Sermon prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church, Auburn WA

by Gregory S. Kaurin, associate pastor

Morning Promise contemporary services, 10/06/02

 

Texts: Isaiah 27:2-5 & Matthew 21:33-46

Sermon:

Vineyard Violence

 

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Before we dig into Jesus’ parable about the ungrateful tenants…I want you to take a good look at the lesson we read from Isaiah.

 

 

This is one of my favorite passages of scripture—maybe because I enjoy the ones that sound like they don’t seem to fit together.  It almost makes God sound manic or schizophrenic.  I said that to my wife, Pauline, and she said, “No, it makes him sound like a gardener.”  She said she knows exactly how this feels because she’s got the same thing happening with her fall lettuce.  The garden bed is producing all kinds of green stuff, but hardly any of it is lettuce!  She loves her garden, and she can understand the emotions in this passage: love, frustrated hopes, a longing for the fruits from the seeds she planted.

 

But God is not just talking about a garden or a vineyard, not even just about his whole creation.  He is talking about his people, and the fruits he wants from them.  Love for him, acts of justice, caring for the hungry, lonely, weak, imprisoned, orphaned, and abandoned.

 

God loves his vineyard, his people, and for that reason, he is a very emotionally God!  Of course he is.  Like no one else, God loves us, and he gets continually dumped.  No one knows better than God what it feels like to be stood up and rejected…by all his dates.  No one has been left standing at the altar more than God, and yet he keeps coming back for us, keeps hoping and reaching, “Let them cling to me; let them make peace, make peace with me!”

 

We’ll come back to this, but let’s talk about Jesus’ parable of the vineyard:

 

 

This story was one in a whole series in which Jesus was responding to the Chief Priests and Elders who were trying to undermine Jesus’ teachings and authority.  And one story after another, he turned around all their questions and attempts to trap him. 

 

This story was no different.  Jesus asked them, “What will the owner do to those tenants?”  They answered, “Of course, he’ll bring those wretches to a wretched end and lease the vineyard to others who’ll use the vineyard the way he intended!”  And Jesus responded by saying:

 

 

It slowly dawned on those religious leaders that he was talking about them, and that he was judging and holding them to their own words—the vineyard would be leased to others who will give God the produce that he wants.

 

Now, I will give you this caution about this passage.  It is very important to keep in mind who Jesus was talking to.  He was speaking to the chief priests, the elders, the religious leaders, or what we might call the “professional clergy.”  Jesus was telling those leaders, “You are misusing everything that God has given you.  You act like you own the vineyard, as if you own what God has given.  You use the vineyard to your own advantage, for wealth and power.  You do your rituals without thinking about the God you’re supposed to be worshipping.  You ignore, and take advantage of the poor.  You ignore the call of the prophets for justice, and you would kill God’s own Son to try to keep the vineyard to yourself.”

 

This story is not just about the chief priests and elders.  It is a warning to us all, maybe especially to religious leaders, to the professional clergy, like me.  I recently read a great quote from the 19^th Century:

 

 

I can laugh at it, but I want you to take it to heart, literally.  You must believe in God, no matter what the clergy tell you.  I hope that what I preach and teach, and I hope my life, all reflect God and his grace. 

 

However, I also know that I am damaged goods, like anyone else.  So, no matter what I say, no matter how much information about God I can tell you, no matter how fancy my theology or explanations, believe me when I tell you this: you have everything you need to have faith as strong as any of the saints, you already have all the grace you need for complete forgiveness and salvation.  So, no matter what you see, hear or learn from me, take this to heart, because, I may be clergy, but I need to cling to it just like you: “My child, believe in God, no matter what the clergy tell you.”

 

I will go one step further with this story of the wicked tenants, to suggest it is a story that catches us all, as believers.  The tenants in the story know that the vineyard belongs to the owner, to God.  And yet they act like it’s their vineyard to use as they choose, and they act as if the owner isn’t ever coming home.  They act as if God isn’t really going to see what they’re doing.

 

Some of you know my dog, Katy.  She’s a pretty well-behaved dog, and we can usually leave her alone in the house for several hours at a stretch.  But once in awhile, she just can’t seem to help herself; she does something she knows is wrong, like getting into the kitchen garbage.  Last night, she got a hold of a cookie box. 

 

I knew she had done something as soon as we walked in the door, and I knew she knew it was wrong by the way she cringed and cowered by the back door, looking pitiful, with her rear down, tail flopping back and forth, ears plastered to her head.  If anyone ever saw the way she acts, I’d have to convince them that she’s really not abused, that we honestly have never even swatted her.  She just really hates getting into trouble, and still, while we’re gone, it’s as if she forgets that we’re probably going to come home. 

 

It’s like those few kids who torment or act out with their babysitters, as if Mom and Dad aren’t going to come home and find out everything you’ve done while they were gone.  Well, God is going to find out—in fact he already knows.

 

 

Jesus’ story said something about the religious leaders that I never really picked up until last week.  We often say that they were waiting for the Messiah, the new King David, and that they didn’t recognize him in Jesus.  But Jesus was suggesting that they really did not want the Messiah to come.  They were happy running the vineyard to their own advantage, using this religion for personal power and significance.  It was fine to have a theology about the Messiah.  It was okay if he and God were ideas and distant objects to worship and wait for.  That was something to keep the people happy and coming back to hear more and to pay their sacrifices and tithes.

 

But the idea of Messiah, the actual Messiah in the flesh, scared them.  And many of them realized that what Jesus did and said was consistent with scripture, that he spoke and acted with authority, even godly authority, and it scared them.  Whether or not Jesus was the Messiah, it was upsetting their lives.  Jesus was reminding them that the vineyard was not theirs.  And so, they decided and said, “Let’s wait and arrest and kill this Jesus before he takes and ruins our vineyard.”

 

So what does this have to do with us?  We are the tenants now.  Jesus’ warnings apply to us.  Our faith, our God, and his plan for salvation are not something we get to arbitrate and decide.  This religion, this faith, is not our vineyard.  But we are the tenants.

 

And so, we are called out of secrecy.   Mom and Dad will come home, and they will know everything we’ve done.  God knows already.  We are called to stop pretending as if God and our faith is just a theology we think about once a week, as if Jesus was just a holy man way back in history, or as if the Holy Spirit is just an idea in our lives. 

 

God is real.  Jesus is your brother and Savior, and he knows everything, everything: all the secret addictions to alcohol or porn, abusive hands or words, the affairs and all the promises you would break if given half the chance.  Maybe you can hide it from Mom and Dad; maybe you can hide it from your spouse.  …Probably not—all this junk has a way of working itself into the light.

 

Even if you could take it to your grave, that stuff you hope is hidden in your closet is never hidden from the one who matters most: God.  We are already convicted.  Part of “practicing the presence” is realizing that God is real, and that he sees everything.  All we need to do is imagine ourselves, each standing alone in front of God, in front of his glory.  God has already walked in the front door and caught us red handed.  Do you think we should act like my dog, cringing at the back door?  Shall we cringe at the back door in God’s presence?

 

No, we are not left cringing at the back door.  Let’s finish where we started: 

 

 

With the message from Isaiah.  God spoke his anger honestly and openly, but he ended with these words:  “Cling to me for protection.  Make peace with me.  Make peace with me.”

 

There is another part of “practicing the presence” of God.  It means that we need to look past our own guilty embarrassed noses to see that there is not cold judgment in God’s eyes.  There are tears and love in his eyes, a love that was willing to die for us.

 

Take heart and strength from that love that says, “I, your God, forgive everything.”

Find in that love the strength and motivation to leave the secrecy here, lose it, drop it, find help, do whatever it takes—because you and I know that it’s getting in the way of your love for God, and your love for other people. 

 

And God wants that relationship with you; he wants you to have that sense of freedom and joy that comes from being able to stand in the light, forgiven.  “Cling to me;” God said, “make peace; make peace.”

 

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