Based on readings from Matthew 21:33-46, Exodus 20:1-20, and Philippians 3:4b-14
I
want you to think about what it is that you are proudest of in your life. Is it something tangible? A new computer or tablet, a new car, your
house, your job, your grades in school, your spouse or kids? Or might it be something subjective? Your attitudes, or knowledge or a talent or ability,
maybe your birthright or status in life or the community? My husband always claims he’s proudest of his
humility. If you know what you are proud of, I want you to keep that in
the back of your mind.
Our
first lesson – Exodus 20 – the Ten Commandments is somewhat familiar. The Ten Commandments were the firsts laws handed
down from God on the Holy Mountain. They
can be divided into 2 groups that Jesus so tidily summed up - Love
God, love your neighbor.
The
first group (commandments 1 – 4) tends to our relationship with God – the vertical. Our covenant tells us our responsibility to
God; we are to love God only; we are not to entertain or idolize other gods; we
are not to use his name improperly and we are to spend time with him every
week.
This
law about keeping the Sabbath is actually a bridge between the laws describing
our relationship with God and our relationship with others. It’s the beginning of how we are to live our
lives here on earth. We take time to
rest – to re-create – to commune (or communicate) with God so that we can begin
the new week with renewed vim, vigor and direction.
The
rest of the laws have to do with our relationship with each other here on
earth. Honor your mother and father –
they were co-creators with God in bringing you to life. Without them, you would not exist.
You
shall not murder, nor commit adultery, nor steal, nor bear false witness, nor
covet anything belonging to your neighbor.
(Now I could spend the rest of the sermon elaborating on these
commandments – but I’m not.)
Now,
I admit that I have made fun of those 6 hundred 15 laws that a righteous Jew
was supposed to follow. When you think
about it, a lot of those laws dealt with the same kinds of things that today’s
laws deal with. Would anyone here like
to give a guess about how many laws there are in America today? There are whole libraries dedicated to
stating and explaining the laws that have been passed by the national and state
legislatures. The reason we have to have
laws is because there are always people who are going to do things that end up
hurting others – and without laws there would be chaos and anarchy.
In
a perfect world everyone would be kind and courteous to everyone else and we
would need no laws. Problem is we don’t
live in a perfect world. When I taught
school, we usually ended up the year with many more rules than we started with
– because each time a student would do something (that we had not anticipated)
that injured someone or caused some kind of trouble or disruption, a new rule
would have to be made.
At
the first of this sermon, I asked you what kinds of things you were most proud
of. In our second lesson we hear Paul
talking about the things he is most proud of… He's proud for being a born and bred, card carrying, law-abiding
Jew, righteous under the law – he makes a long list of all the things that as a
Jew he has a right to be proud of. Many
of these qualities set him apart from the crowd and in Jewish circles placed him
above the average person.
But
Paul, following his conversion, has come to realize that it doesn’t mean
anything. He now understands that in the grand scheme of
things, at the end of his life, it is not going to matter. Paul has learned that it is the love of
Christ that is of utmost importance and he declares that he doesn’t want the
kind of righteousness that comes from pride and the law – but only that which
comes from faith in Christ.
And
then we come to Jesus – and to one of those parables that is somewhat
discomforting – an allegory that challenges us.
I
read a number of sermons expounding on how this parable makes sense to the
people of that day – but it goes deeper than to say “oh, there were lots of
absentee landlords in Israel at the time of Jesus...” The Hebrew people had a
collective memory of their history and their scriptures. In a
way of explanation let me offer the following:
If
I were to begin, “Jesus love me, this I know,___”
How
about “Holy, holy, holy. ______”
And
“Amazing grace, _________”
You
folks know these – you’ve sung them over and over – now you have three tunes
rolling around in your head. That’s the
same way the Jews were with the Psalms – they knew them because that was their
hymn book, songs they sang over and over. *
Likewise
you know many of the Old Testament Bible stories – as the first lesson was
read, you might have thought of Charlton Heston standing on the mountain
holding the tablets of the commandments. If
I were to mention, “the Garden of Eden” or “Noah’s Ark,” you know what that is about – and
an image probably comes to mind. If I say, “Joseph and the many colored coat,”
you know it – an image comes up - or David and Goliath. Likewise this parable Jesus tells begins as a
familiar story from scriptures.
For
the people Jesus was talking to (the chief priests and the elders and Pharisees),
the image of a vineyard was that kind of thing – It‘s from Isaiah 5, and I’m
going to quote it for you. “Let me sing for my beloved my love song
concerning his vineyard: My beloved had
a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He
dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines; he built a
watchtower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to
yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.”
This
sounds very much like the parable we just read from Matthew. It is a story about God – and the land he had
provided for his people – with everything they needed for life – and the people
are the grapes – not the good grapes God expected but wild (sour) grapes. It was a song of the unfaithfulness of the
people of God.
Now
when Jesus tells this parable, it is not the produce itself that is found
wanting, but those who have been given responsibility to tend the vineyard (the
leaders).
The
thing we find interesting as we examine this parable is the patience of
God. He sends his slaves to collect the
portion of the harvest that belongs to him.
When the tenants beat one, stone one and kill one, the landowner doesn’t
immediately rush in and punish the tenants.
He sends more slaves to collect the tithe owed to him, and the tenants
treat them the same as they had the first.
So
the landowner sends his son, the heir to the property. And the tenants seem to think they can kill
him and then the property will be theirs.
Because they have worked the field and harvested the grapes, they have
decided they are entitled to the entire harvest, forgetting that it was the
owner who cleared the land, planted the fields and built the fence, press and
tower. We see the patience on the part
of the landowner, for he is willing to give the tenants a chance to do the
right thing – not just one chance, but multiple chances. Notice that Jesus leaves the parable there –
he does not complete it. He poses the
question, allowing the religious leaders to draw their own conclusions - and
they do – out of their own flawed reasoning.
Today
is the beginning of our stewardship season, and this is a story about
stewardship. How well do we tend this
corner of the garden that God has given us? As new tenants of the vineyard it
means we are the ones responsible for producing new fruit and presenting it to
God. How are we going to be different
from the original tenants? It is now our
turn to give back to God from what he has given to us.
This
says so much more about the way we are to live our lives and conduct our
affairs. How do we tend our vineyard?
God created this wonderful place for us to live and he filled it with
all good things – all the things that combined with the knowledge and wisdom
and willingness to work – can be used to provide us with a really good
life. Are we careful with the things
that God has given us? Do we tend this
vineyard and take care of those things which God has provided for us? Do we give credit to God for those things
which make our life worth living?
So
what kinds of stewards are we of those things that God has given to us. Do we give back to him from the first fruits
of our bounty? Do we honor that which
God has given us? That’s a question that
each one of us has to answer for ourselves.
There
was a time when Sam and I were “C and E’ers” – we only attended on Christmas and
Easter – if we happened to be in
Alvin on those holidays. God began
working on each of us individually and eventually we moved back to Alvin and
began going to church on a regular basis – every Wednesday night to choir
practice and every Sunday to church. And
I have to say it was more about singing in the choir and making music than it
was about worshiping God.
I’d
like to be able to say that there was some moment of enlightenment or
inspiration that was the beginning of the change in me – but I don’t recall any. I just know that somewhere along the way of
faithful attendance, I quit watching the clock and started listening (really
listening) to the sermons. I started
hearing things that rang true, that made sense, that inspired my imagination.
And
the first time they talked to us about filling out a pledge card, my reaction
wasn’t really that great. That was my
hard earned money and we had a family to feed.
The first time I really remember Sam and I sitting down and talking
about any real kind of “donation” was at a marriage encounter weekend. It was a powerful experience of the love of
God shone to us through other loving couples.
There was no upfront cost for the weekend, but one of the talks dealt
with giving. As Sam and I wrote about
this separately and later talked about it, we both decided that we wanted to
give – not only to cover our own costs, but also to cover the cost for another
couple to attend. Over the years I did work up to a tithe, but it didn't happen overnight.
As I've grown in the Lord, I have come to realize that God has indeed always given me the
things I needed – he has found amazing ways to take care of me. And I have found that if I return to him out
of the bounty he has provided, he manages to do wonderful things with what I
provide, regardless of size. What we
give to God should always be our response for the faithfulness of God to
provide for us. And what I have learned
is that God’s faithfulness always trumps my own meager efforts. Amen.
* From a sermon by Randy L Quinn