Generosity is a Practice of Justice
The Scripture this morning is rich and troubling. Someday maybe I will ask our clergy to preach a series on all Ten Commandments. We could offer a whole course on St. Paul’s sense of gains and loss and identity. But I want to sit today with Jesus’ disturbing parable.
We have, within us, a deep need for allegory and mystery. Today’s troubling story must be read this way, allegorically, open to depths of interpretation. There are several symbols in Jesus’ story. Today I want to talk about the watchtower.
I can’t read this parable hearing a very particular guitar riff. In 1968 Jimi Hendrix released his recording of All Along the Watchtower. On Spotify today, it is the most listened track for Hendricks. The song was, originally composed by Bob Dylan. There are just 12 lines, and characteristic of Dylan’s style no easy interpretation is possible. Many have wondered whether the song, due to Dylan’s Jewish heritage, plays on the prophet Isaiah. If so, Dylan is in Jesus’ good company both find in Isaiah the powerful symbol of the watchtower. It is important to name the Jewishness of the story because the parable has been read to support anti-Semitism. Scholars including old John Calvin think reading this story against the Jewish community is a cop out. This is a story about what happens when religious people and religious authorities abuse their power.
Dylan and Hendrix knew a thing or two about the abuse of power. The song builds ominously. Again and again we hear about the watch tower as the wind begins to blow. The storm is why I think of this song as a Jimi Hendrix song, rather than a Dylan song. Hendrix’s guitar plays out the building tension in the allegory. You can almost feel the dark clouds rolling as he plays.
Jimi Hendrix and the Watchtower
The watchtower is a powerful image, an allegorical image, and as such it leaves us with questions. In the story, the threat to the vineyard is not exterior to the land. It doesn’t come from outside. The businessman, they drink the wine. Those employed by the owner stand in that watchtower as they see the landowner’s son coming. The structure built to defend the land from outsiders becomes the site where insiders plot betrayal.
Betrayal is key in the story. If I were a preacher a few centuries ago, and we read this story during Stewardship season, I might have used the image of God’s wrath to try and frighten you into being generous toward the church. Thankfully, I’m not that kind of preacher. I also know this isn’t a congregation where fear works as a motivator.
I will say there is a reason we read this story during the fall Stewardship season. Within the betrayal is a theological economics. Those who were entrusted to care for the land, to watch over the land, have taken what wasn’t theirs to take. The fruit that didn’t belong to them made them rich and greedy. There is an injustice in this story, an economic injustice.
I don’t think we talk enough about justice when it comes to our conversations about giving. We talk about giving thankfully back to God. We talk about abundance. But most of Jesus’ stories don’t center there economically. Jesus is less concerned that we be thankful givers. Christian generosity is meant to be about transforming unjust structures. Jesus saw all around him deep economic injustice. A few grew wealthy off the labor of the many. In our own day, some of us have a superabundance while our neighbors have too little. The lines at our food pantry are growing. The numbers of asylum seekers served by our Landing Ministry have doubled and tripled in recent weeks. In that sense, I wonder whether the story of the watchtower is an invitation to pay attention.
Many of us in this church have been economically advantaged. We’ve grown up with abundance. Notice I said many. Not all of us. But many. This is but one several stories Jesus tells about God’s economy. In God’s economy there is enough work and there are enough wages for all. In God’s economy hoarding has no place. In God’s economy, those who have been forced to flee their homeland, the immigrants among us, find welcome and employment and the possibility of new life with dignity. You may say to me, Mike, we don’t live in God’s economy. I’d disagree, and I’d point you to the watchtower.
I believe we do live in God’s economy. Too many of us though have gotten good at shutting our eyes. Yes, there is a gap between our lived reality and God’s ideal. And I believe God is always at work to close the gap. God yearns for justice.
Money is a Powerful Tool
One of the ways we practice justice is through generosity. My former rector in Washington, the Rev Dr Luis Leon used to say every Stewardship season: “Money is a powerful tool. If you can give away your money, you have power over the tool. If you can’t give away your money, then the tool has power over you.” Money is a powerful tool, and it can make a big difference. No watchtower will save us from our own anxieties about money. But generosity can transform our perspective. Giving can give us power over the powerful tool.
I hope you practice transformative generosity, and I hope that St Michaels is one of the places you see justice being done. I hope this is one of the places you choose to practice generosity, and that you support our work this year.
Your Stewardship committee is in the midst of a bit of a transition. We are talking about moving to a model of year-round stewardship. That does not mean that we will be in a perpetual pledge drive. I promise, we won’t copy NPR and hold usual programming hostage multiple times a year.
A lot of the idea for year round Stewardship originated with your priest for Community Care, JP. JP asked the committee what would happen if through the year we we sought to tell stories about how the congregation’s giving is making a difference? What if we highlighted the way we take stands in this place, for kids in our neighborhood, for families who need a safe and affordable place for their kids to come to preschool? What if we told the stories of people helped by our food pantry? or folks supported by the pastoral care of the clergy? What if we gave you a Birdseye view of the life of one of our youth, and you learned about their preparation to be confirmed? What if we talked, intentionally, about the ways your donations allowed us to make room for the Landing ministry, opening our doors to asylum seekers, making sure they have a place to stay which is are warm, and safe, and welcoming.
Following the allegory of the watchtower, what if we told the stories of how St. Michael’s does not just look out for our members, but for our wider community? We are planning to thank this congregation year round, and invite you to continue to support the ways we look out for our neighbors, for those beyond our walls.
How else could the Watchtower have been used?
The story of the watchtower we hear from Jesus today is a tragedy because there was such potential. What if the landowner had returned to hear how the tenants had used the tower to safeguard the wider community? What if the tower had been used to call the community together, to share the fruits of the harvest with those in desperate need? If the owner had learned on his return that his vineyard was now regarded as a safe haven that helped to care for the village, the story could have ended so very differently.
I’ll never be able to listen Jesus’ story of the watchtower without hearing in my mind Jimi Hendrix’s guitar. I always wonder what it must be like for an artist, when someone else plays their song and makes it into a massive hit. I imagine, if it I was the songwriter I would be jealous. Maybe at some point that was true for Bob Dylan. But Dylan said in interviews after Hendrix died, that he adopted Jimi’s way of performing the song. Every time he plays his own ballad, he plays the guitar solo Jimi added to the tune. He thinks of it as a tribute to Hendricks. Whatever he felt at first, Dylan got to a generous place which is good for the soul. Dylan has also said, Jimi Hendrix’s guitar gave his image of the gathering storm a certain force. I wonder whether the Hendrix version is popular today because the darkness in that solo played in the 1970s like it plays in 2023.
In the midst of dark days, we at St. Michael’s have been entrusted with a watchtower. God calls us share this section of the North Valley and to put it to good use. We believe that all we have, as Christians, comes from God. God asks us to give in ways that make for change. Generosity, seen as a spiritual practice, has the power to transform our own souls. It is up to us to determine how we will put God’s love into action here in Albuquerque in the year to come. How and where will you be generous, in order to watch out for our neighbors?
Mike Angell 