I’ve done it. When I discontinued a service, left a church, or quit going to a store I fired the company. It could have been because they didn’t do the job, they charged too much, or they focused more on collecting money than serving. So I fired them. The whole lot of them. They didn’t produce the goods I wanted, so I fired them. After all if you don’t produce the fruit you get the boot, right?
We all make decisions every day whether we’ll continue to buy a product, use a service, or send our kids to a particular school. If they don’t live up to expectations we let them go. We fire them, all of them. We give them the boot if they don’t produce the fruit.
That’s what Jesus did. God had expectations for Israel. Big expectations. The children of Abraham were expected to be a blessing to the whole world, to live as a kingdom of priests and serve as lights to the Gentiles. They were agents of God’s kingdom.
But in time they, through their leaders, they became more interested in themselves than in managing God’s interests. By Jesus’ time the primary leaders, the Pharisees, were busy making and keeping rules for an elite few and looking down their sanctified noses at everyone else. And the keepers of things liturgical, the Sadducees, were feathering their nests through an exclusive contract to run the temple. No one was interested in being light or blessing to hated Gentiles.
So Jesus came to town to fire them. As Matthew tells it, Jesus made a spectacular appearance in what we call the “triumphal entry” and went straight to the temple to run off the money changers and sacrifice vendors. He fired them. The next day he came back to town and fired the religious leaders. They weren’t bearing fruit. So he gave them the boot.
One could tell things were not getting off to a good start that morning when Jesus stopped for a quick breakfast to go at a fig tree on the way. It was in leaf, advertising figs, but it was fruitless. He cursed it and it dried up from the roots.
He then proceeded to the fruitless keepers of things religious and fired them too.
I love the way Jesus did it. He told a story of a landowner with a vineyard. Landowner went to a lot of trouble to set it up, and then hired folks to tend it before going away. At harvest he sent messengers to collect the goods. They were supposed to have produced fruit. The tenants abused the messengers. Landowner sent more. Tenants abused them too. Landowner then sent his own son, and they tortured and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard, with the assumption they would then own the vineyard. “What should the landowner do?” Jesus asked.
“He should get rid of those rascals and hire someone else to tend the vineyard,” Sadducees replied.
Then Jesus handed them the pink slip. “The kingdom is taken from you,” he declared, “and given to a nation who will bear the fruits thereof.” The whole lot were fired. Because they didn’t produce the fruit he gave them the boot.
Sure enough, forty years later the temple was destroyed by the very Gentiles to whom the Sadducees were supposed to be light. And the phony priests went into oblivion. Forever. The kingdom was handed over to the church to be managed, and we manage it to this day.
God has divided the church into smaller units called congregations generally assigned to metropolitan areas and charged with a specific mission. The mission is applied based on the local situation, and the local unit had better produce the fruit.
While it is certain the church will never go away, I am convinced local congregations are held accountable for the fruit they produce. Are they congregations of priests? Do they shine light into the darkness? Or are they, like the Sadducees, interested in preservation of the status quo?
I am also convinced that fruitless congregations are fired for not being fruitful. That is, they lose their passion for the kingdom and become inward focused and obsessed with being blessed instead of being a blessing to others. They are allowed to die. In other words they get the boot because they cannot produce the fruit.
What does that mean for us? I think it means we become serious about being ambassadors for Jesus in this community. It means we make sure we are healthy and equipped to serve, and we become students of this community and its dark places where light is needed most.
Three dark places needing light that have come to my attention through statistical information readily available to us indicate needs for
- family support and intervention
- Bible study and prayer
- opportunities to volunteer in the community
So what do you think God would have us to do? For what do you think Jesus will hold us accountable? How could we bear fruit in the vineyard to which we have been assigned? How could we bear fruit so we don’t get the boot?
Matthew 21:33-46 (Proper 22 A)
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