.  So servants of our God are sent back to His vineyard (His church), to gather up the fruit (us, the ones ready from the harvest), to be sent back to our God.  But the husbandmen (or group of church leaders) do not readily receive the servants of our God.  Instead they beat one of them, kill another, and stone another.  This is what happens when power, does not like the truth told to it.  The husbandmen is more interested in keeping absolute control over what happens in the vineyard, than to part with any of the fruit that should have been made ready within it.  Control does not breed growth, it inhibits it.

So to keep control, the servants of God who bring news of the harvest, and of the work beyond the walls we erect, are beaten for their truth.  Killed when they will not shut up.  And finally stoned or killed as heretics to the faith.  The husbandmen proclaim to what they believe is “their” church, that “outside” influences must be kept out of the church to keep it pure.  In so doing they reject the servants of God, and the truth those servants are sent to proclaim, to the church which God established.  This was the history of the Israelites to the prophets sent by God to the Kings and church of older days.  And it is the history of the Catholic church to the reformers sent by God to the leadership of that church.  And it is the present-day message of current church leaders to their flocks to avoid the lies of “other” denominations even today.  Death, and hate, espoused to heretics, even till today.  That response so categorically different than love which would rather die in the effort to redeem and reconcile.

Jesus continues in verse 36 saying … “Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise.”  This was not just a single occurrence that happens only once in the life of God’s church.  It happens over and over again.  Because the mission of our God is to redeem, even the misguided, or wicked church leaders that have arisen in His body; He longs to restore them still.  But the response continues to be the same; a message of hate and death to those outside of the click, to those beyond the walls.  Control over what is inside must be maintained by those who believe they have it.  And messages beyond the borders of what we believe must be kept outside so they never permeate the thinking of the members within.  And history repeats itself, again, and again, until blood is more our record, than love could ever be.

Jesus continues in verse 37 saying … “But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. [verse 38] But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. [verse 39] And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.”  This is of course a direct reference to Jesus Christ Himself.  God sent His only Son to us.  And we cast Him out of our church, and slew Him, thinking to take all that was His.  And before you cast the blame of this backwards to those Pharisees who accomplished these feats, take a hard look in the mirror of our modern Christian churches today, who would rather legislate their own ideas of morality than to love like He loves.  Still we seek our power, only now we cloak it in political aspirations, and disguise the message as having the church under attack.  In our defensive postures we take up arms.  We “fight” back, not in submissive messages of Christ like love, but in messages of strength bathed in political affirmation, just like our Pharisee forefathers, and our Catholic forefathers after them.  We seek to unite church with state to take on the power of the state, when power is not what we need, or should want. 

It is only His love than can transform our hearts, but that message is beyond the walls of separation we have erected.  We praise doctrine over tolerance (sound familiar), and we tread the same roads the Pharisees paved, and the Catholics walked for nearly 1200 years.  And somehow we think the current course is different?  It is not.  The true Church of Jesus understands that His church belongs only to Him, not to us.  It is for Him to defend.  It is for Him to judge or not judge.  Our work is one thing alone, to love each other as He loves.  In that we would be known as His.  Not in the vastness of our structures, or collections of our art.  Not in our gospels of wealth and ease, but in our gospels of absolute love, even for those who are still trapped in their sins with no desire to get out.  It is in our embrace of sinners, our love of sinners, that may ever cause in them the notion of escaping their sins.  We need not join them in their behaviors to reach them.  But in loving them, while living in the way Jesus teaches us to live, that His love might one day reach them.  Pursuing a course of political power, so that we might instead legislate what we think He wants, is not a pathway to redemption, it is a cement highway of rebellion away from Christ.  It slays Him once again, this time in reputation, name, and purpose, thinking to take what is His.

Jesus continues in verse 40 saying … “When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen? [verse 41] They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons.”  Jesus asks what is to be done with His church leadership.  And while Jesus would still redeem us.  We in our human response, in our response that has no thought of redemption, turn our hate upon ourselves, answering we should be destroyed, slain, killed.  And the vineyard handed over to other more worthy husbandmen who would be obedient to their Lord.  The Pharisees are quick to answer this, taking no thought they condemn themselves.  We are no less judgmental even today.  But death is not the way of redemption, it is the result of refusing it, time after time after time.  The mission of Jesus was not to come and kill us all for what we deserved, but instead to redeem us all from what we deserved, and transform us from the slavery-of-self, to the freedom-of-serving-others.

Jesus then recites scripture to these leaders to bring home His point saying in verse 42 … “Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?  [verse 43] Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. [verse 44] And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.”  The church must be taken away from the Pharisees.  The leadership must be taken away from those who prefer power and control over absolute love.  It was taken from the Catholics and spread throughout Protestantism.  And it will be taken from us once again, if we cannot let go of our desires of power in any form, and instead seek love above all.  The cycle of repetition can end here in the last times, if we but heed the call of His redemption.  We must fall upon this rock, and be broken by it.  It is Ok to be broken.  It is OK to become someone else, to let His salvation remake us from who we are today, into who He intends us to be.  We will not be the same.  And this is OK,  It is more than OK, it is what it is needed

But to reject that process, to cling to pride, to the notions that we are already “good” enough.  Will find the weight of perfection grinding us into power.  There can be no true obedience outside of “being” in harmony with the laws and character of God.  That harmony is not self-made.  It is created only by the power of the Creator.  We cannot and will not achieve it, yet it can be achieved by Jesus within you, re-creating how you think, how you love, and what you decide.  The response of willingness to allow it, is perhaps humiliating, but also perfect in its wisdom and love.  The response to reject it leads to the only place it can inevitably wind up leading.  To death.  The desired death of the Creator, and the actual death of ourselves.  The final escape, and the solution least desired by our God.

Matthew concludes this story by recording the responses picking up in verse 45 saying … “And when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard his parables, they perceived that he spake of them. [verse 46] But when they sought to lay hands on him, they feared the multitude, because they took him for a prophet.”  The church leaders sought to kill Jesus in response to His Truth.  Are you certain we are not doing the same?  Ask yourself how passionate you are to see Christian politicians in power and Christian judges on the Supreme Court.  To what end?  To have living witnesses of the love of Jesus by example to all the nation and the world.  Or to have legal protections enacted that further the Christian ideals, and protect His church, making your particular ideas of morality become the law of the land; instead of the law of our hearts.  When transformation is our goal, we will be broken, but we will be remade.  When we believe we need the power of the state to protect us, we have already lost the battle.  For the power of the state has never been able to change the hearts of men, or improve their motivations of anything other than fear.

But the efforts of Jesus to redeem us in story were not over yet …