Sermon for Proper 22, Year A
God is not in competition with us.
I talk about my kids a lot. When I do, I say, “my kids,” which makes sense because that’s how we’re used to talking. But the thing is: they’re not really my kids, in the same way that my books or my car belong to me.
They’re not my possession. They are their own, independent, strong-willed, intelligent people. And the older they get, the more I realize that they’re going to have their own likes and dislikes, as well as their own opinions (which they are very happy to voice).
I have a responsibility to love and care for them, but at the end of the day, it is their life, not mine. I’m their parent, not their owner.
We use possessive language over a lot of things in this world. We talk about my time, my life, my family, my church, my country.
But there’s a danger there: We can forget that we do not, in fact, own time, life, our families, the church, or our country. They don’t belong to us. Nevertheless, we care about them, we are responsible for them, and we love them.
That mistaken identity between stewardship and ownership lies at the heart of today’s Gospel. We hear this story that Jesus tells about these tenants in a vineyard. The owner of the vineyard builds the watchtower, plants the vineyard, sets everything up, and leases it out to them.
They care for it as they’re supposed to. But somewhere along the way, they start to get the idea that it’s their vineyard. And they start acting accordingly.
When harvest time comes, the landowner sends various servants to collect the landowner’s portion of the produce, and the tenants treat those servants with increasing levels of violence: beating them, killing them, and stoning them. Finally, the owner says, “I will send them my son. Surely, they will respect him.”
But that’s not what happens. They kill the son too, thinking that if they kill him, then they’ll get the inheritance. Which doesn’t really make sense, if you know how inheritance laws work. It just shows you how possessiveness and violence can twist our thinking into some really foolish directions.
I can relate to that on a personal level. I notice that, when I feel threatened, I start using language about “taking things back.” I want to “take back my family,” “take back my church,” or “take back my country.” That language gives me away. Because, when I say “take back,” I am implying that I think it was mine to begin with.
If I’m feeling particularly spiritual, I might say, “I’m not taking it back for me, I’m taking it back for God.” But here’s the thing: God never lost it in the first place. God is not in competition with us.
If I say, “I’m going to take this or that thing back for God,” God never lost it, so that doesn’t make sense.
If I say, I’m “taking it back,” it was never mine to begin with, so that doesn’t make sense.
Which means that, in the end, I’m just taking.
I am willing to use force and violence to perpetuate the illusion of ownership over whatever it is that feels threatened in my life.
Jesus exposes this tendency in today’s parable.
And there’s something very subtle in his response to the people:
At the end, Jesus asks a question, as he often does.
He asks, “What do you think the owner will do to these tenants?”
And they respond, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death.”
Did you notice who gave that answer? Was it Jesus who said that? No. It was the religious leaders that he was talking to.
This scene takes place during Holy Week. The tension between the Jesus movement and the established temple institution is coming to a head. In the midst of this tension, Jesus tells this parable about them, implying that they are the tenants who have mistaken their stewardship for ownership. And the other mistake they make is assuming that God is just as violent as they are.
What Jesus actually does is ask another question. Basically, he asks, “Have you guys never read the Bible, where it says that ‘the stone the builders rejected has become chief cornerstone; This is the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’?”
Jesus doesn’t agree with “putting the wretches to a miserable death.” For Jesus, God is in the business of building, not tearing down. For Jesus, “that which has been rejected is now the cornerstone.” They are the bringers of death, but God is the bringer of life.
It’s not a mistake that this conversation is happening during Holy Week. At the end of this week, Jesus the Son of God, is going to be taken outside of the vineyard, Jerusalem, and crucified. And then on Easter Sunday, will be raised from the dead. Thus, showing how God brings life, not more violence. God is not in competition with us.
When my wife was a little girl, her parents had a particular prayer that they prayed for her: They prayed that she would have more faith than they do.
What I love about that prayer is that they’re not praying that she would believe what they believe. They weren’t praying that she would grow up to be exactly like they are, or that she would never change, or that they could always control her. They prayed that she would go beyond where they would go.
This is a wonderful image of stewardship. It is an open-handed holding of what has been entrusted to them. They loved her without possessing her. That’s what being a good tenant of God’s vineyard looks like.
Open hands don’t mean idle hands. We still have a responsibility to care for that which has been entrusted to us. We have a duty to protect that which is vulnerable.
But we do so while recognizing this life belongs to God, and God is perhaps guiding it in ways that we can’t see. Maybe that’s also true of our churches, of our country, and of our very lives.
Because at the end of the day, God is the owner of the vineyard, not us. And God holds everything with those open hands, including us.
