Feet of Clay:  October 2, 2011

Matthew 21:33-46

What does it mean when we say of someone, “he has feet of clay?”  It typically refers to someone in the public eye; when a hidden flaw in personal character has been revealed. Jon Edwards, Elliott Spitzer, or even Michael Vick would be recent examples of such revelations.  

The expression “feet of clay” can be traced back to the biblical Book of Daniel. King Nebuchadnezzar experienced a terrifying dream in which he saw a massive statue constructed from various precious metals.  The feet of this statue were composed of a mixture of iron and clay, making it especially vulnerable to an attack.   A  massive stone did strike the statue at its clay feet, reducing the entire statue to dust.  Daniel interpreted Nebuchadnezzar’s dream as a warning that the King’s kingdom was in danger of disintegration at the hands of unseen enemies.

There is a second Biblical reference that I will lift up.  Psalm 118 is a triumphant hymn in which we hear the familiar phrase: the stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.   We read it every Palm Sunday and Easter.  The stone that wouldn’t fit in anywhere else ends up being the stone on which everything else hangs…without, the building comes crashing down.  It is the stone that will smash the feet of clay of the kingdoms of the world. 

Note how far we are in the book of Matthew.  Jesus is already in Jerusalem for Passover. He has already driven out the money changers and cursed the barren fig tree. Friday is just a few days away.  The week is one confrontation with the Temple authorities after the next.  In this intense exchange recorded in Matthew Jesus ups the ante and signs his death warrant.    And he does so as he always did…by quoting scripture back to the religious authorities. 

They would have known exactly to what stone he was referring. They would have known that he referred to those feet of clay smashed by the stone in Nebuchannezzar’s dream.  The People of Israel had seen kingdoms totter and fall.  Babylon, Persia, Greece.  And they were looking for a Messiah to come and topple Rome.   But they were smart enough to know Jesus wasn’t just talking about the kingdom of Rome being smashed….but the Temple and the religious order of which they were the chief representatives.    

The Son and the Stone are one and the same.   As N.T. Wright puts it, the Stone, God’s anointed one, has come to bring God’s kingdom to earth.  Through the Son’s actions, the kingdoms of the world will shiver, shake, and fall to the ground, just like Nebuchadnezzars’s statue.[1]  

But when, God, when?  When will the Ghaddafi’s of the world topple from power?  When will hungry children be fed?  When will greed and avarice stop running this world and having the last word?  When will the Taliban stop oppressing women and burning the schools where girls can be educated?  When will God have the last word?  Hasn’t 2000 years been long enough to wait for God’s kingdom?  I guess the answer to those questions is that we are still rejecting the stone. 

When I look out at the faithful people here on Apple Harvest Sunday– when it would be a lot easier to be somewhere else, it’s very hard to say that Jesus is talking to us.  And yet we know that one cannot read scripture and apply it to others without asking how it speaks to us.  And isn’t Jesus talking to the religious types here?   We also have the capability of rejecting the stone.   We also have feet of clay. 

Some weeks ago we talked about the “spiritual but not religious sunset-loving crowd.”  I think we can say the people who are here this morning are not that.  We are not those who reject God in favor of some kind of vague spirituality that we make up as we go along.    We want church, the Bible, discipleship, regular worship, the sacraments.   We want our children to grow up in the faith.  We give of our time, talents and treasure because we believe in the kingdom that is coming and the kingdom that is here.  We’re OK wrestling with the hard questions and being challenged in our thinking.  So what are our feet of clay?

Jesus was saying to the Jewish religious in-crowd…obeying the rules is not necessarily the same as being conformed to the likeness of God.  Those chief priests and scribes were not mean or bad people.  They did good things and lived good lives.  Jesus challenged their certainty of God’s approval based on their own actions.    They thought that the stone would never fall on them, would never break them.  They could not and would not change their mind.  

Remember the parable of the two sons from last week?  One said he was going to work in the vineyard and then did not go.  The other said that he wouldn’t go, but then changed his mind and went.  “Changed his mind” is Bible-speak for repentance.  How can repent if one thinks he or she is right?  The certainly of rightness is what is being challenged by Jesus.

We live in world where changing one’s mind is a sign of weakness.  Politicians are accused of waffling if they change their mind. Heaven help you if you have reversed your thinking based on new evidence.  You will be lambasted by your opponents.  It’s better to be consistently wrong than ever change your mind.   

Yet the truth of the gospel is that we must all be broken by God.    We are all of us sinners, every one.  We look more respectable, but in the larger scheme of things we are no different than the tax collectors and the prostitutes.  The stone rejected by the builders must break our feet of clay so that we can be re-built.[2]  Pride, selfishness, greed– are qualities we all share and stones that must all be brought down before my life and your life can be a house built by God’s hands.

 If we are to be the visible image of the invisible God, we must be prepared to be broken by God.  When we recognize our own brittle nature, the iron and clay of which we are forged, we can then lovingly and helpfully bring others to a similar understanding.  No, it is not earth shaking or dramatic.   Tomorrow will probably not look a whole lot different than the world does today. 

But the cornerstone is in place, and the kingdom is coming.  Remember the images that Jesus used to describe the coming kingdom.   One of those images was seeds.   Jesus planted seeds of good news.  Yes, the evil one has come along and planted weeds in our lives…but eventually the wheat will overtake the weeds.  We have a crucial role in that process.  Our lives must reflect the fruit of the Spirit in a way that does not condemn, but encourages others to bear similar fruit. 

God does not want to make us feel like miserable sinners.   We do a good enough job of that ourselves and don’t need God’s help for that!  God’s want for us the joy of a life lived for and in Christ.  He gave us Christ so that we could see what a fruitful life full of God looks like.   Christ points the way to the ultimate destination for those who would allow themselves to be broken by God.  Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, we press on toward the goal of a life in Christ Jesus.