Sermon Text

Sometimes a sermon changes in midstream. Sometimes you think you know where it’s going, and all of a sudden, it changes direction, right there before your eyes.

Other times, you complete a sermon, as I did this week, thinking you knew what you were going to preach about. And then, all of a sudden, it becomes crystal clear to you that you can’t preach that sermon, you have to preach a completely different one, and so you’d better get to work, and right now!

Well, the second is what happened this past week. I was all prepared to do a kind of a teaching sermon on the Sacrament of Holy Communion, especially for World Communion Sunday. But I just couldn’t get the lesson from Matthew’s Gospel for this Sunday out of my mind. The story is certainly a familiar one – I’ve preached on it I don’t know how many times over the past 36 years! But it nagged at me. Maybe it’s because we’re in the midst of a season of thinking and praying about our stewardship. Maybe it’s just because that’s what Scripture often does with me – it nags me until I do something about it!

So, I’m not preaching about Communion today. Here is what I am preaching on, so hold onto your seats!

[Read Matthew 21:33-46]

A colleague tells of going to visit a longtime member of the church who had not been in worship for a long time. As they talked, the parishioner asked, “How are they doing down at the church?” My colleague said, “At that moment, I had my sermon title for the next Sunday. The title was, ‘We Are They’.”

Throughout history, God’s people have used a lot of “theys.” Sometimes the list of “them” pointed to the religious leaders, like the scribes and the Pharisees. But the list also included Gentiles, women, the uncircumcised, eunuchs and others who were sexually suspect, Judaizers, sinners, and barbarians. People in every age have exhibited the human tendency to put some distinction between themselves and whoever the “bad guys” are.

There was a Middle School Sunday School teacher who was not aware of the pervasive nature of this tendency. She was telling her class one day about the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee, she said, stood out in the open in the Temple where everyone could see him and bragged to God out loud how thankful he was that he was not like this “other man.” The poor tax collector stood in the shadows and whispered, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” The teacher talked about the pious self-righteousness of the Pharisee and ended by saying, “Now class, let’s bow our heads and thank God we are not like that mean old Pharisee.”

The tenants were given a plot of land to tend on behalf of the landowner. The owner had already put a lot of work into it. “There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it and built a watchtower.” Then he left his land and its improvements in the hands of his tenants. That is, not in “their” hands, but in “our” hands. But we made two mistakes. We thought the land belonged to us. We forgot we were stewards of somebody else’s property. How dare the owner send servant after servant, and finally his son, demanding a share of the proceeds? After all, the tenants had worked hard on this land.

The owner left this beautiful plot in our hands, and what have we done with it? War; terror; ecological disaster; families in disarray; confusion; fear and pessimism everywhere; values twisted and words given new and strange meanings.

Of course, we protest that it isn’t us, it’s they! We blame it on someone else. Like the story of the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis, the man blames the woman, the woman blames the snake, and both actually subtly blame God. We blame it on the government, or on big business, or on the Republicans or the Democrats, or whoever is handy at the moment. Sure, there’s plenty of blame to go around, but we think this gets us off the hook.

Jesus will not let us off the hook so easily. He brings these two words – we and they – closer together. In the story we read a moment ago, even the chief priests and the Pharisees knew he was talking about them.

When the early church reminisced about the life and teaching of Jesus and began drawing the Gospels as we know them together, they left this parable in. Why? It was very clearly a word to the church, both then and now. Be careful lest you ever forget that you are the tenants. Be careful lest you refuse to listen to the servants and prophets God sends. Be careful when the owner sends his son that you do not ignore him or crucify him all over again.

The church today is having a hard time, at least in some circles. We can’t decide what kind of songs to sing, what instruments to play, what liturgy to use, if any, what time to meet (10:15? 11:11??), or what appropriate attire is for the worshipers or the leaders, or what the building ought to look like or contain. Maybe our problem is the same as the one the Pharisees had. Maybe we have forgotten that this is God’s vineyard, and we are just the tenants. Maybe we have forgotten that one day the owner of the vineyard is going to ask for an accounting!
Maybe our task is to stop pointing fingers. Maybe the liberals and the conservatives aren’t to blame, or the government or the gays or the immigrants or the terrorists, or even our parents. We are they. We are to tend faithfully the vineyard we have been given. We are to receive those God sends our way. We are to make sure that if Jesus walks down San Felipe someday, we don’t miss him. Remember what happened on that first Christmas, or even on your last Christmas? Did you see the Christ child?

How much easier it is to point fingers at those folks over there. How much harder it is to ask sincerely, God, what do You want me to do to be a faithful steward of what You have entrusted to me?

Jesus says we have been given this vineyard to tend. It was in good shape when God left it with us. Now our task is the same as those who came before us. It is to leave this vineyard better than we found it. It will take all of us, working together, to make this vineyard green and lush and productive. It is to reach out and join hands and hearts with our brothers and sisters, and even with strangers and enemies.

Isn’t this the kind of vineyard we want to leave for those who will come here after us?