A famous quote has been attributed to former Prime Minister Harold Wilson: “A week is a long time in politics.” And haven’t we been aware of that recently?! Fortunes and events can change so rapidly. Today is Palm Sunday. This morning, churches focus on the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, on a donkey, receiving adulation and cries of “God bless the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory to God!” One week later (spoiler alert), Jesus has been betrayed by Judas, arrested, denied by Peter, mocked and beaten, sent from Pilate to Herod and back again, sentenced unjustly to death, crucified, died, buried and raised from the dead!
The first of my two points this evening is:
1 - To Hate God is to Hate Jesus, and vice versa
The Psalm appointed for this evening, Psalm 69, is already pointing us beyond the triumphal entry into Jerusalem to the crucifixion. To my mind, this is a remarkable messianic psalm. You could easily imagine the vast majority of it coming from the lips of the crucified Christ. Just one verse after the reading ended, we get this: “When I was hungry, they gave me poison; when I was thirsty, they offered me vinegar.” All four gospels mark the fulfilment of this in Jesus.
There are several verses from Psalm 69 which we encounter in the New Testament. Verse 4: “Those who hate me for no reason are more numerous than the hairs of my head. My enemies tell lies against me; they are strong and want to kill me.” Jesus refers to this Himself in John 15. He speaks to His disciples:
“Whoever hates me hates my Father also. They would not have been guilty of sin if I had not done among them the things that no one else ever did; as it is, they have seen what I did, and they hate both me and my Father. This, however, was bound to happen so that what is written in their Law may come true: ‘They hated me for no reason at all.’”
The first half of Psalm 69:9 says this: “My devotion to your Temple burns in me like a fire”. Another version puts it, “Zeal for your house consumes me.” This gets quoted in John 2:17. Jesus upsets the apple cart quite early on here. Or, more literally, the money changers’ tables. He is zealous for His Father’s house, the Temple. He is angry that it is being treated like a marketplace. He makes a whip and drives out the animals being traded, overturns the traders’ tables, spilling their money all over the place. The Jewish authorities ask him (I imagine, with a sneer), “What miracle can you perform to show us that you have the right to do this?” He tells them to tear down this temple and He’ll rebuild it again. He was talking about His death and resurrection, pointing to a greater Temple - His body. Jesus wasn’t setting out to please men.
As time goes on we realise Jesus didn’t fit in with the idea of Messiah. He was a threat to the religious establishment. He pointed out their hypocrisy. He contravened their rules. He aroused their jealousy. They set out to trap Him on numerous occasions. The gospels are full of this. They hated Jesus and therefore they hated God, because Jesus did what the Father wanted and was one with the Father.
The second half of Psalm 69:9 states, “the insults which are hurled at you fall on me.” Paul quotes this in Romans 15 and takes the application in a different direction, but I would bring it back to John 15. The insults hurled at God fell on Jesus. “Whoever hates me hates my Father also.” And, “they have seen what I did, and they hate both me and my Father.” While being separate Persons, Jesus and the Father are stated to be “one”. “The Father is in me and I am in the Father”, He says elsewhere.
To insult God is to insult Jesus, and vice versa. But while He was on earth, the hatred towards God was manifested in the persecution of Jesus. Like in our gospel reading about the man who planted the vineyard. Let’s peek behind the parable, as I understand it. God entrusts Israel to the teachers of the Law and the chief priests. He sends servants to collect what is due to God, but they beat them all up, wanting to keep all the glory and honour for themselves. Eventually God sends His Son, Jesus, with the apparent expectation that they will respect Him. But no. They see the opportunity to get rid of God once and for all by killing the son and heir. This would put an end to all those pesky prophets who keep coming and telling them they’re doing it wrong. All the trappings of religious life are theirs. They’ve got their systems in place just as they like them. It’s all ticking along nicely. The people look up to them as super-examples of righteousness. They’ve got respect. They did charitable acts to get praise from people. They prayed loud and long on street corners so people would think, “how holy they are!” If they fasted, they made sure everyone knew it. They laid down the law and made sure people obeyed them. But Jesus contradicts all this. Jesus runs rings round them with His wisdom and knowledge.Time and again He makes them look stupid. So they plot to kill Jesus to get at God for disturbing their system. They can’t harm God directly, so they plot to kill His Son.
This vineyard metaphor is nothing new. It follows up the reading from Isaiah 5 and shows that nothing had changed in 700 years. So often the Old Testament has the same story. God does everything for Israel and they spit in His face. Thankfully there were exceptions and He always had that remnant that remained faithful. Instead of doing good, the people of Isaiah’s time showed their hatred of God by doing evil. Verse 7 sums it up: “Israel is the vineyard of the Lord Almighty; the people of Judah are the vines he planted. He expected them to do what was good, but instead they committed murder. He expected them to do what was right, but their victims cried out for justice.”
And so this leads me to ask the question - what does this mean for us? Do we sit back and gloat and say, I’d never treat God like that! Or do we lament along with God the sad downfall of Israel? In our world and in our day, when we hear the news or listen to people brag about their sinful lifestyles, or look at people who’ve made a mess of their lives, do we say, “I thank you, God, that I am not greedy, dishonest, or an adulterer, like everybody else. I thank you that I am not like that tax collector over there. I fast two days a week, and I give you one tenth of all my income.” Or do we acknowledge that, given different circumstances, we could be them? And instead of disgust at them, beat on our chests and say, ‘God, have pity on me, a sinner!’ It’s so easy to get angry or bitter when you see the way some people speak and act. I really have to try to stand back and try not to be judgemental. Without God’s grace and salvation, what would I be today?
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